Poison Tongue (7 page)

“I meant how long did you last with your eyes covered.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but I held my hand out to stop him. “Wait, wait,” I said. “Let me guess. A day.”

A rakish grin spread across his face. It was disarming. The bottom hem of his shirt shifted when he placed a hand over his heart and said, “My, Levi. You do think a lot of me, don’t you?”

“Less, huh?”

“Hell yeah. Lasted about six hours before I tore the wrapping off. Went into work that day, barely able to see a foot in front of me. Eyes so bloodshot, I probably looked like I was the walking dead. Gave one of the other mechanics at the shop a heart attack.” He grunted. “I’d never be able to replicate the sound he made. I think it was in an octave only dogs can hear. Well, dogs and me, apparently.”

“I bet it was a scary sight.”

“I don’t know too many people who wouldn’t be scared of a grown man walking around with bloodred eyes. Hell, I scared myself just looking in the mirror the next day.”

I tucked my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. “Silvi wouldn’t be afraid. Never in my life have I seen that kid afraid of anything. She’s the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

“And Silvi is your little sister? The pretty little thing I saw in the sunflower field?”

“That’s Silvi.”

After a moment he said, “You two look alike.”

A small smile tugged at my lips. “Is it the blond hair that gives us away, or the dark eyes?”

Monroe’s gaze trailed down from my eyes, to my throat, and then lower to linger for a moment on my exposed collarbone. “Are you feeling warmer?” he asked.

“Yes.” And I was.

“You should go.”

As though all the light had been covered in a blanket of darkness, the ease in the room seemed to leave. Monroe’s smile turned to a hard line. His relaxed shoulders had gone rigid. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he looked at me.

And then, out of the shadows behind him, something dark slithered out. It slid up his side, beneath his shirt, its tail hooking upward, exposing his taut stomach.

A black snake.

It coiled around his stomach, moved up his shoulder, wrapped around his neck. Scales shimmered and glistened in the fire’s light. When its tail flicked up and touched the edge of his lower lip, I jumped. “You’re right. I have to go.”

Monroe said nothing. He stood and then followed me to the front door. I touched the door handle, and it felt like it was made of barbed wire. The corners of the small hallway dimmed, the walls seemed to morph in on themselves. To my eyes they vibrated and shook, but when I pressed my palm against a wooden panel, it was still.

“Let me walk you home,” he said.

“No,” I gasped. It sounded like a cry for help. Maybe it was. I had to get out of that house. I had to get away from him.

I pulled the blanket off my shoulders and shoved it at him. He said nothing—did nothing—as I unlocked the door and ran outside into the darkness.

“THE SWAMPS,”
I said. “Behind the Poirier house.”

Two blank faces stared at me.

The moment I walked downstairs that morning, both my mama and Ward knew that I’d been sleepwalking.

“The swamps?” my mama asked, a hitch in her voice.

“Their call is louder than ever. I hear them screaming to me when I sleep. I feel their murky waters through my fingers, even when awake. It’s intense and incessant. Each day that passes, their call to me is louder.”

My mama stood at the kitchen sink, Ward in the doorway, and I sat at the kitchen table. Even though I knew my mama couldn’t truly see me, I felt the heaviness of her stare.

“Why do I feel like there’s something you’re not saying, Levi?” she asked.

I hesitated. “I saw something—someone. A haggard old woman, decrepit, long past dead, her flesh decaying. And I think she saw me too. She came to me… reached out for me. I felt her. She touched me, and I felt her.”

If anything, they both stared harder.

“And,” I continued, “Monroe was there.”

My mama put her hands in the air as if that fact were enough to solve everything. “That man is the devil, Levi. He’s rotten to his very soul. I thought I told you to stay away from him. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach. It tells me something terrible will happen when you are near him.”

“It’s a bit hard when my sleeping body drags me to the swamps behind his house.”

She sighed and lowered her arms. “I wish your gran were still around. She’d know what to do. She was more connected to the other world than either of us.”

“Maybe it is time you talk to Elisa,” Ward said.

We both turned and looked at him. It was a good idea. Besides needing her guidance on the matter, I missed my gran. She’d been the one person in this world who understood me most. Besides Ward.

