Poison Read online

  But no, it couldn’t be. It was all too weird.

  “Give us a kiss, love,” the drunk man said, sloshing beer or whatever it was all over himself as he stood up and squat-walked through me to where the girl (was it Morgan?) was sitting.

  “Go back to your end of the boat, you lout,” she shrilled, laughing. “You’ll tip us over.”

  It couldn’t be her, I decided. My mind was doing that, making it seem to be Morgan because of some psychological connection. The question was why.

  Her head swiveled to face Mr. Charm. Unfortunately, I was wobbling directly in front of the man, so it looked for all the world like she was staring straight into my eyes. Then, with a big grin that sent shivers running though me, she said, “It would not do for you to drown, my dear.”

  I knew in that instant exactly what she was going to do, but it was too late to stop her, even if I’d had a real body to stop her with.

  She stood up suddenly and straight-armed her date right in the neck. He had just taken a drink from the tankard, and that mouthful spewed all over the place while his eyes bulged out and his arms began to windmill.

  “No!” I shouted as he lost his balance. “No!” the woman shouted at the same time, scrambling toward him on all fours while the boat swung crazily around in the water. I guessed that she’d changed her mind about throwing the drunken fool into the lake, but she didn’t reach for him. Instead she grabbed for the tankard. I felt a brief moment of relief. If the tankard didn’t fall into the water, there was much less chance that I’d drown. But then the man grabbed it right out of her hands before lurching toward the side of the boat.

  I needed time to go back into the tankard. Without it I’d be lost. But there was nothing I could do. I was tethered on a psychic level to the tankard. Wherever it went, I had to follow. If I didn’t, I knew, I would die. The guy bellowed like a crazed bull as he fell into the water, still clutching his drink, and I felt myself being pulled behind him, through the dank air toward the algae-covered water. The last thing I saw was the girl, who looked so much like my new friend Morgan, standing in the boat with her hands on her hips, shaking her head in anger.

  “Morgan!” I called. I couldn’t even reach the tankard now.

  I was in the middle of a lake in an unknown place and an unknown time. Even if I lived through this, I’d never be found. “Help!” I screamed. “Get me out of here!”

  Her eyes met mine, and I saw her mouth move. “Goodbye,” she said.

  Well, maybe her eyes didn’t meet mine. Maybe she was looking at her date. Her date, whom she might have just murdered.

  Water shot inside every opening in my body—up my nose, filling my mouth, blinding my eyes. I came up sputtering, flapping my arms uselessly as I tried to teach myself to swim then and there.

  It wasn’t working. For a moment the moon came out, and I saw the girl’s face again, bathed in cold light. “Morgan!” I called. I was hoping, praying that she could see me, but she gave no sign of it. She just kept standing on the boat as it drifted away.

  “Please help me,” I squeaked.

  The man, finding his way to the bank, climbed up and shook himself like a dog. “I’ll see that you pay for this, you harpy!” he shouted.

  The woman responded with a rude gesture. “Idiot!” she shouted. “’Tis you ought to have drowned!”

  Even though I was panicking, a part of my mind registered the way she had emphasized the word “you,” and it struck me as odd. It was as if she knew that someone besides the man had been in the boat with her.

  But none of that mattered now. All I knew was that the water was invading every part of me. In the last glimpse I had of her, she was standing like a statue in the boat, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. As I sank beneath the water, I watched her pull the shawl more closely around her arms.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, but when I came up, I couldn’t breathe. The boat was gone. Crickets chirped along the distant shore. A mosquito droned near my face. I was so tired, too tired to do much besides allow the water to drag me down again.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FIFTEEN

  “Katy.”

  Someone was hugging me. Or punching me. I couldn’t tell which. Water poured out of my mouth. But it was still all around me. I would have screamed if I’d had the strength, but all I could do was stiffen my limbs.

  “Stop it. Relax. Listen to me. Relax.”

