put you into one of her gowns.”
I looked down at the gown I’d been wearing for six months. It smelled like wet grass and roses. I took a handful of the gauze and pressed it against my face, breathing deep.
“You smell good,” Annette said. “You do not want to know what I smell like when I haven’t showered for six months.”
“And you’d know that how?”
“Based purely on what I smell like when I don’t shower for a day.”
A smile tugged at my mouth then gave up. “And the floating thing?”
“Oh.” She waved a dismissive hand. “That happened when your dads wanted to take you to the hospital. Ruthie argued that you weren’t in a normal sleep but a magical one, even though it was new for her too. She reminded them that you were special. A charmling. And that the rules simply didn’t apply to you.”
“But they were insistent.” Did I know my dads, or did I know my dads.
“They were insistent. They came upstairs to gather you up, and there you were, floating a foot off the bed.”
“And no one thought to summon a priest?”
“Well, your head was on straight, and you weren’t spewing pea soup.”
“Small blessings.”
“But that’s not all.”
“Of course not.” It wasn’t anything close to all. A sudden tightness gripped my chest. There were things I wanted to tell her—things I’d seen while I’d been sleeping, things that scared the shitake right out of me—but I couldn’t. I just . . . couldn’t. So, I shoved them away.
“There were the vines. Percy wanted to protect you. I think he was mad at your dads for even considering taking you to a mundane hospital.”
“Mundane?” I asked. “Et tu, Annettus?”
“Hey.” She lifted a shoulder. “I embraced the life long before you did. I just don’t have any magic in me like you do.”
I took her hand. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
She squeezed. “The roses were incredible. Every time someone tried to get near you, vines with thorns sprung up.” She splayed her hands in the air to demonstrate. “We tried to keep them under control. But eventually, they covered the whole house. They moved aside for no one until you woke up.”
I reached out, and a vine sprang from the side of the bed, curled over the bedspread, and wrapped around my fingers. “Thanks for keeping me safe, Percy.”
The house hummed around us.
“That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” Her expression turned dreamy.
“So, you had to leave me here all these months?”
“Yes. We couldn’t get in the door. And here’s the strange part.”
“Like all of this isn’t strange?”
“True.” She laughed. “But get this. Percy can’t get into the secret passageways.”
Okay, that really was strange. “I forgot all about those.” One of those doors was in the bathroom connected to this very room. Surprisingly well lit, the passages were narrow halls with walls painted lighter than the rest of the house. But we’d never gotten around to exploring where they led. “What do you mean he can’t get in?”
“The vines. They can’t go past the threshold of any of the doors to the passageways. Roane told your dads about them, and they were able to drill through a wall and set up a camera so we could at least keep an eye on you.”
Now we were coasting past odd and sliding right into disturbing.
“I think Percy knew,” Annette said. “He never covered up the lens. He didn’t seem to mind we were keeping an eye on you, as long as we didn’t get too close. And that’s what we’ve been doing. Taking turns for the last six months.”
“Even my dads?” They had vineyards in Arizona, an entire hillside of paradise with a series of gorgeous Spanish casitas around a pool. They’d been looking at land near Salem in Ipswich before I’d pulled a Rip Van Winkle.
“They bought that farm in Ipswich, but they’ve hardly left your side.” She thought about it. “Well, the monitor’s side. It’s set up in the adjoining room.”
I left the bed and walked to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined a wall of the massive bedroom. “And here I thought my first few days in Salem were surreal. All of this is just so much.” Too much. I couldn’t seem to let go of the aftertaste those horrible dreams had left. It lingered like a foul breath that hung in stale air.
Suspended animation? One star. Would not recommend.
Annette came up behind me. “I’ve had time to absorb it all. I’ve read a ton of stuff