Poison Princess (29 page)

Recalling all the times he'd appeared restless, I figured that he simply hated being cooped up in a car with me, being
saddled
with me. We were stuck together, watching the windshield wipers scrape, listening to the same iPod songs over and over.

Most of the tracks were from Mel's playlists. Oddly, Jackson didn't enjoy endless rap remixes of Alanis Morissette.

God, I miss that girl like an ache, like I miss Mom. . . .

Still stewing over my accusation of meanness, Jackson said, “You ain't perfect yourself,
peekôn
. You get your feelings hurt like this”—he snapped his fingers—“and you woan tell me anything about you. Most close-lipped girl I ever knew.”

“Why am
I
always the one getting interrogated? You've rarely talked about yourself since we've been on the road.” Yes, I had secrets, but he had such a huge advantage over me—Brandon's phone!

“Ask me something,” Jackson said, though his grip on the steering wheel tightened, as if he were bracing for a punch.

“Okay. Was the cage-the-rage rumor true? Did you really go to prison?” If so, he might understand some of what my experience at CLC had been like.

Anger flared in his expression. “You got to go for the slam at every opportunity.”

“What are you talking about? I asked for a reason.”

“Which is to remind me of my place!”

“Jackson, I'm astonished you can walk upright with that chip on your shoulder.”

“How about asking what my favorite book is? Or what class I liked best?”

“I figured you liked English a lot, and I thought
Robinson Crusoe
was your favorite book.”

In a menacingly low voice, he said, “Sometimes I forget, me, that you were in my house.”

“Fine, I'll try again. So, Jackson, what had you planned to do after high school?”

He slid me a narrowed glance. “Open a chop shop. Steal cars for parts. Isn't that what you expect me to say?”

“Forget I asked.”

“What were you goan to do, then?”

“Marry Brandon, have a couple of rich brats, play tennis all day. Isn't that what you expected me to say?”

He seemed to be strangling the steering wheel. At least his hands had healed. When I'd insisted on cleaning and bandaging them last week, he'd been gruff, but I thought he secretly liked someone fussing over him.

Because it was such a rarity?

When I'd finished dressing them, he'd grumbled, “Surprised you didn't kiss 'em better.” So I did, pressing a quick kiss to each bandage, just to shock him. Instead, his voice had grown husky as he'd called me
“ma belle infirmière.”
My pretty nurse . . .

His moods were so changeable. That night he'd been flirtatious. Now he was brooding, filled with tension.

It seemed like the harder I tried to be nice to him, to make him happy, the more it backfired on me.

Silence stretched between us again. Until my stomach growled.

Jackson cast me another scowl. I'd also learned that the sound of my hunger really bothered him, as if I were pestering him for food.

“We're not eating for hours yet, princess.” He knew I hated it when he called me that. “We agreed to keep heading for Atlanta, Evie. And we knew it'd be lean.”

“I'm
not
complaining. I have never complained.”

“No, but that stomach of yours is. I almost wish you'd start bitching at me.” His knuckles were now white on the wheel.

“What good would that do?”

“It's better than you sitting here seething all day.”

“Seething? Hardly!” He didn't understand. I could roll with a lot of punches now that the voices were quieted. “I was in a
great
mood earlier.”

“Bullshit! Over what? You're exhausted, starving, and you doan know where your next meal's coming from.”

“You didn't get decapitated by sheet metal and we scored some fuel. Win!”

“But no
food
.” The wipers scraped louder across the windshield.
Grate, grate, grate . . .

I threw my hands up. “All right, you talked me into it. I'm officially in a pissy mood.”

“Damn it, you doan need to miss meals.” Early on, he'd been giving me the lion's share, calling me a “growing girl.”

As he'd explained: “Hell, Evie, I like where you're goan with this”—he'd motioned to indicate my chest—“I want to see where you end up.”

Now he muttered, “Thought I'd be shooting some game.” On occasion, we'd see a bird or a rabbit. “And you ain't exactly contributing to the pot.”

No, but I
could
. If things got really bad, I'd grow food from the seeds in the back. Refusing to rise to the bait, I said, “It's getting late.” The winds were dying down as the sun set. The ash started to settle, revealing a waxing moon. “Shouldn't we be looking for a place to overnight?”

“We need to get past this area. The gas took longer than I thought.” He glanced over his shoulder, then back to the road, picking up speed. “Sick of these storms.”

“What about the Bagmen? You said we can never drive past sundown.” This afternoon, we'd crossed bridge after bridge. If they flocked to old bodies of water, at night . . .

“I'm changing the rule, adding: unless we're in slaver territory. We got to make up some time anyway.”

My stomach growled more insistently.

“Suck it up, Evie! We can't risk looking for food right now. If anything happens to me, you're screwed.”

“One more time, I'm not arguing with you about food, I'm not complaining, and I might surprise you by actually surviving without you.”

“You can't hunt or ferret out supplies. You're a resource-suck. You're hopeless in the kitchen—”

“Here we go again.” I could deny nothing. I was awful at cooking, couldn't seem to heat a can of ravioli without screwing it up.

“You should end each and every day with a ‘Thank you, Jack. It's great to be alive.' ” Another glance over his shoulder, another increase in speed.

“Clearly, I'm just a nuisance to you, a ball and chain around your ankle. I'm surprised you haven't gotten sick of me and dumped me already. I keep waiting for you to say, ‘Screw this,' and ditch on North Carolina.”

