Poison Princess (2 page)

In fact, it's time for my own elixir. I collect a stoppered vial from my cabinet, downing the clear, sour contents. My thoughts grow even more centered, my focus laser-sharp.

“Here we are,” I say when I return. Her eyes go wide at the bounty. When she licks her plump bottom lip, the tray rattles in my quaking hands. “If you'll just grab that stand . . .”

She all but lunges to help me set it up, and in no time, she's digging in. I sit on the couch—not too close, careful not to crowd her.

“So, Evie, I'm sure you saw the sign out front.” She nods, too busy chewing to utter an answer. “I want you to know that I'm delighted to help you. All I ask is that you share some information with me.”
And cry as I touch you, flinch whenever I near you.
“I'm archiving folks' stories, trying to collect them for the future. We need a history of how people's lives were rocked by this catastrophe.”

This is essentially true. I tape my girls' stories—background on my subjects—and later their screams. “Would you be interested in sharing?”

She eyes me cagily as she finishes her stew. “What would you want to know?”

“I'd like you to tell me what happened in the days leading up to the Flash. And then how you coped with the aftermath. I'd record you with this.” I point at the battery-operated cassette recorder on the end table and grin sheepishly. “Old-school, I know.”

She reaches for her mug, raises it, blows across the top.

Drink, little girl.

When she takes a sip, I release a pent-up breath. She's drinking a toast to her own doom, to our beginning.

“So you'll just record me talking?”

“That's right.” When I rise to remove the tray, she snatches her mug, holding it close to her chest. “Evie, I've got more in the kitchen. I'll bring back a whole pot of it.”

By the time I return with a pot and my own mug, she's finished her drink. Her hoodie is now wrapped around her waist, and as she stokes the fire, her short-sleeved T-shirt molds to her breasts.

I clench my mug handle so tightly I fear it will break. Then I frown. I'm not usually so
lustful
of my subjects. Mixing business with pleasure is . . . messy. But her allure is intoxicating.

Earlier in town, when I first saw her, I'd desired her, imagining her in my bed, opening her arms to me.

Could she be the one?

She returns to her seat, breaking my stare. “Why do you want to know about
me
?” Her voice has a drawling southern lilt to it.

After clearing my throat, I answer, “Anyone who makes it here has a story of survival to tell. You included.” I take my spot on the couch. “I want to know about your life. Before and after the Flash.”

“Why before?”

To get a baseline history on my new test subject.
Instead I say, “The apocalypse turned lives inside out, altering people. In order to survive, they've had to do a lot of things they never thought they could. I want as many details as possible. . . . You don't have to give your last name, if that makes you feel more comfortable.”

Over the rim of her mug, she murmurs, “My life was turned inside out long before the Flash.”

“How do you mean?” I reach over and press the record button. She doesn't seem to mind.

“In the weeks leading up to it, I'd just gotten home after a summer away. And things were strained.”

“Where was your home?” I ask, nearly sighing as I gaze at the girl. Her lids have grown a touch heavier, and the blond waves of her hair shine in the firelight. She smooths the silken length over her shoulder, and I catch the faintest hint of her scent—sublime, flowery.

Even eight months post-Flash, and with all the lakes and rivers evaporated, she manages to smell as if she's fresh from a bath. Amazing. Unlike the fetid little rats in the dungeon.

“My home was in Louisiana, on a beautiful sugarcane farm called Haven.” She leans back in the chair, gazing dreamily up at the ceiling, remembering. “All around us, there was a sea of green cane stretching forever.”

Suddenly I find it imperative to know
everything
about this girl. Why is she alone? How could she have made it this far north with no male protecting her? If the Bagmen didn't get her, then the slavers or militiamen surely would have.

I realize she must've only recently lost her protector—which is why a girl this fine would be alone.

My gain.

“How were things strained at home?” Which will it be—a tale of strife with her parents, or punishment for staying out past curfew, or a messy breakup with the local high-school stud? “You can tell me.” I give her an earnest nod.

She takes a deep breath and nibbles her lip. In that moment, I know she's made the decision to tell me everything.

“Arthur, I . . . I'd just been released from a mental institution.” She looks up at me from under her lashes, gauging my reaction while seeming to dread it.

I just stop my jaw from dropping. “Mental institution?”

“I'd been sick the last quarter of my sophomore year, so my mom made me go to a clinic in Atlanta.”

This girl's been heaven-sent for me!
I, too, had been
sick
. Until I'd tested my concoctions on myself, eventually discovering a cure.

Her idea of sickness and mine would likely differ to a murderous degree . . . but I could
teach
her to give in and embrace our darkness.

“I can't believe I'm confiding this.” She frowns, then whispers, “I couldn't tell him my secrets.”

Him
—her previous protector? I must know these secrets!

She gives me a soft smile. “Why do I feel so at ease with you?”

Because a drug is at work even now, relaxing you.
“Please, go on.”

“I'd only been home for two weeks and strange things were starting to happen again. I was losing time, having nightmares and hallucinations so realistic I couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep.”

This troubled girl is as frail in mind as she is in body.
She's mine. Heaven-sent.
I know I can take the merest spark of madness and make insanity flare to life. I begin sweating with harnessed aggression.

She doesn't notice, because again she's studying the ceiling, thinking back. “A week before the Flash would have been the day the school year began, seven days before my sixteenth birthday.”

“Your birthday was day one A.F.?” I ask, my voice high with excitement. She nods. “What was happening then?”

