The wooden figure suddenly flushed with color, the rough edges smoothing to soft flesh, and the now little man, who couldn’t have been more than a foot tall, snatched up the ball and tossed it. PC turned, bounding after it.
“You’re the garden gnome,” I said, stating the obvious in my surprise.
The gnome turned. He looked like any lawn ornament of a gnome, right down to his friendly, rosy cheeks and a pointed hat almost as tall as he was. “And you’re the mistress of the castle.”
“I—” Well, yeah. I guess I was. “I’m Alex.”
“They weren’t wrong,” he said, nodding in the direction Roy and Icelynne had gone.
“About the castle bending to my will? I’m not so sure— Wait. You can see ghosts?”
The little gnome shrugged. “Only when I’m wooden. But yes, you are the mistress of the castle. There was no spring here before. I must say, I’m enjoying it. So many things grow in spring.”
“I didn’t . . .” I started, but trailed off. He’d said all of that as a statement with very little wiggle room. While it was possible it was only his belief that I’d willed the castle to be caught in spring while fall hurtled toward winter just outside the door to this folded space, it might actually be true. And the other fae at the castle would probably know a lot more about it than I would. Fae were extremely long-lived. Compared to most of the other people at this castle, I was very young. The fact that I’d grown up believing I was mortal didn’t help. So I considered the weather here, and how I was always relieved to get out of the chilly November air and step into the folded space holding the castle. I was cold too often from the grave as it was; I didn’t like cold weather on top of it.
“So if the grounds bend to my will . . . does that mean I can move the door leaving the folded space closer to the castle?” It would be a relief to not have to make that hike every time we needed to get to and from the other side.
The little gnome shook his head. “The castle and estate are yours. The folded space itself and the door are not.”
“Oh.” Well, darn. That would have been awesome. “But you can make a winter garden?”
“Yes, most definitely.” The gnome perked back up. “You have to really want one. But yes, if you do, I can make something that will please the frost sprite’s specter. Which garden would you like to freeze?”
I had no idea. I looked around. “Not this one. This one is perfect like it is.”
The gnome bowed, both hands moving to his large hat to hold it on his head. “You honor me.”
In my pocket, my phone began singing about how girls just want to have fun. Holly’s new ringtone.
“You’re the artist behind these gardens. I’ll leave it to your discretion to decide which would look best frozen,” I said to the gnome as I dug my phone out of my pocket. “I need to take this. Hello, Holly.”
The gnome bowed again, and if I hadn’t been on the phone, I would have asked him to stop. Then, without another word, he turned and vanished into the hedge of roses. In my hand, the phone squawked, Holly’s voice coming out broken and full of static. I glanced at the display. One bar.
“You’re breaking up. I didn’t get any of that,” I told her, standing as if that would improve the signal.
“What? I can’t understand you.” She sounded like she was yelling into the phone, but while her voice was still a little garbled, at least I could make out her words.
“Better?” I asked, patting my hand on my thigh to get PC’s attention as I headed for the entrance of the garden.
“Yeah. I take it you aren’t somewhere you can turn on a TV?”
“Not if I’d need to do it in the next ten minutes.”
Holly was silent for a moment and I glanced at the display again to make sure the call hadn’t been dropped. The reception at the castle was horrid. No towers. Finally she spoke. “The broadcast is over now. I’ll find a clip online and send you a link. You were on the news, and, Alex, it was bad.”
? ? ?
True to her word, my phone buzzed with a link a few moments after I hung up with Holly. I didn’t open it immediately but gathered PC and headed back into the castle. If it was bad, I wanted a little more privacy than the gardens offered. My growling stomach also demanded more food before bad news.
I passed through the kitchens on the way to my room. It was still too early for dinner, so the kitchen boasted fruit hanging in baskets and steaming baked goods that appeared to have just come out of the oven. In another hour, when the dining table filled with the night’s meal, the kitchen wouldn’t have so much as a crumb in it, forcing anyone who wanted food to present themselves for dinner.
I thought about what the gnome had said about the castle reacting to my will as I snagged a muffin the size of a small plate. Had I enforced the family dinner situation somehow? I certainly hadn’t meant to, and sometimes it was annoying, but in truth, I did rather enjoy it. Maybe I had? If the castle was shaping itself for me, even here, at least half in the mortal realm, I would definitely have to pay better attention to my own thoughts and desires.
Back in my room, I set to work devouring the muffin as I clicked the link Holly had sent. It loaded slowly, the intermittent signal sluggish. I was about to give up and head back to Caleb’s house when the video finally filled my phone screen. A pretty woman in her early thirties smiled out of the screen, addressing the camera directly as she finished a sentence pertaining to a report she must have been giving before the clip began. I vaguely recognized her as a reporter for one of the local stations, but the only news I watched with any regularity was Witch Watch. A small tag near the bottom of the screen identified her as Xandra Lundahl.
“In other news,” Xandra said, still smiling directly at the camera, “the police are asking for help locating a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. Viewer discretion is advised as the footage you are about to see could be considered graphic.”