  “Who . . . ” I managed to turn my head. “Peter!”

  The sight of him did a lot to bring me around. “How . . . How did . . . ”

  “Shh. Just listen,” he said. “It’s the ring. You’ve got to concentrate on the ring, okay?”

  “What?”

  “The ring will take you back. To the store, remember?”

  “The . . . store . . . ” I shook my head and coughed. “Okay. The ring.” I looked at my finger. The ring Morgan had given me was glowing a bright opalescent blue.

  “But . . . I don’t know how . . . ” Suddenly I was coughing again, but not from the water in my lungs. The place had a horrible smell. “Are we in a swamp or something?”

  “Never mind,” Peter said. “Just concentrate on the ring.”

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  “The ring will take you home.”

  Like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, I thought, focusing on the ring. Take me home. Take me home.

  Peter was still holding me, but his grip was loosening. Somewhere in the corner of my consciousness, I could hear him coughing. Then he let go of me, and I slid out of his arms and into the deep water.

  Take me home. I touched the slimy bottom of the lake, and the tankard was there, calling to me like sonar. Yes, yes. Home.

  I felt myself constricting again, being sucked into the molecules of the tankard. With a huge sigh of relief, I just allowed myself to go.

  And then I felt as if someone had just smacked me across the face with a plank. Peter!

  Where was he? Hadn’t he come with me? Couldn’t he?

  “Peter!” I screamed. “Peter!”

  “Calm down,” someone was saying.

  I opened my eyes. I was on the couch in the store.

  “Sheesh, what a drama queen.”

  I propped myself up on one elbow and tried to swallow the furriness in my mouth. “I’m back,” I whispered.

  “Keenly observed,” Morgan said. “Who’s Peter?”

  I cleared my throat. I could still taste the lake water. “My . . . my boyfriend,” I said, looking around. “I was drowning. In a lake that smelled like a toxic dump. And Peter came. He rescued me.”

  Morgan laughed out loud. “And they lived happily ever after,” she said. “Is that how it ends?”

  “What?”

  “Your fairy tale. The handsome prince has to make the scene, is that right? I mean, you couldn’t possibly have made it back by yourself, on your own two feet.”

  “I wasn’t on my feet. It was a psychic journey.”

  “Whatever. Barbie goes metaphysical.”

  “Who are you calling Barbie?” I demanded, sitting up.

  “You,” she said, looking at me levelly. “Because nobody rescued you. You went into the tankard, and you came out, all on your own power. You didn’t need a guy to make it okay.”

  “I needed someone to tell me how to get back,” I said angrily. “It sure wasn’t you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Peter told me to use the ring. Otherwise I’d never have known how to leave that place.”

  “What ring?”

  “The ring you gave me. It’s a magic ring, isn’t it?” I sounded like an interrogator.

  “Of course it isn’t. Going into that tankard must have burned up some of your brain cells.”

  “How else was I supposed to get out?” I shouted.

  “How would I know?” she shouted back at me. “You’re the one with the gift.”

  I was so frustrated, I crammed another cookie into my mouth. “These suck,” I mumbl
ed, spitting into a napkin.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s be reasonable. Call Peter. He’ll tell you if he was there or not.” She handed me a phone.

  “Good idea.” I dialed his number. If he didn’t answer, I’d take that as a sign that he was still at the lake. Or in it, I thought with a frisson of horror.

  “Hello?” Peter mumbled on the other end.

  “Where are you?”

  Smacking of lips. “I’m back in the limo,” he said with a yawn. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. What are you doing?”

  Silence. Finally a sigh. “I’m sitting here,” he said. “I’m going home. To bed. Because it’s late, Katy. Any other questions?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Then you weren’t . . . somewhere else?”

  “I might have been,” he said patiently. “Can you give me a clue as to where?”

  “Like in a lake? Rescuing me from drowning?”

