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

We stood in silence for a moment as Dr. Grant’s car pulled out of the driveway.

“Khadijah said someone came after you,” Circe said. “She said you showed up here under the impression that I wanted you to come.”

Her voice set off something deep in my memory, something I couldn’t quite retrieve. It was familiar and not at the same time. Did I know her? Was there some image of her locked away in my mind? Some memory of her voice? “There was a woman,” I said. “She was calling herself Melissa Redmond, but her real name was Katrina Valek. She said she was the one who killed Selene.”

Mo gasped. I didn’t understand her reaction at first, but it only took me a second to fit it together. While I was running around lying to my parents, something I’d never been good at or had reason to do too often, I realized I’d left out that very important piece of information. Mo had only come into the apothecary after Karter’s mother had admitted out loud that she’d murdered my birth mother, Selene, in an attempt to force Circe to retrieve the piece of the Heart locked in the Poison Garden.

“Bri,” Mo sobbed as tears welled in her eyes. “My god. Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you been keeping that from us?”

“She told me right before she—right before—” I bit the inside of my lip until the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. I didn’t want to say the words “right before she killed Mom” aloud. It was too much.

The vines encasing the house crept through the crack under the front door, pulling themselves toward me. Circe’s jaw tightened and made hard angles of her chin as she watched the plants react to the surge of grief coursing through me. She suddenly wobbled on her feet and her legs folded under her. The woman she’d called Persephone was there before I could blink. She’d crossed the room at an inhuman speed and caught Circe as she nearly collapsed. I exchanged glances with Marie, and she nodded once, confirming what I suspected. Here was another person changed by the Heart. Another living piece of it. Our total had come to five.

Mo let her gaze drop to the floor, and she shook her head in silent confusion. She must’ve been struggling with all the things she was seeing and learning about for the first time. She hadn’t seen Marie’s speed and superhuman strength yet either. We were going to have to have a serious conversation about that at some point, and soon. I squeezed her hand.

Persephone eased Circe onto the couch, and she leaned forward, cradling her head in her hands. She was clearly still grieving her sister, Selene, and my heart ached for her. I was grieving her, too, and in a way I’d never expected to. I was processing so many things at once I worried how much more I could actually take.

“Where is she now?” Circe asked through clenched teeth, her dark eyes narrow. Her entire frame trembled. “The Redmond woman—where is she?”

A shudder moved through me as images of her wild, terrified eyes flashed in my mind. “She’s dead.”

Circe glanced up. The dark brown headscarf she had twisted around her head brought out the brown in her eyes—eyes that were so much like mine. “Dead?”

Outside, there was a rustling, and a tangle of vines crowded the window. The red fangs of the coiling Devil’s Pet scraped against the glass like fingernails. Circe lifted her hand and without even looking toward the window, flicked her wrist. The vines shrank away from the glass. She was in complete control of her power—a power that appeared to be the same as my own.

“After all this time,” Circe said, more to herself than to anyone else. “I thought I’d left it in the past, moved on but—” She stopped short, then leaned forward. “How much do you know? I don’t want to do or say anything that’s gonna upset you, but there is so much.”

I steered Mo, who seemed to be drifting in and out of a daze, to the couch opposite Circe, and we sat down.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said. “Then maybe you can fill in the blanks?” Circe nodded and I tried to think in a straight line. “Mrs. Redmond found out about me. I don’t know exactly when or how, but a few weeks ago she came to our apartment in Brooklyn. She said you’d died and left me the house and the keys. She also said you left me a set of letters that were only for me to read.” I pulled the lanyard that held all the keys I’d collected from around my neck and set it on the coffee table. “She lied about everything, and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Circe shook her head and pushed the keys back toward me. “You can keep the house, Briseis. You can have everything I own. I don’t care about any of that. I walked away from this place many, many years ago.” She sighed heavily. “I don’t know how to say this, and I hope it doesn’t come across the wrong way, but I didn’t leave the house to you or anyone else. I’m clearly not dead and I didn’t write the letters.”

“I know,” I said. “I figured all that out. Well, most of it. I didn’t expect you to show up, that’s for damn sure. I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

Mo squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, Lord, don’t let her be a ghost.”

Circe pressed her lips together and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Don’t worry. I’m not.” The way she said it wasn’t like she didn’t believe in ghosts, just that she wasn’t one. I had to stop myself from thinking too deeply about what that meant. After everything I’d seen, nothing was impossible. “What did the letters say?” she continued.