Bad Boys Can't Date Persephone: Part 6
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
“Are you paying rent for this place?”
“Not much, but yeah. Why?”
I pointed at the hole in the floor. “Will they charge you for that?”
“Uh…” He grimaced. “Don’t know. They might.”
“I’ll pay for the repair when this is over. Please, I’d like to do that.”
“We’ll talk about that later, but Elena told me that cups of tea help people feel better. You want one? Sorry it won’t be any of that herbal and berry stuff your mum’s farm sells.”
Elena wasn’t wrong.
“That sounds great. I never liked that kind of tea anyway, except if it’s got pomegranates in it.”
***
“Tell me about your magic.”
We were both curled up in the two old chairs in the sitting-room, the TV playing silently in the background. Hayden had insisted on me taking the one with the blanket.
Outside, the grey shadows still swirled, making it seem as if we were caught between twilight and nightfall.
The tea felt warm and comforting in my stomach.
“When I was little, I wanted to have magic just like my mum. She seemed like the most amazing and powerful person in the world to me – except for Dad, of course. One day when I was six, she took me out to a meadow.”
It had been a perfect spring day. The sky was the beautiful blue you think you’ll only see in your dreams, and to me that day had felt like a dream. Just me and Mum, surrounded by the flowers.
I could still remember the pink and white patterned dress I’d worn.
“The flowers were stunning and so colourful, and I was just so happy that I started running and dancing around on the path. I twirled around, and suddenly the flowers just changed. Mum said they became fuller and brighter; some that hadn’t even blossomed yet opened right then. She said the entire meadow became more alive.” I shrugged, taking care not to spill any tea. “That’s when we both realised I had flower magic. Sorry, that whole speech sounded cheesy.”
“No,” Hayden murmured. “It wasn’t.”
“And you?” I asked. “When did you realise you had magic?”
“I was about six too. Dad made it clear that he wanted kids with magic, especially since Mum doesn’t have any, and I wanted to impress him. He was really pleased when my magic manifested, and he started training me right away. When he realised Perry and Zach had it too, he was thrilled. Three sons, all with magic, just like he’d wanted.”
He gulped at his tea, not even wincing as it went down his throat. “Our tutors reported back to him on how we were doing, and he wasn’t complaining, but when Zach was eight things suddenly changed. Dad wanted to see how well we’d do against each other.”
“You mean, how well you’d do when fighting each other?”
Hayden nodded. “I said no. The fact that I didn’t even like Perry and Zach didn’t come into it; they’re my little brothers. When I told Dad that, he said that I could fight him instead.”
My breath froze in my chest.
“It was them or him, and I picked him. Every time. Each fight, I’d keep going until I just couldn’t.”
I’m fine. I’m used to this, just give me a moment.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You didn’t deserve that.”
Nobody deserved a parent like Carl Ashcroft.
Hayden shrugged. “My aunt Erin gave me a motorbike and a license one Christmas. Looking back on it now, I think she knew what I’d eventually do with it. She never liked my dad.”
“Good for her.”
“My grandparents set up a trust fund for all three of us. Day I turned eighteen, I waltzed right into the bank with all the documents I needed; Dad kept them in his study, but he couldn’t hide them from me. I opened an entirely new account, transferred all the money in my trust fund, packed my bag, left some notes and that was it. Haven’t seen my family since.”
We stayed quiet for a few moments.
Hayden Ashcroft and Mina Asher had to be the bravest people in Topaz Coast. They’d endured so much, and they’d got away from it.
Some part of me – a tiny part – hoped that Hayden’s family were looking for him because they were worried, that they were sorry and wanted to make amends. But I couldn’t tell him that. We hardly knew each other and it didn’t feel like my place to tell him.
“When did you first figure out that you could make flowers come out of nowhere?”
“I can’t do that. I can just work with seeds and bulbs, and the plants that are already there. That rosebush didn’t just come out of nowhere.”
Hayden sat up and leaned forward, his eyes alight. “But that’s the thing. It did. Pretty certain there wasn’t a rosebush planted under the floor.”
