Poison Read online

  CHAPTER

  •

  SIX

  Miss P wasn’t nearly so lenient this time. “Those girls are in comas,” she said in hushed tones. Her face was drawn with worry. “Summer’s parents took her home today.”

  “Miss P, I swear—”

  “Don’t speak,” she snapped irritably. “I’ve explained to everyone concerned that we must not jump to conclusions. Any number of things might have caused this. We are beginning with medical inquiries, and all the girls are receiving excellent care. The cafeteria food is being analyzed, as well as anything the girls might have . . . consumed in Summer’s room.”

  My thoughts went to the herbs in the jar Summer was keeping in her room. Suddenly I doubted very much that she was storing oregano for a rainy day. I was pretty sure Miss P and whoever else had searched the room might be thinking along the same lines.

  “However, if nothing is found to account for this phenomenon—and I reiterate that every effort is being taken—then we will have to consider a supernatural cause.”

  My great-grandmother fanned herself with her handkerchief. “Goodness gracious,” she said.

  “I’m terribly sorry to burden you with this, Mrs. Ainsworth.”

  “I’m afraid it’s you who has the burden, Penelope,” Gram said. “And Katy, of course.” She patted my hand.

  Gram never considered for a moment that what everyone was saying—that I’d bombed into Summer’s room and put a killing hex on all of them—was true. I loved her for that.

  “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, and that we’ll find it,” Miss P said, smiling tightly.

  “I hope so, dear. Otherwise the effect on the school will be calamitous, I’m afraid.”

  Miss P cast a glance in my direction. “I’m aware of that, Mrs. Ainsworth,” she said.

  “Can you imagine what would happen if four wealthy cowen families believed that their daughters were killed by witchcraft?”

  I could. I would go to prison. The school would close. The laws would change. And eventually the persecution against our kind would begin again, just as it had more than three centuries before.

  “I’m trying not to think about those possibilities,” Miss P said.

  “Well, I suppose it might have been the food,” Gram said halfheartedly, although she knew as well as I did that it couldn’t have been that, because all of the students had eaten the food.

  Almost all of us. Everyone except me. I’d been working at Hattie’s Kitchen during the dinner hour. That was another reason why so many of the students were accusing me.

  “They were using a Ouija board,” I whispered.

  Both Miss P and Gram gave me bored looks.

  “They were talking about how it gave them power.”

  “I told you not to speak, Katy.”

  “I’m sure she’s just trying to be helpful,” Gram said.

  “The Ouija board in question has been examined. It has no intrinsic magic whatsoever.”

  Gram looked up at Miss P. “You’re quite sure these girls were cowen?”

  “Quite,” Miss P said.

  “Still, somebody turned my hamburger into slugs,” I insisted.

  “I beg your pardon?” Gram’s handkerchief halted midwave.

  Miss P gave me a cold stare.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “But not those . . . same individuals, surely,” Gram said.

  “It had to have been them,” I said. “I saw it on their faces.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Miss P picked up her paperweight and dropped it with a thud. “Listen to yourself, Katy!”

  “I’m telling you, they used magic!”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “I just made them stink!”

  My great-grandmother blinked several times. “Excuse me?”

  “There was an incident at the lockers, in which Katy played a prank on . . . some girls,” Miss P admitted.

  My great-grandmother was not stupid. “Those girls?”

  Miss P nodded. “In addition a number of residents in Dorm C saw her behaving suspiciously prior to her encounter with Summer and the others.”

  “I see,” Gram said.

  “I’m not accusing you, Katy. In fact, I’m fairly certain that you haven’t the ability to cause the kind of damage we’re talking about. But you have drawn attention to yourself.”

  “Oh, dear,” Gram said. She patted her face with her handkerchief.

  That was it, of course. The first, last, and most important rule of witchcraft: Don’t get noticed. There was even a motto about that:

  KNOW, PLAN, ACT, KEEP SILENT.

  Most witch households had those words on display somewhere in their homes as a reminder that their way of life, and sometimes their lives themselves, depended on secrecy.

  I hadn’t held strictly enough to that motto, and now there were going to be consequences. I just hoped they wouldn’t involve Peter.

  Also, although it probably shouldn’t have bothered me so much, practically no one in the school was talking to me anymore. I began to hear people yelling “Stink!” behind my back in the halls. I heard a rumor that I had changed my lunch into slugs and fingers myself because that’s what I secretly liked to eat. I guessed even witches weren’t immune to the myth of the evil hag who raises toads and roasts children.

  But the worst thing was that even my best friends didn’t believe me.

  “You used magic,” Verity said breathlessly at the door to my room. Becca Fowler was with her. I guessed the two of them had come to tell me why they’d decided to stand against me.

  “The only magic I used was to keep Cheswick out of trouble that day at the lockers,” I said.

  “That’s still against the rules,” Verity said. Verity always followed the rules. Every rule, including not talking in the library and not using more than five sheets of toilet paper.

  “Maybe you ought to be lecturing your boyfriend, then,” I said icily.

  “Oh, I have,” Verity said. “Count on it.”

  “Cut it out, both of you,” Becca said. “You know it wasn’t about the locker thing.”

