“Who you gonna call?” the man asked, in this jovial tone that made her think he was going to start humming the Ghostbusters theme song. Everything about this was absurd. Belle wanted to tell herself it was a dream, because none of this could be happening, except… the rest of the night had been incredibly vivid. Those lips, trailing across her skin. Those hands, warm and familiar. Bright eyes. Mischievous smile. They’d hardly touched over the past few years, and yet everything was exactly the way it had been the first time they’d held hands.

Like coming home.

Now her actual home was disappearing in the rearview, and the officer was saying, “Look, you don’t need to call an attorney. I’m guessing your rich daddy can arrange…” A pause as his gaze flicked to the estate in the mirror. The elegant Tudor rose up in the distance, surrounded by a perfectly manicured lawn. The only thing unruly about the estate was the garden, huge and overflowing with dahlias. Bougainvillea. Jasmine. And tucked in the back, in a corner:

Belladonna.

As beautiful as it was fatal. Belle had cultivated that little patch of flowers, telling herself stories about freeing Raven from his wicked stepmother. She’d come up with a plan. Now, three years later, she told herself she wouldn’t really have gone through with it. She was protective of her ex-boyfriend, but she wasn’t a killer.

None of them was.

“How did Mrs. Holloway die?” she asked softly. Every word that came out of her mouth, she analyzed. Did she sound innocent just then? Did she sound guilty? She wasn’t guilty, she swore to herself over and over again, but it was hard to believe that with cuffs around her wrists. It was harder to believe when the police station came into view.

“You tell me,” the officer said from the front seat. “You had a whole cluster of it in your yard. It even looked like some had been pulled recently. We made sure to check before—”

“Pulled?” Belle almost choked on the word. “Which plant was pulled?”

“It had such a pretty name,” the man said, catching her eye in the mirror. “You have any guesses, Belladonna?”

The back of the car went silent. It was the middle of the night, so Belle expected it to be quiet, but in that moment, she heard nothing. It was as if she were floating in the recesses of space. Everything dark, everything quiet. “They used belladonna?” she said after a minute. “How did you know to look in my yard? Who told—” She really should keep quiet. She had the right to remain silent, after all. Anything she said could and would be used against her in a court of law. Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “Did they use any other flowers? Poppies or…”