by S. E. Babin
He turned back to look at me and, lo and behold, the scowl was back in place. “I guess delivering wasn’t good enough. Now I have to unload this all by myself?”
I glared at him and headed down to his truck. Jerk. Now that we were on more familiar ground, I wasn’t feeling so discombobulated. Hank frowning? All was right with the world. Hank smiling and laughing? World tilted and stomach felt like a tilt a whirl. Because smiling Hank was drop dead damned gorgeous. Not that he wasn’t handsome even with the scowl, but seriously, who wanted to be around a perpetual grump? Not I. Life was too short to have permanent PMS, and living with a guy like that would be like that, minus the cramps. Well...except for once a month. And Hank on top of literal PMS? No thanks.
But tack on dark hair, eyes like caramel on a hot fudge sundae, and a grin that showcased one perfect little dimple on the side of his mouth? Plus his well manicured hands that handled plants like they were newborn babies? Well…yes, please with a cherry on top. Hopefully mine. Because my cherry was dehydrated and kept on the shelf for way too long.
I cleared my throat and my thoughts about Hank because it was weird. Way weird.
I glared at his back just to make the world start spinning the right way again and went to lift out a pallet of plants. It was the tail end of March, the perfect time to plant, and Midnight Cove was perfect for gardening. The weather was almost always agreeable unless the gods were angry. We were all very careful not to anger them, but every once in awhile, someone managed to bring down their wrath and we had to deal with hurricane, tornadoes, all the fun things that a small, enclosed town should never have to deal with. However, most times, the gods focused their weather wrath right on top of the naughty person so there wasn’t much collateral damage. Most of the time, and depending on who the god was.
But barring all of that, the weather usually stayed from 55 to 65 degrees most of the year. From November to February we had occasional light dustings of snow, which was gorgeous, but we lost most of our plants. Thus the reason Hank and Pepper were still in business.
The first pallet I lifted out was creeping thyme. I crushed one of the leaves in my hand and leaned down to inhale the herbaceous scent. Every year I redid my landscaping. I had seven acres of land here even though I kept it pretty quiet. Most of the town thought the land belonged to the Dating service. The founder of it owned the vast majority of Midnight Cove. But she didn’t own this. When I first started my necromancy business, I put almost every penny away. I existed on packaged noodles and those salty packs of seasoning and water, and also dry cereal. It was a meager existence, for sure. In the first two years, I had raised enough money to buy the house and the acreage around it. Even my parents had no idea how much land I actually had. I could buy all the plants I wanted and never run out of room to grow them.
I put the creeping thyme down by the pile of landscaping pavers I’d left in the front because they were heavy as hell and I was both lazy and weak. Hank didn’t ask where to put his pallet so he set the Wave petunias next to the creeping thyme. It would be plant sacrilege to plant those together and I gritted my teeth as he walked away for the next. I thought I caught the hint of a smile on his face, but that would be impossible. Only puppies made Hank smile.
Speaking of the little she-devil, she hadn’t moved from her spot in the back of Hank’s truck. She watched him intently as he lifted pallet after pallet off his truck, but she never tried to chew or jump. She was weirdly obedient.
After the fourth pallet of Wave petunias were unloaded, all right next to my creeping thyme, Hank finally spoke. “What are you going to do with all of this?” he asked, his gaze sweeping across my yard.
“I re-landscape every year,” I told him.
Instead of looking impressed, a look of horror slid over his face. “What about all the plants from the year prior?”
I shrugged. “That’s why I buy mostly annuals.”
He eyeballed the creeping thyme. “That will come back next season.” His gaze swept the Wave petunias. “And so will those.”
I waggled my fingers. “Necromancer,” I whispered. “If it doesn’t, I can bring it back to life. Woo wooooo!”
Hank rolled his eyes. “Or...you could not kill it at all.”
I took umbrage to that. “I don’t kill things. Some things just die.”
He shook his head. “Are you familiar with the concept of permaculture?”