“I doan let puzzles go unsolved.”

Which is why I won't tell you about the crops until you've gotten me where I need to go.

“Besides”—he flashed me a wolfish grin—“I ain't even slept with you yet.”

My lips parted. “You're talking about having . . . sex. With
me
?”

I should have known this conversation would arise soon enough. It seemed like each night together, Jackson and I had grown
less
comfortable with each other.

If he felt relatively secure with our overnight, he'd sleep without a shirt. Those tantalizing glimpses of his chest—I always looked away—flustered me, making it difficult to sleep.

At other times, I'd cast wary glances at the bed, while he cast hungry looks at me.

“
Sex
is what you sit in this car thinking about?” Just as I'd suspected, I was better off not knowing.

His expression was bored, as if to say
Grow up
. “Why wouldn't I? I'm a red-blooded male, and you're the only game in town. Tell me you doan think about it.”

I had. I'd fantasized about what might have happened at the sugar mill if we'd kissed, if we'd explored that sizzling chemistry between us. Then I would feel guilty and out of sorts. “I-I'm not having sex with you!” I finally answered. “I can't believe you would just put it out there like that.”

Though I knew the world was different now, I still held on to the naïve idea that losing my virginity should be special—something I did with my boyfriend.

Not
something I did solely because the guy with me was red-blooded.

He flashed me a knowing look, with a wicked glint in his eyes. “So you doan deny thinking about it?”

I sputtered. “That's the main reason you volunteered to help me—because you wanted to make me one of your
gaiennes
, one of your doe tags!”

“De bon cœur.”
Wholeheartedly.

“All that bullshit about remembering the bayou and
Why-whoever-will-I-talk-Cajun-to?
was just lip service. You couldn't care less if we speak the same language or share a history!”

“I told you the truth. It's not my fault all that comes in a pretty blond package that I want to take to bed—”

BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions sounded just outside.

The car careened out of control. He stomped the brakes, but we rushed toward an embankment.

My hands shot forward to grip the dashboard.
“Jackson!”

“Hold on, Evie!” he yelled, arms straining as he fought the steering wheel.

The car swept up that embankment sideways—a ramp launching us off the ground.

Then . . . weightlessness. Jackson surrendered the wheel, shoving his arm over my chest. The engine revved as we rolled in the air.

My feet were above my head. When the ground suddenly punched the top of the car, I screamed; airbags deployed.

Still we plummeted . . . rolling . . .

Sudden
stop
. The car landed upside down. Windows shattered on impact, metal shrieking from strain.

Jackson and I hung from our seat belts. And it'd sounded like we'd landed on another car?

Even over the wheezing gaskets, our breaths were loud. “Wh-what just happened?” I peered out the window opening, disoriented. We were off the ground, by at least half a dozen feet.

At once, Jackson's buck knife flashed out, stabbing the airbags. “I hope you got your bug-out bag packed right. Now stay still.”

“You're
not
going to cut my seat—”

He cut my seat belt.

“Ow!” I scrambled upright, hunching down on the roof of the car.

Then he cut his own belt, twisting to his back. “Evie, grab your bag and shut your mouth! You hear me?”

I reached back, rummaging until I laid hands on my pack. “What is going on?”

“We're in a heap of trouble.” He grabbed his own pack, his bow, and the shotgun, then shimmied out through the window hole. Jumping down, he hurried to help me out.

As we crawled free from the wreck, comprehension dawned. We'd landed on an old car. All around us were more wrecked vehicles.

A graveyard of cars.

At once, flashlight beams started bouncing toward us. What sounded like a . . .
dog
bayed. While I marveled that one still lived, Jackson raised the shotgun, cocking it.

His lips were thin with fury, his gaze murderous.

“Those people aren't coming to help?” I whispered. “Maybe th-they know that road is dangerous.”

“They ain't coming to help. They're slavers coming to hunt. They were just laying in wait.”

Oh my God.

He gazed from the group nearing on our right—to the forbidding ruins of a forest to our left. Then his expression grew determined.

He gripped my upper arm and hauled me toward the murky tree line. I struggled to keep up, but mud—actual mud—was sucking at my boots. Which meant moisture.

Which meant Bagmen.

“Jackson, we can't go into that forest,” I murmured between breaths, glancing over my shoulder. The men were gaining. In the erratic light, I could make out a few of them, regular dressed middle-aged guys. No manacles at the ready. They looked so . . .
normal
.

“Not a forest. Used to be a wooded swamp.”

“What if those people
do
want to help us?”

“It was a trap.” With one hand, Jackson swapped out the gun for his bow, bolting an arrow in place. “A spike strip took out all four tires. These cars were all wrecked on purpose.”

“They wouldn't!”

“Oh, yeah. They might be too scared to follow us. An old swamp's probably full of Baggers.”

“Forget that! You can't convince me that we'd be better off in there!”

He squeezed my arm. “The ones who set the trap are slavers—at best. At least the Bagmen usually go right for the throat.”

I gaped, letting him lead me away from the approaching lights, the yelling men.

As soon as we plunged past the tree line, sounds echoed all around us. A snapping twig. The rustle of sooty leaves.

Dead branches crackled just to our left. Jackson released me with a shove, whirling around with his bow at the ready. “Run, Evie!”

With a cry, I stumbled forward. But scorched vines littered the ground, slowing my retreat.

Though I had no idea where I was going, I struggled on. The rising moon streamed shafts of light through the leafless trees. Shadows wavered all around me.