Poison (12 page)

•  •  •

I sat there with my thoughts for a while. I was exonerated. It was just a matter of time before it became public knowledge that Summer and the others had been ingesting foreign substances for recreational use and had suffered the consequences of their wrongdoing. By next year no one would even remember them very well. They weren’t nice girls, after all. They didn’t have many friends, except for one another. No one would miss them much.

My eyes filled with tears.

•  •  •

That night, while I was putting away my laundry, I came across the box that had contained the worthless “clues” to the Muffy incident that I’d collected from Summer’s room. All that remained inside were the two broken pieces of brown plastic. When my fingers brushed against them, a feeling like lightning passed through me.

Taking a deep breath, I picked the pieces up slowly and, making sure whatever vibrations they carried wouldn’t catch me unaware, I carried them to my bed.
I’m not going to see anything or feel anything unless I want to, and until I’m ready,
I reminded myself. That had been my mantra ever since I’d first learned to control my psychometry, and the reason why this ability hadn’t driven me insane. Still, the vibes in these pieces were so strong that the plastic nearly jumped out of my hand.

Calm down,
I told myself.
Breathe. Get ready. Okay.

I concentrated on the smooth, lightweight fragments in my hand. I felt a sensation like movement flinging me through time and space. It was as if traces of light were shooting out behind me as I shot away at warp speed.

And then, abruptly, I was looking at the same green vista I’d seen in my earlier vision. The girl was there again too, but she was older this time, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and dressed in an elaborate costume of green brocade, although she paid no attention whatever to her odd clothing as she ran through the meadow laughing, her waist-length hair flying freely behind her.

In the background the doors of wattle-and-daub cottages opened slightly to reveal the awestruck faces of young girls, hardly breathing as they watched the exotic, beautiful creature among them, until their parents yanked them away and shut the doors.

Again vultures circled in the sky above her, but this time she seemed to be playing a game with them, although it was obviously not a game the vultures were enjoying. Every time the ungainly birds swooped down on her, she waited, poised,
until the last possible moment, and then vanished from under their noses.

A moment later she reappeared, laughing, taunting the squawking birds of prey that had terrified her as a child. Again and again they swooped down with their long talons, only to lock onto thin air.

She’s learned to amuse herself with her tormentors,
I thought. And although I still didn’t know who she was, where she was, or why I was seeing her, I couldn’t help but give her a little silent cheer.

But those watching her from behind the almost-closed cottage doors did not cheer for her.
She’ll be punished,
they said.
You wait and see. This girl’s life will be short.

•

I wasn’t looking forward to working that night, because Bryce and Peter were both going to be at Hattie’s—no doubt having a great time with each other while I did most of the work—but a job’s a job. I had to go whether I was in the mood or not. Besides, I was hoping to talk to Hattie alone if I could, so I showed up a half hour early. Luckily, she was in the kitchen when I arrived, making the dough for her famous cheese biscuits.

“Can I help? I asked, putting on my apron.

“Just in time,” she said cheerfully as she pulled out two big sheet pans. It made me almost pathetically happy that she’d accepted my offer of assistance. “Finish the biscuits while I write out the menu,” she said. “Then we’re going to need a couple of pies.”

“My pleasure,” I said.

“Now, what’s on your mind?”

I didn’t know how she could always tell. “Are you sure you want to hear?”

She sighed. “No, but go ahead.”

I rolled out the biscuits. “It’s about the girls at school who collapsed.”

She nodded.

“They’re Muffies . . . er, that is, non-adepts.”

“I know.”

“Well, from what I hear, their doctors have pretty much given up on them.”

“And how would you hear anything?” she asked truculently. Hattie didn’t exactly regard students as equals. Nevertheless, she was Whitfield’s high priestess and I needed her help, so I barreled on.

“The school’s position is to go along with the judgment of the girls’ families and attorneys.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that Summer and the others brought on their condition by drinking some South American tea.”

The barest hint of a scowl played at the corners of Hattie’s mouth.

“But that can’t be it,” I continued. “There was magic involved. Heavy magic. I watched them fall, Hattie.”

“All right,” she said. “Look what you’re doing to the biscuits.”

I guess I’d forgotten myself. I’d rolled the dough so hard that it was now paper thin and oozing over the edge of the counter. “Sorry,” I said, gathering it up again.

“Now they’ll be tough.”

I ignored her. “Anyway, Verity Lloyd admits to being a scenter, and she thinks that someone took Summer’s
soul
—”

“I know,” Hattie said.

I was about to go on with my tirade, but her words stopped me short. “You do?”

“Penelope Bean—Miss P, your assistant headmistress—told me about it last night.”

“Oh.” I should have known. Miss P wouldn’t let any of the students down, at least not without a fight. But the fact that they were Muffies made things a lot harder. “What are we going to do?” I whispered.

“We?”
She arched her eyebrows disdainfully. “What do you think
you
could do?”

I took a deep breath. “Well, for one thing, I can walk through objects.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Into them, rather. I thought that maybe if I had something of Summer’s—”

“You will do no such thing!” Hattie grabbed the rolling pin from me and held it up as if she were about to hit me with it. “This is not a matter for students. Do you understand?”

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding out my hands to placate her.

“Get away from those biscuits before you kill them.”

“Fine. Okay.” I stepped away. “But about the girls . . . ”

“Why, oh
why,
are you always sticking your nose into things that are none of your business?” she wailed.

“Hattie, there’s no way those girls did that to themselves,” I said. “No weight-loss tea would send all four of them into instant comas.”

“Oh, so you’re a medical expert now, are you?”

