telling me this place has been closed for a long time.”
“A while ago.” She pushed the money closer to me. “You got bills to pay, right? I really hope you reopen the apothecary. This place is more important to people than you can imagine.”
She’d sidestepped my question about when she’d paid Circe like I hadn’t even asked it. Something lingered in her words, some other meaning. This place.
Marie leaned forward, rolling the beads of her necklace between her fingers. Her nails were painted fire-engine red, and a moss-colored agate in the shape of a skull adorned her middle finger. “This has been passed down through my family for generations. You see the beads? Do you know what they’re made from?”
I leaned in to take a closer look at the necklace. She gently bit her bottom lip and sighed. The warmth of her breath and the closeness of her face to mine lit a fire in me. I blinked away the thoughts and I tried to refocus on the necklace.
What appeared to be wooden beads were, in fact, black and red seeds, dried and drilled straight through the middle.
“They’re Abrus precatorious,” I said. “Rosary peas.”
She strummed her fingers on the counter. “Harmless in this form—”
“Deadly to cultivate.”
“Exactly.”
Circe had known, or at least suspected, that I was immune, and I began to wonder if she had an even deeper understanding of this mysterious gift than I thought.
“Circe replaced them for me over the years,” Marie said. “See these ones?” She touched two cracked and flaking seeds near the clasp. “Maybe you can fix them for me now that she’s gone.”
The jar labeled Abrus Precatorious was empty, but she probably knew that. She wasn’t asking me to climb the ladder—she wanted me to grow them for her.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a seed,” Marie said.
The door of the apothecary bounced open. Mom and Mo fell headfirst into the room. Mo practically did a full barrel roll, then jumped up and stood at the doorway.
“I was just—just checking these door jambs,” she stammered, rubbing her shoulder. “The jambs are loose. And the hinges are—are broke. We gotta get that fixed.” She ran her hand over the jamb like she was inspecting it, then turned to Mom. “Babe, can you call somebody to fix this?”
Mom took out her phone and put it to her ear. Without unlocking it. Or dialing a number. She pretended to talk to someone and then paused, shoving her phone back in her pocket.
“We were eavesdropping,” Mom admitted. “Sorry. We’ll leave y’all alone.”
They stumbled out of the room and closed the door—which worked perfectly—behind them.
I sighed. “They’re a whole mess.”
Marie laughed as she pulled out her phone. “What’s your number?”
“You want my number?” I asked.
“Yes.” She said it with zero hesitation.
It took me a second to actually remember my own damn phone number. I needed to get it together because I was embarrassing myself. After rattling off the numbers, she sent me a text so I had her info.
“Call me. We can talk more about Circe, about this place, or maybe something else altogether.” Before I had a chance to respond, she swept out of the room, glancing back to look me square in the eye. “Bye, Briseis.”
The way she said my name sent a flood of warmth through me—and not the kind that brought flowers to bloom. She disappeared down the hall. Not a minute later, my parents were standing in front of me.
“Spill it,” said Mo. “Who was that? And why was she lookin’ at you like that?”
“She said she was gonna pay you a hundred dollars for some seeds?” Mom looked extremely concerned. “What kind of seeds? Opium? Kids gettin’ high out here in the sticks?”
“What? No. It’s—it’s plants.” I needed to let them in on at least some of what was happening so they didn’t worry. “Circe and Selene were running an apothecary. We figured that, but the thing is, they were growing and harvesting everything themselves in that garden I told you about.”
“And there are already people willing to pay money for this stuff?” Mo scanned the shelves.
“That’s why random people have been showing up,” I said. “The place has been closed for a while, but now that word has gotten around that we’re here, I think people are hoping we’ll reopen it.”
“Will we?” Mom asked. She turned to me. “You want to do this?”
It wasn’t that I wanted to do it. I felt like I was supposed to. The only thing I’d ever been