Poison Read online

  “Oh?” He grinned, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Want to prove it?”

  I pulled away and thumped him on the arm.

  “It was worth a try,” he said with a shrug.

  “I was hoping you’d take me seriously,” I said hotly, heading for the exit.

  “Come on, Katy.” He loped after me. “You know I was kidding.”

  We walked through the doors into the crisp late-autumn air. “I guess,” I said. There was a cold drizzle falling, which felt good after the superheated classrooms of the school’s ancient building.

  “So tell me what’s up.” Casually Peter took my books and tucked them under his arm with his own.

  I shook my head. “It’s just that Miss P said I was involving you in my . . . infractions or whatever, and that you were going to suffer for it.”

  “Me? Suffer how?”

  “By not getting into Harvard.”

  He burst out laughing. “Because you gave Summer Hayworth BO?”

  “Or something. Miss P was serious, though.”

  “I doubt that. Besides, we’re not even allowed to apply to colleges until next year.”

  I stopped in my tracks and turned toward him. “She wants you to go to Harvard, Peter. She’s going to help you. But everything we do from here on in is going to count. Don’t think it won’t.”

  “Okay, I get it. No fraternizing with criminals. But I hardly think you fit into that category.” He put his arm around me as we walked into the Meadow.

  Hattie’s Kitchen, where Peter and I worked after school, was on the far side of the grassy expanse that had stood in the middle of Whitfield since the town’s founding three hundred and fifty years ago. For cowen it was just a nice little park with a quaint old cemetery that had headstones dating from the sixteen hundreds, and a lot of twisting, narrow pathways leading into the woods that protected the town from the Atlantic winds blowing off Whitfield Bay. But to the witches whose families had settled the area, the Meadow was the wellspring of their magic.

  I’ve mentioned that on Wiccan holidays the Meadow filled with a supernatural fog so thick that only the descendants of those original settlers could enter it. But even on ordinary days the place exuded a sense of peace that always made me feel better.

  I put my arm around Peter, matching his arm around me, and we walked together through the wet fallen leaves. “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I love you, too.” He pressed me close to him and kissed the top of my head. “Even if you are a bad influence.”

  “I’m really sorry about what happened today,” I said. “The next time you see me doing something stupid, don’t bother trying to talk me out of it. Just run the other way.”

  “I promise,” he said, crossing his heart. “Although I really had hoped to see you beyond next week.”

  I scowled.

  “Oh, come on.” He ruffled my hair. “You’re the smartest person in school. You can’t even do anything stupid.”

  Right. Which is why I had been almost burned at the stake last year. If it hadn’t been for Peter—and a few helpful ghosts—I’d have finished out the summer as an ember, thanks to one of my bright ideas.

  “So I’m officially asking the smartest person in school to Winter Frolic.”

  I looked up at him. “The dance? Really?” I tried to look enthusiastic, but actually I hated events like Winter Frolic. People looked forward to it so much, and then when it finally came around, everyone was too nervous to have a good time. So they would just hang out pretending that they were having fun. Plus there was always somebody who cried in the bathroom all evening, somebody who acted like a jerk, somebody whose dress ripped, and somebody who got reamed out by a teacher in front of everyone. Please.

  “You don’t want to go?” Peter asked, knowing full well how I felt about Winter Fwow-up. “Zounds.”

  “I get it,” I said. “You don’t want to go either. You only asked me so I’d feel good about being invited.”

  He smiled. “I’d do anything for you.” He kissed me on the lips. Our books fell to the ground in a whoosh of slick leaves. Some boys who were passing by whistled and whooped at us, but we ignored them. All I could think about was the touch of his soft lips on mine and the feel of his body pressing so closely against me. “How about ten minutes?” he asked.

  “Huh?” I just wanted to keep kissing him.

  “We can go to the dance for ten minutes,” he said. “That way you can at least put on a pretty dress. Unless you don’t want to do that.”

