Poison Princess (23 page)

All evening he'd been doting on her, while I'd been on pins and needles, wondering what his game was, wondering what he thought of my earlier blackout.

But if this was what it took to ease the strain on Mom's face, then I'd play along. For now.

“Jack, did you know that Evie speaks fluent French?”

He leaned back in his chair, looking smug. “I did indeedy.”

She asked me, “Wasn't dinner great, honey?”

I forced yet another smile. Mom wasn't the only one who'd finished her helping. Instead of complimenting Jackson and boosting his ego, I asked him, “Who taught you how to cook?”

He grated,
“Nécessité.”

Mom picked up on the sudden tension, and said, “Maybe you can teach Evie?”

Grin smoothly back in place, he told her, “Something tells me she can't boil an egg.”

Mom smiled but was quick to say, “Our Evie's a fast learner.”

Our
Evie? Trying to get him to take mental ownership of me, Mom?

When he just shrugged noncommittally, she said, “Did you ever come across kids your age when you were in the militia?”

“Only other boys.”

“So our Evie is kind of a rarity.”

He smirked against the rim of his glass. “Oh, she is that.”

I glared.

“Doesn't she look pretty tonight, Jack?”

“Mom!” I felt like I was on match.com. “I'm going to do the dishes.”

“That can wait. Honey, we should look at your baby pictures! Oh, and your first dance recital!”

Would this night never end? “They're all on the flash drive. We went paperless, remember?” Which meant they were completely inaccessible, along with all my e-books and e-mails. Even if we'd had a generator, few electronics worked after the apocalypse. Damn technology.

“I saved the hard copies. They're in the sewing room.”

I was about to beg her not to torture me—or Jackson—like this, but she started coughing into her napkin.

As her face turned bright red, I helplessly rubbed her back. When her coughing finally eased, she looked . . . scared. She tried to hide it, but I saw blood, stark against her crisp white napkin.

I glanced at Jackson. Though his face was expressionless, I could've sworn a muscle ticked in his cheek.

“You want a sip?” Jackson offered me his flask as I watched him tinker under the Mercedes's hood.

I peered around, nervously running my fingers over the salt in the pocket of my hoodie. This was one of my first times out at night since the Flash. The quiet was so eerily complete that every sound we made was amplified, as if we were in an auditorium.

“Take the flask, Evie. You look like you could use it.”

My heart was aching for my mom. I gazed up at her window, at the flickering candlelight visible through the shutter. I could read the writing on the wall. She believed she was dying—soon.

Earlier, as I'd helped her get ready for bed, she'd been sentimental, kept telling me that she loved me, kept reaching for my hand to hold.

She told me that my father would've been so proud of me. She made me promise that if anything should happen to her I would find my grandmother.

In other words, Mom hadn't believed
me
when I'd told her I'd get her well.

I accepted Jackson's flask. “Why the hell not?” When I wiped the rim with my sleeve, he scowled.

“Jesus Christ, Evie. You were goan to let me kiss you that night at the sugar mill, but now you woan drink after me?”

“I was
not
going to let you! And why would you even bring that up? Don't you think that should go into the forgotten column?”

He returned to his task. “It ain't every day a Basin boy makes out with a Sterling cheerleader. I would've been even more of a legend than I already was.”

“Wow. You mean you had more of a motive than just duping me?”

Cajun shrug.

With a roll of my eyes, I took a drink, clamping my lips against the burn. “You're not worried about Bagmen?”

He gazed up from under the hood. “Nothing can get the drop on me.” Even now that crossbow was propped up nearby. I'd noticed that he never let it out of reach.

When I held the flask out to him, he said, “Hang on to it while I finish up.”

“You really think you can fix this?”

“I worked on the militia's trucks. It's not hard if you know what you're doing.”

“And you do?”

“Ouais.”
Yeah. “So, did your
mère
send you down here to be nice to the Cajun boy?”

That was exactly what had happened. Just before I'd joined him outside, she'd given me a rare order: “Convince Jack to like you.” She'd asked me, “Can you imagine how relieved I'd be to know you were with a strong, capable boy like that? We
need
him, Evie. Please, for both our sakes? Make up the guest room for him. Go help him with the car.”

I hadn't wanted to leave her. “You don't want me to stay?” When she'd shaken her head, I'd kissed her good night. “I'm going to get you better. You'll see.”

“Leave the candle lit, honey.”

“Love you.” But as I headed out to join up with Jackson, I still hadn't been convinced that I could let bygones be bygones.

I'd finally decided to call a truce for one reason. He'd patiently looked at every one of my baby pics. As Mom had cooed over every toothless image
—“Look at that smile!”—
Jackson had dutifully paid attention, though it must have been miserable for him.

He'd risen a notch in my estimation.

And I reasoned that if he was out to rob us blind, he wouldn't have gone through this much trouble.

With that thought in mind, I took another swig—this one didn't burn nearly as much—then said, “Mom likes you a lot. She wanted me to extend an invitation to stay with us. For as long as you like.”

His tinkering slowed. “I'm surprised you're actually extending it.”

“I've already made up the bed in one of the guest rooms.” When he merely raised his brows, I said, “What?”

“Hell, Evangeline, I thought you were goan to make me sleep in the barn tonight.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you still think of me as
the help
.” Attention back on the car, he muttered, “You probably always will.”

