I sat back in the seat. “I don’t understand how this has been happening in this town for generations and everyone is trying to keep a lid on it. What for?”

“I don’t know,” Karter said. “I can’t get over fuckin’ Lucifer in there. That guy was creepy as hell. He didn’t give off a creep vibe?”

“He did, but he works with dead bodies all day.”

“He looked like a dead body.”

Karter wanted to get as far away from Lou’s as he could, but I was the one who’d just discovered that a bunch of my relatives had died horrific deaths and that a lot of them, my birth mother included, had been murdered. Lou was clearly involved in a cover-up but his insistence that there was a good reason for it unnerved me.

Karter drove me home, and I texted Marie to tell her I’d seen Lou and that we needed to talk face-to-face. She hit me back right away to let me know Nyx would pick me up in a few hours.

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 24

Karter dropped me off at the house and I went straight to my room. I sat on the bed and tried to let my mind settle enough to piece together what Lou had shared with me. I wasn’t any closer to finding out what I was supposed to do with the Heart and who might have been trying to get to it through me. The plants on the hearth turned toward me, acknowledging in their own little way that they understood my frustration. It made me feel better.

I went down to the apothecary and collected a few perfectly cultivated rosary peas to replace the broken ones on Marie’s necklace. I folded a square of scrap paper into a makeshift envelope and slipped them inside.

My phone dinged. An email notification hung at the top of the screen with Dr. Kent’s name in the subject line. I stuck the envelope with Marie’s gift in my pocket and opened the email.

Hello Briseis,

Angie told me you are thinking of majoring in botany when you get to college, but if you change your mind and want to venture into classical studies, please let me know. You seem to have a passion for it. As for your questions, I’ll try to address them in order.

1)Yes, I charge a consulting fee, but not for this conversation. I cannot express how touched I was that you understand the value of picking another person’s brain. You are a gem. Truly.