  “That’s right.” Verity looked pained. “Those girls are cowen, Katy. They couldn’t defend themselves.” Injustice affected her like indigestion. Any hint of unfairness brought out Verity’s inner protester.

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t use any magic.”

  “Maybe you did and you didn’t even know it,” Becca offered.

  “Huh?”

  “It could happen,” she said. “I mean, you can do a lot of things no one else can.” She gave a little shiver. “It’s scary.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? What about last summer, when you called up all those dead people?”

  “They were spirits,” I corrected.

  “Spirits of dead people,” Verity said, as if there were any other kind of spirits.

  “Whatever,” I said. I could feel the tension practically crackling in the air between us, so I ignored them and leafed through a magazine until they left.

  And then I burst into tears. I felt just the way I had before I’d moved to Whitfield. For most of my life I’d been an outcast, a motherless freak who’d had to hide my “gift”—though at the time I’d thought it was a curse—from everyone. And then, even though I’d come to Whitfield and Ainsworth School kicking and screaming, I’d discovered that this place was where I really belonged. This was where I found my great-grandmother and my aunt, two people who had loved me since I was born. This was where I’d met Peter, and where I’d learned that there were other people like me in the world. This was where I’d found magic.

  But now it was as if none of that had ever happened. The people here didn’t want me any more than the jocks at Las Palmas High had. Even Peter was supposed to keep his distance from me, if he knew what was good for him.

  Know, plan, act, keep silent.

  As if outcasts like me had any other choice
.

  CHAPTER

  •

  SEVEN

  Then there was the matter of dog poop. I think every Muffy in dorm C made me a gift, presented in one way or another, of dog poop. There was so much poop in front of my door that I had to move out of the dorm and in with my aunt and great-grandmother until I could clear my name.

  “Try not to be persuaded emotionally,” my aunt Agnes said as I sat with my head in my hands, recalling the bags of dog poop with which my fellow students had conveyed their feelings about me. “Feelings aren’t facts.”

  “It’s a fact that everyone hates me.”

  “Now, now, dear,” Gram said sweetly. “We don’t hate you.”

  That’s when you know you’ve hit rock bottom, when your relatives are the only people who can stand to be around you.

  “Oh, stop sniveling,” Aunt Agnes said irritably. “Your universal unpopularity, whether true or not, is of no importance. What is a fact, however, is that actions leave traces. Even magical actions.”

  I looked up. “Do you think it was magic?”

  “Of course it was magic. Four healthy sixteen-year-old girls don’t suddenly keel over within ten seconds of one another from food poisoning.”

  “I thought that was rather far-fetched myself,” Gram interjected. “Even if the food was dreadful.”

  “They’d been dabbling,” Aunt Agnes pronounced, as if she were accusing Summer and her friends of injecting heroin. “There are ways magic can be worked through cowen. They’re perfect dupes, after all. Since they have no knowledge of magic, they have no fear. The question is, who worked it?”

  That was the question, all right. “Well . . . the Ouija board may have had something to do with it,” I repeated stolidly.

  “Please, Katy,” Gram said. “Even in the hands of real witches, Ouija boards have all the power of a camera battery.”

  “Not necessarily,” Agnes said with a reflective tilt of her head. “Spirits have been known to manifest through a Ouija.”

  “Yes, spirits,” Gram said. “Insubstantial thought forms. Spirits can hardly knock one unconscious.”

  Agnes tapped on the dining room table with her long no-nonsense index finger. “That room must be explored, because there are almost certainly traces to be found.”

  “Traces of what?” I wondered.

  She raised an expressive hand. “Dust, often. An odor, perhaps, or a stain.”

  I blinked. Dust, odors, and stains? Had she ever seen a high school dorm room?

  “But surely Penelope—Miss P,” Gram said, nodding at me, “would know to hire a scenter.”

  “I’m sure she has already,” Agnes agreed. “Or at least is looking for one.”

  “A center?” I asked. “Like the tall guy on a basketball team?”

  Gram burst out laughing. “I keep forgetting you haven’t been here long,” she said.

  “A lot of young people don’t know about them, Grandmother,” Agnes said. “After all, there isn’t much use for them these days.” She turned toward me. “We’re talking about scenters, as in ‘scent.’ ” She wrinkled her nose. “Although a scenter employs much more than a sense of smell.”

  “A scenter is a sort of detective,” Gram added excitedly. “Someone skilled in the use of many senses.”

  “Many?” I asked. “Like five?”

  Agnes tsked. “There are more than five senses, Katy. You should know that.”

  “Of course she does!” Gram leaned forward. “How does it feel when you push, dear?”

  “Pushing” was a slang term for telekinesis, or moving objects with your mind. It was not that big a deal as far as special abilities go, but it was something I could do. “Er . . . I don’t know,” I said. Actually, it felt sort of like sending a whip out from my brain and feeling it wrap like a tentacle around things, but I didn’t want to gross out my great-grandmother. “Weird, I guess.”

  “Well, a scenter would know that feeling, and a number of others as well. She—or he, since many of them are male—would be able to perceive traces left in that poor girl’s dorm room from whatever magic occurred there.”

