Nyx looked thoughtful. “Who am I, or any of us, to tell you how you should feel? But a word of caution, if I may? Now that you’re here, people will come. All kinds of people, most of them with no ill will. Try to keep an open mind.”

I thought of Alec and Marie and wondered if she meant people like them or something else completely. “I can do that. I think.”

“I hope so.” She gave me a pat on the arm and left.

Mom and Mo made me give them a minute-by-minute rundown of my visit. They wanted every excruciating detail. We stayed up for an hour going over everything: the library, the fancy appetizers, the fancy car, the multiple pools, and Marie’s affinity for old things. In the end, they could only agree that I needed to be careful and that Marie probably had a lot of money and too much free time. But I knew she had more than a passing interest in me, and it lit me up inside. I hoped I’d be able to see her again, and soon.

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 19

I slept, but only because I couldn’t sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to use the new key. When I woke up the next morning, it was barely seven. I lay in bed thinking of what Marie had said. She’d told me not to open the door, that there was something unfathomable behind it. She was worried that the plant was poisonous but that wasn’t a concern for me. All I could think of was opening that door.

When I heard Mom and Mo get up, I slipped the key with the heart onto my lanyard and went down the hall to tell them I’d be back for breakfast. As soon as I closed the front door behind me, I broke into a run. I bolted around the side of the house and across the lawn, into the tree line. The pathway opened up before me and I ducked through. I followed it to the garden, and as I came to the clearing, I took out the key and opened the gate. As it swung open, a sprig of climbing snapdragon slithered down from the wall and encircled my head, twisting itself into a crown of fuchsia blooms before breaking off and returning to the wall. This was our exchange every time I went in, and my collection of flower jewelry was deposited all around the house, not a single petal or stem wilted.

The gate clanged shut behind me and I rounded the corner, making my way straight to the Poison Garden.