Page 89 of Amber Gambler

“But you know better.” He watched me. “You’re not surprised to hear it.”

“Aretha treated me the first time I went in the water with the asrai, and she noticed my blood was weird but didn’t know what had caused it. I told her about the leaf, that I had been carrying it on me. She said I might have, I don’t know, divine contamination?”

“Not even prolonged contact with the leaf would have caused a physiological alteration on that scale.”

“You’re scaring me a little.”

“Divine contamination isn’t far from the truth.” His gaze slid away. “Your blood is ambrosial.”

“How?” I jerked up my pant legs, but my cuts had scabbed over. “Why?”

Kierce sat there, studying the distant horizon, but he didn’t answer me.

“Please.” I rested a hand on his thigh. “Tell me.”

“Had you eaten the fruit of my tree, it might have produced the same side effect.”

“But I haven’t eaten the fruit of your tree,” I said, proving I was the great intellect in the room.

“No.” He stared at the carpet between his feet. “I believe it’s possible you ate from his.”

His.

Who else could he mean but Ankou?

A stomach cramp twisted my gut until I dry heaved, producing nothing but misery.

“No.” I refused to believe it. “He?—”

How many times had I eaten at Armie’s restaurant? How many times had he cooked for us on weekends or when he slept over at Josie’s? He helped her garden. For all I knew, his tree was hidden among hers. I might have been fed his poison apples or what-the-hell-ever for months now without a clue.

Instinct demanded I defend Armie, which was insanity. I knew Armie hadn’t been real. Iknewit. But, like my sister, I hadn’t yet crushed the reflex telling me he was my friend, that he was a good person, that he would never hurt me on purpose. It was bull. All of it. Every minute we ever spent with him. A lie.

“I can’t kill you myself.”

Armie had told me that once.

“She can be…so…much more.”

He told me that too.

But the untapped potential he dangled before me hinged on my death.

Call me crazy, but that was a deal breaker for me.

“If he fed me from his tree—” I swallowed hard, “—aside from sparkle plasma, what is it doing to me?”

“To eat divine fruit forges a link between the grower and the consumer.” He exhaled. “Ankou must have feared you would discover him, or that his expulsion from this realm was imminent. He wanted that tie, a way to reach you across any distance. It could explain how he’s been coming to you in your dreams.”

“He’s in my head.” I stared at my scabby knees. “Does that mean he has control over me?”

“No.” Kierce pinched my chin between his thumb and finger, forcing me to look at him. “He can’t control or even influence you. He can only reach you in your dreams because your conscious mind is at rest.”

“How long do the effects last?” A surge of hope rose in me. “Would eating your fruit cancel out his?”

“The duration is dependent upon how much and how often he fed it to you.”

Days, weeks, months. “Which we can’t know.”

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