  I licked my lips. They felt chilled in the cold air now. “I guess I could handle ten minutes,” I said, loving him more than ever. “Then can we go for pizza?” I leaned against him.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he said. “An excellent plan.”

  CHAPTER

  •

  FOUR

  Hattie’s Kitchen was warm and dry and brightly lit. “We’re here!” Peter yelled as we hung up our coats and put on our aprons.

  “Good,” Hattie answered, brushing flour off her ebony-colored arms as she bustled into the room.

  Peter gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “You have a good day at school?” she asked, straightening his collar. Hattie had raised Peter since he was six years old. She still kept his room in the cottage attached to the restaurant, even though, like most other witches, he had a room in the school dorms.

  “I did,” Peter answered. “How’s Eric?”

  “Sleeping.”

  Eric was Peter’s eleven-year-old brother. He was a witch too, and about a thousand times more powerful than Peter. He was more powerful than just about anyone in Whitfield, really, even though he couldn’t speak or walk or feed himself.

  Nature is weird in the distribution of genius, but there it was. The greatest magician in a town filled with magicians was a brain-damaged eleven-year-old kid.

  Hattie consulted the menu she’d been writing. “Katy, start on pies,” she ordered. “Six pumpkin, six Dutch apple. And a cheesecake. Peter, you go call Jeremiah Shaw.”

  Peter and I looked at each other. “What?” we asked in unison.

  Hattie raised her hands in submission. “Don’t ask me. His secretary called to command you into the old coot’s presence. You have to negotiate when that’s going to happen.”

  “I don’t think I want it to happen at all,” Peter said. “He stood me up the last time.”

  I remembered vaguely that Jeremiah Shaw had invited Peter to meet him at Shaw Enterprises last summer, but that hadn’t amounted to anything. When Peter had shown up, he’d been told that his great-uncle was out of the country.

  “Well, that’s up to you,” Hattie said. “But if you ask me, enough bridges have been burned. Maybe you ought to hear old Jeremiah out.”

  Peter puffed out his cheeks. “All right,” he muttered. He shot me a look as he left the kitchen. His expression looked like that of a drowning man going under.

  I felt for him. Peter had been dealt a bad hand from the beginning, with both parents dead and a brain-damaged brother who would never be able to take care of himself. Their father, the lowest-ranking member of the patrician Shaw family, had left both children in the care of Hattie Scott, who was not only poor and cooked food for a living, but was also known even to tourists, although half jokingly, as the village witch woman. It wasn’t a set of characteristics that appealed to the upper-crust Shaw family, who all seemed to have been born with long sticks up their butts.

  When he couldn’t reverse his nephew’s will, Jeremiah, as head of the family, had disinherited Peter and had seen to it that none of their relatives would have anything to do with either of Hattie’s wards again.

  “So why would Jeremiah Shaw want to contact Peter, after all these years of ignoring him?” I asked out loud.

  “Just tend to your pies,” Hattie snapped. “Lord, but that girl is nosy,” I heard her grumble.

  It seemed like forever until Peter came back. He looked dazed.

  “Well?” I de
manded. Hattie was looking at him expectantly.

  “He—he apologized,” Peter stammered. “For everything. Just . . . everything. He wants me to go see him.”

  “Again?” I asked skeptically.

  “You hush,” Hattie said.

  “I think he wants to train me to work for his company.” Peter’s hands were shaking. “He says he’ll put me through college.”

  “Oh, my stars,” Hattie whispered, looking heavenward.

  “Harvard?” I asked breathlessly.

  He nodded. “If I can get in.” He bit his lip. “And if I work out with Shaw Enterprises.”

  “Meaning what?” I wanted to know. Hattie waved me away.

  “He says I’ve been gone from the family for too long,” Peter said. “Maybe he wants to adopt me. Or re-dopt me. Whatever.”

  The phone rang. Hattie held up her index finger, then went to answer it.

  “You’ve already been adopted,” I spat, casting my eyes toward Hattie. Peter looked pained. “But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see what’s what,” I relented.

