“Not as far as I can tell. Listen,” I said, before he had a chance to ask me any questions. “I know this is . . . ​different. I don’t know what’s going on here exactly, but I think it has something to do with the people who lived here before, Circe and Selene.”

I thought he would freak out, maybe tell me he had to go and then never come back, but he sat quietly, lost in his own thoughts for a minute before speaking. “And they left you this place? How did you know them?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

He tilted his head to the side. “Then why would—”

“Selene was my birth mother.”

Karter blinked. “Oh.”

“It’s not a secret,” I said. “I was adopted. I’ve always known that. But Mom and Mo are the best.”

“Not the best at waffle-making, but whatever.” The vines atop the high walls rustled, and Karter tensed like he was going to get up and run.

“Circe and Selene were running a natural medicine shop out of the house. I’m gonna try to reopen it.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Karter said, looking around the garden. “Everything’s dead.”

“I’m gonna fix it,” I said. “Maybe you could help me?”

“Uh, I kill plants on contact. I couldn’t even keep bean sprouts alive for a science fair project. And I’m definitely not going back in there.” He waved toward the Poison Garden. “I felt like my throat was gonna close up.”

I sat down next to Karter. A tendril of flowers dropped down from the canopy above us. They looped around my neck and broke off, leaving me with a necklace of bright pink blooms.

Karter’s mouth opened into a little O. “How—how did you do that?”

“I don’t know, exactly.” My heart was in my throat. I’d never been so open about what I could do with anyone other than my parents and it felt like another huge gamble.

“It’s . . .”

I braced myself for what he might say. Weird? Scary? Strange?

His face softened. His shoulders relaxed and he shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s magic.”

I blinked a few times, trying to clear my head. “I don’t know about magic. I’ve been like this all my life, but until I got here, I’d always been afraid that I was gonna lose control and mess up or get someone hurt.”

“It’s not like that now?” he asked, his gaze darting from me to the plants and back again.