“He likes you,” she said.
I nodded.“Yes, I think so.”
“Good.That will make things easier.”She held a hand out to me.“Come sit with me.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I took her hand, anyway—it felt frail in mine—and we crossed the room to the sofa and sat together.
“What do you know?”she asked, point blank.
I blinked.“I’m sorry?”
“About the Crossroads,” she said, as if that cleared everything up.
I stared at her, my mind blank.
“What did Alice tell you?”
“Very little,” I said.
She was silent, her mind working, then she nodded once.“Then we have a lot to discuss.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Madeline’sgazesweptoverme once as she leaned back into the cushions of the sofa.Her expression was unreadable but if I had to guess I’d say she looked like she was trying to decide what to tell me and where to start.
Owen had disappeared into the kitchen with no hope of rescue.I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands so I sat there, ramrod straight and waited for her to say something—anything.
“I was helping Alice,” she said finally.
That spurred me into action.I reached into my oversized handbag and brought out the grimoire, the seed catalog and the scraps of paper I’d found.The first one—the one with her initials—I unfolded and handed to her.
“I found this.”
She took it, stared down at Alice’s handwriting, her gaze sweeping across the scrawled line.Then she looked at me.
“Does Owen know?”I asked before she said anything.
“No,” she said.“And neither does my husband.”
I blinked.She’d been helping Alice and never breathed a word to either Dougal or Owen.
“Why?”
“I didn’t tell them because Alice didn’t want anyone else to know about her struggle,” she said.
“Dougal was helping her, too,” I pointed out.
She nodded.“I know about the treasures she hid in the shop.”
“Why was she hiding them there?”I asked, my heart clanging in my chest hoping for answers.
She shook her head.“I only know she was hiding them to keep them out of someone else’s hands.”
That didn’t help at all.I sank back into the cushion.
“Alice knew the Crossroads was failing.That’s why I was helping her.We patched it up,” she said.“More like covering it with a bandage than fixing it permanently.The fix only lasted one moon cycle.”
I stared at her.“You know what I need to do, don’t you?”