Drawing a foot up on the chair, she uses her other to gently rock herself. “I remember getting dressed for school Monday morning—my mom was worried that I wasn't ready to go back.” She exhales. “Mom was right.”

“Why?”

Evie meets my gaze. “I'll tell you. All of my story. And I'll try to remember as much as possible. But, Arthur . . .”

“Yes?”

Her eyes are glinting, her expression ashamed. So exquisitely wretched. “What I believe happened might not be what actually took place.”

DAY 6 B.F.
STERLING, LOUISIANA

“How are you feeling?” Mom asked with an appraising eye. “You sure you're up for this?”

I finished my hair, pasted on a smile, and lied through my teeth, “Definitely.” Though we'd been over this, I patiently said, “The docs told me that settling back into a normal routine might be good for someone like me.” Well, at least three out of my five shrinks had.

The other two insisted that I was still unstable. A loaded gun. Trouble with the possibility of rubble.

“I just need to get back to school, around all my friends.”

Whenever I quoted shrinks to her, Mom relaxed somewhat, as if it was proof that I'd actually listened to them.

I could remember a lot of what the docs said—because they'd made me forget so much of my life before the clinic.

With her hands clasped behind her back, Mom began strolling around my room, her gaze flickering over my belongings—a pretty, blond Sherlock Holmes sniffing for any secrets she didn't yet know.

She'd find nothing; I'd already hidden my contraband in my book bag.

“Did you have a nightmare last night?”

Had she heard me shoot upright with a cry? “Nope.”

“When you were catching up with your friends, did you confide to anyone where you really were?”

Mom and I had told everyone that I'd gone to a special school for “deportment.” After all, you can't prep a daughter too early for those competitive sororities in the South.

In reality, I'd been locked up at the Children's Learning Center, a behavioral clinic for kids. Also known as Child's Last Chance.

“I haven't told
anyone
about CLC,” I said, horrified by the idea of my friends, or my boyfriend, finding out.

Especially not him. Brandon Radcliffe. With his hazel eyes, movie-star grin, and curling light-brown hair.

“Good. It's our business only.” She paused before my room's big wall mural, tilting her head uneasily. Instead of a nice watercolor or a retro-funk design, I'd painted an eerie landscape of tangled vines, looming oaks, and darkening skies descending over hills of cane. I knew she'd considered painting over the mural but feared I'd reach my limit and mutiny.

“Have you taken your medicine this morning?”

“Like I always do, Mom.” Though I couldn't say my bitter little pills had done much for my nightmares, they did stave off the delusions that had plagued me last spring.

Those terrifying hallucinations had been so lifelike, leaving me temporarily blinded to the world around me. I'd barely completed my sophomore year, brazening out the visions, training myself to act like nothing was wrong.

In one of those delusions, I'd seen flames blazing across a night sky. Beneath the waves of fire, fleeing rats and serpents had roiled over Haven's front lawn, until the ground looked like it was rippling.

In another, the sun had shone—at night—searing people's eyes till they ran with pus, mutating their bodies and rotting their brains. They became zombielike blood drinkers, with skin that looked like crinkled paper bags and oozed a rancid slime. I called them
bogeymen
. . . .

My short-term goal was simple: Don't get exiled back to CLC. My long-term goal was a bit more challenging: Survive the rest of high school so I could escape to college.

“And you and Brandon are still an item?” Mom almost sounded disbelieving, as if she didn't understand why he would still be going out with me after my three-month absence.

“He'll be here soon,” I said in an insistent tone. Now she'd gotten me nervous.

No, no. All summer, he'd faithfully texted me, though I'd only been allowed to respond twice a month. And ever since my return last week, he'd been wonderful—my cheerful, smiling boyfriend bringing me flowers and taking me to movies.

“I like Brandon. He's such a good boy.” At last, Mom concluded this morning's interrogation. “I'm glad you're back, honey. It's been so quiet around Haven without you.”

Quiet?
I yearned to say, “Really, Karen? You know what's worse than quiet? Fluorescent bulbs crackling twenty-four hours a day in the center. Or maybe the sound of my cutter roommate weeping as she attacked her thigh with a spork? How about disconnected laughter with no punch line?”

But then, that last one had been me.

In the end, I said nothing about the center.
Just two years and out.

“Mom, I've got a big day.” I shouldered my backpack. “And I want to be outside when Brand shows.” I'd already made him wait for me all summer.

“Oh, of course.” She shadowed me down the grand staircase, our steps echoing in unison. At the door, she tucked my hair behind my ears and gave me a kiss on my forehead, as if I were a little girl. “Your shampoo smells nice—might have to borrow some.”

“Sure.” I forced another smile, then walked outside. The foggy air was so still—as if the earth had exhaled but forgotten to inhale once more.

I descended the front steps, then turned to gaze at the imposing home I'd missed so much.

Haven House was a grand twenty-two-room mansion, fronted by twelve stately columns. Its colors—wood siding of the lightest cream, hurricane shutters of the darkest forest green—had remained unchanged since it'd originally been built for my great-great-great-great-grandmother.

Twelve massive oak trees encircled the structure, their sprawling limbs grown together in places, like hundred-ton hydras trapping prey.

The locals thought Haven House looked haunted. Seeing the place bathed in fog, I had to admit that was fair.

As I waited, I meandered across the front lawn to a nearby cane row, leaning in to smell a purple stalk. Crisp but sweet. One of the feathery green leaves was curled so that it looked like it was embracing my hand. That made me smile.