  Peter nodded mutely.

  Then Hattie got off the phone and came over. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Peter Shaw,” she said gently, hugging him. “Everything’s going to work out just fine.”

  CHAPTER

  •

  FIVE

  So things were more or less okay until the next day, when my hamburger turned into slugs.

  Let me stress that I am not kidding. I was eating lunch with Peter and noticing how his calm gray eyes had flecks of gold in them, when Becca Fowler, who’d been sitting across from us, suddenly stood up shrieking like a prom queen in a horror movie.

  My first thought was that maybe Verity had puked in the food line—it wouldn’t have been the first time—but Becca was pointing at me. That’s when I noticed that my bun had sprouted antennae and was traveling. My fries, too, had taken on a new appearance. They had become a pile of severed fingers.

  I jumped up so fast that my chair fell over behind me. Everyone at my table—all witches—was either staring and speechless or scrambling toward the exits, because there was no question at all about this being an unnatural occurrence, and a fairly advanced one. What I mean is, most of the witches at Ainsworth School, even seniors, wouldn’t have had the skills to pull this off. Whoever made fingers out of potatoes knew something about the Craft.

  I looked around. By this time the place was in a state of utter confusion, with a lot of shouting and laughter and gross sounds of all descriptions and people getting up to check out the spectacle for themselves. The only ones who didn’t seem to be at all perturbed were Summer and the Muffies, sitting on the other side of the cafeteria. All of them were facing me. A.J., Suzy Dusset, and Tiffany were giggling behind their napkins, but Summer was just watching me with this little half smile on her face.

  “Summer?” I was basically talking to myself, but the thought was so surprising to me that I guess I spoke out loud.

  “What?” Peter asked. Apparently he hadn’t made that connection at all.

  Becca did. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Summer may be heinous, but she’s still cowen. Besides—”

  At that moment a huge black dog leaped through the open cafeteria doors and bounded down the aisle, stopping momentarily near my table to shake mud on everyone and help himself to a half dozen hamburgers.

  “Ewww,” someone said as the dog belched dramatically.

  “Hey, he left yours alone,” Peter said with a grin.

  “Very funny.”

  “Everyone calm down,” Miss P commanded, the heels of her shoes clicking across the floor. Actually, she didn’t exactly say anything. She only thought those words, but that was enough. Even though the room was practically vibrating with noise, all we heard was her voice in our heads and the sound of her walking through the silence.

  “What is going on here?” she demanded in her real speaking voice, moving unerringly toward my table.

  “N-nothing,” I stammered.

  “I do not wish to warn you again, Katy.”

  “But I didn’t . . . ” I gave up. I couldn’t explain anything anyway. “Sorry. I guess I knocked my chair over by accident.”

  Miss P studied me for a moment, trying to figure out what I’d done to cause so much commotion. Well, sorry, kemo sabe, I thought. Can’t help you there. My eyes drifted toward Summer.

  Miss P caught my look. “Do you have a problem with someone here?”

  No issues, I thought. “No.”

  She clacked away. “You.” She pointed to the dog that had been sitting obediently, licking his chops. “Out!” The dog barreled through the caf doors like he was on fire. “Carry on,” she said aloud.

  Right. Business as usual. Welcome to my world.

  “I don’t suppose you feel like dessert,” Peter said finally.

  I shook my head. Most of my hamburger had fallen—or crawled—onto the table. “Go ahead,” I said miserably. “I think I’ll go to the library.”

  • • •

  Summer!

  How could that be? She was not only cowen, she was übercowen. Math was magical to Summer Hayworth. If her parents hadn’t donated the school’s auditorium, she’d have been in someplace like Las Palmas High in south Florida, where I used to go to school. There were no witches at Las Palmas, only surfer dudes with six-pack abs and brains the consistency of warm oatmeal. Summer would have fit right in there.

  She couldn’t have slugified my burger. I don’t know if I could have done that, and I was supposed to be pretty proficient for my age.

