Page 2 of Love Potion No. 69
Magnolia’s eyes widen. “You’re usingElysian Blossom?”
I smile. “Yep.”
She frowns. “But—but it only blooms once every hundred years. It’s extremely rare. Our family is the only one that even has seeds, and you know how important it is to us, Clementine.”
I cross my arms, instantly on the defensive. “Quit using your teacher voice on me, Mags.”
She’s not fazed. “Clearly, someone has to. Does Mom know?”
I grind my teeth. This is exactly why I don’t like my family to come in here. Never mind that I’m a grown woman with a degree and plenty of common sense. All they see are the messes I made as a little girl with insatiable curiosity. The burn on my right hand and arm, the color of an over-ripe strawberry against my olive skin, doesn’t let them forget, either.
“Well? Does she?” Magnolia prompts.
“She doesn’t, and she doesn’t need to,” I shoot back.
Magnolia barks a laugh. “You’re hilarious. Mom will kill you.”
She won’t. But Mags doesn’t know that. “Could you for once, justonce, pretend that I might actually know what I’m doing?” I keep my voice calm and even, despite preferring to screech at her. “Pretend, for just a moment, that I have been doing this research for five years. Pretend that I’m the one who tends to our land. Pretend that I might have figured out a way to force the flower to bloom when I want it to, and that I’ve managed to capture its essence in a way that doesn’t harm it.”
She shakes her head. “You’re begging for trouble.”
“I’m really not. I know what I’m doing,” I repeat. And if Mom bothered to pay any attention to me, or to come knocking on the greenhouse door, I’d have happily shown her what I was doing, the progress I was making.
My phone pings from beneath my notebook, and we both turn in its direction.
“Who’s that?” Magnolia asks.
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t looked yet. Also, it’s none of your business.”
“Since when has that stopped me?” she asks, angling her body to look at the screen with me. Then she snorts. “Who is ‘Entitled Canadian Asshole’?”
I smash the phone against my chest. “No one.”
“That doesn’t seem to be the case.”
I consider her eager eyes and the way they betray her carefully presented patience. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a sister on my side, and honestly, if I could choose the sister to go to battle with, it’s always going to be Mags. She is the one who gives me the least shit, and in my family, that’s saying something. “It’s this man, Quinton Henry.”
She gasps. “The perfume prince of Canada?”
The effort it takes for me to not roll my eyes at that ridiculous nickname should win me an award. “Yes.”
“What does he want?”
“Christ, Mags—why don’t you stop talking and I’lltellyou?” I huff.
Properly chastised for a whole two seconds, she nods.
I continue. “He wants to buy Elysian Blossom seeds.”
Immediately, every part of her goes on high alert. “Absolutely not.”
I smile wryly. “Yeah, no shit. And that’s what I’ve continued to tell him, but it’s not sinking in.”
“So what’s he saying now?”
I hold the phone so we can read it together.
Entitled Canadian