“Why don’t you go into the reading room, Levi?” my mama said. “Prep the room. I’ll grab my things.”

I walked into the reading room and pulled the curtains closed. Mama kept a small cupboard in the corner full of incense, candles, potpourri. When I lit the candles inside the candlestick holder on the table, Ward walked in silently and went to the corner. He didn’t say anything, just stood there with his dark eyes watching me.

A few moments later, Mama walked into the small room and closed the door. She placed some of my gran’s favorite things on the table: a hairbrush, a set of tarot cards, a small glass brooch with a picture of a woman. Mama dimmed the lights and then took the seat directly across from me at the small table. We laced our fingers together, and I closed my eyes.

The heat from the flickering flames of the candles touched my face, warming my skin. Balmy colors of the fire danced with the darkness behind my eyelids. The smell of smoke and dried flowers filled the room. My mama’s palms were sweaty as they held mine tightly, squeezing.

My mama and I had done this before. Gran never believed in things like communication boards or chanting while she was alive, and she certainly didn’t believe in them in death. Our communication with the lost memory of our family member was quieter, subtler, but it was what we knew. We laced our hands together and thought of Gran, the way she laughed, the way her arms felt when she hugged us tightly. She never spoke to us in words that minds of this world could hear. Her spirit would join us quietly, calmly, and show us things that only we could see with closed eyes.

But as we sat there in silence and the minutes trickled by, I felt nothing. I did not feel the warm embrace of presence, the knowing tickle on the back of my neck. My mother squeezed my hands a little tighter, and I knew she didn’t feel my gran’s presence either.

Then the fine hairs on my arms stood on end, skin chilling, goose bumps rising. A twinge of pain came deep in my gut. It was nothing but a feeling that blossomed deep within and quickly spread to my heart and mind. I tried to open my eyes, but found my eyelids impossibly heavy, almost tacky.

The tightening feeling in my stomach strengthened.

And then the screaming began.

Was it my mama screaming? My gran? The decrepit woman from the swamp? Or was it me? I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t even hear the screaming, but I knew it was there.

“Levi!”

My eyelids shot open.

Mama sat across from me at the table, her thin fingers tightly gripping my forearms, her pale eyes staring at the space beyond my left ear. Ward leaned over my side, his dark eyes more troubled than usual.

“Something is clinging to you, Levi,” Mama said. “Something dark and otherworldly.”

“I know. It feels like a sickness burning in my belly.”

“Its presence is stronger than your gran’s. I couldn’t even sense her here.”

I didn’t want to think about why. There hadn’t been a single time in life or death that my gran had not come to me when I needed her.

Except now.

“You are shaking,” Ward said.

“Make protection mojo bags,” Mama said. “Take them with you everywhere. I’ll ask around, maybe go see Miss Annamae. You can’t live like this, but I don’t know what to do. This is stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before.”

Her voice softened. “I know how you’re feeling, Levi. I’ve met men like him before. None with souls like his, and none with as bad of a reputation. But men who you know are bad for you. Men you can’t seem to stay away from. He will break your heart whether he means to or not.”

“I would never let him.”

Mama smiled sadly, her expression grim. Her clouded eyes pointed down toward the table. I swallowed hard, wishing she could look into my eyes and know I meant it.

“Oh, Levi. Matters of the heart ain’t up to you. They ain’t up to anyone. You can’t help what you love—who you want—but you can help who you go near. That man will bring nothing but trouble.”

I stood to leave. “I know, Mama. I know.”

“For the sake of your soul, Levi,” Mama said. “Stay away from Monroe Poirier.”

THE OBSIDIAN
stone glistened between my fingertips. Its sharp edges pressed into the soft flesh of my fingers as I held it up to my bedroom window, allowing the light from outside to reflect off its shining surface.

“Do you have everything you need, Levi?” Ward asked from where he stood behind me, leaning against a wall.

“Yes.”

Eight small red satchels lay on the wooden floorboards. It had taken me five days to gather all the things I needed to make protection bags. I’d visited Miss Annamae’s store twice, waiting for new supplies to come in.