  “Is this some kind of prank?” he asked crankily. “I think you pretty much know everywhere I’ve been, since you’ve called me just about every hour on the hour since I left.”

  That hurt. I’d called only three times. “Okay,” I said contritely. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I really am.”

  “Hey, sorry. It’s just been a long and boring day,” he said, his voice softening. “You never bother me.” I could hear the sleepy smile in his voice. “How about breakfast tomorrow?”

  I laughed. We were both scheduled to work the six a.m. shift at Hattie’s. “Sure,” I said, and hung up.

  “I owe you an apology,” I said to Morgan.

  She arched an eyebrow. “So Peter wasn’t your knight in shining armor, huh?”

  I shook my head. “He was in New York. Actually, I knew that, but everything just seemed so . . . ” I caught myself. “I was going to say ‘real,’ but . . . ”

  She laughed. “I know. Who’s to say what’s real and what’s not?”

  “Especially here.”

  “Especially,” she agreed.

  “I guess I wanted Peter to rescue me,” I admitted. “I wanted him to . . . ”

  “To care?”

  “Yeah,” I said hoarsely. I was ready for her to make fun of me, call me a Barbie again or worse, but she didn’t. Instead she took a scarf off one of the display tables and wrapped it around my neck. “We all want that,” she said. “Sometimes it happens, and someone does care. But when it doesn’t, we have to be enough for ourselves. Do you get it?”

  I nodded. “Be my own hero,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, baby. Shoot, you’re the Mistress of Real Things, aren’t you?”

  “Damn right,” I said, although I didn’t feel as cocky as I tried to sound. I looked over at the tankard and shuddered. I could still feel that brackish water flooding into my lungs.

  “You okay?”

  I took the scarf off and gave it back to her. “I’m fine,” I said.

  She wrapped the scarf around her own shoulders. The moon shone through the skylight above and lit her face. I thought of the little filigree bird with the living eyes.

  PART TWO

  THE MISTRESS OF REAL THINGS

  CHAPTER

  •

  SIXTEEN

  I moved back to my dorm room after the first snow, even though nothing had changed. Summer and the other three Muffies were still in vegetative states, and I was still being blamed for what had happened to them. The witches at Ainsworth believed I’d used magic against Summer, and the Muffies just thought I was generally weird and evil. Since there was no real evidence against me, I hadn’t been kicked out or anything, but my popularity rating had dipped from maybe a two on a scale of one hundred to absolute zero.

  Nevertheless, Aunt Agnes convinced me that running away wasn’t going to help anything and that the best way to prove my innocence was to act as if I weren’t guilty. The school tried to help. Mr. Midgen, the custodian, had complained about the bags of dog droppings in front of my door, so the halls were now monitored regularly and I could at least walk down the hall for a shower without stumbling through an obstacle course of smelly paper bags with my name on them.

  I tried to concentrate on my schoolwork and convince myself that being friendless had an upside, but I still felt rotten. I thought I’d found a friend in Morgan, but every time I went to the store to see her after that first day, the place was closed. I guessed that maybe her aunt had gotten held up longer than she’d thought, and that Morgan had gone home.

  I didn’t even know where that was. It would have been nice if she’d told me she was leaving, but to tell the truth, I was getting used to being ignored.

  Speaking of being ignored, my relationship with Peter had become, to say the least, uneventful. Half of his free time was now spent sucking up to his uncle Jeremiah, who showered Peter with expensive gifts—a laptop, a Wii, a smartphone, an iPad, plus a new wardrobe, haircuts at the best salon in Boston, and a couple of sessions with a cosmetic dentist, who managed to make Peter even better-looking than he’d already been, if such a thing were possible.

  The other half of the time that Peter had once spent with me was now devoted to hanging out with Bryce de Crewe.

  It was Hattie’s idea to enroll Bryce at Ainsworth, even though he didn’t have any records or ID of any kind. Not only was he accepted and all fees waived, but to my amazement, Miss P herself volunteered to tutor him privately to bring him up to grade level.