  “By sensing dirt and things.” I was still trying to get my head around that concept.

  “By focusing,” Aunt Agnes said. “Focusing is the core of all magic. The scenter concentrates on whatever has been deposited in the room—hair, skin, breath—and then sorts out what is relevant from what isn’t.”

  “Breath?”

  “Nothing is lost, Katy. The breath from your body will remain, in one form or another, until the end of time.”

  “Gracious, I hope Penelope doesn’t have too much difficulty finding one,” Gram interrupted. “There hasn’t been a scenter in Whitfield for years.”

  “Let’s hope we find one in a hurry,” Agnes said. “It’s been nearly two days. Traces are evanescent, you know. They remain, but they fade quickly, and soon become impossible to perceive, even for a scenter.”

  • • •

  As it turned out, the lone scenter in the tristate area was on vacation at Club Med in Aruba, so Summer’s room would be yielding no new information. Everyone was disappointed, especially me. The scenter might have exonerated me. Better yet, he might have figured out what had really happened to the Muffies, so that they could wake up. I hadn’t liked Summer, but I wouldn’t have wished what had happened to her on anyone. If there were just something I could do!

  I began to think about scenters, and how they were the detectives of the spiritual plane. Actually, I could see myself doing that, solving crimes by using my highly honed sensitivities—being in demand wherever people were in need of psychic help, a Sherlock Holmes of the magical realm. I’d be welcomed into the highest circles of society because of my extraordinary skill. I’d even make inroads among enlightened cowen, bringing our disparate worlds closer together. Yes, I could see myself answering that call.

  Katy Ainsworth, finder of lost souls.

  “There are traces of everything everywhere, of everything that’s ever happened,” I explained to Peter while we were shucking oysters. Fall was the big season for oysters at Hattie’s. “Like Napoleon’s breath,” I said, elaborating on Agnes’s information with something I’d thought of on my own. “It’s still here, somewhere.”

  “His farts, too?” Peter inquired.

  “I’m serious!” I shouted, banging my knife on the bucket.

  “Okay, I was listening. Traces. They’re everywhere.”

  “But they’re evanescent.”

  He looked over at me. “Like those baking soda volcanoes?”

  I gave him a hard look. “No, not effervescent,” I said, as if I didn’t know he was pulling my chain. “Evanescent. The traces fade. They’re made of things like dust and odor, so they fade.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think they fade very fast,” he said. “Not in my room, anyway.”

  “Believe me, I know. I’ve been there.” I put down my knife, thinking. “Still, it’s worth a shot.”

  He sighed. “What sort of shot, exactly, are you thinking about, Katy?” he asked.

  “I have to get back into Summer’s room,” I whispered. “To pick up the traces.”

  “I thought you said it took an expert to spot that stuff. To smell it or whatever.”

  “Well, an expert isn’t available. The room’s scheduled to be cleaned tomorrow.”

  “So? What would you be able to do?”

  “I don’t know. Check it out. Maybe I’d be able to pick up a vibe.”

  “What kind of vibe?”

  “A supernatural vibe, Peter. If we knew that magic was involved, Hattie and Gram and Miss P might be able to help Summer and her friends. Besides, we might find something else. A clue.”

  “I doubt that,” Peter said. “The police have already . . . Did you say ‘we’?”

  “No. My mistake. Me. Just me. I wouldn’t want you to be involved.”

  “Frankly, I’d feel better if I were involved,” he said.

  I stopped
what I was doing. “Why?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . well, I’d feel safer if you weren’t going to . . . whatever . . . all by yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not about to be accused of being a bad influence on you.”

  “Just what are you planning, anyway?”

  I bent close to him. “I’m going to break into Summer’s room before the janitor gets there,” I whispered. “That’ll be a piece of cake. Moving locks is really elementary magic.”

  Peter nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Only, nobody in dorm C is going to let you past the front door after what you . . . what you allegedly did.”

  I swallowed. “Maybe no one’ll be around.”

  “Katy.” He gave me one of his Be reasonable looks.

  “Anything can happen.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” He took a deep breath. “Look, if you’re going to do something so crazy, I can’t let you go alone.”

  “But what can you do that I can’t?” I nearly shouted.

  He looked right, then left, then crossed his arms over his chest. “I can get you past the girls who live there.”

  He explained how we were going to pull this off. In my mind’s eye I could see Miss P shaking her head, blaming me once again if Peter and I got caught.

  “But we won’t get caught,” I said aloud.

  “I sure hope not.”

  “No way. Won’t happen. It’s a great plan.”

  CHAPTER

  •

  EIGHT

  It was a stupid plan. I realized that while I sat crouched inside the garbage bin that had contained, among other revolting things, the remains of the three hundred oysters Peter and I had just shucked.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” I hissed, peering out from under the stinking lid.

  Peter was steering the bin on a dolly toward dorm C. “I don’t want to draw attention to myself,” he said, pulling a baseball cap over his eyes. That, plus the zip-up coverall that he wore when he worked on Hattie’s truck, was the closest we could come to a janitorial disguise.