“We’re not supposed to talk to you. Dorien’s orders. Usually, I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, and you seem harmless, but the Broken Muse boys seem particularly keen to get you out of here, and they’re a direct line to Madame Usher. I need her to like me or I won’t graduate.” A darkness passed over Aroha’s eyes, but it was gone in a moment.
I leaned forward, dangling my cigarette between my fingers, my heart thumping. She knew something. “You think if you don’t do what Dorien asks, he’ll influence Madame Usher?”Would he really mess with someone’s entire career like that?
Aroha shrugged. “Have you met Dorien? Dude is hot as sin, but he’s got crazy serial killer eyes.”
“Were you here when Clare… fell down the stairs?” I remembered just in time that I shouldn’t reveal Harrison’s suspicions to anyone, least of all a fellow student.
“Yup.” She shuddered at the memory. I reached behind me, curious about the strange plant poking out from a crack in the glass. “All of us were in the house except the twins, who were at a recital. Clare was a bit cray-cray, sooooo obsessed with Dorien, but he— don’t touch that!”
Aroha slapped my hand. Hard. The sting arced across my palm. I rubbed at the spot. “What was that for?”
“That’s monkshood. It’s highly poisonous. If you get the sap on your skin, it’s bad news.”
“How do you know?”
Aroha gestured to the greenhouse. “Duh. This whole place is a poison garden.”
“A… what?”
“It’s a Victorian curiosity. Apparently, one of the Usher ancestors fancied himself a botanist. He collected all these different poison plants from all over the world and grew them inside the greenhouse. He did lots of experiments and made some important scientific discoveries. Madame Usher warned us all not to go inside – apparently, some of the plants are so toxic you only have to brush past them to fall over and die. Look.”
She pointed to a rotting wood panel above the shuttered door. I peered at it, unsure of what she was referring to, when carved letters came into view. A phrase in Latin:In cauda venenum.
The same phrase tattooed across Dorien’s chest.
My mouth dried. “Do you know what it means?”
She snorted. “Right. Like I have time to study Latin.”
Fuck.Fuck.
My mind whirred with impossible thoughts. Like why Dorien would have the same tattoo as a poison garden, and how I happened to find that out right after I learned my mother was poisoned. A vision of a crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs flashed in my mind again.
No, it’s impossible.
Aroha must’ve seen something in my face because her expression softened. “Look, Dorien’s notactuallya serial killer. He’s just a cocky shit. A fucking gorgeous one, but a shit all the same.”
I grinned. “The word is dickweasel.”
Aroha tossed her head back and laughed. “You’re all right, trash. Come bum a smoke from me any time.”
“But you won’t speak to me inside the house?”
“Hell no. I’m not incurring their wrath. It’s not just Dorien you’ve gotta watch out for – Titus and Ivan are no angels. Little word of advice, trash. Everyone at Manderley is running from something. The Muses make it their business to discover what that something is, and then they’ll use it to twist you to their will. Hold your secrets close. Don’t let them into your head, or they’ll tear your heart out while it’s still beating. That’s what they did to Clare.” She stood up, grinding her cigarette butt into the dirt with the heel of her boot. “We should head back.”
As we walked back along the path, my eyes scanned Manderley’s facade. From this angle, the house appeared even larger and more foreboding – straight out of a Bram Stoker novel, especially given the number of sexy Romanians wandering its halls. I felt a tiny glimmer of peace when my eyes landed on the window of my room. It had been my little square of sanctuary since Harrison changed the lock. I’d left the light on because the bulb at the top of the steps blew. I could just make out the outline of the edge of my clothing rack and—
I gasped.
There in the window, staring down at us through the glass, was the outline of a face.
Chapter Twenty-One
Faye
“Shit.” I surged forward, crashing into Aroha. She wobbled in her high boots, throwing her arm out against a tree trunk to stop herself from falling over.
“What the fuck, trash?”
