She kissed the top of my head and squeezed me tight. “I love you more. Now get out in that garden and grow me some peonies. You know I love them.”

“Hang on.” I left the kitchen and went to the apothecary. I climbed the ladder, searching for a jar I’d seen when we first arrived—dried peony root. I fished out a chunk and took it back to the kitchen.

I gently set the root in her palm and cupped my hand over hers. I took a deep breath. A warm sensation flowed from my fingertips. A wave of dizziness washed over me, but I relaxed into it. I unclenched my jaw, set aside thoughts of this going wrong, and let the energy move through me.

The dizziness disappeared immediately. The root shifted. Mom inhaled sharply. A single green stalk pushed through my fingers and sprouted a foot high. A bud bloomed, revealing the blackest petals I’d ever seen, the seedy center as red as blood.

“It’s an onyx peony,” I said. “It’s the rarest kind of peony there is.” I was in awe of the unique plant, but I was also stunned that my own resistance to this power—worrying so much, trying to control it—seemed to be the thing that caused the dizziness and exhaustion I always felt after bringing flowers to bloom. There was none of that now. When I looked up at Mom, she was staring at me. “What is it?”

“You, baby.” She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “You’re some kind of actual Black girl magic.”

She put the flower in a tall glass of water and as I went down the hall, her Bluetooth speaker chimed on. The familiar notes of Josephine Baker singing “Blue Skies” in her signature breezy way wafted through the house.

Mo poked her head out of the front room. “Is Mom playing that music?”

“Yeah. She said this place is growing on her.”

Mo’s mouth curved into an ecstatic grin. “Who’d have thought?” She went back to dusting the shelves and windowsills, humming along with the music.

I went upstairs and took out the map Circe had left me to study the checkerboard setup of the plots in the garden. They would grow better if I transferred the plants that shared the same soil needs into the same beds. The ones that needed more acidic soil would thrive in beds with similar plants instead of sectioning the individual plots off with wooden planks.