I shrugged. “I’ve heard of it. Why?”
He motioned for me to walk with him. We both grabbed another pallet and headed back toward the porch. “It’s a state of gardening where everything is beautiful, but also functional. You can have a rainwater collection system, but why not use it as a place for koi? Or you could grow an herb garden that’s both functional and delicious. If you need a fence to keep the deer out, you could turn it into a trellis for squash or cucumbers.” He set the pallets down and looked at me. I blinked, taken aback by his direct stare. His eyes. Gorgeous.
“Are you tilling the soil every time you replant?” he asked, taking a few steps closer to me.
I nodded.
He shook his head and sighed. “That’s terrible for the land. Try planting perennials. They’ll last longer. Take me around to your backyard.”
He was close enough for me to breathe in his citrusy scent. But the smell of fresh dirt and something else…
I took one step back and studied him closely. “Hank?”
He was looking at me with a confused expression. “Yes?”
“What are you?”
Hank’s expression turned back into the familiar scowl except this time it was heaped with a whole lot of anger. “That’s extraordinarily rude.”
It was. I reddened and cursed my word vomit. “I - I’m sorry.”
But Hank? He was dead. I’d never stood close enough to him to notice. But the dead always had a certain hint of smell to them. Now, don’t get me wrong. The walking dead didn’t have an unpleasant scent, but all of them had a certain hint of...moss to them. Vamps smelled like graveyard dirt and black moss. Zombies had more of an earthy, wet grass smell. And ghouls...ghouls smelled just like Hank.
Except Hank also smelled like sunshine and life, but the hint of moss was enough to make me wonder. And, since he’d never been to my house before, nor had I ever seen him smile, I also wondered about the note from the dating agency. The cryptic words came back to me: “He’s already dead.”
If Hank was a ghoul, he was dead. Technically.
Hank shook his head and made a disgusted noise. “I’m a ghoul,” he snapped. He headed back to the truck, apparently no longer wanting to see my backyard.
Or me.
I rushed after him. “Hank, I’m sorry. That was rude.” I shoved my hair out of my eyes. “It’s just been a weird day. Something happened -”
He abruptly turned back to me. “What does that have to do with me being a ghoul?”
“I -” I clamped my mouth shut. If he wasn’t the guy the agency was talking about, I was going to look like a big ol’ idiot. From what I knew about them, they didn’t discuss their matches with either of those clients. Things just sort of fell into place. But not always easily.
He huffed out an annoyed breath. “Thought so,” he said. Hank gently lifted the puppy out of his truck and gave her a gentle pat on the head. “Bye girl.” He set her on the ground, gave me a final long stare and got into his truck.
“But I wanted to know about permaculture!” I yelled to the truck peeling out of my driveway.
If a puppy could give a disgusted huff, that’s what happened. She walked right past me and up to the porch.
“Fine,” I muttered. “I’m a jerk.”
I let us both inside the house and thought about Hank for the rest of the day.
2
Puppies were stupid expensive. The night prior after trying to shoo the dog out the door so she could find her way home, I realized it was a lost cause. For whatever reason, she wanted to stay with me. I tried one more time on th
e way to the pet store. I stopped right in front of the massive building for the Deadication Dating Agency and opened the door.
“You’re home!” I said, making it sound way better than it actually was. The building didn’t look much fun at all. Stark, white, and with very few windows, the place didn’t look like it would be much fun for a puppy with as much energy as she had. She gave me a side-eyed stare and plopped her oversized head right onto her paws.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “But I’m super boring. You’re going to be very bored with me. I promise. And the first time you poop on my rug, you’re gone.”
She yawned. Super concerned, she was.
I reached over and scratched her behind her neck. She huffed at me.
“You’re emotional,” I said. “I’m not sure we’re going to work out.” I whipped my small truck into the parking lot of the local pet store, Raise the Woof, and told her to stay. Right after I got out and walked around the car, she promptly stood, started scratching on the glass, and howling.
