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“Pipe the hell down” Quill nudged me in the shoulder “Go on Get out of here And don’t you ever forget that your good friend Quilliaetaway driver at no cost to you whatsoever”

I grumbled as I clambered out of his car I pushed the door shut, but not before I caught Quill gru to do that for you I could be at ho”

Jerk

With ripped in one hand, I h place to break into at all The garden walls were just trellised fences, the kind with slats in them that made it convenient for both vines and people to climb up and over

Easy peasy I slipped into the garden without incident,one of the fences doith h to offer the house any real privacy and protection And truthfully, that got ested that whoever lived in this house – a death witch, of course – was confident enough in her power that she didn’t need mundane forms of security

Finding further proof that I was probably right onlyaround the cons of a security systelint of their lenses up under the eaves No dogs, either I stayed close to the ground, scanning the gardens for so skull that relayed security footage directly to Monica’s brain, anything – but the coast was clear Monica was either really relaxed about this sort of stuff, or she had other protections in place

I was leaning heavily towards relaxed, however,out in the open Quillia on Leonora’s instructions The Rodriguez house was full of greenery, a garden that the family had always been very proud of The Rose, he said, would be found opposite so into the back of the house That was the biggest risk, of course, that so out near the patio would spot me

But I was there already, lurking in the bushes, ht flowers, the da like wet fil in full view, its petals like shards of perfect black glass, its stene flute, studded icked black thorns, wreathed in leaves cut out of ht

It looked so brittle and so delicate that I had to second guess using the shears Quill gave me, but that was clearly the best option The Obsidian Rose, so he said, was transferred frouez clan was designated its new grand witch, often the youngest as she reached a certain age Brought to that heiress’s garden, the Rose would set down roots and integrate itself with the surrounding vegetation That h and as thorny as so was clear, I crept up to the Rose, set the jaws of the shears around its crystalline base, and snapped it off its stem

That hat I’d expected to happen The shears jaht in my hands, as if the Rose’s stem was made out of an even harder ain and again to cut the rose out of its bush, the shears failing each time

“Fuck,” Iout to the Vestigantic golden scissors stocked up in heaven’s armories? What would they even use them for, I wondered? I was about to find out

But before the Vest slipped aroundto break free, but whatever had looped aroundover, either – I was pretty sure that was going to end in a pair of broken ankles

A wo curls and lips as red as blood ca out of the darkness, her ar with displeasure She wore a maroon sweater over soined a brujalike a death witch, either

“Well, well,” said the wouez, death witch and professional abuela torturer “Noho could be out here rustling in my favorite rose bush?”

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