Poison Princess

He just narrowed his eyes at me, looking dangerous in the gaslights.

“Feel free to leave at any time, Jackson. Because I don’t need a bodyguard, and I won’t be scared. I don’t have a choice anyway, since you refused to take me to find Melissa or Brandon.”

“Radcliffe again?” With a grated curse, Jackson pushed up from his bike, striding to the doorway. “Even though he helped Clotile with that keg-stand? After that, I thought for true you’d be reevaluating your definition of solid.”

“You . . . you saw that?”

“Everyone saw that. And at your own birthday party, too. They also saw you trying to win his attention back. Looked desperate, if you ask me.”

Bile rose in my throat. Jackson had said that I needed to be taken down a peg. Mission accomplished.

“I just doan know what he thinks Clotile has over you. You’re pretty to look at in that skirt of yours, you’re good at dancing, and you smell like a flower. What’s not to like?”

When he smirked at me, I hit my limit. Enough! “You’re enjoying this!”

“De bon cœur.” Wholeheartedly.

“You would. Because you’re a cruel, classless boy who gets off on other people’s unhappiness.” I held his gaze. “Brandon is twice the man you are. He always will be.”

Jackson’s expression turned more menacing than I’d ever seen it.

Done with him, I slammed the door in his face, then marched into the office at the back of the barn. Fuming, I paced. Reevaluate your definition of solid?

I wanted to strangle him!

No, no, I didn’t need to be thinking about Jackson Deveaux; I needed to focus on who—or what—had attacked me.

Or at least to determine if I’d actually been attacked. When I reviewed every detail I could recall—and damn, I’d been buzzed—I concluded one thing. I was screwed.

I could accept the plants—hallucinations or not, they’d begun to comfort me. But the lightning javelins? Death on a pale horse? Seeing the cryptic boy in class?

Screwed. Two years and out would never work. Change of plans. Yes, I’d promised my mom that I wouldn’t contact Gran—but I was CLC-bound anyway.

Death had said, “No one told you to expect me?” Maybe someone had?

I would sneak a call to my grandmother tomorrow.

As I wondered how I’d begin our first conversation in eight years, my head and face started tingling. Then hurting. The barn soon faded away. “No, no!”

Too much! I can’t take any more of this! I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that would do anything.

When I opened them again, I was standing in a windowless room, with beanbags on a tiled floor and Star Wars posters on the walls. A basement playroom?

Then I spied the cryptic boy, standing just before me!

“You must prepare, Evie,” he said.

The bubbly sensation I usually experienced now felt more like a migraine, as if this vision were being shot into my skull with a nail gun. “J-just leave me alone!” Then to myself, I muttered, “How many visions can I have in one night?”

“Many,” he answered. “It’s the eve of the Beginning. Much work to do!”

Great. He was going to make as little sense as he had the first time I’d seen him. “Who are you?”

“Matthew Mat Zero Matto. Easier to think of me as the Fool Card.”

A card. Ah, God, I had internalized my gran’s Tarot teachings. A character from the deck she’d always played with was now talking to me. “And I suppose the reaper who visited—the one who wants to kill me—was the Death Card.”

He nodded. “Major Arcana.”

Hadn’t Gran once explained the Major Arcana to me? They were special cards, maybe the trump cards of the Tarot?

Wasn’t there a time when I’d shuffled through her deck, the cards feeling so big in my little hands . . . ? I couldn’t remember!

“And the red witch?” I demanded. “What card is she? How can she”—we—“control plants?” That was the extent of our similarities.

I was good and she was evil. Period. I’d be a Glinda the Good Witch of plants—all peace, love, and unity with them—and she would be our hated scourge.

Death himself said that I was all about life—and the witch was clearly all about death.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. As if any of these characters were real!

“Red witch?” Matthew frowned. “Ah, she arises. We’ll deal with her when the time comes.”

“Deal with her? You mean fight her?”

“She’s strong. You are not. Yet.”

The pain in my head grew excruciating. My eyes watered. “Matthew, this hurts!” I tasted blood running down the back of my throat, increasing my nausea.

The pressure eased a little, but not all the way. “I don’t want you to hurt,” he said gravely.

“Why do you keep appearing?”

“Field of battle. Arsenal. Obstacles. Foes. I’ve taught you each; you listen poorly, take pills, drink.”

When blood trickled from my nose, I pressed the back of my hand against it. “I’m about to go under, kid. I mean screaming, hair-pulling, whackadoodle cracked. I can’t keep having these visions.”

He gazed at me with solemn brown eyes. “I won’t fail you. Evie, you are my only friend.”

His heartfelt words took me aback. He did seem so familiar. Just when I was wondering why I felt a measure of trust in him—he’d done everything imaginable not to deserve it—I reminded myself that he didn’t exist.

I shook my head hard, clearing just enough of the vision to escape. I made for the door, snagging a horse blanket, then out toward the cane. Rainclouds had gathered above the field; thunder rumbled.

“No, Evie,” he called. “Not under the clouds! Rain . . .”

I glanced back. He looked frightened, unable to follow. Scared of precipitation?

He didn’t need to know that Sterling’s clouds were two-faced scammers, hadn’t delivered on their promise all summer. I marched on.

“You aren’t ready!” he called after me. “Your eyes will go bright if you look at the lights!”

“Just leave me alone, Matthew!”

“Turn away from the lights. Turn away! Want you safe!”

“So—do—I!”

Right before I reached the edge of the cane, he warned once more, “The Beginning is nigh. . . .”

10

DAY 0

When I hadn’t heard from Mel or Brandon by noon, panic set in. Why wouldn’t they pick up their phones?

Surely the two of them hadn’t gotten . . . gaffled.

Especially when no one else seemed to have been. Without my cell, I’d been on my laptop, scouring students’ posts online for info.

All morning, I’d looked at keg-party pics and Solo-cup shares. I’d read updates from kids bragging about being at the party of the year.

Not a word about the cops. And apparently, Mom hadn’t heard anything either. . . .