But he was easy to talk to even if he was awkward as hell, and my parents already liked him way too much. If I was being honest, I needed a friend. Maybe more than I needed anything else.

“Coffee sounds good,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

We exchanged numbers and I left. As I headed back toward Ginger’s, my parents came strolling around the corner.

Mo gazed over my shoulder. “Where’s Karter?”

“He went back to work,” I said. “And thank y’all so much for embarrassing me like that.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Mom said. “It’s good to see you doing things with kids your age. He seemed nice.”

“He is nice,” I said.

Mom and Mo raised their eyebrows in unison and exchanged mischievous glances.

I shook my head. “It’s not like that. Y’all are the worst.”

“Are we though?” Mo asked. “I kinda think we’re the best.”

“The absolute best, if you really think about it,” said Mom. She and Mo exchanged nods.

“I’m ready to head back if you are,” I said.

Mom pulled me close and kissed me on the side of my face. “My big-head baby.”

We drove to the house, and Mom decided she needed to take an oatmeal bath to deal with her rash. Mo fell into a food coma on the couch, and I spent the late afternoon debating whether I should go back to the garden or not.

I put on and took off my sneakers three times. My procrastination skills were legendary when it came to schoolwork and sometimes my chores, but this was on a whole other level. The incident with the man in the glade was fresh in my mind, but beyond that there was fear. Fear that I might find something I couldn’t walk away from. When I finally worked up the nerve to go back, it was already dark, and that seemed like a perfectly good excuse to put it off for one more night.

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

The next morning, I was up before Mom and Mo. I sat on the edge of my bed and weighed my options—stay in and help my parents clean, or maybe face somebody’s knife-wielding pawpaw in the woods on my way to a secret enclosure where I was told answers would be waiting for me.

What happened had shaken me. He’d called me Selene, said he needed something, and then got laid out by a tangle of poisoned vines. I had to get out there but I wasn’t going back under-prepared. I’d had Mace before, but this time I slipped Mom’s Taser into my pocket, grabbed my bag, made sure my phone was fully charged, and left out the door.