  “But who is he?” I asked Hattie one day before work. “Why does he sound weird and dress like a monk?”

  “He doesn’t dress any differently from anybody else,” Hattie answered, skirting my questions.

  “That’s because he’s wearing Peter’s clothes.” His gorgeous, expensive clothes, I might have added, since Peter dressed in only designer labels these days. “When I first saw Bryce, he looked like Friar Tuck. And he acted like a gas stove was a miracle of modern science.”

  Hattie sniffed. “You sound pretty snooty for someone who’s known as the dog poop queen.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Not fair.”

  Hattie smiled in spite of herself. “You’re right,” she said. “But you’re nosy.” I was about to object, but she stuck a finger in my face. “Don’t try to deny it.”

  She had a point. “Okay. I guess you’re right. But I won’t say a word. I swear.”

  “Oh, really?” Hattie mused. “The way you didn’t say a word about Peter’s brother, and almost caused him to get killed?”

  She was referring to something that had happened the previous year, before we had known what the little kid could do. “I paid for that. Big-time,” I said. “And I haven’t said anything since. You know that.”

  She sighed. “Lord knows I’d be crazy to tell you anything,” she said, “but since you’ll be working with him, maybe you ought to know.”

  “Yes?” I asked eagerly.

  “But you’ll have to keep this to yourself.”

  I crossed my heart. Hattie gave me a skeptical look but told me anyway. “Bryce de Crewe is from a different plane of existence,” she said quietly. “At one time all of our ancestors lived in his world, so there will always be a connection between our two planes.”

  “The land where witches originated?” I asked, spellbound.

  “Something like that, yes. So as high priestess of Whitfield, it’s my responsibility to help Bryce with his mission.”

  “Which is . . . ”

  “Which is something he’ll tell you himself when he’s good and ready,” Hattie said. “Now, I don’t want you to go blabbing about that, because the poor boy’s going through enough of a culture shock without being treated like some kind of freak. Especially at school. Whatever he’s been sent here to do, I want him to feel like a normal teenager. For once.”

  “For once?”

  “Now, that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Er . . . thanks.” I had to be—or at least pretend to be—content with that.

  • �
� •

  Bryce moved into Hattie’s living quarters at the restaurant. At Hattie’s request Peter moved back in too, even though he had a room at school. In fact, he moved out of the dorms at just about the same time I moved back in.

  Great. Just great.

  In a strange turn of events, Bryce—far from being considered an outcast, as Hattie had feared—quickly became one of the most popular guys at school. Girls were crazy about him, especially Becca, who thought he looked like Prince Harry. Peter liked him too. In fact, for two guys with a lot of extracurricular work to do, Peter and Bryce managed to spend a lot of time together. Time Peter could have spent with me.

  There, I’d said it. Sometimes I just got tired of being understanding and non-clingy and self-sufficient. I missed the old, poor, awkward Peter. Old Peter once carried me down the ivy-covered wall of a burning building on his back. New Peter couldn’t eat lunch with me because he was either taking etiquette lessons from his great-uncle Jeremiah’s butler or else hanging with Bryce and fighting off the girls who were all over the two of them like a coat of paint.

  That was my state of mind—insecure, dejected, and melodramatically depressed—when my two so-called best friends, Becca and Verity, plopped down next to me in the cafeteria. It was the first I’d seen of them since I’d fled the dorms.

  Since then I’d been alone so much that I’d stopped thinking about having friends, but here they were, uninvited and . . . Well, I was going to say “unwelcome,” but that wasn’t true. I’d missed them. Even Verity, who was usually a pain.

  “Is this seat taken?” Becca asked, smiling. She always looked like she was in a shampoo commercial. Her curly blond hair literally bounced. With her dark eyes and pouty lips, she was as close to movie-star gorgeous as anyone at Ainsworth could get.