She tapped my chest again and gave me a sad smile.
Then it clicked.
Me.
“What?” I got to my feet in a rush, skittering away from her as if just by touching me she was making things worse. I didn’t want to accept the truth of what she was saying, because I simply couldn’t understand how it could be true.
“What did she say?” Wilder was standing now, too, watching me move around the room.
“Me. She said it was me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She says I’m the one who placed the curse.” My heart was pounding a mile a minute and suddenly I was painfully aware of the fact we were trapped inside a tree and there was no easy way to get back outside to the fresh air. I felt hot, sweaty, and claustrophobic.
I paced back and forth, gasping for breath, and the entire time, Memere just watched me do it. I could tell from the expression on Wilder’s face he wanted to do something to help me, but there was nothing he could do.
I still didn’t understand how what she was saying was possible, let alone true, but I felt the truth of it in my blood. I knew she was right even though I couldn’t explain it.
Finally I worked myself up into such a tizzy I was on the verge of hyperventilating and sat down on the dirt floor, burying my head in my hands and trying to pull myself together.
Wilder crouched beside me and put a strong hand on the back of my neck, his cool skin bringing me a small amount of calm that I had otherwise believed to be impossible.
“I don’t understand,” I mumbled into my hands.
They both said nothing while I grumbled incomprehensibly, and then at last, when I simply didn’t have enough energy left to feel sorry for myself, I stared at my hands, trying to figure out how they had managed to betray me like this.
“You’re such a smart girl, Genie, but I fear your powers are so much greater than either of us ever realized.” Memere pulled her stool up again, as Wilder and I gaped at her. She’d spoken, and in perfect English.
“This shouldn’t be possible,” I argued.
“What is and is not possible with magic?” She held up a hand and reminded us where we were. “I am a hundred and forty-five years old. Tell me what is impossible, please.”
I was briefly taken aback by her declaration. I’d known she was old, and probably older than I imagined, but in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have thought that age was an option. I shook off my stunned surprise and circled back to the bigger issue. “But a spell like that, to cast it without knowing? How would that even work?”
“When you destroyed all of Callum’s cabins, did you know you were doing it?”
“No.”
“There you go.” She stood in front of me, brushed her fingers through my hair, combing it back out of my face. “I brought you here because of what I knew you could be, my girl. I saw the potential brimming inside you and knew with the right direction you could surpass even myself in pure potential. But you left me too soon.”
“I was here for five years.”
“You learned so much in that time, I know. But as soon as your sister took you away, you had no time to adjust. I see it all in your blood, the fear, the danger, the changes you went through. I never should have let you leave.”
A deep frown creased her features, and I realized she blamed herself for what had happened to me. Meanwhile, it had been me who agreed to go with Secret when she’d found me here all those years ago.
“This isn’t your fault, Memere.” Somehow I was comforting her, even though I’d been the one to place a deadly curse on my own head.
“I should have done more for you.”
“You did plenty,” I offered her. “I know so much more than I did as a kid. I can control it.”
“No you can’t. If you could control it you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have done the things you’ve done.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You thought this was a quick action. That someone who hated you snapped their fingers and said, there is now a curse. But no, chere, no. This was slow magic, burning in your veins for years. You did things you won’t let yourself remember, but the soul knows. The soul saw it all. And the guilt for things you didn’t know you’d done ate you up. That guilt, combined with your power, and that’s what brought the dead back.”