“Immortal?” I cut in. “Strong as shit?”

“Yeah,” Marie said. “How was I supposed to say that without you walking away?”

Walk away? Is that what I wanted to do now that I knew her secret, and she apparently knew most of mine? She was right. Nothing she said could have softened the blow of what she’d shared. “I won’t walk away, but I’m gonna need a minute to think.”

“That’s fair,” Marie said.

We pulled up in front of my house and the door lock clicked open. I grabbed the handle, then hesitated.

Marie reached out and gently closed her hand over mine. I felt a searing stab of guilt. She had saved me in the graveyard. Who knows what those guys would have done if she hadn’t been there? I let go of the handle and sat back.

“Do you think I’m safe now that those guys are . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say “dead.”

“I don’t know,” said Marie. “I don’t know who sent them or what they planned to do. Astraea always said how dangerous it was to be in her position.” She sighed. “Will you try to talk to the coroner?”

That was the other thing I’d been meaning to look at: why everyone else in my birth mother’s family was dead. Were those guys in the woods my biggest threat? I couldn’t grow the garden or protect the Heart if I was dead because of some unknown illness stalking my family tree.

“I’ll go up there tomorrow,” I said. “And you said you’d talk to Dr. Grant?”

“Yes,” she said.

I got out of the car, and she was already standing on the passenger side as I closed the door behind me.

“Shit,” I said, grabbing my chest.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” There was genuine remorse in her tone. “This night didn’t go the way I planned.”

“Yeah. Coffee shop meet-cute would’ve been nice,” I said. “Instead we get, what, graveyard murder meetup?”

She laughed. After everything that had happened that night, she laughed. She leaned in and kissed me gently on the cheek, then climbed into the car and drove off.

A part of me wanted to run after her and tell her to kiss me like she wanted me the way I wanted her. She’d killed three grown men to protect me and I still wanted to make out with her. I went inside and tried to get my life together.

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I’d seen things that I thought only existed in nightmares. Marie was some kind of immortal, able to kill three people without breaking a sweat, and the Heart had made her that way. Her face stayed in my mind. Her kiss lingered on my skin.

Marie and Nyx had said they’d call Dr. Grant, so she had to know more than I thought she did. Did that mean she couldn’t keep me and my parents safe—or that she was willing to do just that . . . by any means necessary?

The next morning, I called Karter and asked if he wanted to come with me to the funeral parlor. Marie had said a man named Lucian Holt had more information about the deaths in the Colchis family and I wanted answers as much as she did. The address, according to Karter, was only a twenty-minute drive from the house. He picked me up and we drove over.

We parked in front but we didn’t go inside right away. Karter kept looking at me, opening his mouth, then closing it and shaking his head.

“What is it?” I asked. “You look like you need to say something.”

“Don’t take this wrong way, but you look rough. Are you okay? Did you sleep?”

“Not really. I got a lot on my mind.”

“Wanna talk about it?” he asked.

“Not right now,” I said. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Whenever you’re ready.” He stared out at the funeral home. “Why do we keep ending up at the most random places? The hospital, a secret garden in the woods, a funeral parlor.”

“We tried going to the movies and you saw how that turned out.”

“Yeah. About that. Any word from Dr. What’s-her-name?”

“Grant,” I said. “And no. Nothing yet.”

I didn’t want to tell him about Marie or how Dr. Grant seemed to know a lot more than she was willing to tell me. We climbed out of the truck and started up the walkway. A sign that read Lou’s Funeral Parlor stood in front of the house.

“Imagine having a baby and naming it Lou,” I said.

“Imagine naming your funeral home after somebody,” Karter said. “Like, ‘Guess what, Lou? We named the place where we embalm dead people after you.’ ”

“It’s so sweet,” I said sarcastically.

We both laughed, but it was only to shake off the nerves. Karter was creeped out about the funeral home itself and so was I, but after what I’d seen with Marie, I was worried this guy was going to be a werewolf or something. I was not prepared for that.

The funeral home was run out of an old Victorian with a perfectly manicured lawn. Two enormous weeping willows flanked the walkway. Curtains of leaves swayed in the breeze. They brushed against me as I passed by and went up the front steps. A hand-lettered sign next to the door read Please Come In. I turned the handle and pushed open the door.

A bouquet of white carnations sat on a small table in the entryway. To the left was a sitting room full of comfy-looking recliners and couches. To the right was a bigger room with folding chairs set up in rows. At the front of the room was a low platform. On it, an open coffin.

“Oh no,” Karter said. “There’s a body in there.”

Someone with dark hair and a red blouse lay inside. Bouquets of roses and tulips were arranged all around the casket. A stand-up arrangement in the shape of a heart stood at the foot end. The pink roses adorning it had begun to brown and curl at the edges. I stepped into the room.

“What are you doing?” Karter asked in a hushed tone.

“That arrangement is jacked up,” I said. Mom would never have let half-dead roses get delivered to a funeral home for a service—or anywhere, for that matter. “I can’t leave it like that.”

The center aisle that led to the coffin was lined with bushels of carnations and white football mums. They were fresh and plump and barely moved as I walked by. Karter followed close behind. When I got to the coffin, I looked inside. An older woman lay there, her head resting on a white satin pillow.

I’d been to a few funerals in my life. The last one was for Mom’s great-aunt Bernice. There were kids at the service and they were scared to death. One of their parents told them that Bernice would look like she was sleeping. That wasn’t true. Dead people never looked like they were sleeping. The woman in the coffin didn’t look like she was resting peacefully either. She looked like a wax figure.