Page 15 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

She did not wish to. But she could. And he would not expect it.

She would do what she had to.

In the meantime, the day was not even half over. She could not expect him to wait until the morrow to strike again. She continued her walk around the hill, blocking a hole here, shifting sand beneath a boulder there. Beginning with minor obstacles, but also analyzing where she could do more. There was a promising ring of saguaro and cholla; she could perhaps transplant more to fill in the gaps…

A familiar whirring sound began, the one she had heard earlier from her bower, and she started, scanning the skies. There was a black shape in the air, almost like a dragonfly but large and black, perhaps the size of a golden eagle. The sunlight glinted off it in places, and she realized it was mechanical.

A drone. That explained much. Ethan had not been lucky in his path—he had chosen it through clever reconnaissance. As it drew closer, she could see the camera mounted beneath. It had to be sending images back to its controller, to Ethan. Showing him her fortifications from a distance.

Was he seeking another path? Or seeking her?

Regardless, it was a problem. She had learned much from invisibly spying on him. She could not afford for him to learn so much about her. But the drone was high in the air, out of her purview, unreachable by either earth or wood. Unless…

She swiftly turned away, pretending she had not seen it, though she listened closely to the whir as it grew louder. What could she do to lure it even closer, to where she could lash out at it?

Beautiful. Gorgeous. Pretty green eyes.

Mara smiled.

She would win this skirmish.

Chapter seven

Espionage

He wasn’t going to look for her.

Or he was, but in a know-thine-enemy kind of way. A get-your-damn-tenure kind of way. Definitely not a wanting-to-spy-on-her way.

He’d seen the painting. He knew the price men paid for peeping at a goddess.

As he trudged back to his Jeep—a strategic withdrawal, he told himself furiously, not a retreat—he turned the events he’d just experienced over and over in his mind. He was a man of science. He might have focused on botany in the end, but he’d been through the full gamut of science classes in high school and undergrad. Physics. Chemistry. Biology. Geology. Even a side course in astrophysics that hadn’t counted toward his degree but had fascinated him nonetheless. And in his hobbies, too, in the SCA, he’d learned the hard way about kinesthetics, practical physics, herbology, more chemistry—he’d dabbled in brewing—and even medieval engineering. If he had a religion, it was science.

There was a scientific explanation for everything.

Except he could not think of one for what had just happened.

He’d laughed about land mines—but the sand hadn’t exploded under his feet. It had rolled, pushed, undulated like a living thing, moving his feet against his will. It had crept up onto his makeshift bridge like a snake, falling gently down into the cacti on either side once he’d reached the end. And then it had risen like a pillar beneath the end of his bridge, as if there were an iron rod in the ground that was somehow ratcheting up with enough force to send the plank flying.

But there had been no rod. He’d been gaping, aghast, then dodging the plank’s fall, but he’d still seen it, the way the pillar of sand collapsed downward. There had been no rod. Just sand, hard and forceful, then soft and yielding. And even if there had been a rod, some sort of device installed in the ground, how could anyone have placed it there, just where he would choose to cross? Either the hillside would have to be riddled with such devices, or… It couldn’t be.

And then the ladder. It had sunk into the ground, the ground he damn well knew had been stable, as if it were quicksand—just as she had disappeared the first time he’d seen her—and then rumbled underground like a cartoon, the traveling ridge like Bugs Bunny forgetting to take a left turn at Albuquerque.

Again he’d joked. But prairie dogs could not have done that. It was impossible for his siege tower to have Looney-Tunesed its way back to his Jeep—because that was where it had gone. It was lying on the sand beside his campsite now, as if he’d never carried it all the way to the green-eyed woman’s hill.

He set his jaw as he walked around the fallen ladder to his Jeep. It was not her hill. No matter what she said. No matter how queenly she looked as she glared down at him, making him feel like the merest bug under her heel.

God. He wished he knew her name. It felt wrong to call her just she and her in his head. Perhaps he should give her a name. Diana. Boadicea. Eve, holding out an apple in the Garden of Eden with a smile like sin.

He’d take the apple, if she offered it. Without hesitation. Sin and sin and sin with no regrets. Even if it started the twenty-first century version of the Trojan War.

Ethan was mixing up his mythological apples, but he didn’t care.

He tossed off his bags and dug out his canteen for a long drink before unfurling and staking out his sunshade. She’d been more beautiful than he’d remembered—though clearly he’d imagined the cloak that had seemed like wings—just appearing in a silky, flowing gown that had left her curvaceous, golden legs and arms bare. It hadn’t even looked snagged.

How could someone wear a dress like that in the Sonoran Desert without it shredding like a Landsknecht’s sleeves? It would make him think she had still been a hallucination, or maybe even a ghost, except that her presence this time had been…physical.

He hadn’t touched her, though he’d wanted to, wanted to stroke her skin and see if it was as soft as it looked. Not that he would have felt that softness through his gloves, but he’d itched to do it all the same. But he hadn’t needed to touch her to feel her warmth. She’d radiated heat like sun-baked sand, her every movement sending vibrations through the air that he’d felt on his cheeks and imagined he could feel on his entire body, despite his armor.