Poison (23 page)

“Ah,” I said.

“My refined sensibilities require . . . ” She poked at the chicken and dumplings. “What’s this slop?”

“It’s . . . er . . . ”

“I wanted bulgogi, damn it.”

“I know, but we thought—”

“What kind of place is this?” she screeched. “There isn’t even a menu.”

“Madison—Mim—please . . . ” People were turning around to stare. “I’m sure that if you tried these dumplings—”

“
Dumplings?
Do I look like someone who eats
dumplings
? You must be out of . . . Oh.”

Mim was like a rhinoceros. If she got distracted for three seconds, she’d forget why she was charging at you. In this case her attention shifted from the dumplings to a man coming through the door.

Admittedly, a handsome man. A man who most of my friends thought looked like a movie star.

“Dad,” I moaned. If Hattie thought Bryce was unreasonable, she had no idea what was in store once these two started fighting with each other. Which they would, momentarily.

“Hello, Katherine,” my father said. He kissed my cheek, then instantly forgot that I existed. “Madison,” he whispered breathlessly, seeing her. As if it were the first time he had ever seen her. As if he didn’t know what a nutcase she was. “What are you doing here?”

“I just came to try out the . . . ” She peered down at her plate. “Dumplings,” she said, her mouth twitching sensuously. “Will you join me?”

The two of them slowly melted into their seats, their eyes locked on to one another. Licking her lips, Mim speared a dumpling and fed it to my father.

“Ambrosia,” he said.

I sighed. “I’ll fix you a steak,” I said.

“No.” He sucked another dumpling off Mim’s fork. “This.” Their fingers touched. “Only this.”

Oh, please. Didn’t they ever learn?

Well, there was an expression in Whitfield that at Hattie’s you always got what you needed. Apparently what my father and Madam Mim needed was each other, because five days later I got an e-mail from Dad saying that he would be spending a few weeks at an ashram in India.

There was no accounting for taste.

•

When I got back to the kitchen, Hattie was carrying Eric in her arms. “Everything go all right?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said.

“Next time you tell them we serve only USDA Choice or better. No bull.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Kaaay!” Eric squealed. He was eleven now, but brain damaged from an incident a long time ago, and still a baby in a lot of ways.

“Who’s a good boy?” I asked, walking into his open arms. He smeared his face against my cheek, and I felt all my problems fall away, the way they did every time I was around Eric.

I used to think it was just love I was feeling. I did love the little guy, and I think he loved me too, but it was more than that. Because Eric was more than a lovable special-needs kid.

He was also the most unusual being in Whitfield, which is saying a lot. For one thing, he could draw like Michelangelo,
maybe better, even though he couldn’t spell his own name or count to five.

He could also heal with a touch of his hand.

Not many people knew that about him, which was how Hattie wanted to keep things. “A gift like that would bring nothing but harm to this little boy,” she had said when Gram had suggested that Eric volunteer at the hospital. The thing was, Eric’s gift was so great that none of the other hospital volunteers would be necessary. In fact, no one else in the entire medical profession would be necessary. Eric could heal the whole world, one person at a time, until he dropped dead from exhaustion. And then there would still be people getting sick, people dying. In the end it would be as if he’d never come along at all.

Hattie had been right. Eric’s gift, as extraordinary as it was, ultimately would mean nothing. And so all of us who were close to Eric agreed to shelter him from the demands of the world as much as we could.

I never told them that I believed Eric could do more than heal, but I knew that he could. Last year he had actually brought me back from death. But that would have been too great a secret for any of them to keep or even know.

There was something else he could do that even Hattie’s inner circle of friends didn’t know about, something Hattie herself didn’t like to think about. He could predict the future.

Maybe. This wasn’t something I knew for sure either.

“Kaaay!” He flailed his arms at me. When I walked back to him, he pounded on my head and shoulders with his bony little fists.

“Hey!” I yelled, laughing. “Are you trying to beat me up?”

“Kaaay!” He showed me a balled-up paper place mat in
his hand, then threw it at me, giggling wildly.

I went along with it. “For me?” I gushed. Eric was always giving me beautiful crayon drawings. “Why, it’s . . . ”

My words stuck in my throat. The drawing showed a country meadow, which resembled the park in the middle of Whitfield, being torn apart by what looked like a tornado. Bodies were flying through the air, while the earth beneath crawled with rats and snakes.

“Hattie,” I whispered, my mouth dry.

She was putting Eric in his special high chair. “We don’t have time for . . . ” she began, until she saw my face. “What is it?”

I gave her the drawing.

“What on earth,” she said, shaking her head.

“It’s the Darkness.”

I saw her swallow. But she came back in a second as if the drawing hadn’t scared her senseless. “Don’t be silly,” she said.

“You know what his drawings mean.”

“I do not!” she snapped. “And neither do you. Eric makes dozens of drawings every day.”

“Erc!” Eric shouted.

“And some of them are prophecies.”

“Just stop it, Katy,” she snapped. “The Darkness doesn’t just appear like a puff of smoke. There are always harbingers, signs—”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then,” I relented.

“Unless someone were to call it, of course,” she added.
“Which no one in Whitfield would ever do.”

“Even by accident?”

“You don’t call the Darkness by accident,” Hattie said.

I looked back at the drawing. “But this shows the Meadow.”