These mojo bags were for protection. Most practitioners had their own unique way of making and preparing mojo bags. Me, Mama, and Gran all used the same materials. The charms we used, the material of the bags, the stones, all had been taught to my mama and me by Gran, who’d learned it from her gran.

“The world isn’t filled with those who see things the way we do, Levi,” Gran had told me the first time she’d shown me a mojo bag. “So we must trust what is tried and true. This is a protection mojo bag. It will help to dispel evil. Make sure to keep it hidden, and never let anyone else touch it.”

We had sat together on the floor in the living room, and she’d opened her spell book to a page with small, hand-drawn pictures of mojo bags. I remembered running my fingers against the pages, feeling the age of the paper beneath my skin.

“This will be your book one day. It’s been passed down through generations, starting with my gran’s granddaddy. But you mustn’t show it to anyone else, Levi. Most people don’t understand our ways, our customs. Our gifts have been in the Bell bloodline for years. Other people won’t understand.”

I sat on my bedroom floor with my legs crossed and small piles of stones and charms and herbal mixtures. Having done this many times before, I no longer needed my gran’s spell book to know the exact way to prepare a mojo bag. I picked up a red bag and placed one of my tiny, rough stones into the bag. One by one I filled them with obsidian and amber stones, mixtures of mistletoe, white sage, bay leaves, thistle, and anise. Lastly, in each bag was a small lock of my hair.

“Why have you made so many?” Ward asked.

I ignored him. After a few moments of silence, he said, “Levi.”

“He saved me from drowning myself in the swamp, Ward. If nothing else, I wouldn’t mind a bit of extra protection while I’m near that house. It could just as easily happen again.”

Why did it feel like I was making excuses?

“You know this is a bad idea. Think of what Alta said. She is rarely wrong when she has a bad feeling. You should trust her on this matter, not your heart,” he said.

“When have I ever listened to my heart, Ward?”

He said nothing. When I turned he was already gone.

NOT MANY
things look as frightening in the daylight as they do in the evening. The Poirier house is one of the few things that does. The daylight showcases its rotten wooden beams, its chipped paint, and its holey curtains on the second-story windows.

As I approached the house, a feeling of dread began to trickle into my senses. It was something I was going to have to steel myself against. I was stronger than whatever evil had decided I was worth paying attention to.

Clutching my bag that hung on my shoulder, I walked up to Monroe’s house. Ward had been right—I knew this was a bad idea. Yet, I couldn’t find myself even considering not doing it. I wasn’t sure if it was for Monroe’s sake or my own.

A few feet from the front porch, I stopped dead in my tracks. The front door opened and a very familiar person trotted down the stairs.

Saddie stopped when she saw me, a rosy blush covering her cheeks and neck. Her work uniform top hung half off one shoulder, and one of her sneakers was unlaced. Hair stood in matted tufts from the side of her head, and her makeup was smudged around her bright eyes. In her arms she carried a crumpled-up jacket and her new purse that she’d bought down at the main store just two days ago.

“Levi.” She forced a smile.

I forced one back. “Saddie.”

“What are you doing here?” She shifted her weight from foot to foot. It was something I knew her to do when she was uncomfortable.

“I was dropping something off. I should’ve called.” I took a step backward.

The front door swung open with a bang. It hit the wooden railing on the porch.

The devil himself stepped out onto the landing. He wore nothing but a faded pair of unbuttoned denim jeans.

“You forgot your—” Monroe stopped abruptly the moment his eyes found me. An odd expression crossed his face. His eyes blazed.

“I should go,” I said, turning. Whatever happened between Monroe and Saddie was none of my business. Hell, I didn’t even like Monroe. Being near him made my stomach ache and my chest burn.

Footsteps sounded behind me as he stomped down the stairs. He grabbed my arm, spun me around.

“Levi, wait.” He sounded breathless. Saddie looked at us, and I didn’t want to think of why Monroe Poirier was breathless.

“I shouldn’t have come.” I looked up into his pale eyes and immediately regretted it. I shouldn’t be looking at a man like that when my only friend had just spent the night with him. The thought of that, for some reason, soured my stomach.