Chapter 1: Fucking in the Garden
The air in the backyard tasted of damp earth and magic. Under the neon wash of the city’s floating streetlights, the thorned roses and silver-leafed vines in Mike and Casey’s garden seemed to breathe, their faintly glowing petals pulsing in time with the distant, rhythmic chatter from a spell-caster’s patio two blocks over. An enchanted firefly, its light a persistent blue, bobbed lazily near a cluster of weeds that looked suspiciously like grasping fingers.
“This is bollocks,” Mai announced, yanking at a vine that recoiled slightly before going still. She wiped a bead of sweat from her temple with the back of a muddy glove. “Gardening. Honestly. My mother is out there hunting dragon leads with a magical compass, and I’m here pulling up sentient nettles.”
Felicity, kneeling beside a bed of glowing moonflowers, pushed a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Her blue eyes were focused, analytical. “It’s not sentient. Probably. See the capillary pattern in the stem? It’s just a basic luminal response to ambient mana. Fascinating, really.” She carefully extracted the plant, root and all, and placed it in her specimen jar instead of the waste bag.
“You would think that.” Mai grinned, her English accent clipping the words. “Where’s your bloke, anyway? Bruce moping you’re here instead of with him?”
“He’s fine. We’re… casual.” Felicity’s cheeks pinked, a tell Mai had come to recognize. It wasn’t about Bruce. It was about the memory of the noise from the ‘Horny House,’ about the heady, confusing night of tangled limbs and sweat-slick skin with Mandy, Ben, Mike, and Casey that had unlocked a door in her Felicity couldn’t seem to close. Her mother’s teasing about being ‘broken’ wasn’t far off. The scholarly part of her wanted to study this new, hungry version of herself. The rest of her just wanted to feel that again.
A sharp, rhythmic clanging from the old tool shed broke the garden’s hum. Then a low, masculine groan, muffled but unmistakable.
Mai’s eyes rolled so hard Felicity was surprised they didn’t stick. “Speak of the devils. Or rather, listen to them. Your best friend and her beau, having a go in the shed. Predictable.”
“Mandy said they were getting the longer shears,” Felicity murmured, but she was staring at the shed’s warped wooden door.
“Come on. A peek won’t kill you.” Mai was already moving, silent as a cat on the soft grass, her restless energy finding a new outlet. Felicity followed, her heart doing a strange little flutter.
The shed door was ajar, a slim slice of darkness revealing movement within. The smell of old gasoline, potting soil, and sex hit them. The clanging was the rusty wheelbarrow, rattling against the stone foundation with each thrust.
Inside, Ben Bryant was a silhouette of taut muscle, his dirty blonde hair damp with sweat. He was on his feet, jeans and boxers shoved down to his thighs. Mandy Williamson was bent over the wheelbarrow’s grimy tray, her own jeans puddled around her ankles, her long, shaggy brown hair a chaotic veil over her face. Her ass was in the air, pale and perfect in the sliver of light.
“Fuck, Mandy,” Ben grunted, his voice strained. His hands gripped her hips, his knuckles white, as he drove into her. The sound was wet, filthy, a steady slap-slap-slap of skin on skin mixing with the wheelbarrow’s percussion.
“Yeah, right there, you fucking… ah, god…” Mandy’s voice was a ragged moan, choked and full. “Don’t you dare slow down. Give me that big fucking cock.”
Ben’s head fell back. “Your cunt’s so goddamn tight. Soaked.” He pistoned harder, his heavy balls slapping against her. “Gonna make you come all over it.”
“Promise?” Mandy shoved back against him, taking him deeper, making him gasp. “Come on, fuck me like you mean it, you jock shithead.” Her hand snaked between her own legs, fingers working her clit in frantic circles. “Oh, fuck, yes…”
Felicity watched, paralyzed. She saw the thick length of Ben’s cock, shiny with Mandy’s arousal, plunging in and out of her slick, stretched opening. She saw the desperate, animal need on their faces. It was crude, obscene, and it made a hot coil of lust tighten low in her own belly. Her breath came shallow.
Mai made a sound of pure disgust. “For Christ’s sake.” She didn’t bother whispering. She stepped forward and kicked the shed door. It flew open with a bang, flooding the space with garden light.
Ben froze, his cock buried to the hilt inside Mandy. Mandy jerked her head up, her smirk instantly in place despite the delirium in her eyes. “Party’s in here, girls. Bring a weed whacker.”
“You were supposed to be getting tools,” Mai said, hands on her hips. “Not polishing his.”
“Multitasking.” Mandy wiggled her hips, making Ben groan again. “We’re almost done. Two minutes.”