“No, but—”

“Well, people who
are
medical experts are saying that’s exactly the case.”

“They’re cowen. They can’t see—”

“And you can? Is that it? Katy Ainsworth, girl detective?”

“I’m not saying—”

“Leave it alone. I’m telling you—”

“No!” I shouted. “Look, I’m no medical expert, that’s true, and I’m no detective, either. But I know there was Craft involved with those girls. And so do you.”

We stood there for what seemed like a long time, staring each other down. To my amazement, Hattie looked away first.

“All right, all right,” she said, and sighed. “If it makes you feel better, we’re looking. We’re looking as hard as we can. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the cowen families. They’ll never know, one way or the other. But we’re trying to save the girls. I made a potion to get people to remember—”

“Was that the soup you made? That night you sent me home?”

She nodded. “It was an attempt. A failed attempt. But we’re still trying.”

“Then let me help,” I said. “That’s all I want. If we can just find out what happened to the Muffy girls—”

“We know what happened to them,” Bryce said behind me.

I spun around. He was standing there, his head hanging. Peter was beside him. “Don’t,” Hattie began, but Bryce held up a hand.

“Katy has suffered sufficiently,” he said. “I am honor-bound to tell her.”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

Hattie rolled her eyes. “The question is, will we have to shoot her afterward, to keep her big mouth from blabbing all over town?”

“No,” I said defensively. “I can keep a secret. You know that now,” I said, sliding my eyes toward Bryce. I hadn’t told a soul about him or where he came from. Hattie grunted reluctantly.

“Yes, we must tell her, Hattie,” Bryce said. “Always Katy taketh the blame for everything that’s happened to those girls.”

“Oh, taketh off, Bryce,” Hattie said.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Scott, but I cannot. We knew all along that Katy was innocent.”

“What?” I gasped.

“I must tell her. Everything.”

Hattie threw up her hands. “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But don’t just hang around jawing. Make the pies for dinner service, Katy. Two apple, three pecan.”

“Yes, Hattie.”

“Peter, you prepare salad for twenty-five. Bryce, pound fifteen chicken breasts for scaloppine.”

“Yes, Hattie,” they said in unison.

We all got busy until she left the kitchen. “Okay,” I said, slapping the flour off my hands. “Talk.”

Bryce put down the wooden mallet he was using to hammer a raft of chicken breasts. He looked small. Small and tired and scared. “It’s my fault that those girls are in their unfortunate condition,” he said.

“You?” What was he telling me? “You zapped them?”

“No. But because of me someone else did. Someone very dangerous.”

“Who?”

“A sorceress,” he said.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning someone with a great deal more power than a witch. I cannot even mention her name, for fear that she might hear me.”

I looked over at Peter, to see if this was some kind of a joke between them. “Are you serious?”

Bryce gave a rueful laugh. “I wish I were not. I was entrusted to transport her to a safe place, but I failed in my task,” he said.

“Are you like a bounty hunter or something?” I asked.

“How’d she get away?” Peter interrupted.

“She did not ‘get away,’ ” Bryce said. He cleared his throat. “Well, not exactly. She was trapped in a piece of amber, and I dropped it somewhere.”

“Wait a second,” I said, squinting. “Did you say ‘trapped in amber’? Like, say, a fly?”

He nodded miserably.

“Er . . . Just how big was this person, exactly?” I asked.

“Small,” he said. “That’s how she came to be trapped.”

“And you dropped her somewhere.”

“Here, I think. In Whitfield.” He sighed. “Those cowen girls must have found her and somehow released her from the amber.”

“That’s a big ‘somehow,’ Bryce,” I said. “I don’t know if Summer and her gang deserve that much credit.”

“They needn’t have known anything about witchcraft,” he said. “The sorceress who was in the amber is very powerful. She could have communicated with them, told them how to break the spell that bound her. In fact, that is almost certainly what happened.”

“And the potion—”

“It was a memory potion. Hattie and I were hoping that someone would remember seeing the sorceress. It might have given us an idea where she is.”

“From your description, it sounds like she’d be pretty hard to forget,” I said.

“Yes, but it yielded nothing. No one we’ve spoken to has seen her except for the four cowen girls, and they’re . . . ” He spread his hands in despair.

“Summer was trying to summon power the night I broke into her room,” I remembered. “The girls were arguing about it. I got the feeling they’d done it before.”

“Really?”

A lightbulb went off inside my head. “It
was
the Ouija!” I said. “I knew it! They were doing incantations over a Ouija board when they got into some kind of fight, and then—”

“And then she appeared?” he asked.

“No,” I corrected. “And then they opened the door and saw me.”

“And they collapsed?”

“Not right away. First they made fun of me for a while.”

He shook his head. “That does not seem to be sensible,” he muttered.

“So who is this tiny evil being you’re chasing? Is she a fairy or something?”

He started seasoning the coating for the chicken. “Actually, she is a Traveler,” he said. “Like me.”

“A traveler?” Visions of Bryce lounging on a beach chair in the Caribbean while wearing a hair shirt swam into my head. “Where do you travel?”

“Anywhere I want.” He grinned, then caught himself. “Of
course, I do not indulge in that sort of thing. I go only where I am told.”

“Like here.”

“Yes. Actually, that is the main thing a Traveler can do. Leave Avalon.”

I smiled. “Avalon?”

To my surprise Peter caught on to what I was thinking. “Wasn’t that where King Arthur ended up?” he asked.

“Yes, after he died. And only then because it had been the express wish of one of our greatest magicians, the Merlin.”

“Merlin,” I said, awestruck. “Merlin the magician was from Avalon?”