This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(40)

“What did you hear?” I asked. The ropes of philodendron roots upended him, dangling him by his ankles. He squirmed like a fish on a hook.

“They were going to a lighthouse! A lighthouse!”

“Not helpful,” Marie said.

Even as he was hanging by his ankles he managed to give Marie the dirtiest look. “The Great Eye.”

Circe let her gaze drop to the ground and then turned around to look at me. “We need to go. Now.”

She ushered me toward the door.

“Wait. What about him?” I willed the branches to let go, and Lou dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks. He groaned and rolled over on his back. I hoped he broke something.

“I got it,” Marie said. She was gathering him up before I could blink. She pulled him down the steps that led to his basement workspace and returned a few seconds later … alone.

“Did you kill him?” Circe asked.

“No,” she said. “I put him in the freezer where he keeps the bodies. I slipped his phone into his pocket. When he figures out he has it on him he can call somebody to let him out.”

“Is he gonna be able to get a signal down there?” Circe asked.

Marie shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

There was a long silence. I thought of Lou feeding information to Mrs. Redmond. How that had led her to hunt the Colchis women down and murder Selene and my mom. If he died in that basement, I wouldn’t be upset.

We piled into Marie’s car, and this time Circe slid into the front seat next to me. I scooted closer to Marie.

“Were you able to get anything booked?” Circe asked Marie. “Flights? Hotel? Anything?”

“It’s going to be two weeks at the earliest,” Marie said.

“Two weeks?” Circe asked. She pressed the back of her head into the seat. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

“We’re flying to Turkey,” Marie said. “That means we need passports, which you can’t get because technically you, me, and Persephone aren’t even supposed to be alive.”

“Okay?” Circe asked.

“That means I gotta find a document specialist who can arrange everything,” Marie said, slight edge of annoyance in her voice. “Then we have to charter flights from people who don’t care what we’re up to. It’s not gonna be easy and it will take time. I’m sorry. This kind of thing would normally take six months to plan, and we have to do it in a few weeks.”

“You’ve done this kind of thing before?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Marie said. “I usually use somebody like Phillip to do the traveling when I’m returning looted pieces. I have the resources to travel by myself if I need to but I’ve never had to arrange it for more than one or two people.”

“What do we do when we actually get there?” I asked. I didn’t want to think of all the ways this could go wrong before we even got started, but I couldn’t help it. “Once we’re there we still have to find the island. Are we positive that’s where the last piece is?”

Circe hesitated. There was still doubt.

“I’m going,” I said.

“We just had this conversation,” Circe said.

“I know. But I’m going. You’re right about Mo. She can’t go, but I have to, and we can try to convince her but even if she says no, I’m going.”

Circe ran her fingers over her forehead. “You understand how dangerous this will be?” She glanced out the window. “And it just got potentially more perilous. You heard what Lou said about the Great Eye?”

I nodded.

“It’s a lighthouse from the myths,” said Circe. “One of the older stories that isn’t as well-known as some of the others.” She rubbed her temples and leaned forward in her seat. “When Zeus freed the Cyclopes from their imprisonment in the Underworld, they gifted him the lightning bolt to use in his war against the Titans. They also forged Poseidon’s trident and Hades’s helmet. Zeus had his weapon but he needed more than that to overthrow the Titans, and so he forged an all-seeing eye and placed it at the top of a tower—a lighthouse. It allowed him to see across land and sea, even time.”

I didn’t know for sure what that meant, but I was not about to question it. “And we know where it is?”

“No,” Circe said flatly. “But it sounds like this Redmond woman and her son did. They were chasing the pieces of the Heart, and if her son still has that information, if he has help—like those people who were trying to get the pottery shard—they might already be making their way there. They could use it to find the location of Aeaea.”

“Can they?” I asked. “Can they use the Great Eye to find it?” A new fear gripped me. They get there before us. Even if they didn’t reach the last piece of the Heart they could make it impossible for me to reunite the pieces in time and get my mom back. I felt sick.

“I don’t know,” said Circe. “If they’d figured out where to look, then maybe. But we’re talking about something lost to time. I don’t even know where to start.” Circe turned to me and looked me straight in the eyes. “How will we convince Mo to stay behind?”

“I’ll tell her the truth, but I have to make her stay,” I said. “It sounds like we’ve got a few days to plan. Give me a couple days to think about it. But we agree, I’m going, no matter what, right?”