He was wrong. I didn't think of him that way; I thought of him as a criminal hardened by life. Plus, I'd never want him in the barn near my crops again. “Whatever, Jackson, you can do as you like.”

“I'm not goan to be here when the army rolls in.” He pointed a wrench at me. “Count on that. I doan suggest you two being around either.”

“Why are you so certain they'll come here?”

“Haven House is the biggest building still standing in the area—and one of the oldest.”

“Why's that important?”

“Wells and windmill pumps. You doan need electricity to get at the water. The general's been following some field guide to all the big farms in the South, and he always hits the ones with the older wells. How many you got? Two or three?”

“Five,” I admitted.

“Oh, yeah.” He grasped his forehead, smudging oil there. “They'll be here.”

“I have a hard time believing there's this swarm of three thousand soldiers, and all of them are evil.”

“They're not necessarily. That general is, though, his two kids as well. And if you doan follow their orders, you get executed.”

“Or you become a deserter.”

“You need to get past that word, Evie. You're starting to hurt my feelings. No matter, you stick around here long enough, and you'll soon find out why I
deserted
.”

“
If
I could move Mom, and
if
you got this car fixed, I'd leave. I'd head out at dawn to find a doctor, then we'd go to North Carolina to reunite with my grandmother.”

“What makes you think your good ole granny's alive? She's probably not.”

“I just know she is.” Like Mom said, I
had
to believe that. The alternative—never understanding all the mysteries surrounding me—was unbearable. To have no recourse from the voices . . . ?

I just stopped myself from shuddering.

Not to mention never seeing my grandmother again. The more I remembered of her, the more I loved. I could recall Gran's eyes—they were a twinkling brown, the color matching the darker striation of a pecan shell. The skin around them crinkled when she laughed. She'd laughed a lot. Used to hum all the time too, especially when she played with her well-worn Tarot deck.

“You
know
she's alive?” he asked. “Like from a vision?”

“I don't walk around seeing the future, Jackson. And most of the time, the things I see make no sense.”

“Tell me about them.”

“There's no pattern to when they occur. They're . . . painful,” I said in the understatement of the year. “They feel like they're being shoved inside my head.”

“You ready to tell me what you saw earlier?”

No, Jackson. No, I'm not.
So I glossed over that question. “I have repeated visions featuring a boy who talks about nothing that makes much sense to me. I get lectured by this kid, who might as well be speaking another language.” And still I felt such a strong bond with him. “In any case, a lot of the stuff I see has never come true.” But give it time. . . .

“Maybe it just hasn't
yet
.”

Perceptive Jackson. Changing the subject, I said, “What's it like out there on the road? Really like?”

He exhaled, allowing me to steer him away from talk of my visions. “Outside the cities, you can go days without seeing another living soul. Actually better not to. Two types of people left: them that want nothing to do with you and them that want to do you harm—the black hats.”

“And inside the cities?”

“Lots of corpses. More survivors are dying out now, and the old ones ain't moldering like they normally would, just piling up.”

I shivered at the mental image. “Is every place burned out like Sterling?”

“Not a damned thing's green, if that's what you're asking. Everything's covered in ash, but not every place is burned. Some towns look striped from the lines of flames that hit the ground.
C'est surprenant.
” It's uncanny. “Real finger-of-God stuff.”

At my confused look, he said, “One house stands while the one beside it burned down. No rhyme or reason, like how a tornado strikes.” He closed the hood. After wiping his hands on his jeans, he collected his crossbow and climbed into the driver's seat, setting the bow on his lap. “Hop in.”

When I'd joined him inside, he said, “You'd never make it to North Carolina, Evie. That's heading right into the belly of the beast.”

“Why do you say that? Because of the Bagmen?”

He met my gaze. “Maybe you'll never have to find out. Ask me nice, and I might take you to Texas.”

God, his eyes really were breathtaking. As I stared into them, I allowed myself to imagine what it'd be like with him guiding Mom and me west. She liked him so much already.

Another thing I'd noticed? The voices were much quieter when he was near. I guessed they faded when more people were around to distract me.

I begrudgingly admitted that it might be
not awful
having him around. “Why would you help us like that?”

“Your
mère
has been kind to me.”

“There has to be more to it than that.”

Earlier, I'd told Mom, “Jackson wouldn't stick around here unless he had an angle.”

She'd given me a soft smile. “His ‘angle' ? It's probably that you're a pretty girl and he's an eighteen-year-old boy.”

Did he actually like me in that way?

“I got my reasons, me. That's all you need to know for now.”

“Not good enough. By this time tomorrow, she could be under the care of a real doctor.”

He hesitated, gripping the steering wheel, clearly wrestling with a decision. Snapping his fingers for the flask, he said, “Clotile lived through the Flash.”

That was surprising. “How?” I handed him the whiskey. “And for that matter, how did you?”

He absently touched his forearm. “Wouldn't stop bleeding, this. Couldn't throttle my bike. So Clotile took me to an unlicensed doc in the next parish over, had a cellar office.”

In a twist of fate, that drunk man had ended up saving both Jackson's and Clotile's lives.

“After the Flash, Clotile and me followed another survivor from the Basin, a reservist, to join his company. He talked us into serving our fellow man, and all that bullshit. But what else did we have to do? Besides, he'd figured out how to get his car to work, and we were hankering to put the entire wasted parish behind us. Though Clotile was a damned fine shot, the reservists stuck her in the kitchen and me in the fields, hunting Bagmen.”