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know about your Gift, I’m wondering how much of this”—Lily gestured at the grounds—“you did yourself. It’s gorgeous. In my experience, most Earth-Gifted don’t like to have other people mess in their dirt.”
    “I planted and tend every filthy inch,” Deborah said with the particular smugness of a gardener.
    So complimenting Deborah on her looks was out. That made her freeze. But compliment her on her gardens and she lit up. “I love this one,” Lily said as they reached a round, tiered bed. “It looks like a wedding cake or a fountain of plants instead of water.” She stopped, tilting her head. Most of the plants weren’t blooming this late in the year, but . . . “Is it a white garden?”
    “Oh, you must be a gardener! Yes, I love the way masses of white flowers seem to glow in the dusk. I wish you could have seen it a month ago. Even the summersweet is past its peak now, I’m afraid.”
    “Summersweet?” Lily asked. “I don’t know much about your plants here, but I had the idea it was a summer bloomer. There’s that “summer” in the name.”
    A dimple winked slyly in Deborah’s left cheek. “I may have persuaded it to keep blooming longer than usual.”
    “Now that’s a useful trick. Not one most Earth-Gifted can do, either.”
    “An elemental showed me how once.”
    Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “An elemental?”
    “They show up here from time to time. They’re curious about me, I think.”
    “Ah.” She didn’t have to let herself be fetched, Lily decided, and she’d rather talk to Deborah than make up to Bixton’s chief of staff. “I don’t have my own garden, but my grandmother lets me muck around in her dirt. There’s nothing like destroying a few square yards of weeds to set the mind at rest.”
    “Exactly. Though Bermuda grass—!” Deborah rolled her eyes. “The people who owned the place before us had planted it. After twenty years, I still find clumps I have to dig out.”
    “Nasty stuff. Roots that want to contribute to Chinese agriculture. Why anyone ever thought Bermuda grass was a good idea—”
    “They’d never planted a garden, that’s for sure. Talk about invasive. You have it out in California, then?”
    “Oh, it’s everywhere. I’ve heard,” Lily said darkly, “it’s been found at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. What kind of grass do you have? It’s a turf grass, I can see that much, but it isn’t like any we use out in California.”
    “Kentucky bluegrass. You have to mow it high, but if you do that, an established bluegrass lawn is almost weed-free.”
    Twenty minutes later, Lily and Deborah were studying a sad-looking rhododendron on the eastern edge of the lawn near the woods, talking about mulch and compost and black root rot.
    “. . . not much of a problem in my part of the country,” Lily was saying, “but I know good drainage is key. But if you’ve already amended the soil and given it your own special boost, then switching to a different mulch—”
    A clear tenor voice broke in wryly. “I should have known.”
    Deborah looked over her shoulder at her husband, that single dimple winking again. “Lily likes to garden.”
    Ruben Brooks didn’t look like a man who’d recently had a heart attack . . . one that had nearly killed him and still had him on indefinite medical leave. A heart attack caused by a potion that, for reasons of timing and proximity, restricted suspects to those at FBI Headquarters. A potion administered by a traitor.
    Tonight, though, Ruben looked healthy. Still on the skinny end of lean, he had a beak of a nose, messy hair, and glasses that said “geek” more than “power broker.” But he wasn’t wasted anymore. He wasn’t in a wheelchair, either. When Lily first met him last November, he’d suffered from a mysterious condition that caused progressive weakness. The condition hadn’t gone away. It was genetic and would be with him for life, but now he knew what triggered it and could avoid his triggers