This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(17)

Alec’s eyes grew wide. “Marie told you, didn’t she?”

Circe pushed her glasses up and smirked. “Of course she did. You’re so smart, Alec. I don’t know why you’d ever risk it. You know how much Marie depends on you even if the two of you live on each other’s last nerve. She’s bad at letting people know how she feels.”

“No she’s not,” Alec said. “She tells me all the time how much I annoy her.”

“Not those kinds of feelings,” Circe said, shaking her head. “She keeps a wall up, Alec. You know what she’s been through. She loves you, though. I know she does.”

His eyes glazed over and he pretended to shuffle some papers around on his desk. “I love her, too. Might be good if she said it out loud sometime.”

I made a note to myself—pull Marie aside and make her tell Alec she cared about him, because I was not gonna allow her to keep hurting this sweet old man’s feelings.

“We can talk about that later,” Circe said. “But for now, I’d really like to know what was going through your mind when you decided to try and sneak out to the garden.”

He shook his head. “The ulcers.”

Circe raised an eyebrow, then gave him the once-over like a concerned parent. “I’ll bring you a window box. I’ll start a dozen comfrey plants. Can you look after them?”

“He needs the Symphytum uplandicum variety,” I said. “We only have Symphytum officinale at the house.”

The corner of Circe’s mouth crept up. “And the other one is better because?”

I could tell by her tone that this wasn’t a question she actually needed an answer to, but she wanted to hear me say it.

“The alkaloid content is higher. It’s just better.”

Circe nodded in approval and then turned back to Alec. “She’s right, but I’m not going to bring you a single thing unless you promise not to come up to the house without telling somebody first.”

“In my defense, I thought you were dead, and I didn’t know Miss Briseis and her family had moved in.”

“Give me your word,” Circe said. “I trust that.”

He raised his right hand the same way he had when I’d visited him in the hospital. “You have my word.”

Marie came back into the room. “My contact says he doesn’t have it anymore.”

My heart sank into the pit of my stomach.

“But he also won’t tell me how or when he returned it to its country of origin.” She crossed her arms hard over her chest. “Which means he probably sold it to a private collector.”

“How very unfortunate for him,” Alec said.

I looked back and forth between him and Marie. “What? Why does that matter?”

“It’s against my rules,” Marie said. “My contact knows that.”

I turned to Circe and expected to find her as confused as I was, but instead, I found her grinning.

“What’s funny?” I asked. “What did I miss?”

Circe drummed her fingers on Alec’s desk, then looked at Marie. “He wronged you? Reneged on the terms of your deal?”

Marie took in Circe’s expression and cracked a smile herself.

“Somebody gonna tell me what’s going on or what?” I asked.

Circe patted me on the shoulder. “Marie is a stickler for rules, especially when it comes to her treasures.”

“They’re not treasure. They are looted history, and if I asked this mother—”

“Language!” Alec said, his eyes wide.

He sounded like Mo and it made me smile.

Marie pursed her lips and dramatically folded her hands together in front of her. “If I made a deal with this—jerk—to return something and he sold it, well …” She took a long deep breath and her brown eyes seemed to swim with little tendrils of black. “That’s going to be a problem. For him.”

Alec cleared his throat and shook his head before raising his gaze to meet Marie’s. “Why are you like this?”

“Because I need to be,” Marie said. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. “Come on. We can get on the road and be there in an hour.”

I didn’t want to waste any more time than we needed to. I shot Mo a text letting her know what we were doing, leaving out the part about Marie possibly wanting to murder this contact on sight. As we walked to the car, Nyx was nowhere around and Marie reached for the driver’s side handle. Circe slid into the seat as Marie opened the door.

“I can drive,” Marie said.

Circe took the keys from the visor and started the car. “I know everybody thinks I’m dead, but I don’t actually want to be dead.”

“Are you ever gonna let that go?” Marie asked.

“Never.”

“What?” I asked. “You crashed the car or something?”

“Tell her,” Circe said. “Let her know who she’s dealing with.”

Marie huffed and lowered her gaze to the ground. “Maybe I ran over Circe’s foot one time.”

I looked at Circe, who was smiling smugly. “My toes ain’t never gon’ be right again,” she said. “I love that for me.”

Marie shrugged. “I’ll ride in the back.”