“Shut it,” I hissed.
She looked at me, stopped, waited for me to take a couple of steps and started howling again. “I don’t have a leash!” I yelled.
She yawned.
With an annoyed growl, I opened the door. She jumped out and started walking right beside me. “It’s illegal for you to be off the leash.”
She inched a little closer to me.
I rolled my eyes, marveling at the weirdness of my dog, and walked into the store.
At first, the employees kept giving the dog the eyeball as if she was suddenly going to go full on Cujo. When one of them approached us, the puppy promptly sat, lolled her tongue out, dropped and rolled to expose her belly. This, of course, resulted in googly eyes and a chorus of awwws from everyone in the store.
This dog was wicked smart. I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help the grin that crossed my face. When the employee finished giving her a good belly rub, the puppy stood and led me right to the food she apparently wanted. She sat down and stuck a paw right on top of the bag.
Another lady in the aisle saw her and made an appropriate cute noise. When she asked me her name, I stopped, tilted my head and grinned. “Margo.”
The puppy whined for a moment as if thinking about it. “From the Magicians.”
Margo barked.
“Well,” the woman said, “I’d say she likes it.”
“I would too,” I murmured. “Have you seen Margo? She’s totally badass.”
Margo impatiently nudged my leg. I lifted up the enormous bag of food and put it in a basket I snagged at the end of the aisle. I let her trot around the store checking things out and by the time we made it to the register, I had a massive bag of digestible rawhide, a huge bag of food, one squeaky t-rex toy, and a ball with a bottle of what appeared to be cheese whiz. That was gross, but Margo got so excited, I went ahead and put it in the cart.
I swallowed down a shocked noise when the total came up on the register, but as we were walking out, I muttered to Margo, “You better be worth it.”
Margo growled at me.
“Relax, mutt.” I opened the door and she jumped right in and onto the passenger seat.
I loaded everything up and we made the short drive back to the house. Once everything was unloaded and Margo promptly tried to destroy her t-rex, I decided to head over to Hank’s nursery to try and apologize again. Under the guise of needing potting soil, of course. I was hoping I could work it in somehow.
Margo bolted out the door in front of me. I yelled at her to come back, cursing my lack of foresight in forgetting to grab her a crate. She sat in front of the passenger door.
“I’m going to see Hank.”
Margo barked.
“You like him?”
She barked again.
I sighed and opened the door for her. “Let’s go. Don’t get upset if he doesn’t let you in the shop.”
Hank not only let Margo in, he poured her a bowl of water and gave her some of his beef jerky. He did this all without acknowledging I was even there. So. I supposed this meant he was still mad at me.
When he finally deigned to look at me, I decided maybe pretending to want potting soil was lame. I went in for the kill.
“Thank you for delivering my plants yesterday. Someone dropped Margo off at my doorstep, so my day got turned upside down pretty quickly.”
He nodded. “You never paid me for the mileage.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from saying something snarky. “I’ll pay on my way out,” I said instead. This could not possibly be the guy the dating agency had in mind for me. We’d kill each other in a week.
He nodded. “Was there anything else?”
“I wanted to apologize for the abrupt way I acted. It’s not like me to do that, and I just want to reassure you I meant nothing by it.”
“Why did you even bother asking me then?” His face was still in his normal scowl, but his gaze was curious. The answer mattered to him.
Hank wanted honesty. Huh. So I went for it. “I got this odd letter attached to Margo’s collar.”
His lips twitched. “Margo?”
“From The Magicians,” I said.
His stare was blank.
Definitely not the guy for me.
“Anyway, the letter was from that matchmaking service.”
Hank scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Does anyone even believe in that thing?”
“They set my parents up,” I told him.
Hank abruptly shut his pie hole and motioned for me to go on. “The note told me I needed to keep the puppy and that I would meet someone who was dead.”
One perfectly dark eyebrow rose almost to his hairline. The silence was deafening. Margo lay down on the ground and put one paw over her face like, “this girl is an idiot. Look away.”
