Poison Princess

place.

Satisfied, he collected his bottle from me and started pacing.

“Please, let me look at your leg, Jackson.” Did I sound as deadened as I felt? “And your hands, too.” I hung the lantern on a coat hook, ready to examine his injuries. I was still worried about infection.

Plus, doing something productive might keep my thoughts occupied. I’m the red witch. “You’ve probably got splinters embedded in your knuckles.” Now that he’d been drinking so much, maybe it wouldn’t hurt him too badly when I got them out. “You can talk while I work.”

He shook his head hard. “Non. Got something I need to say, me.”

I’d never seen him this brooding. “Go on, I’m listening.”

“When you got captured, I didn’t know . . .” He trailed off, had to chug whiskey before he could continue. “If it’d be like . . .”

“What?”

“Like it was with Clotile.”

“Oh, Jackson, no. I was okay. I’m unharmed.”

“Didn’t know if I’d get there too late,” he said with a shudder. Then he crossed over to me, until we stood toe-to-toe. “Evie, if you ever get taken from me again, you better know that I’ll be coming for you.” He cupped my face with a bloodstained hand. “So you stay the hell alive! You doan do like Clotile, you doan take that way out. You and me can get through anything, just give me a chance”—his voice broke lower—“just give me a chance to get to you.” He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. “There is nothing that can happen to you that we can’t get past.”

Nothing? I gazed at the ceiling in misery. If only that were true. But how could he possibly accept these changes in me—when I couldn’t?

I transformed so drastically I might as well be a different species.

Or a plant. I choked back a hysterical laugh. A different classification altogether.

What boy would want a girlfriend with claws? Hey, Jackson, you probably won’t want to drink after me.

Still I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “When you say we . . . ?”

He pulled back, gazing down at me, his eyes blazing. “I’m goan to lay it all out there for you. Laugh in my face—I doan care. But I’m goan to get this off my chest.”

“I won’t laugh. I’m listening.”

“Evie, I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you. Even when I hated you, I wanted you.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I got it bad, me.”

My heart felt like it’d stopped—so that I could hear him better.

“For as long as you’ve been looking down your nose at me, I’ve been craving you, an envie like I’ve never known.”

“I don’t look down at you! I’m too busy looking up to you.”

He seemed amazed by my declaration. “For true?”

“Yes!”

The corners of his lips curled for an instant before he grew serious again. “You asked me if I had that phone with your pictures, if I’d looked at it. Damn right, I did! I saw you playing with a dog at the beach, and doing a crazy-ass flip off a high dive, and making faces for the camera. I learned about you”—his words grew hoarse—“and I wanted more of you. To see you every day.” With a humorless laugh, he admitted, “After the Flash, I was constantly sourcing ways to charge a goddamned phone—that would never make a call.”

I murmured, “I didn’t know. . . . I couldn’t be sure.”

“It’s you for me, peekôn.”

My face fell. A thorn. He might have feelings for me, but that didn’t mean he wanted to. And he didn’t even know about my vile alter ego.

How could this be happening? Why did I have to discover I was one in a line of cackling, murderous psychopaths—on the night I’d learned of his feelings? I bit back a sob. “W-we both know your life would be so much simpler without me! I am just a thorn in your paw.”

He nodded easily. “And it reminds me of you—every move I make, I think of you.”

My lips parted. Again I realized that he was the only thing in my life that made me feel sane, made me want to fight for a future.

“Evangeline, I’ve got to feel you with my every step.” His shaking hand closed over my nape, squeezing. “Or I go a little crazy, me.”

Despite everything, I felt a tendril of hope. Jackson wanted me. I wanted him. Which was all that should matter, right? He never needed to learn what I was. Gran could teach me how to rid myself of this curse, or how to keep it buried forever—without slipping to that cowardly other side.

With her guidance, this didn’t have to be an either-or situation. I could learn how to be a normal again!

And we were only weeks away from the Outer Banks. There was still time. Optimism filled me. . . .

Until I recalled yet another of the many barriers between us. “What about Selena? Didn’t you two get together?”

He shook his head. “She’s all right, and if I’d never met you, I might’ve looked twice. But I only flirted to make you jealous. To see if you felt the same way about me at all.”

“The same way?” Half of me wanted to be kissing Jackson; half of me wanted to hear anything else this beautiful boy wanted to tell me. I threw my arms around his neck, squeezing him close, uncaring of the dried blood and mud.

He stiffened at first, as if in surprise, then closed his arms around me with a groan. “Ah, I know that smell. Honeysuckle.”

I felt laughter bubbling up inside me. “Yes, yes.” I went to my toes to smooth my lips along his neck, to press kisses across his proud, weary face.

His eyes slid closed, his expression one of bliss. He rasped, “I’m goan to protect you, bébé.”

“I know. I know you will.”

“Never taking you to North Carolina. Jamais.”

I stilled, drew back. “What are you talking about? I have to find Gran.”

“Come on, Evie, we both know she probably didn’t make it. We haven’t seen another woman on the road. I woan let you be in danger like today.”

He wanted to call off our journey now? Running out of time . . . I pulled away from him, trying to keep calm.

“I got plans for us, see. We’re goan back to Selena’s. You can take your coo- yôn pet with you. But we’re goan south. Back to warmth, away from plague and cannibals. You can teach me how to court you. ’Cause I doan know my way around that. You can be happy living with me. You will be.”

Yes, I would. Just as soon as I was freed of this curse! “All of this is bigger than me, Jackson. I have to figure . . . have to figure myself out.”

“Then tell me what’s happening. Be honest for once. Trust me with your secrets. I’ve laid mine bare.”

Tell him what I was? Or, dear God, show him?

Selena had been magnificent as the Archer, all grace and speed, with a goddess’s poise. Matthew had his to-the-second foresight, a master of fate. Finn’s talents were nearly inconceivable.

Mine? I sprouted eerie claws. I grew things through the spilling of my own blood. I could be poisonous. When I controlled plants, they were snakelike and shuddersome.

And what about tonight with the lotus? I’d called Selena deceptive.

Wasn’t that my MO as well?

Unlike me, the other kids just seemed enhanced, like demigods. If I revealed to Jackson what the Empress truly looked like, how could I bear to see his disgust? I grew nauseated even thinking