“How’s this for easing some of the… What’s he feeling, Irene?” Clem asked.

“You know, you could ask me,” Kaden said.

“Do you care if I look at your aura?” Irene asked, as if she hadn’t been watching his shifting feelings with interest since he showed up at the shop.

He arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t?”

Irene bit her lip and reached for the bottle. He laughed as he handed it over.

“I’ll tell you,” Kaden said. “Anger and betrayal mostly. A little sadness.”

“Mourning,” Irene said. “Which surprised me.”

“His dad died,” Clem said.

“It’s not for him,” Kaden said. “It’s more like… mourning what my life could’ve been? Who my mom could’ve become? I’m also more confused than I was before I came to town. All these missing memories. Nobody remembering who I am. And the town just accepts it—an entire summer, gone—because in Yarrow we give up our worst memories and move on. I accepted it, too, for all these years, and never questioned why.”

“You think there was something more to it?” Irene asked.

He rubbed the pad of his thumb against his lip. Instead of answering her, he asked, “What’s it like when you heal someone?”

Irene didn’t explain her magic to outsiders, but something in Kaden made her want to lay her heart bare.

“I start at the roots,” Irene said. “I search for them first. As much as I’d love to stick a spade in and scoop up all that pain at once, I have to pry it free one root at a time.”

He considered that. “You don’t just take it all, like with the memory harvest?”

“Right,” Irene said. “And the worst pain can resurface, but as you tend to it, less and less grows back.”

“So, pain is like a weed. And what you do is like weeding a garden?” Kaden said.

“You have experience gardening?” Irene asked.

“There’s a community garden back home.” Kaden’s eyes met hers and held them for a few seconds. He rubbed at his lip with his thumb again. Irene forced herself not to stare. “Pretty sure I started going there because of how much I loved the magic in your family’s garden.”

This type of talk was not helping Irene’s resolve not to fall for him.

“Then yes, it’s like weeding,” she said, taking a sip of the bourbon. She held it up to the light, the amber liquid sloshing against the glass. They’d already worked halfway through it. It had been years since she’d had this much alcohol in one day.

“Enough talk of pain,” Clem said from up above them. “We came here to have fun.” She dropped down to her feet beside Irene and started tugging off her shirt until she was down to a sports bra and jeans.