“And you thought it was me?” His voice was deadpan.
Abort. Abort. I raised a hand up and choked out a self-deprecating laugh. “I didn’t say it was you, but when you showed up, I had to wonder.”
“I don’t like blondes,” he said abruptly. Hank stood from his seat behind the register. “Was there anything else I can help you with?”
I sighed. “Since I’m here and we’ve established that not only were you not the man they were talking about, but that you hate blondes, which I happen to be one, a natural one, and not a bottle one, I was hoping we could talk a little bit about permaculture. As long as you accept my apology. Because that was awkward. And I’m not a speciesist.” I added because why not? I’d already made myself look like a massive idiot.
“A speciesist?” he echoed. “Am I a species now and not a man?” Hank shook his head. “You have a real gift for words, Ms. Reaper.”
I was an idiot. “Permaculture,” I blurted before I could dig myself into an even deeper hole. “I’m interested.”
Hank gave me a long look. Margo whined. His lip quirked to the side. “Margo thinks you need some work, too.”
“Margo is a dog who needs to mind her own business,” I grumbled.
He pointed over to the back of the nursery. “Head back there and wait for me. I’ll show you some examples after I take care of something.”
I called for Margo.
“She can stay here.”
Margo refused to budge anyway, so I shrugged and headed over to the back. The area had a table, two chairs and about a hundred books filled to the brim with landscaping ideas. I was immediately overwhelmed. My idea of landscaping was a lot of flowers in one area with maybe some rocks and some herbs. It looked pretty, it smelled good, and sometimes I could eat out of it.
Some of the examples in the book were so elaborate they gave me anxiety. I appreciated Hank’s knowledge, but I wasn’t going to do anything like the projects here. I was hoping he’d tell me to plant some oregano under a lemon tree and call it multipurpose.
About ten minutes later, just as I’d talked myself out of ever doing anything with permaculture, Hank came over and sat in the seat across from
me. A smile lit his mouth as he saw my expression. “Permaculture doesn’t have to be elaborate,” he said.
I blew out a relieved breath. “Oh thank the gods,” I said. “This is terrifying.” I pointed to the stacks of catalogs.
“Listen, Ms. Reaper, you don’t have to do anything. I was wrong to jump all over you about your landscaping. Plants are just important to me and I think we should do all that we can to make sure they live out their full life cycles.”
Hank seemed like he was just full of caverns waiting to be discovered. Anyone could tell he loved plants. Just based upon the way his shop looked and felt, anyone would have to be a fool to doubt his devotion.
"What about you?" I asked. "Do you do permaculture for people?"
Hank blinked in surprise. "Can't say that I do. I've never been asked."
A smirk pulled the side of my mouth. "I can only assume that's because you haven't lambasted them about their lack of plant love."
To his credit, two spots of red appeared on his cheeks. He reached back and rubbed his shoulder. "Yeah. Sorry about that."
"Listen, I have some land. I like landscaping. I appreciate what you're trying to do. How about I hire you to come in, look at the land, and tell me what you think?'
At first, Hank didn't seem inclined to agree to my proposal. But for some odd reason, my instincts were screaming at me to try. "I'll pay you well. Just come look at it first and then decide. Okay?"
He speared me with those warm eyes. I stared back at him. At first his gaze narrowed, then he gave a short nod. "I'll come look at it. That's all I can promise. I'll have to work in the evenings if that's okay. If I decide to take the job."
"Fair enough," I said. I stuck out my hand for him to shake. "How about tomorrow you come over and look?"
The jangle of a collar alerted us to Margo trotting over to us. "As long as she's there," Hank said.
"I can't seem to get rid of her, so I agree to those terms."
Margo gave a whoof of agreement.
Hank plucked a couple of books from his massive stack and pushed them over to me. "Take a look at some of the plans in these and see what you gravitate to. Is 6 okay for tomorrow?"