  But her face . . . She’d known what was happening. Even from that distance, I’d been able to see the look of triumph in her eyes. Not to mention the giggling Skankettes having a hearty laugh at the miracle their leader had wrought.

  It had to have been Summer. But how had she done it? I had to find out.

  • • •

  That night, I lurked.

  I often wished I had the gift of invisibility. I guessed almost every witch wishes that. It’s a rare talent, and I’d never met anyone who could do it. So in lieu of vanishing I had to make do with skulking around the corridor of dorm C, pretending to be visiting Muffies whose names I didn’t even know. Whenever someone came out of one of the rooms, I’d face a random doorway, smiling and waving, as if I were just saying good-bye to whoever was inside. Fortunately, that happened only twice—it was after midnight—before I reached Summer’s room.

  I could smell incense. That was a cowen thing, thinking that the trappings of magic—incense, candlelight, incantations, talismans—were what made the magic work. In truth, you could do magic in a supermarket, with fluorescent lights and announcements about red dot specials.

  That is, if you were a witch. These girls weren’t. They were incanting like crazy, and burning enough incense to choke a horse.

  “Spirits, grant us power!” That was A.J.’s reedy little voice, presently shouted down by Summer.

  “Me,” Summer corrected as I heard a loud thump. “Give me power!” Then she added, less stridently, “We don’t want to dilute it.”

  “Jeez, Summer, it’s only a stupid Ouija board,” Suzy Dusset countered. “I don’t even think you’re doing it right.”

  “How would you know?”

  “A Ouija board’s for contacting the dead, doofus. It doesn’t give you power.”

  “Well, it worked before, didn’t it?”

  “Then let me do it.”

  “No way. You’d only use it to get boys.”

  “Yeah,” Tiffany agreed. “That’s why they call you Sleazy Does It.”

  I almost choked over that. As it was, it pretty much signaled the end of their session. Suzy started cursing like a sailor at about the same time the room resounded with the crashing of various items against the walls.

  One of them screamed in the high-pitched tone only girls who weigh less than ninety pounds could achieve. A.J., I figured.

  “Shut up!” Summer st
age-whispered.

  “But there’s something on me!”

  “It’s only a stupid bug.”

  More squeals and thumping. “So get it off me!” Slaps and snuffles. “Get it—”

  “Okay, okay. Just hold still while I open the—”

  At that moment, the door swung open and a large moth—undoubtedly the creature that had unhinged A.J.—flew past me as I knelt awkwardly with my ear to what had been the keyhole.

  Clearing my throat, I stood up slowly, trying desperately to think of something cool to say.

  The four of them stared at me. Beside an abandoned circle of flickering candles stood a jar half-filled with what looked like oregano. A broken Ouija board lay in pieces on the floor.

  “Can we help you?” Summer asked, as if I’d just walked into a White House state dinner wearing spandex and big hair.

  “Er . . . ” It took me a moment to gather my thoughts.

  “Maybe you’re lost,” A.J. offered.

  “The kitchen’s that way,” Tiffany added.

  This was a reference to my job cooking in a restaurant after school. I actually liked it, but to Muffies all work was demeaning and to be avoided at all costs.

  “I want to know how you did what you did in the cafeteria,” I said as evenly as I could.

  “Why?” Summer asked innocently. “Do you want the recipe for tomorrow’s blue plate special?”

  “Look, I’m only—”

  Then it began, the nightmare that I thought would never end. A.J. was the first to drop. I mean drop, out cold, onto the floor in a heap.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Tiffany snarled at me a second before she also collapsed.

  I heard sounds behind me. When I turned around, I saw that half the dorm had gathered around the doorway, probably drawn by A.J.’s scream, but now focused entirely on me.

  I ran inside. “Summer?” Suzy croaked. Then she hit the floor.

  Summer was the only one left. “Summer, are you all right?” I squeaked, putting my arms around her.

  Her eyes rolled back in her head. “Oh, snap,” she said. Those were her last words.