CHAPTER 134

The gray skies of the Underworld did little to improve Mike's mood, and the occasional wail from the house made his stomach sour. Yet he sat quietly as Yuki told Amymone about how she had escaped from her tower.

"...and after we sent the Society packing, Mike forgave me for trying to kill him." Her tale done, Yuki put her hands in her lap. "And so I live in the house again. It's really weird that nobody remembers me, but I'm hoping to try and rebuild those relationships. It's frustrating, and more than a little lonely, but I'll get there."

"Wow." Amymone was sitting on the ground with her legs pulled beneath her and her chin on her knees. "That's incredible, I'm so happy that you survived."

"So what about you?" Yuki waved her hand around to indicate the Underworld. "I'm more than a little surprised to see you here. I figured you were dead."

Amymone's laugh sounded almost like a bark. "Okay, well, after you disappeared, things started getting dark around the house. For the most part, Emily was the same, only she claimed that you had gone away on an important mission. But then I heard rumors from the others about your disappearance and started to wonder if she had left you behind in the world on the other side of my tree. Granted, we couldn't help but believe her stories, but eventually some of the stuff she did spoke volumes more than the lies she fed us."

"Like what?" Mike had been quiet, allowing the two of them to catch up, but now he was curious.

"She became obsessed with unlocking the magic in the house. That was something that hadn't been an issue before. She was also becoming borderline abusive with a couple of the girls in the house, and poor Tink was constantly getting yelled at for little things. It was textbook personality disorder type stuff, and I saw the writing on the wall long before the others. A dryad can never leave her tree, so unlike Naia, I was never able to go inside the house. Well, sometimes Emily would do something on a Monday that would have everybody upset, but then by Wednesday or Thursday, they would have all forgotten about it. She found out how to tamper with memories somehow, and I suspect she was using the geas to do so."

He shook his head and sighed. "I have my theories, but they don't change what happened."

"Yeah, well, for the longest time, she claimed that she was trying to track you down." She pointed to Yuki. "Told everyone that you had been attacked or whatever. Became obsessed with some old key she found, would disappear into the Library for days. She even started perusing the books down in the Vault, and we all know that's a huge no-no, but we thought it was to help you, so nobody said anything."

"There are books in the Vault?" Mike tried to remember if he had seen some on his last trip there, but couldn't picture any.

"There are supposed to be. Dangerous ones. Anyway, she started asking me uncomfortable questions about my tree. She could use a tree to walk to another one, and had done some trick to open a portal in my tree that went somewhere new."

He nodded. "I'm familiar with this."

"Well, one day, a pair of centaurs came through from the other side. They wanted access to the greenhouse, and Emily was so freaked out by the fact that they had just come on over that she didn't ever notice that only one of them went home."

Zel. Mike thought about how the centaur had originally come to the house. It had been through Amymone's tree.

"And so she chopped it down?"

"Oh, and she was insidious about it, too. Blocked off part of the spring so Naia was stuck in the house and told everyone it was movie night. Sent Abella into the greenhouse to check on Sweet Pea because she'd been acting funny recently. Emily popped right on out and started chopping away. I couldn't even stop her. She used some sort of spell to trap me in place. Told me all about how she was going to have Tink make a lovely wardrobe out my tree while clearly out of her fucking mind."

"I'm really sorry." Mike hung his head and took a deep breath. "That must have been awful."

"Watching yourself be murdered? Yeah, it was." She shook her head, her long hair shifting along oaken shoulders. "Anyway, you don't read plenty of mystery novels without knowing what's about to go down. Long before she killed me, I actually pulled the heart wood out of my tree and hid it. Think of it like the magical core. Over time, my tree would die without it, but Emily was out there with her axe long before my leaves had even wilted."

"Is that why you're here?" Yuki asked.

"Yep. My heart wood can go dormant for almost a decade before it needs to be properly planted. I figured Emily was nearing the end of her lifespan and had my fingers crossed that a new Caretaker would arrive and find it. In the meantime, I'm stuck here, waiting to be born anew."

"Where did you hide your heart wood?" Mike asked.

Amymone smirked. "It's hard to hide something when you can't go away from your tree, and I was afraid that Emily would find out and demand to know where it was. So I gave it to the one person who would never say a word."

Mike and Yuki looked at each other, then back at her.

"Who?" Mike asked.

Amymone's grin faltered when she realized that they weren't going to guess. "Why, Sweet Pea, of course! The mandragora can't talk, and since I can talk to plants, I had her take my heart wood into the greenhouse and hide it with instructions to give it to the new Caretaker."