“You have thirty seconds,” Mai stated, turning on her heel. “Felicity. We have actual work to do.”
Felicity jumped, tearing her gaze from the intimate join of their bodies. She felt flushed, exposed. “Right. Yes. Weeding.” She hurried after Mai, the image of Ben’s thrusting hips burned onto the back of her eyelids.
Back at the flower bed, the mundane task felt surreal. The moans from the shed resumed, then crescendoed—a sharp cry from Mandy, a guttural roar from Ben, then silence.
“Animals,” Mai muttered, attacking a thorny vine with renewed vigor.
“They’re in love,” Felicity said softly, not sure why she was defending them.
“So what? Does love mean you have to fuck in a tool shed while your parents ask you to do a simple chore?” Mai shook her head. “My mother rode a dragon. She didn’t spend her youth getting railed in garden sheds.”
“Different kinds of adventure,” Felicity offered, her mind still in the shed, her panties feeling uncomfortably damp.
A few minutes later, Mandy and Ben emerged. Mandy was re-zipping her jeans, her hair a glorious mess. Ben looked sheepish, carrying a pair of perfectly clean long-handled shears.
“Told you we’d find them,” Mandy said, plopping down on the grass. Ben sat beside her, his arm instantly around her.
The work continued, the garden slowly yielding. As the sun dipped lower, casting longer shadows, Felicity felt it. A subtle vibration through the soil. The glowing petals on the roses dimmed, then brightened abruptly.
“Did you see that?” she whispered.
Mai paused, glove in the dirt. “See what?”
“The light. A wave.” Felicity frowned, her scholarly mind clicking into gear. “And the ground… it hummed.”
Before Mai could answer, the back kitchen door opened. Casey Kapowski stepped out, silver streaking her dark hair, a paint smudge on her cheek. She held a strange, ornate brass compass that didn’t point north. Its needle was spinning lazily.
“Hey, kids. Mike’s ordering pizza. You almost—” She stopped, her eyes going from the kids to the compass in her hand. The needle had stopped spinning. It was pointing directly at the center of the overgrown garden, at a ancient, gnarled hawthorn tree they’d all assumed was just dead.
The tree’s bark began to split with a sound like tearing parchment.
Casey’s face, usually so composed, went pale. “Mike!” she yelled over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off the tree. “Get out here. And call Yukio. Now.”
Inside the house, one of the cats, Rembrandt the Maine Coon, began to hiss, a low, continuous sound of pure warning. From across the street, they could see Mrs. Anderson’s living room curtain twitch.
The curtain fell back into place. A second later, the porch light across the street flicked on.
Mike emerged from the back door, phone already pressed to his ear. He nodded at Casey, his expression more ‘mildly inconvenienced’ than alarmed. After twenty years, weird shit happening in their yard was basically a seasonal allergy. He had a mental speed-dial list for this. “Yep. The hawthorn. No, it’s not blooming, it’s… creaking. Splitting. Like it’s giving birth to termites the size of poodles. Just get here.”
He lowered the phone and raised his voice slightly. “Calista? Sweetie, you might want to put the concealer down. We may need some targeted barbecue.”
From the upstairs window of the house, Calista leaned out. Her silver hair cascaded over her shoulders, catching the last of the sun like spun mercury. Even from a distance, her half-elf glamour was palpable, a gentle pressure behind the eyes that just made you want to keep looking. “Can it wait twenty minutes? I’m blending.”
“Your tree is having an existential crisis!” Mai yelled up, hands cupped around her mouth. “Why aren’t you down here pulling weeds with the rest of the grunts?”
Calista’s luminous eyes flicked to Mai. “I have a photo shoot. For Arcane Vogue.”
“You have a photo shoot every other day!”
A graceful shrug. “I can’t afford the calluses. My hands are insured.” She disappeared from the window.
“Insured,” Mai muttered, kicking a clump of dirt. “Twat.”
Mike scrolled his contacts. “Okay. Who’s the least chaotic option? Jan?”
Casey snorted, not taking her eyes off the widening split in the tree trunk. A faint, silvery glow was emanating from within. “Red’s first move is to get everyone naked and see if the problem goes away. It sometimes works, but I’m not explaining another orgy to the HOA.”
“Bethany, then. Golden Wands are clinical.”
“She doesn’t travel solo. It’s a whole ‘Lady Percival and retinue’ thing. Very official, very noticeable. Mrs. Anderson would have a field day.”
“Fatima?”
