I gasped. “Percy would really do that?” He’d make a killing as bodyguard. If he could leave the house.
She lifted a noncommittal shoulder. “He wouldn’t let us near you. I don’t know what he would’ve done.”
I dropped my face in my hands and mumbled into my palms. “How am I ever going to ever face him again?”
“Percy?”
Shaking my head, I lowered my hands to my knees.
Nette grinned like she’d just eaten every morsel in said candy store. “Do you honestly think Roane wasn’t flattered?”
“Which time?” The words dripped with sarcasm. “When I suggested he bury his bone or when I proposed he butter his biscuit?”
“Well, I’m no Roane—”
“Thank God.”
“But I rather liked the cookies and cream thing.”
I dropped my face into my hands again, and she hesitantly patted my head just in time for me to realize I hadn’t washed my hair in six months. I winced.
“Oh,” she said, oblivious. “One other thing. You turned forty-five a few days ago.” She threw in a quick “Happy birthday” as if that would soften the blow.
“What?” Lifting my head, I screeched at the unfairness of it all, figuring theatrics might help. “I missed the one day I gave myself permission to hide under the blankets and eat copious amounts of popcorn and chocolate while watching old Humphry Bogart movies?”
“Sorry.”
“I was just getting used to forty-four.”
“Well, now you don’t have to.”
She had a point. “Okay, take me back. What happened? How did I end up in here? And what the bloody hell am I wearing?”
With a wiggle of her butt, she settled further into the blankets and leaned forward, her expression full of adventure. “It’s crazy. The whole thing is crazy.”
“Which is why I’m asking,” I said, feeling a tad less adventurous than my cohort.
“When you, I don’t know, pulled Ruthie out of the veil . . . Is that what you did?”
I lifted my shoulders, just as clueless.
“We’ll go with that. Afterward, you were like, ‘Is it true?’ And she was like, ‘How did you do that?’ And you were like, ‘Is it true?’ And she was like, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’” Annette’s hands moved as fast as her mouth. “And you were like, ‘How many people have you killed?’ And she was like, ‘I told you. I’ve killed three men.” And you were like, ‘Not men. People. How many people have you killed?’ And she got all ashamed and was like, ‘Four.’ And, stunned off your rocker, you were like, ‘Ruthie, did you kill my mother?’ And she kind of freaked out, went white as a ghost—which, since she is one, looked really good on her—and then, soft as silk, she said, ‘Yes.’” My bestie feverishly took a breath.
I opened my mouth to interrupt—
—but she wasn’t finished yet. “And then, Deph . . . I don’t know. It was like it hit you. The spell or something. Or maybe her words. Either way, you stumbled back, tried to grab the cabinet for balance, then you just crumpled to the ground. You would’ve faceplanted if not for a certain startlingly handsome, kilt-wearing journeyman.”
Who I’d just propositioned publicly about twenty-seven times.
But back to Ruthie. In my grandmother’s defense, she’d had a really good reason to kill all three of those men. The jury was still out, however, when it came to her killing my mother.
I’d read about the mother I’d never gotten to know in Ruthie’s diary—after using my Energy to reveal the black words hidden on what had seemed a blank page. She’s gone. I had no choice. May the great Goddess embrace her soul.
I let the emotions wash over me again, just as I had six months ago, only this time I kept them under some semblance of control. At least outwardly.
There had to be a reason for what Ruthie had done. But at the time, I couldn’t think straight. Maybe I still couldn’t. I was running on pure instinct. Or pure magic. Was that even a thing? I was so new to all of this.
Apparently, as a kid, I’d been so powerful that my grandmother sent me into hiding. She’d suppressed the magics inside me to keep me concealed from those who would steal them—as the only way to steal my magics was to kill me.
But what else had happened then, when I was three years old, that caused not only my banishment but also my mother’s death? Why would my grandmother kill her own daughter? I needed those answers PDQ, but right now, I had to get my head wrapped around more recent events. Like the floating thing. “And then?” I asked Annette.
“And then what?” She was staring at me intensely.
It was my hair. It had to be my hair. I fluffed the flatness as best as I could. “How did I get here? Into these clothes? Onto this bed in my room?” Well, really Ruthie’s room. And where was she sleeping?
“Oh, right.” Annette snapped out of it. “At first, we had Roane bring you upstairs.”
Roane. I groaned.
“Since the longest you’d been out up to that point was only a couple of hours, we just waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.”
I gestured for her to get to the point.
“We took turns watching over you, but nothing changed. Your dads wanted you comfortable, so Ruthie and I 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.”