“It does not. This”—she slapped the drawing with the back of her hand—“is nothing but some grassy place. And besides, if it
is
the Meadow, then you know it couldn’t happen, because the Meadow is the most protected area in Whitfield. It must have more than a thousand charms around it. You know that.”

It was true. The last time the Darkness had gotten near the Meadow, it had been expelled. If ever there was a Darkness-free zone, it was the Meadow.

And yet . . .

“What is it now?” Hattie asked as she opened a jar of baby food.

I shook my head. “I’m just remembering something Eric once told Peter,” I said quietly.

“Erc!” Eric bounced in his seat and kicked his legs.

Hattie knew what I was talking about. Last year Eric had said that one day Peter would destroy Whitfield.

“Just listen to yourself,” Hattie said. “Eric
told
Peter. In case you haven’t noticed, this child can’t
tell
anybody anything.”

“But he—”

“He was
possessed
,” she hissed. “Those words weren’t his. The voice wasn’t his. And that stupid prediction sure ’nuff wasn’t his.”

“All right,” I said. There was no point in arguing. Either the prophecy would come true or it wouldn’t, and there wasn’t much I could do about it either way.

“And don’t go talking about it either. Nobody even remembers that, anyway.”

Except for me. Because there was a second part to the prophecy that apparently even Hattie hadn’t remembered. Eric had said that Peter would destroy our world.

And also that I would help him.

•

Such was the makeup of my winter: Peter, lost to Shaw Enterprises; Gram and Aunt Agnes, lost to wedding preparations; Morgan, lost to evil. Plus the slight possibility of imminent apocalypse.

In other words, everything was back to normal.

I tried to ignore the fact that I was alone and dateless as I prepared to take myself to Winter Frolic. I would rather have spent the evening having root canal work, but I’d promised Hattie, and she’d find out if I reneged.

“What the hell am I doing?” I muttered as I tried to figure out what to do with my hair.

Verity and Becca stopped in my room on their way back from the showers. Verity showed me a drawing of the bizarre upsweep she’d designed, complete with tulle butterflies to match the ones on her dress. It was a good thing that Cheswick was as strange as she was.

Becca, on the other hand, always looked fashion-model perfect. Her gold-blond hair naturally had the kind of bounce
and curl that cost a fortune to achieve in a salon, and all she did was fluff it with her fingers. As for me . . . Well, I just wanted to get this evening over with. I’d promised I’d go, even though Peter was taking someone else. What was worse, I was probably going to be the only unescorted human being there.

“This all sucks,” I muttered.

“I guess it would . . . for you,” Verity said. Becca jabbed her with her elbow. “Ow.” Verity rubbed her ribs. “Well, it’s true.”

“No, it isn’t,” Becca argued. “Besides, it’s just one stupid night.” She twirled my hair experimentally. “And you know Peter loves you.”

“Yeah. That’s why he’s taking Fabienne.”

“Oh, get real, Katy. She’s a
child
.”

“She’s French, though,” Verity said. “I think they mature faster than we do.”

“Good to know, Verity,” I said.

“So you’ll show her up by looking gorgeous,” Becca said, smoothing her hands over my dress that hung in the closet. “How could you not, in this?”

True, the dress was pretty spectacular, a navy blue satin Albert Nipon with a lot of crisscrossing straps across the low-cut back. It was a castoff from Madam Mim, but I had to admit, it still looked pretty fabulous.

“I’ll do your hair,” Becca volunteered. This was okay, because Becca never overdid things.

“My mom’s hairdresser is doing mine,” Verity said, “so I’d better be going. Toodles.”

“Toodles,” I repeated, deadpan.

Becca waited for the door to close behind Verity. “How much do you want to bet she ends up looking like RuPaul?” she asked.

“No takers on that,” I said.

The style Becca chose for me was pretty simple, pulled back on the sides and held in place by a clip made of pearls. The rest of my hair hung straight over my shoulders. The only jewelry I had on, aside from the hair clip, was the blue ring on my finger.

It still made me wonder. I mean, you’d have thought that would be the first thing that Gram and the other witches would have noticed, especially since Morgan had given it to me, but they hadn’t said anything about it.
No one
had ever said anything about it.

But let’s be honest, that wasn’t the real issue. The question I had to ask myself was, why hadn’t
I
said anything about it? Why did I make a point of wearing it wrong way out, so that the stone didn’t show? Why had it become a habit to keep my other hand held over it?

It didn’t have anything to do with Morgan. I’d gotten over being hurt that she’d used me the way she had. Morgan was just one of those people who didn’t value friendship. Actually, I was glad that she’d turned out to be the way she was, because now I wouldn’t feel bad for her when Bryce did whatever he had to do to her.

No, that wasn’t true. I would feel bad. I
did
feel bad. I’d liked Morgan, even if she didn’t care a thing about me. But there was nothing I could do for either of us. At least I knew that she wouldn’t be imprisoned in amber again.

But she wasn’t the reason I still wore the ring. It was because of how it made me feel. Whole. Strong. Confident. But then why . . .

“Whoa,” Becca said. I’d jumped in the chair. She stepped back, holding the comb aloft. “Did I pull your hair?”

“No. No, it’s not that. I just wanted to know . . . ” I turned the ring face out and held up my hand. “Can you see this?”