Casey grimaced. “She’d bring Hank. And Kim. And Maryam. Kim would want to fight it, Maryam would want to bet on the fight, and Hank would try to give it a sports analogy. That’s a lot of bodies.”
“Annie? Verdant Pasture should know about magical flora.”
“She’s the Governor’s wife, Mike. She’s probably at a fundraiser for mystical bee conservation. We can’t just ask her to pop over.”
The tree groaned. A large piece of bark the size of a dinner plate peeled away and hit the grass with a soft thud. The silvery light pulsed.
“Screw it,” Mike said. He tapped his phone screen rapidly, activating a multi-line conference feature Jan had rigged years ago. “Let’s just ask everyone and see who yells the loudest.”
A low hum filled the air, and five life-sized holographic figures flickered into existence in a semi-circle around the troubled hawthorn. The glow from the tree washed over their translucent forms.
Yukio Harata leaned on her cane in a physical therapy room, her tattoos vivid even in hologram form. Jan O’Connor appeared cross-legged on a plush rug, a braid over her shoulder, Godfrey III a fuzzy Maltese ghost in her lap. Fatima Abaza was in a serene meditation space, her short hair perfect, her expression already analytical. Bethany Xander-MacDougal materialized in a crisp, charcoal-gray suit, looking like she’d been interrupted mid-briefing. Annie Sweeney, the Iowa farmer’s daughter turned political wife, stood in a sunlit kitchen, a ghostly calico cat weaving around her ankles.
“Mike, Casey,” Bethany said, her tone all business. “Report.”
“The dead tree in the back is opening up. It’s glowing. Casey’s weird compass pointed at it. The kids were weeding. That’s the report.”
Jan peered at the tree. “Ooh, a piñata! Did you try smacking it?”
“Not yet, Red.”
Fatima’s eyes narrowed. “The light has a frequency. It’s not demonic. It’s… archival.”
“It’s a tree, Fati,” Hank’s voice called from somewhere off-hologram in her house.
“It is a vessel,” Fatima countered.
Annie stepped closer, her hologram knees disappearing into the rose bushes. “Hawthorns are thresholds. Gatekeepers. This one’s been dead for a decade… whatever it’s holding, it wasn’t meant to be released lightly.”
Yukio frowned. “My compass is for finding living magical creatures, not digging up tree corpses. That’s something else.”
The five experts fell silent, studying the phenomenon. The tree continued to split, the sound like dozens of bones cracking in slow succession. The glow intensified, casting long, dancing shadows.
Mai watched them, this council of powerful, magical adults, all stumped. Her mother, the legendary dragon rider. Jan, the chaotic heart of the Green Moons. The most dangerous woman in Chicago. A Golden Wand commander. A Governor’s wife with power over life itself. All just… talking.
Impatience, her oldest companion, flared hot and bright in her chest. Adventure wasn’t a committee meeting.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she breathed.
While Mike was saying, “Maybe we should all physically convene—” and Jan was adding, “I’ll bring snacks and lube—” Mai darted forward.
“Mai, no!” Yukio’s hologram shouted.
But Mai was already there, at the mouth of the split trunk. The light was cold, not warm. It smelled of ozone and old parchment. Without hesitation, she shoved her arm into the narrow, glowing crevice, past the splintered wood, up to her shoulder.
Her fingers brushed something smooth and metallic. It was lodged deep. She gritted her teeth, wedging herself further, the rough bark scraping her skin. She got a grip.And pulled.
The object came free with a sound like a sigh.
The second it cleared the trunk, the silvery light winked out. The cracking noises stopped. The garden was suddenly, profoundly quiet, held only by the hum of the holograms and the distant city.
In Mai’s hand was a large, sealed vial made of dark, smoky glass. Inside, suspended in a viscous silver fluid, was a single, perfect, and impossibly vibrant green leaf. It pulsed with a slow, sleepy light, like a captured heartbeat.
All the holograms stared.
“Well,” Jan said, breaking the silence. “That’s new.”
From across the street, they heard the distinct, sharp crack of Mrs. Anderson’s front door opening.
The sharp click of Mrs. Anderson’s sensible heels on the sidewalk was a familiar, dreaded rhythm. She marched across the street, a small, wiry woman in a beige cardigan despite the humid evening, her pinched face a monument to suburban disapproval.
“Mike. Casey,” she said, her voice like rustling legal documents. She didn’t even glance at the spectral council of holograms flickering in the garden; years of living across from the ‘Horny House’ had inured her to visible weirdness. She focused on the tangible infraction. “The light pollution from your… horticultural event exceeds HOA bylaws, section seven, paragraph C. Also, the unpermitted excavation.” Her eyes darted to the pile of weeds and the shed. “And I heard what I believe were industrial noises from your tool shed earlier. This is a quiet neighborhood.”