“Are you saying I created that? But that was an accident. I haven’t done anything like that in a long time.”
“So that’s happened before?”
“Yeah, when I was little and lost control of my emotions.” I’d thrown my share of temper tantrums, just like any six-year-old, and they’d always ended in thorny vines just appearing around me. They’d frightened me and Mum, so I’d stopped the tantrums.
Since then, there had been no vines.
“And you never realised you can actually create plants?”
I shook my head numbly. Could I really do that?
What was the harm in finding out?
“Do you mind if I use your garden to find out?”
“Nope. Place was kind of bare anyway.”
I put my shoes on – they were still a little damp – and stepped outside. I wouldn’t have any trouble growing the flowers that were already biding their time, but this was different. I wanted to try to create something that wasn’t in the garden. But what would it be?
An image of a flower with white petals and a blush-pink centre entered my mind.
I’d always liked the colours blue and purple.
That would work.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, imagining dawn lily bulbs resting in the earth. I pictured the colours that the petals would have and the way they would blend into each other.
The little bulbs in the garden started to stir. I reached out with both hands, turned my palms upward and slowly raised them. The plants reacted joyfully, shooting up and breaking the surface of the soil.
When I opened my eyes, the grass was like a living carpet. And yet…
I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth. Standing tall and proud above the other flowers was a crop of dawn lilies, the blue petals slowly turning purple at the centre.
“Flora!”
I spun around and rushed inside. “Hayden, you’re not going to believe this! I just…”
My voice died away as I saw what was on the TV.
Mum, her face pale and eyes red from crying, was talking into a microphone. Beside her was a picture of me; the words FEARS FOR MISSING GIRL glowed on the screen.
“This is bad,” Hayden said.
Yeah, it was. This was really bad, if Mum was already talking to the press.
It was then that I had an idea. “What if my magic can break the wards?”
Hayden looked up at me, frowning.
“Hear me out. You can’t break the shield because the wards are using your magic to create them – but what if I used my magic to break the wards themselves?”
“You think you can do that?”
“Right now, I feel like there’s nothing I can’t do.”
He followed me out of the house. His mouth dropped open at the sight of all the flowers. “Whoa. You created those?”
“Not all of them. Most were already there, but you see those lilies?” I pointed at the tall flowers. “Those weren’t. I was going to create dawn lilies, but then I imagined different colours and…”
I stopped talking, breathless with excitement.
“They’re beautiful – no, they’re more than that. They’re amazing.”
I cleared my throat and shook my hair back. “How many wards are there, and where did you place them?”
“There’s four of them. One at every corner of the garden.”
Four? He hadn’t been playing around.
I’d never used my magic like this before; could I do it? Could flower magic be enough to break the wards?
Closing my eyes again, I took several deep breaths and focused, reaching out with my magic along the edges of the garden until it encountered what felt like four large stones.
“Have you found them?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, I surrounded each ‘stone’ with power and began to squeeze. It felt like trying to break a stone in real life; no matter how much pressure I put on them, they held strong even though they shook.
“I think it’s working! Keep going!”
My arms were beginning to tremble. Beads of sweat prickled at my forehead, and my breathing became laboured. The wards started to shake even harder. If I just kept going…
Another type of magic wrapped around the wards, its tendrils small but still strong.
Shadow magic.
I smiled.
“Three, two, one…” Hayden said.
We both tightened our grips. The wards shattered and sunlight pierced my closed eyes.
I opened them. The shields were gone. We were surrounded by green fields and the afternoon sun shone down on us without a grey cloud in sight.
“We did it!” Laughing, I spun around and hugged Hayden on impulse; he threw his arms right around me and practically lifted me off the ground.
“Ready to face your parents?” he asked when we broke apart.
“Yeah. I’d better get it over with.”
It had only been a couple of hours since we’d properly met, but I didn’t want this to be over yet. I wanted to see Hayden again when all this blew over. I could make Mum understand what had happened, couldn’t I?
Then something appeared out of the corner of my eye: two sleek black cars crawling towards the house.