This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(51)

After I cleaned up I fished my phone out of my bag. There were fifty missed calls from Mo. Thirty text messages. I couldn’t bear to read any of them. I hit send on the note I’d written to her and switched my phone off completely. I met Marie back in the main cabin and sat in the beige recliner across from her.

“You look … refreshed,” she said, biting back a smile.

“You were just gonna let me walk around like that, huh?”

She reached over and put her hand on my knee. “I think you look beautiful. Snotty nose and all.”

“That’s messed up,” I said, laughing.

“I pointed you to the bathroom, didn’t I?”

I smiled at her, and she sat back in her seat as Circe and Persephone climbed aboard and the outer door clanged shut. They sat down in the two seats immediately across the narrow aisle.

“The pilot says we’ll be in the air in a few minutes,” Circe said. She shrugged out of her sweater and reclined her seat until it was flat enough to lie down. “Might as well get comfortable. We’ll stop once to go through customs and refuel, but then it’s right back in the air for the second leg of the trip. Total flying time should be about twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours?” I asked. I’d never been on a plane for that long, and the cabin suddenly seemed smaller and much more cramped.

Marie pressed her head back into her seat and sighed. “I’m already bored.”

“Maybe we should try to focus on what we’ll do once we land,” Persephone suggested. “We’ll have to charter a ship to reach Aeaea, but we have to locate the Great Eye in order to find out which way to sail. We’re going to Abana first.”

I sat forward. “Not tryna be rude but do we know how to work a boat?”

“I’ll drive the boat,” Marie said, grinning.

“I would rather swim,” Persephone said. “I literally can’t die, and I would still not get in a boat you were steering.”

Marie sank down in her seat. “Well, damn.”

“The boat is actually the least of our worries,” Circe said. She propped her arm under her head and stared up at the ceiling. “If we can get to the Great Eye, figure out how it works so we can locate Aeaea, there are still the sirens. And if they exist as they do in mythology, we’ll have to take precautions.”

I settled into my seat as the engines rumbled loudly and the plane began to maneuver into position for takeoff.

“How did people get past them in the stories? Does it say?” I asked.

“Some sailors plugged their ears with wax,” Circe said. “And there’s the story of Orpheus playing his lyre so loudly that it drowned out the sirens’ calls.”

Persephone nodded. “But since we don’t have either of those things, our best bet is going to be noise-canceling headphones or something similar.”

“What happens if you hear their calls?” I asked. “Can’t you just … not go into the water?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of willpower,” Circe said. “Every single reference to them in the texts makes it clear that the sound they emit is impossible to resist. It could be some kind of hypnosis, or maybe the sound incapacitates you completely. I really don’t know.”

The engine noise rose until it drowned out our conversation. The lights flickered, and then we were tearing down the runway. The plane lifted off, and the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach reminded me of the way I felt as I clung to the griffin’s back. I shut my eyes until we leveled out and my ears adjusted to the quiet, constant hum in the cabin.

The door to the cockpit slid open, and a man with a shiny bald head and round face peered out. “We’ve reached our cruising altitude. Feel free to get up and stretch. This’ll be a long flight.”

“Appreciate it, George,” Marie said.

The man’s eyes grew wide, and then he slid the door shut and I thought I heard the soft click of a lock.

I turned to Marie. “He looked shook. What’d you do to him?”

Marie shrugged. “Nothing. I chartered this flight.”

I tilted my head to the side. “And?”

“And I had to make sure he understood that I needed him to use discretion.”

“When are you going to learn that you can’t just threaten people all the time?” Persephone chimed in.

“I have to use this power for something,” Marie said. “Otherwise what do I get? I get made into a monster and can’t act monstrous every once in a while?” Marie was confident in almost everything I’d seen her do up to that point. She was so sure of herself, but in that moment I heard something like sadness in her tone.

“I understand,” Persephone said.

“I know you do,” Marie said. “I can see it in your face.”

Something silent passed between them, and I tried to think of what it must be like to live forever. To have to watch everyone around you die. My stomach twisted into a knot. I didn’t need to be some immortal to understand that part of it, but something else Marie said bothered me.

“You’re not a monster,” I said. “You really feel like that?”

“Sometimes.” Marie looked into her lap. “I’ve just been like this for so long. It’s strange. In the beginning I was in awe of this power. Nothing could touch me. I had all this strength and didn’t know what to do with it. Astraea tried to help me, but she could do only so much.”