Mike forced a smile, stepping forward as Casey subtly nudged the conference call into a muted hold with a tap of her compass. The holograms froze, silent statues of magical authority.
“Betty, hey. No excavation, just some aggressive weeding. The glow is, uh, biodegradable garden lights. A new product. Very eco.”
“They pulse, Michael. They pulsed in a synchronized, non-organic pattern. My dahlias are confused.”
Casey put a hand on Mike’s arm, her smile wider and more dangerous. “We’ll look into the pulsing, Betty. We’re ordering pizza. Would you like a slice? Hawaiian?”
Mrs. Anderson recoiled as if offered a plate of live spiders. “The covenant explicitly prohibits the consumption of fruit-on-pizza in communal view. It lowers property values.” She peered past them, eyes narrowing at the huddle of girls around Mai’s hand. “What is that child holding? It appears to be a controlled substance in a glass vial.”
At that moment, the back gate squeaked open. Rick Williamson shuffled in, his apron dusted with flour and a deep fatigue in his kind eyes. He took in the scene: his parents in defensive formation, a frozen war council of magical aunts in the roses, his sister and her friends clustered around something glowing, and Mrs. Anderson in full tactical mode.
He blinked slowly, processing. Then he deliberately looked away, focusing on a spot on the back patio. “Hey. Long day. Brioche rebellion. Is dinner a thing that’s happening, or should I just eat frosting?”
“Pizza!” Casey shouted over her shoulder, not breaking eye contact with Mrs. Anderson. “Order whatever you want, sweetie!”
Rick nodded, giving the magical tableau one last, weary sidelong glance. “Cool. I’m going to not ask. I’m going to shower. I’m going to pretend I saw nothing but a weird lawn ornament.” He trudged towards the house, a man choosing blissful ignorance.
Mrs. Anderson, thwarted on the Rick-front, refocused. “The vial.”
“A decorative Christmas ornament!” Mike tried, his voice cracking slightly. “Early prep. We’re festive.”
As Mike and Casey engaged in a doomed dance of appeasement, the three young women were locked in their own world.
The vial in Mai’s palm was cold. The glass was not smooth, but finely textured, like fossilized skin. Inside, the silver fluid seemed to move on its own, a lazy, mercury-like tide around the central leaf. The leaf itself was a shock of absolute, impossible green. It was not a reflection of light; it generated it. Tiny, intricate veins of gold etched its surface, pulsing in that slow, rhythmic cadence.
“What the hell is this thing?” Mai breathed, her earlier bravado replaced by genuine awe.
Felicity leaned in, her scholar’s mind whirring. “It’s not botanical. Not any botany I know. The fluid… it’s damping a significant energy signature. Containing it. See how the leaf’s luminescence dims when the fluid sloshes against it? It’s a suspension medium. Probably alchemical.”
“It’s a battery,” Mandy said, her tech-brain making a different kind of leap. She pointed a dirt-crusted fingernail. “Look at the gold circuitry in the leaf. That’s not a vein pattern. That’s a conduction path. This is a stored magical charge. A big one.” She glanced at the tree. “And that was the safety deposit box.”
“So it’s valuable,” Mai said, her avarice sparking.
“It’s dangerous,” Felicity corrected. “Something this carefully hidden isn’t a gift. It’s a secret. Or a weapon.”
“Same difference, often,” Mandy muttered. She reached out, not to touch the vial, but to hover her hand above it. The fine hairs on her arm stood up. “Static field. Massive. This thing is live.”
As if reacting to her words, the leaf gave a sudden, brighter pulse. A single thread of gold light, finer than a hair, detached from a vein and swam through the silver fluid before re-attaching elsewhere.
The three of them stared.
“It’s not a leaf,” Felicity whispered, her academic certainty crumbling into wonder. “It’s a… a schema. A diagram. Of what, I have no idea.”
From across the garden, Mrs. Anderson’s voice sawed through the air. “—and if the pulsating ornament is not removed by sundown tomorrow, I will be forced to file a formal complaint with the Architectural Review Committee!”
Mike was nodding, a man already defeated. “Sure, Betty. Sundown. You got it.”
Mai closed her fingers gently around the vial. The light seeped between her knuckles, painting her hand a sickly, beautiful green. She looked from Felicity’s worried, fascinated face to Mandy’s keen, calculating one.
“Well,” Mai said, a slow, adventurous grin spreading across her features. “This is more like it.”
The leaf pulsed again, as if in agreement.