This family wasn’t just made up of people who were devoted to a goddess. They were a part of her, as Medea and her brother Absyrtus were, as I was.
Hecate stood. “I will guide your mother on her journey to the underworld. She will be safe under my watch.” The vial of Living Elixir glinted in her hand.
“Can’t we use it? To bring her back?” I asked.
She shook her head. “To make life everlasting, there must still be life. Alone, it is not enough to bring the dead back. But . . .” She trailed off.
“But what? Please. I’ll do anything. Please help me. Help her.”
She glanced toward Mom and then back to me, leaning down, putting her face very close to mine. “Can you do what has never been done? What no one has been able to do since the pieces of the Heart were first separated?”
I thought of Circe’s journal. Absyrtus made whole, master of death. “The six pieces. If I bring them together, I can save her?”
“She must come with me now,” Hecate said. “I cannot stave off death forever, but I can keep it at bay for a full cycle of the moon. Reunite the six pieces and resurrect her.”
“But I don’t know where they are! What if I can’t find them?”
Hecate pressed her palm to the side of my face, put the vial of the transfigured Absyrtus Heart in my hand, then turned and knelt at my mom’s side. Mo stiffened, but didn’t move. I stood watching as the cloaked goddess slipped her arms under Mom’s body, cradling her like a child. She walked to the void, her dog at her heel, and disappeared into the abyss.
CHAPTER 31
Hecate was real and Mom was dead—but we had a chance to save her if we could bring together the six pieces of Medea’s brother, Absyrtus. I was the only one who could do it. I was all that was left of Medea’s descendants. Hecate’s family.
I called Dr. Grant. When she arrived, Mo and I tried to recount everything that had happened. She looked at us like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. We sat in the front room, stumbling over our own words, trying to lay it all out.
I called Marie and told her everything as she rushed to the house. When she arrived, she didn’t speak. She looked exhausted, and she kept her injured arm covered, but she held my hand as Nyx stood by the front door.
“What do we do now?” Mo asked through a torrent of tears. “What do we do?”
“We have one month,” I said quietly. “And we have this piece.” I held out the vial. “It’s already transfigured.”
Marie took my hand in hers. “I drank the elixir Astraea gave me,” she said in a whisper.
“So we have one vial and one person who consumed the elixir. That’s two.” I stared at Marie. Was she now considered a piece of the Heart itself? I couldn’t see how, but Hecate said the six pieces could be reunited. Looking into Marie’s face, I didn’t like the questions that posed—or the way those questions made me feel.
“Where are the other four pieces? If Circe was looking and couldn’t find them, if nobody in this family has been able to find them after all this time, how are we supposed to locate four pieces in a month?”
There were pins in that map behind my fireplace, but that was my only lead.
“Where do we even start?” Mo asked. She collapsed into tears again and Dr. Grant handed her a tissue.
“There’s also the issue of Karter, or whatever his real name was,” Dr. Grant said. “You said he was injured pretty badly. I’ll check the hospitals and clinics, but he probably didn’t stick around.”
I felt the tears coming again. I got up and walked out of the room.
“Love, wait,” Mo said.
“I need a minute.” I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. All I wanted to do was wake up.
I wandered back to the apothecary. Fragments of broken jars lay scattered on the splintered floor. The counter sat crooked on its base. The jar of oleander lay open on the ground and a large circle of blackened wood where Hecate had disappeared with my mom stained the ground by the door.
I weaved through the shattered remains of the apothecary and went into the room behind the hidden panel. I gazed up at Medea’s portrait, avoiding Jason’s branch of the tree. I couldn’t stand to look at it.