way too scary to let that happen, so I shook my head no.
“How could you help?” Karter asked.
Marie pretended she didn’t hear him, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, glancing around nervously. I walked through the Poison Garden and stopped in front of the rear wall. The vines pulled back, and I opened the hidden door. The crimson brush bloomed and pointed toward the door. I held up my hand. The plant retreated.
“Ready?” I called to Karter. “Hold your breath and run. Now!”
Karter sprinted forward, stumbling once and nearly falling flat on his face. Marie was suddenly there, hoisting him up and pulling him toward the door. They slid to a stop in front of me.
“Oh, wow,” Karter said, staring down at Marie. “You work out?”
I yanked him through the door and Marie slipped in after him. I stood between them and the crimson brush’s star-shaped blooms.
“Down there,” I said, gesturing to the stairs.
They disappeared below and I followed once I was sure the crimson brush wasn’t going to act up. I descended the stairs into the dank little room. Karter and Marie were both completely silent. The lights from our phones illuminated the small space. The plant stood in its glass enclosure. Karter leaned in and I quickly put my arm in front of him.
“This is the Absyrtus Heart,” I said. “It’s the deadliest plant I’ve ever come in contact with. I don’t want either of you to get hurt. You shouldn’t even be in here, but I had to show you this. It’s real. It exists.”
I examined the hole in the ceiling, and Karter followed my gaze.
“I think when the moon rises, it shines through there,” I said.
“What kind of plant grows in the dark?” Karter asked. “Don’t plants need sunlight?”
“Queen of the Night cacti only bloom in the dark.” I unlocked the glass door and we peered inside. “But this is something else.”
Marie stood as still as the shadows. “I don’t even know what to say.”
I’d felt the same way when I first saw it. If I hadn’t seen the shriveled stalk and crumbling leaves underneath it, I would have thought I was looking at a real human heart, somehow preserved.
For my AP Biology class, we’d taken a field trip to the museum and seen a human heart suspended in a jar of formaldehyde. We’d had to label the parts on a worksheet, and all those parts were there on the strange plant. The flat waxy plain of the right and left ventricles was pointed upward. The tangle of what might have been arteries snaked off the bottom and fed into long, thick stalks.
Karter leaned over my shoulder. “What the hell? Have you tried watering it? Tried to get it to come back like the stuff up top?”
“No. But I don’t think water would make a difference. I don’t think that’s what it needs.”
“What does it need?” Karter asked.
“If it were a real heart, what would it need?” I asked.
Karter’s eyes grew wide in the moonlight. “Are you saying it needs blood?”
Marie put her hand on my shoulder, concern in her eyes. “Do you know what will happen if you do this?”
“Do you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Do you know if Circe kept it alive? Or did she let it die?”
Marie avoided my stare. “She kept it alive. So did Astraea. She said she had to.”
This was the work Circe had mentioned. Not the shop or even the Poison Garden, but this—the care of this very special plant.
“I’ve seen you do all kinds of impossible things,” Karter said suddenly. He walked over and stood next to Marie. “So I’m not really surprised that we’re out doing some kind of blood ritual in the dark, in a stank-ass underground vault. But for real—this feels dangerous. Especially for me, because clearly your homegirl is not concerned.” He gave Marie the once-over, but didn’t push further.
“Oh, I’m concerned,” said Marie. “Just not in the way you think.” She looked at me. “I’m worried that if you don’t keep track of the Heart and look after it the way Circe and Selene did, that it’ll be lost—or stolen. If you really think you’re related to Medea, your family tree branches back hundreds of generations.” She sighed. “I always wondered why they’d risk it, why this family felt like they had to do all this after the toll it seemed to have taken on them.”
I gestured at the plant. “They kept it because it’s him—it’s Absyrtus. The Hearts are