This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(10)

Her bluntness stunned me. I leaned away from her. “Right.”

I moved to get up, and she gently pulled me back to sitting. “If staying here means you can’t be safe or happy, then no. I don’t want you to stay. But if it can be a haven for you, then I want you to stay forever.” She looked down into her lap like she was embarrassed. “Have you seen pictures of her?”

“I found an album in the house. She was pregnant with me in a couple photos.”

“She made me take those pictures like she was modeling for a magazine or something.” Circe smiled in a way that told me she had that specific memory in her mind’s eye. “She was everything to me.” She shook her head and climbed to her feet, holding out her hand to me. I took it and she pulled me up with the strength of a normal human being, which relieved me a little too much.

“You’re here,” Circe said. “Anybody ever tell you what’s for you will always be for you?”

I nodded. “My grandma.”

“Smart woman,” said Circe. “You’re here, and the Heart has already stolen something from you. Its existence has taken a mother from you, twice. I don’t expect you to want anything else to do with it.”

“I wish I’d never laid eyes on it.” All I could see in my head was Mom’s face. I swallowed the urge to cry. “But I can’t go back. Like you said, I’m here. So what do we do now?”

Circe stared at the spot in the ground where the Heart had been rooted. She turned her attention to the glass enclosures. Taking a key from her pocket she opened the first small door. I didn’t move as she reached in and withdrew a flat stone, red as rose petals and about as big around as her palm.

“What is that?”

Circe quickly transferred the stone to the enclosure surrounding the vacant hole in the ground. She pushed it deep into the dirt and stood back, clutching her hand.

“The resurrection stone. The philosopher’s stone. It has lots of names.”

“It’s a piece of the Heart?” I asked. “I thought transfiguring it turned it into an elixir.”

“It can be transfigured into anything. A liquid, a stone … a person.”

Marie’s face flashed in my mind.

“This stone was created by a woman named Perenelle Flamel. I don’t know where she found her piece of the Heart or which of our ancestors transfigured it for her, but when she died in 1397, she was nearly two hundred years old.”

“She died?” I asked. “So it didn’t work for her?”

“It worked for a while.” Circe moved to the second enclosure. “But the Heart, in its transfigured form, must be held within the body. That’s why it’s been preferred as a liquid for so long, but creating the liquid is much harder to do. Perenelle kept the stone beneath the skin of her forearm. Her husband removed it and she died. He then secreted the stone under his own skin, right in the center of his chest, and lived on for four hundred more years.”

“What happened to him?”

“Persephone caught up with him in Paris many, many years ago.”

I glanced at the hole in the ground where Circe had put the stone. “How did she get the stone back from him?”

Circe cleared her throat. “A knife, I imagine.” She opened the second enclosure, took a halting breath, and plunged her hand inside. From it, she pulled an Absyrtus Heart, almost identical to the one I’d been forced to uproot. It was pink and supple and beat in a furious rhythm. The thick black roots dripped blood onto the stone floor. Circe quickly transferred it to the enclosure and set it on top of the stone. The roots burrowed into the dirt, writhing like worms as they anchored the plant in the ground. It immediately sprouted a half-dozen tufts of velvety black leaves as wide as a hand. Circe closed the little glass door and bent over, resting her hands on her knees.

I knew that feeling. “It’s like dying,” I said.

A film of sweat blanketed her forehead as she tried to catch her breath. “Like dying.” She locked up the enclosure door and took a step back.

“I’m sorry I brought Mrs. Redmond—Katrina Valek—down here,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand, and I thought I could trust Karter.”

“Karter?” Circe asked.

“Her son. He was—he was my friend. Or at least I thought he was.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “None of this is. I wish I’d known what was happening here. I wish I’d put it together sooner. I’m so sorry, Briseis. This whole situation is a mess, and so much of it is my fault. We don’t go into these things thinking we won’t have a chance to make them right. We’re just trying to survive so much of the time that I think we forget to live. I wish I could see Selene just one more time—tell her how much I love her.” She ran her fingertips over her mouth as her chin trembled. “How is it that some of us have no time left and others have more than anyone could ever truly need? It’s not fair.”

It wasn’t and I didn’t have an answer to her question, only more tears. I missed Mom and I could see how much Circe missed Selene. Our pain was the same.

I took off my glasses and wiped my face. Circe reached out but let her hand hang in the air in front of me. It was her way of asking if it was okay. I met her gaze and nodded. She swept me into an embrace with all the warmth of the sun, all the tenderness of family, born out of blood or choice, it made no difference in that moment. It was she and I and all that remained of the oldest branches of our ancient family tree … almost.