Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            But my shudder of remembrance vanished when I realized Getty was crying.

            “What did Jenks do?” I said, half the pearls in my pocket, half still in the drawer.

            “It’s not him,” she sobbed as she wrung her skirt. “It’s me. I try and I try, but I can’t get anything to grow!”

            My shoulders slumped in relief, and I took the time to gather the last of the pearls before I knelt before her. The pixy had never had a garden before, and though Jenks was attempting to teach her a lifetime of skills in half a season, she still couldn’t sense when a seed would grow and when it was infertile. To say she was frustrated was an understatement. “You haven’t had a real chance yet, Getty. Wait until spring,” I coaxed.

            “Spring won’t help.” Getty sniffed, gaze averted. “I’ve planted things before. Nothing ever grows. And Jenks . . . he can make a dust bunny grow into a mop.”

            I scooted up onto the fainting couch. “I know this is important, but you’re good at some amazing things. You can sew, and knit, and weave. You braid hair better than he does, and cook a meal from nothing at all. I know he’s impressed with the way you organize the fairies and string security lines in the garden.” But the fairies were gone now, down in Mexico until spring.

            “A pixy who can’t grow food is useless,” she burbled. “When he finds out, he’ll hate me.”

            I doubted that very much. Her failure probably stemmed from never having had a scrap of dirt to call her own. Nothing cultivated grows well if you aren’t there to tend it. But she needed proof, not my hollow words, and I thought for a moment before standing up and going to the corner of the octagonal room that I arbitrarily called my closet.

            “I have an idea,” I said as I rattled around in a large bag on the floor until I came out with a small paper sack smelling faintly of onions and dirt. “Here,” I said as I took out a small bulb.

            “It’s too late.” Getty wiped her eyes. “The ground is hard. I know that much at least.”

            Smiling, I rolled the bag closed and shoved it away. “This isn’t to plant outside. It’s a paper-white, sort of a daffodil. You grow them inside during the winter. I got them to give to Ivy for the solstice, but I bought like a dozen. You can have one. Check it out. Make sure it’s firm and viable. All you need to do is fill a vase with water and set the bulb so the bottom barely touches it. It doesn’t even need to be in the sun.”

            Getty wiped her nose with a scrap of cloth, her eyes on the bulb. “I don’t understand.”

            “It will grow,” I insisted. “In the dead of winter.”

            She blinked back her tears, hope making her beautiful. “You think?”

            “It’s guaranteed. Says so right on the package.”

            I set the bulb before her and she picked it up, the papery bundle as big as a load of laundry in her arms. “Thank you, Rachel,” she said, her wing pitch shifting higher as she struggled to find the air. “Jenks means the world to me. I don’t want him to think I’m stupid.”

            “You’re welcome,” I said, but she’d already darted out the open door and down the stairwell. “And Jenks would never think you were stupid,” I whispered.

            A happy sigh shifted me, and after a quick check to make sure that I’d gotten all the pearls, I thump-bumped down the stairs in my socks. Getty was not in the sanctuary, and Jenks looked up from where he and Constance were standing over his phone. The screen was lit, and she was apparently using it to swear at him, if the poop emojis were any indication.

            “What’s up with Getty?” Jenks said, his dust an embarrassed red. “She flew through here as if the devil herself were after her.”

            “She was bored,” I lied, not wanting to tell him she was suffering from feelings of inadequacy. “So I gave her one of the bulbs I bought for Ivy. She probably wants to get it going.”

            “Oh.” His feet left the table, and then he sank back down, clearly torn between watching Constance and busting in on Getty and her new bulb.

            Constance sat on her haunches beside the glowing phone, patting it for my attention. It was open to a notes app, and from Jenks’s bad mood, she was getting her point across. Whatever her point was.