Poison Princess

MedicAlert bracelet circling his wrist. It was stamped with the word AUTISTIC and an emergency contact phone number.

For some reason, I didn’t want Selena or even Jackson to see this, didn’t want them to judge him. I whispered to Matthew, “You won’t need this anymore.”

I reached down to unfasten it; as soon as my skin made contact with his, a vision softly appeared inside my head, fluttering down into my consciousness like a tossed scarf.

The van disappeared. I found myself in the boy’s home watching a scene unfold.

Just before dusk, the house began quaking. Then came a deafening metallic pop, sounding like a manhole cover had exploded. Water rushed downstairs. It wasn’t long before Bagmen streamed into the yard, beating at the house.

The boy stood in that creepy time-warp living room alone. Waiting. Though he was so tall, and at least my age, he looked young and lost among all those hoarded boxes. Hours passed, and still he waited. The yard was now thick with zombies.

When a middle-aged brunette finally emerged from her bedroom, he met her gaze, not bothering to hide his emotions. Vulnerable. Pleading.

“Matthew,” she said in a high voice, adjusting the prim skirt-suit she wore, “why don’t you go check on the pipe? See if you can’t fix the leak? I’ll go secure the garage.”

His soulful eyes misted. “Yes, Mother,” he rasped, dragging his feet down the stairs and into that flooding basement.

Once he’d trudged through foot-deep water to find the burst pipe—a massive one that he could never fix—he heard the woman murmur from the basement hallway, “Mother knows best, son.”

As the water continued to rise, he faced her. His expression was heartbroken.

But not surprised.

Not even when she forced the door closed behind her and locked him inside to drown. . . .

31

“Slap that boy awake,” Jackson told me.

We’d just broken into a four-bedroom brick McMansion for the night. After searching the place, Jackson had returned to the van to ferry a still-unconscious Matthew to one of the twin beds in a guest room.

“I want to know how he got himself into that fool bind.” He leaned his shoulder against the wall, hitting the fifth that he and Selena had broken out to celebrate our successful rescue mission.

I sat beside Matthew, shaking his shoulder. Then harder.

Nothing.

“He’ll wake up soon enough.” Selena snapped her fingers for the bottle. “Come on, J.D., there’s a dartboard downstairs.”

Jackson nodded. “Evie, let’s leave him for now.”

“I don’t want him to wake up and not know where he is.” Not after the day he’d had. Mother knows best. I shivered. “You guys can go and play—”

“My friend came for me.”

My gaze darted down. Matthew’s whisper had been . . . out loud? After so long hearing his voice in my head, it sounded so rich, so authentic.

He was awake, his eyes open. Utterly familiar to me.

Shooting upright, he yanked me into his arms to hold me close, his breath shuddering, as if he’d been aching to see me.

Over Matthew’s shoulder, I saw Jackson’s frown turn into a scowl.

In a pissy tone, Selena said, “I thought you told us that you’d never met this boy.”

“I-I haven’t.”

“Empress,” Matthew sighed against my hair.

I stiffened, wishing he hadn’t said that out loud.

“Why did you call her that?” Jackson demanded, while Selena canted her head with curiosity.

Matthew drew away from me to face him. “Why don’t you?”

I couldn’t tell if his tone was challenging or merely puzzled. Apparently neither could Jackson. “Tell us your name.”

“Matthew Mat Zero Matto.” With a sly look, he said, “Empress knows my name.”

Jackson asked, “Where’d the water come from in your house?”

“A pipe.” Then he explained to Jackson, “Water travels in pipes.”

Jackson pushed up from his spot against the wall, clearly reaching his limit of patience. “You hit your head or something, boy?”

“Jackson, please.”

Another scowl from the Cajun. Then he muttered to Selena, “He’s slower than Christmas.”

“Christmas,” Matthew began grandly, “is . . . slow.”

In a loud voice, Selena enunciated to him, “I am Sah-lee-nah Loo-ah. This is Jackson Dah-voh.”

In a bored tone, Matthew said, “Dee-vee-oh and Luna.” He turned from them without interest to gaze at me. “You came for me.”

“We did, Matthew,” I said. “Jackson’s the one who freed you from the basement. Selena played a huge role as well.”

Shrug.

“The only coo-yôn in the world who could drown himself after the Flash,” Jackson grated. “And you owe me a buck knife, boy.”

“Come on, J.D.,” Selena said, “we’ll let these two crazy kids catch up. I’ll bet you the other fifth I packed that I can beat you at darts.”

Smart girl, packing whiskey—for the boy nicknamed after it. Well played, sage foe.

Jackson gazed from Matthew to me, looking unconvinced.

Impulses warred inside me: my curiosity’s need to ask Matthew questions in private, and my jealousy’s need to separate Jackson from Selena, to find out what had happened between them last night.

Curiosity won. “You guys go have fun,” I said. “We’ll be fine. I think I’ll be able to talk to him better alone.”

Selena started dragging Jackson away.

“You yell if you need anything. I’ll be listening,” he added darkly for Matthew’s benefit. Then in French he murmured to me, “We need to talk. Tonight.”

“Gawd, you are sexy,” Selena cried, “when you speak French!” And then they were gone.

Slore! Jackson was right—jalousie did rip at you inside.

I made my face expressionless before I faced Matthew again. “Hey, kid, you need to be a little nicer to those two. Unfortunately, we’re kind of dependent on them.”

He chuckled at that.

“Can you hunt? Or shoot?”

“Had a slingshot once!”

“Okay, then, neither can I. But they both hunt. They’ll source food and protect us. So, seriously, we are going to have to rely on them.”

He grinned. “Empress has a sense of humor this time.” It was one thing to be called Empress in my head, quite another in real life.

Matthew truly was here. With me. “Thank you for the visions, kid.” That was a sentence I’d never thought I would say. “You saved my life from the Flash.”