Page 81 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

When he finishes, Logan taps his thumbs on the steering wheel as he waits for his brother’s reaction.

To my surprise, Mason rolls his eyes. “Figures.”

Logan’s eyebrows stitch together. “How does it figure?”

“Well. It wasn’t the only mess she left for someone else to clean up, was it?”

His brow furrows, but he doesn’t press his brother further.

“So,” I ask Mason, “now that you know everything we do, do you still feel optimistic about breaking this curse?”

He loosens his seat belt and swivels to look at me over the backrest. “ ‘Cursed to solitude’ does sound more serious than I’d expected.”

Logan meets my gaze in the rearview window. I feel a shot of heat through my belly even as I say aloud, “I think the pears are the immediate problem.”

A few minutes later, Mason instructs Logan to exit the freeway. When we hit a residential street, the truck slows to a crawl—despite Mason’s complaints, Logan always drives the speed limit—and I take in deep pulls of crisp fall air from our lowered windows. Giant sequoias humming with crows line the street and delivery bikes zip around the car. (At this, Mason sighs aggressively. “Jesus, Logan, you’re driving slower than the bicycles.”)

Logan kills the engine in front of a stately building rimmed by manicured shrubs. Even after Mason throws off his seat belt and jumps out, Logan remains, swivels to look at me.

“How are you doing?” he asks.

“Oh, by all means.” Halfway up the steps, Mason seems to have realized we aren’t with him because he’s tapping at his wrist and shouting, muffled through the closed windows. “Take your time! It’s not like those pears are ripening by the minute or anything.”

Logan ignores him. “It’s been quite the few days.”

And, genuinely, the first thought that springs into my mind, fully formed, is I’ve only survived them because you’ve been with me.

There’s an ache in my belly as I say, “It has. And thank you.”

Logan studies me for a moment longer before saying, “I’m here. And I’m with you.”

My heart squeezes with both pleasure and pain, and I nod before we step out of the cab.

The library is solemnly quiet but for the faint scratch of a highlighter and stifled yawns from students huddled around glowing screens. At the far end of the third floor, we find the reference librarian: a woman in a high-neck blouse with bangs as blunt as her stare.

“The bigfoot section is in the back,” she tells us when Mason asks for books on lived mythology.

“Sorry, no,” Mason says, flashing a golden-ticket smile. “We’re actually looking into trees.”

Now she squints over her dark-rimmed glasses, lingering on me and Logan. She must be wondering what we’re doing here—so clearly past the age of midterm exams.

“Mythology or folklore?” she asks. “Or, perhaps, I can direct you to the fantasy section?”

Mason rummages through the bowl of hard candy on her desk, foraging until he finds a red piece. “No, no. None of that. Historical accounts. But recent ones.”

“Legends?”

“No, we want serious,”—he pops the candy into his mouth and smacks hard—“well-documented material only.”

She appraises Mason’s contradictions. “But not cryptids.”

Mason hesitates, looking like he might just be curious about the bigfoot section after all.

“Trees,” I interject. “Just trees.”

The librarian nods, types something at her keyboard, then pushes off her chair and hooks a finger for us to follow. We wind around long communal tables pooled with warm light from antique lamps, past glass-walled study rooms, and take two more abrupt turns before stopping in a short aisle with humming overhead lights that don’t quite reach the bottom shelves. The librarian directs us to a shelf of spines fading to gray and washed-out navy before turning on her loafers and marching away.

Over the next handful of hours, Logan, Mason, and I chase leads between the stacks, hunting through ecological magazines and bound journals. In the strained silence of the library, footnotes and bibliographies blur into white noise. And although I should be laser focused on breaking the curse and saving my farm, I’m far too aware of Logan’s exact position in the stacks. The way he thumbs through pages, slow and deliberate. The way his gaze flicks toward me when he thinks I won’t notice—except I always do. Not for the first time today, I wonder where on earth we stand.