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I did. “Eat your sandwich.”

His mouth twitched. “Bossy.”

He opened the bag. There were four sandwiches, and he handed me one automatically.

I looked at it, then at him. “Barrett, that was for you.”

“There are four.”

“And you require the caloric intake of a logging camp.”

“You need lunch.”

I laughed and took the sandwich.

Some things, apparently, did not need fixing.

The laboratory wasn’t officially open, but that hadn’t prevented anyone from using it.

By noon, Mags had brought three bundles of dried moonmint she wanted me to test for potency. Doris appeared with a jar containing a leaf she swore had been insulting customers outside the municipal building. Two teenagers were curious if the purple mushrooms growing behind the diner were poisonous, hallucinogenic, or both.

They were neither. They were, however, mildly judgmental when touched.

I documented them anyway.

This was what my work looked like now. It was smaller and messier than a university department, but far more interesting.

I still wrote papers. That had surprised Professor Halpern. My final grant report documented eight significant botanical findings, three possible new symbiotic relationships, two species requiring further conservation assessment, and absolutely nothing about a blue-flowered plant growing beneath Screaming Woods.

The cavern didn’t exist in any document accessible outside my private files. Neither did the ward or what had happened to Barrett when he crossed it. I’d created a separate catalog for those.

Grandma’s journal sat in the locked cabinet beneath my desk. Beside it was another book, bound in green leather.

Mine.

The first section covered my entire understanding of the plant: its makeup, water needs, root spread, glow, and potential medicinal uses.

And written across the inside cover in letters large enough that nobody could mistake them:

NO COLLECTION. NO PUBLICATION. NO LOCATION DATA.

Below that, in smaller letters:

Observe. Protect. Leave it where it grows.

Barrett had read the second line and nodded.

I opened the cabinet now and took out the journal. We’d been back to the cavern once, and the hidden passage appeared for Barrett exactly as it had the first time. The shimmer returned when he crossed the ward, although less dramatically.

I’d taken photographs, privately, for scientific purposes. And perhaps because having photographic evidence that the enormous bear sharing my bed occasionally sparkled was too valuable an opportunity to waste.

The plant remained untouched. The protected zone, shown on my map, surrounded the main cavern and all nearby caves. As far as anyone outside a very small circle was concerned, that section of Screaming Woods contained unstable limestone and environmentally sensitive habitat.

Both statements were accurate, just incomplete.

I liked incomplete truths considerably more than I used to. There had been a time when withholding information would have felt intellectually dishonest. Now I understood there was a difference between secrecy used to deceive and secrecy used to protect.

Grandma had understood it first.