Enchanted Ivy

attacking Forbes,' she said. 'I'm supposed to follow and watch!'

Tye's grin vanished. He took her hand. She felt the tiny static shocks run up and down her arm. It felt as if her skin were carbonated. Now, after being in the other Princeton, she knew what it was: magic, his magic, touching her. 'You shouldn't go,' he said. 'You could be hurt. Unless you have secret kung-fu skills in addition to the flowers-think-you're-swell vibe?'

'Plants have never acted like I'm a magnet before,' Lily said. She tried to ignore the fact that he was holding her hand. 'We own a flower shop; you'd think I'd have noticed.'

'You must have never had enough magic in you,' he said. He let go of her hand, and she instantly missed it. She resisted the urge to touch him and instead leaned over the flower bed and brushed the tulips again. And again, they danced under her touch.

'So weird,' she said. On the scale of bizarre things she'd seen today, this wasn't overly high, but still ...

'At least we now know what you are,' Tye said.

She looked up sharply at him.

'You're the one who woke those vines and caught our wrinkly green friend. You're a dryad.' He corrected himself. 'Half dryad.'

The tulips hummed. 'I'm ... what?'

'Tree spirit,' he clarified.

She stared at him. 'I'm part tree.'

'Pretty much, yes,' he said happily.

'You turn into a tiger, and I'm part tree?' She tried to sound flippant, but the plants betrayed her. As her hand tightened on the stem of a tulip, the flower shot into the air, stretching to twice its height. The blossom swayed back and forth like a cobra poised to strike. 'Whoa!' She released the plant and stumbled backward.

Tye caught her as she tripped on the flagstones. Arms around her waist, he steadied her. She breathed in his rain-forest scent. Soul mates, her memory whispered. The plants whispered, too, wordlessly murmuring in her head.

'Looks like plants respond to your emotions,' he said. She looked up into his golden eyes. 'Can you direct them?' he asked. For an instant, caught in his eyes, she had no idea what he was talking about. 'The flowers,' he clarified.

The tulip was still writhing like a snake.

Tentatively, she reached out her hand and touched the flower. Its petals curled around her fingers. 'Shrink, please,' she said. The flower quivered, and she heard a wobbly chime. She stroked its petals. 'It's okay. I'm okay.'

The tulip shrank.

Tye whistled. 'Cool.'

Kneeling in front of the flower bed again, she spread her fingers to touch several tulips. 'Up,' she said. Obediently, leaves lifted into the air. 'Sideways,' she said and tipped her hand to the right. All the flowers dipped their blossoms. 'Other way.' They reversed directions. 'Braid.' She twisted her fingers against the stems and imagined what she wanted them to do, and the flowers wrapped around one another.

Tye knelt next to her. 'How do you feel?'

'Like I have a really lame superpower,' Lily said, unbraiding the flower stems.

He laughed. 'You did catch that goblin with the ivy.'

'I guess so.' She wasn't sure how. That had been before she'd crossed to the magic world and absorbed its magic. 'What happened to him? Did he escape? Did you say 'goblin'?'

'I took him home,' Tye said. 'He's with his family now. He'll be all right, eventually.'

She gawked at him. 'You helped him? That monkey—goblin—thing gored you, remember?'

'He's a victim too,' Tye said. He was watching her with an expression she couldn't read. 'He's an addict, not a murderer. Deep down, he doesn't want to kill. I offered him a way to break his addiction.'

Wow. That was ... rather heroic. 'You save Feeders?'

'You can too,' he said. 'We can do it together; we can offer Feeders a way out, a way home.'

'I ... I don't know.' She'd just found out her father had been a tree spirit and she could hypnotize flowers. Now Tye wanted her to ... what? Become some kind of superhero who saved vampiric monsters?

'Lily, I can't reach them all by myself.'

'Can't the knights help?' She bet they'd be all over the idea of returning Feeders to the magic world. It was a much better solution than knives and swords.

He flashed a wry grin, but the humor didn't touch his eyes. 'The head knight and I ... we have some philosophical differences.'

Lily raised her eyebrows.

'I think he's an idiot, and he thinks I'm evil demon spawn.'

'Oh,' she said. 'Are you?'

He tilted his head back and let out a mock evil laugh. 'Mwa-ha-ha!'

Grinning, she swatted his arm. 'Very funny. I'm serious. Why aren't you the knights' Key?'

'Latest reason? I accused the knights of trying to invent something to drain magic from Feeders.' He made a face. 'Even the gargoyles wouldn't side with me on that one.'

'But they've already invented that—they call it a drainer,' Lily said. 'They were going to use it to drain my excess magic. We were interrupted by the attack on Forbes.'

Tye stared at her as if she'd sprouted leaves (which, all things considered, she thought, wasn't impossible). 'Say that again?'

'It's in this hidden room. I can show you.'

'You can?' His face lit up in a smile. He looked as though she'd just offered him a mountain of chocolate. His smile was almost (though not quite) as brilliant as Jake's smile.

Lily nodded. 'I think the door is still open.'

'I am absolutely in love with you,' Tye said.

CHAPTER Eight

One of the stone monkeys on the 1879 Hall arch scampered down the brick wall. Tye scooped him up, and the monkey wrapped its arms around his neck. He murmured to it, and then he replaced the monkey on the wall. It wormed itself back into the carving of monkeys and a lion. A second later, it was motionless stone again.

'Friend of yours?' Lily asked. She was pleased that her voice sounded light. A day ago, the sight of a monkey statue climbing off a wall would have sent her running for her medicine.

'I've known the professors my whole life,' Tye said. He waved at them as he and Lily crossed through the arch toward Prospect Avenue. 'After my mother died, the gargoyles pretty much adopted me.'

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I mean, about your mother.'

He shrugged but didn't meet her eyes. 'It was a long time ago.'

She wanted to reach out and take Tye's hand. She didn't quite dare. Instead she walked silently beside him down the sidewalk. Whispers danced in her head, and she brushed the hedges in front of the eating clubs with her fingertips. The whispers spiked into a croon.

'Used to sneak into the classrooms to sleep near the gargoyles,' he said. 'And I ate a lot of picnics on rooftops. Endured a lot of sunburns. And rain. When your family is gargoyles, you get rained on a lot.'

'You slept in classrooms?' Lily asked. 'Why didn't the Old Boys take you in? They had to know you were here.'

'After the dragon attacked ... well, after that, the Old Boys had less enthusiasm for the magic world, yours truly included,' Tye said. 'As soon as I was old enough to understand, I kind of took it personally. And I did a few things I'm not proud of. Well, except for the time I nailed their shoes to the ceiling of Vineyard Club. That was rather awesome.'