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She’d seen no evidence of any spellwork that didn’t originate with Laiken.

But she couldn’t let go of the idea that the failures were deliberate.

She didn’t know why anyone would want this, but it was possible.

There was, of course, one person who would know for certain. Or, more accurately, who knew .

“I say it’s—” Birch began.

Stepping between Birch and Yarrow, she said, “I need to talk to the ghost.”

Yarrow stopped glaring at his father to blink at her. “What?”

“To do that, I need your help, both of you,” Terlu said. “Laiken doesn’t know me. I know neither of you want anything to do with him, but he might have answers, and he’s more likely to listen to one of his gardeners than to me.”

Yarrow shook his head. “He didn’t have any interest in his gardeners.”

His father agreed with him. “He wasn’t good with people.”

Nudging Terlu’s foot with her leaf, Lotti piped up, “Take me! If Laiken is there, even a piece of him… I want to talk to him. He’ll listen to me. I think.”

She might be right. Lotti held up her leaves, and Terlu bent down and lifted her up. Closing her petals tighter, the rose curled her leaves around her root ball.

“Come with us,” Terlu pleaded with the two men.

She expected an argument or even excuses, but instead Yarrow merely nodded. Sighing, Birch nodded as well.

While the other gardeners and sentient plants reorganized the singing plants and took stock of what survived—nearly all the plants this time, thankfully—Terlu headed out of the greenhouse with the resurrection rose, Yarrow, and his father.

Back in the sorcerer’s tower, Terlu, with Lotti, climbed the stairs first, followed by Yarrow and Birch. They’d quit arguing and dropped into an angry silence, which she didn’t think was an improvement, but at least they’d both come.

She lowered Lotti onto the bedside table. “Can you sense him?”

Lotti waved her petals and leaves in the air. “Laiken? Are you here? Papa?”

Terlu wondered if she should leave the rose alone with him. But no, she had important questions to ask. Or try to ask. There was no guarantee that a ghost could understand anything the living said—it depended how much of him remained.

She shivered.

Was that him, the chill in the air, the shadows on the wall?

“If you’re here, your plants need you,” Terlu said.

“Why did you— No, that’s not what we’re here to ask,” Lotti corrected herself. She folded her petals as if she were petitioning a judge. “We need your help. Your children need you. We’re awake, you see, but the greenhouses are failing. Can you help us stop it?”

The windows rattled.

“Wind or ghost?” Terlu whispered.

“Wind,” Birch said, arms crossed. He was scowling hard, more bearlike than Yarrow had ever been. “He doesn’t care.”

Another whoosh, and the sheets on the bed shifted.

Lifting his voice, Birch said, “Isn’t that right, Laiken? You don’t care about anyone or anything. You don’t care about the gardens—you just made them because of how powerful they made you feel. You didn’t care about your daughter—you just wanted to control her.”

He knew the daughter, Terlu guessed. Dendy had said she’d died before Yarrow was born, but Birch and the other older gardeners may have known her personally.

They’d watched the tragedy unfold, and they’d seen Laiken become more and more paranoid and been unable to stop any of it.

They’d been there when he forced the plants to sleep—and then when he forced all of his dedicated gardeners to leave their jobs and their homes.

“Quiet,” Yarrow growled at him. “You’ll anger him.”

Birch snorted. “What does that matter? He turned his back on us. All of us. We devoted our lives to this place, to the vision of what it could be. We believed it was important, that it was bigger than ourselves. But to him… it was a toy. A toy he discarded.”

“I’m more than a toy,” Lotti said.

“Absolutely you are,” Terlu said firmly. “You’re more than what anyone made you to be.” She wished she could propel those words right into the little rose’s heart, so she’d believe them. She deserved so much more than he’d been capable of giving her.

“He made me out of love,” Lotti insisted.

“He loved me. He loved all of us. He just… got so scared he’d lose us that he went too far.

” She turned in a circle to face her bloom toward all of the room.

“But we’re alive. We’re awake. Dendy. Risa.

Amina. Tirna. Nif. Zyndia. We’re all alive and well, and we want to stay that way. Won’t you help us?”

A breeze blew through the room, and the curtains rustled.

There was no open window, no source for the wind.

“I think that was a yes?” Lotti said.

“Ask him if there’s an enemy causing the failures,” Birch said.

Yarrow shook his head but said nothing.

Lotti repeated the question and lifted her petals higher. “No,” she said.

“See?” Yarrow whispered to his father. “I told you.”

Terlu wanted to ask her how Lotti could be so sure of his answer, but she didn’t want to break whatever tenuous connection the ghost and plant had established.

She tried the next question, “Are the greenhouses failing because the spells are old?” That was her and Yarrow’s original theory.

It was logical, and if so, then the cure was to fix the failures, ideally before they happened. Replace the spells.

The wind blew through the bedroom, counterclockwise.

“No,” Lotti said.

No?

She tried being more specific: “Are they failing because the spell ingredients have decayed or been damaged?”

“No.”

Terlu wanted to go back to the idea of an enemy, but he’d already said no to that. “Is it a specific spell causing the failures?”

“Yes.”

Yes? But what kind of spell… Why? And who had cast it? What was the point of such a spell? And if it wasn’t cast by an enemy, then who was responsible? She shook her head. This didn’t make sense. “Is the spell supposed to destroy the greenhouses?”

All of them held their breath.

“No,” Lotti said.

A malfunctioning spell. Ah, now that she understood. “But what…” No, that was too complex a question. “Is it your spell?”

Silence.

Then: “Yes,” Lotti said.

“An old spell or a new spell?” Terlu asked.

And then she realized he couldn’t answer that.

“An old spell?” No. Huh, so it isn’t one of the creation spells gone awry.

“A new spell?” Yes. “From after you died?” No.

Of course no, dumb question, she scolded herself.

“A spell you cast before you died?” Yes.

“A new spell you were experimenting with when you died?” Yes, again.

She remembered the notebook she’d found on his bedside table.

“Did you keep notes in the journal that was by your bed?” She hadn’t read that one.

It was too recent, and she’d been looking for the spells from the initial creation of the greenhouse, so she could recreate those.

But if he’d cast a malfunctioning spell and then died before he had a chance to fix it…

“Yes,” Lotti said.

Terlu exhaled. Yes. She had the book that held the answers. “Thank you, Lotti,” she said fervently. “Thank you, Laiken.” She knew where to begin now. She flew down the stairs. Dimly, she heard Yarrow and Birch behind her.

“Why does this matter? So now we know, but what are we supposed to do with this?” Birch asked Yarrow. “Your girl… She’s not a sorcerer, is she?”

She paused on the steps, listening to how Yarrow would answer.

“She’s amazing,” Yarrow said.

“Ahh,” Birch said. He asked no other questions.

Her head buzzing with hope, Terlu continued down the stairs and across the workroom. She picked up her coat and pulled it on. She knew exactly where the notebook was: back in Yarrow’s cottage, on the desk with the book about the care of orchids.

Yarrow reached her. He was still wearing his own coat.

“How can I help?” he asked.

She loved when he asked that. “I don’t know yet.”

“Good luck,” he said. And he kissed her, in front of his father, Lotti, and possibly Laiken’s ghost. When he released her, she felt as if she could climb mountains, swim oceans, and definitely and absolutely save the Greenhouse of Belde.