This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(39)

Circe leaned closer to him. “You are going to tell me everything I want to know. How did you come in contact with Redmond? Did you find her or did she find you?”

“She came to me,” Lou spat. “She wanted more information about your family.”

“And you gave it to her?”

Marie squeezed his neck a little tighter and he gasped. His eyes bulged.

“Not—not at first,” he stammered. “I followed the covenant. I kept my word.”

“Until you didn’t,” Circe said. “What made you do it? You’ve always been angry. I’ve always suspected you simply didn’t like knowing that you aren’t really in charge here, but I did expect you to fall in line. After all this time, after everything our families have seen and weathered together—”

Lou’s thin dry lips peeled back over his teeth as he tried to scream in Circe’s face. “Not together! We’ve been cleaning up your messes, sheltering you from the world, and for what? What do we have to show for it?”

Circe balled her hands at her sides and blinked repeatedly. “You’ve been paid. Handsomely. You’ve been compensated in every possible way.”

Lou stuck his neck out, pressed against Marie’s unrelenting grip. “Money? Material possessions? You think that’s enough?”

“People have been killing us to get their hands on what we have,” Circe said. “Hunting us like animals across every continent for hundreds of generations. Isn’t helping to save people’s lives enough of an incentive? We damn sure have saved more members of the Holt family than I can count. That’s how our covenant first came into existence.”

Lou stared at Circe like he couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. “You think I don’t know that? I do. And I don’t care. Your money isn’t enough. You and your family hoard everything! All the while reaping the benefits.” He glared at Marie. “I would have taken another form of payment, though.”

“And what form of payment would that be?” Circe asked in a way that sounded like she already knew what he would say.

“Redmond offered me more than you ever did,” he said. “She offered me a chance to be more.”

My mind was going in circles trying to comprehend the level of deception Lou was admitting to. I took a step closer to him as his words repeated in my head. Be more.

“She offered to use a piece of the Heart on you, didn’t she?” I asked.

Lou lifted his head and stared at me with so much contempt, so much hatred, that I had to step away from him. I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it clearly before—he hated me. He hated everything associated with the Colchis family and had clearly decided that his days of being a living record for us were over.

Circe shook her head in disbelief.

“She said when she became a god she could grant me anything I could think of, anything I wanted,” Lou said. “Any sort of power I could conceive of could be mine.”

“She thought she would become a god?” Circe asked, turning to me.

I thought of Marie and Persephone, of what they’d become. What kind of terror would they have caused if they’d thought of themselves as gods?

Lou sneered. “I would have been a fool to turn it down.”

“You’re still a fool,” Marie said. Her voice deep and rough, her words sharp.

“When did you tell her about Briseis?” Circe asked.

Lou tried to wriggle out of Marie’s grip, and she pressed him into the wall so hard one of the wood panels splintered under his shoulder.

“A year ago,” he said quickly. “When I was sure you weren’t coming back. The county was preparing to declare you dead, and I thought—”

“You thought you weren’t going to have to answer for your actions,” Marie growled. “Coward.”

“Shut up!” he screamed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She’d come around before, asking questions, and I kept up my end of our bargain.”

“Until you gave into greed or cowardice,” Circe said angrily. “And did you—” She paused as she seemed to come to some kind of conclusion in her own head. “You brought her here the first time, too? You told her about Selene and me?”

He’d been in collusion with Mrs. Redmond all this time? Since Selene’s murder?

“Mrs. Redmond killed Selene and my mom,” I said. The branches of the philodendron tripled their length and wound themselves around him again. “We wouldn’t be up here if it wasn’t for her, and she wouldn’t have found me if you hadn’t helped her. They’re dead because of her … because of you.” The branches wrapped around his neck, taking over for Marie, who let go and stepped to my side. The dark green lobed leaves fanned out around his mouth and tucked themselves inside, muffling his terrified screams.

Circe walked up to Lou and pulled a handful of leaves from his mouth. She flexed her fingers, and the remaining tendrils curled away from his face.

“What else do you know about Redmond and her son?” she asked. “Where did they come from? Where were they planning to go after all this?”

Lou clawed at the branches encircling his neck. “I don’t know where they came from but—I—I heard—”