I switched on my flashlight again, illuminating the narrow steps. The ceiling felt very close. The light shone straight down to the bottom: a concrete floor and another closed door. Usually—almost always—this door pulsed with light. Bright white leaked around its seams, a glowing rectangle, like some kind of clean room. I would push open the door into heat, the thrum of the fan, the thick and heady plants, the room teeming with life. And my mama.

It was a magic world behind the basement door. To come into this world in the dead of winter, to find her, surrounded by life and light—and danger—cast a spell.

We would grow fifty plants, sixty, sometimes as many as eighty, shoulder to shoulder, brushing my waist, turning greedily toward the lights on the ceiling. I thought of their leaves, sharp and pointed as daggers. As a child, I both loved and hated coming here. Each time I felt a rush of danger and love, overwhelmed by heat and the smell of the plants: the spicy, dark musk of them. Each time I thought I would faint from it.

My mama was just as involved as Lobo, more so because it turned out she was even better than him with the plants. She had a knack for it. It was in my blood, as the Pumpkin King had said. She sang to them, that was my mama’s secret.

As an adult, it was hard to forget that feeling, to overcome it every time I opened the door. To stop expecting my mama to be behind it. I didn’t sing to the plants as they grew. I had nothing to say to them. Thank you for giving us money for food. Thank you for taking my mama from me. Thank you for ruining my life.

The door at the bottom of the stairs was dark now. No light leaked around its edges. I shoved my shoulder against the wood to free the tight door from its frame. I switched off the flashlight, and fumbled on the wall for the switch.

“Brace yourself,” I said.

“For what?” Grayson asked.

Then light pulsed through the room, blinking back to life from the hanging fluorescents strung low, at my chest, a height that would be just hovering over the plants when they were grown. Light also came from the bulb on the ceiling. And light came back from the very walls. Reflective silver panels shot the light across the walls and floor, back onto the plants, which devoured it.