We talked for hours about how things had been for me growing up, how Mom and Mo had reacted when they found out what I could do, what it was like living in Brooklyn, but when the conversation shifted to him, he was always hesitant. He didn’t talk about his dad at all, and his mom was a workaholic to the point of neglect. Karter always changed the subject when it got too heavy.

The plants in the Poison Garden grew with their infusions of rainwater and dew, but they took their time. They came alive under my thumb, but by the time I’d collected two full harvests from the front garden, only one was ready in the Venenum Hortus.

Karter worked in the front part of the garden while I collected the rosary peas and watered the hemlock root, castor beans, and oleander. Every time I did, I let the most toxic parts of the plants come in contact with my bare skin, just to test myself and see if Circe might have been wrong about me. I never developed so much as a rash or a welt, let alone seizures or bleeding mucus membranes—things that were supposed to happen when these poisons got in the bloodstream.

One afternoon, as we put away our rakes and hoses and as I hauled a bag of black hellebore to the gate, Karter paused. “Can I ask you something?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever said no to that question.” There was nothing he’d asked me about so far that I’d shied away from.

“I know you’re happy with your parents, but do you ever think about your birth mom?”

“Um—sure. I think that’s a normal, right?”

“Makes sense,” Karter said. “Do you know how she died?”

The question caught me off guard. I didn’t answer him right away. My mind twisted back to when I’d asked Mom and Mo that exact same question. I think I was ten or eleven. One of my classmates had gone to a funeral and they told us all about it when they came back. It got me thinking more about death than I had before that point. I’d asked what happened to Selene right in the middle of a spaghetti dinner, and Mom told me that the adoption agency called to tell her Selene had passed away shortly after my adoption was finalized. I knew that already, but I wanted to know how. She said the agency told her she died of an illness.

“She was sick,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Karter said, his voice low. “I know all this belonged to her. My dad died when I was twelve, and I used to go to this one park where we’d had cookouts to feel like I was sharing space with him after he was gone. I was wondering if that’s how you’re feeling now.”