I asked, as the familiar cool sensation trickled down my throat.
His gaze suddenly darted to the top of the wall. A vine as big around as a telephone pole slung itself down, thudding as it hit the ground. It moved along the ground like a snake, baring its thorns like fangs.
Karter scrambled back. He coughed over and over again and his eyes watered profusely. I’d made a mistake. He shouldn’t have been here at all.
“Do me a favor and don’t move,” I said, my heart racing. The plants were reacting to me. A frenzied sort of energy permeated the air as tangles of vines and Devil’s Pet began to unfurl from the tops of the walls. I lunged in front of Karter as the snakelike vine reached for him. “Don’t!” I shouted.
“It listens to you?” Karter asked, his eyes wild, his breath pumping out of him.
I didn’t know for sure that it would, but I didn’t know what else to do. I put my hands up in front of me. “Stop!”
The vine coiled back on itself and went still.
Karter looked around frantically. “Can we go?”
We left the Poison Garden, and as we did, the vine recoiled and retook its position at the top of the wall. Karter had backed all the way up and was standing in the shade of the big tree. His eyes were bloodshot, his face shiny with sweat. He clawed at his neck. “Am I gonna die?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re good? Why do I feel like I’m dying?”
He sat down, gulping in the fresh air between fits of coughing. After a few minutes, his breathing slowed, and his eyes stopped watering. He’d be okay.
“You can’t go back in there. I’m sorry. I thought if you didn’t touch anything you’d be okay.” It was too much of a risk and I felt terrible.
“It doesn’t affect you at all?”
“Not as far as I can tell. Listen,” I said, before he had a chance to ask me any questions. “I know this is . . . ​different. I don’t know what’s going on here exactly, but I think it has something to do with the people who lived here before, Circe and Selene.”
I thought he would freak out, maybe tell me he had to go and then never come back, but he sat quietly, lost in his own thoughts for a minute before speaking. “And they left you this place? How did you know them?”
“I didn’t,” I said.
He tilted his head to the side. “Then why would—”
“Selene was my birth mother.”
Karter blinked. “Oh.”
“It’s not a secret,” I said. “I was adopted. I’ve always known that. But Mom and Mo are the best.”
“Not the best at waffle-making, but whatever.” The vines atop the high walls rustled, and Karter tensed like he was going to get up and run.
“Circe and Selene were running a natural medicine shop out of the house. I’m gonna try to reopen it.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Karter said, looking around the garden. “Everything’s dead.”
“I’m gonna fix it,” I said. “Maybe you could help me?”
“Uh, I kill plants on contact. I couldn’t even keep bean sprouts alive for a science fair project. And I’m definitely not going back in there.” He waved toward the Poison Garden. “I felt like my throat was gonna close up.”
I sat down next to Karter. A tendril of flowers dropped down from the canopy above us. They looped around my neck and broke off, leaving me with a necklace of bright pink blooms.
Karter’s mouth opened into a little O. “How—how did you do that?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” My heart was in my throat. I’d never been so open about what I could do with anyone other than my parents and it felt like another huge gamble.
“It’s . . .”
I braced myself for what he might say. Weird? Scary? Strange?
His face softened. His shoulders relaxed and he shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s magic.”
I blinked a few times, trying to clear my head. “I don’t know about magic. I’ve been like this all my life, but until I got here, I’d always been afraid that I was gonna lose control and mess up or get someone hurt.”
“It’s not like that now?” he asked, his gaze darting from me to the plants and back again.
“No.” As I said it, I realized how much these last few days had allowed me to see myself in a way I never had before. “So much has changed since I’ve been here. Things have happened that