His eyes squeeze shut. “I thought you were going to be honest with me.”
“I am,” I answer. “As honest as I can be. I am part of a circle of women—all related—who kill men guilty of horrific crimes. My mother, my grandmother, Aunt Myrtle—it’s who we are.”
He rubs at his face. “You poison them?”
“Yes.” I don’t look away as I answer. I want him to see the truth in my eyes.
“With mushrooms?”
“With our bodies.” I don’t even blink.
He starts slightly, scrutinizes me to see if I have a tell, if I am giving myself away somehow. But I am as still as the lake itself. “You mean you—”
“We eat the mushrooms, yes. Or the berries. Or the roots or leaves or stems or flowers. We happily eat whatever part is most toxic, and we transfer that poison to our victims.”
He blinks. “Are you sure you want to be telling me this?”
“Yes,” I respond. “No. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, least of all you. But…”
He waits patiently.
“Lying to you is impossible,” I say with a sigh. “The other night, when you warned me about the autopsy—you wanted tohelpme because you care. Well, that’s what I’m doing now.”
“You’re warning me?” he asks.
“I’m trying to help because I care,” I clarify. “Maybe it would be better to keep you in the dark, only you won’t stay there. You’re stumbling blindly into something you don’t really understand. And that could get dangerous.”
“For me?” he asks now, a little incredulous.
“For both of us,” I emphasize.
He frowns. “I don’t understand. How does it work? Do you build up a tolerance? Is it genetic?”
“It’s magic,” I say simply.
He laughs. “Right.”
“Do you want answers or not?” I sip my tea, return the mug to the table.
“You’re serious.” He doesn’t ask, he states it. He sees it as plainly as the mug before him.
“Deadly.” I give him a small smile. “The man in the café? I spit into his coffee after I saw what he did to his wife. Don, the man from the news reports? He forced himself on me, tried to rape me. It happened when he kissed me. I don’t take credit for his loss. He did it to himself.”
Regis looks like he can’t believe what he is hearing, and yet he must, because he just sits there, staring, trying to piece it all together in his mind. “And Ed?” he asks.
My eyes water. “Ed was different. We found him on the brink of death already, suffering. His pain was so great. We knew help would never arrive in time. I promised to give him relief, and then I kissed him goodbye.”
“Jesus.” He spins his cup on the table, processing. When he looks at me, his eyes are sharp as flint. “Acacia, tell me the truth. Did you kill your husband?”
“Henry?” I laugh bitterly. “No. A missed opportunity I will regret for the rest of my days. Of everyone, he is the one I should have taken out. But there was so much I still didn’t understand then, and I was desperate to escape. That’s why I’m helping you, I suppose.”
“Helping me?” He looks confused. His chin tucks. His brow crinkles.
“To get the Saranac Strangler. A kind of penance, I guess, for leaving Henry alive to possibly hurt someone else.”
His eyes narrow. “You said ‘get,’ notcatch.You don’t want to help me arrest him, do you? You want to kill him.”
“Doesn’t he deserve it?” I ask.
