Poison Princess (31 page)

“Leave that boy behind?” At once, Jackson's mood seemed to improve.

“I was getting out, one way or another.”

“Then maybe it wasn't true love on your part, no?”

I kind of wished it
had
been. I felt guilty that I hadn't been in love with Brandon, as if I hadn't appreciated how good our lives were, at least before I'd been sent away. “I don't want to talk about him anymore.”

“Then tell me where you really were last summer, when you dropped off the face of the earth. You weren't at a special school, were you?”

Two realizations struck me—Jackson was one of the most perceptive people I'd ever met. And he'd studied every byte of data on that phone.

Surely he would notice that my text messages to Brandon had gone from countless to zero overnight—until the rare texts began to arrive over the summer. On the exact same days of the month, at the same time.

Though I'd told no one where I was, a clever boy could figure out that I'd been locked up
somewhere
. “No way I'm talking about that, Jackson. Not until you divvy.”

He looked to be growing uneasy again, like he'd prefer facing an army of Bagmen over talking about himself.

“We don't have to do this,” I assured him. “We don't have to get to know each other—even though we're on the road together and we might die tomorrow. As soon as we get to North Carolina, I'll tell you all my deepest, darkest secrets, and you can leave, still a stranger to me. If that's what you want.”

He exhaled a gust of breath. “Ask, then.” He dragged his flask out of his own bag, as if in readiness.

Surprised he was cooperating, I sat up. “What did you really want to do after school?”

“A podna of mine worked on an oil rig off the coast of Mexico. Eight-week stints. Great money.” He flashed me a rueful grin. “
No
girls. I was goan to send money to Clotile, and she'd look after my
mère
.” In a more somber tone, he added, “We had it all figured out.”

A boy with hopes, dreams, and a
Spanish for Beginners
book. Just as I'd wondered all those months ago, he
had
planned on getting out of that hellhole. “You said Clotile . . . that she might be your sister. Do you know who your father was?”

“I knew
of
him, more like. Only met him once.”

“Why?”

“He was too busy spoiling his legitimate son to spend time with me—or to send a single dime to
ma mère
. Told her he wouldn't admit culpability or some bullshit.”

“Sounds like a lawyer.”

With a contemplative swig of his flask, Jackson muttered, “Heh.” Cajun for
Huh. You think so?
“By the time I learned I could nail his ass with a paternity suit, I was more concerned with telling him where to shove his money.” His hand tightened around the bow stock. “I knew who my
père
was, but Clotile could only narrow hers down to three or so. My father made the short list. Blood or no, she was a sister to me.”

“I'm sorry you lost her.”

“And what about your dad?” he asked, changing the subject.

Another thing I'd learned about the Cajun? He didn't like messy emotions. His go-to response for just about every situation tended to be pure anger, with a side of action.

“I never knew my father,” I said. “He disappeared when I was young. Went into the bayou on a fishing trip and never came back.”

Jackson looked like he had an opinion on that, but wisely kept it to himself. “Am I done now?”

“Please tell me why you were on parole.”

Another shrug. “One of my ex-stepfathers wouldn't take
non
for an answer. He terrified
ma mère
. And he paid for it.” The fierce protectiveness in his gaze was staggering.

So Clotile hadn't been the only woman he cared about who'd been abused?

“I did to him what you saw me do to that other man—and then some.”

“Bagasse?”

He nodded. “Knew I'd get sentenced; didn't care. He somehow pulled through, but he'd never be able to hurt another woman.”

As I wondered what that meant, Jackson said, “Now can we get back to your summer away?”

He'd shared so much with me that I supposed I could at least tell him this. And hadn't I yearned to talk to someone about these things? But I didn't want him to look at me like those docs had. Because at some point in the last nine days, Jackson's opinion of me had become important—

“You went to a nuthouse, didn't you?”

“Wh-why would you guess that?”

“If anybody else saw that journal of yours, you'd have been sent up for true.”

I glared. “Or maybe you guessed that because you saw my texts to Brandon, and put things together.”

“You told me there was a reason you'd asked about me going to prison. I think it was 'cause you got locked up too, only you were with all the
fous
.” Lunatics.

“Ugh! You are such a dick!”

“Shh.”
His gaze darted, body tensing before he gradually settled down once more.

I never should have sidled around this subject with him! Now he thought I was mental.

“You go in for the visions—or the voices?”

I just stifled a gasp. “What . . . how did you know about the voices?” Why was I bothering to hide
anything
from this boy?

“I'm not stupid, Evie. I've caught you talking to yourself. A lot. Muttering for someone to leave you alone or begging them to shut up.”

“I don't . . . it's not like that.”

“Then what
is
it like?”

“Why should I tell you anything? You'll just make fun of me again,” I pointed out, even as I was nearly shaking with the need to unload. “You'll call me a lunatic.”

“I never called you a lunatic. I'm not making fun.”

Did I dare confide this to him? I bit my bottom lip. “I'm not talking to myself—I'm talking to others. I do hear voices, tons of them. They all sound like they're kids our age.”

“Do you think they're real?” he asked in a neutral tone.

I sighed, nodding. “And I feel like I'm connected to them somehow. Like we share a hive mind or something.”

“Pardon?”

“Hive mind. Like how bees communicate.”

“You're starting to confuse and unsettle me, Evangeline,” he said, but strangely, he didn't look either at all. Did nothing faze him? “What they say to you?”

“Sometimes nothing but gibberish. Sometimes I hear these phrases repeated over and over. A girl says, ‘Behold the Bringer of Doubt.' This Irish kid always says, ‘Eyes to the skies, lads, I strike from above.' It gives me chills.”

Jackson studied my expression, probably reading me like a book, while I gleaned nothing from him. Would he be even more likely to cut his losses now, to ditch the mental girl? “Why do you think it's happening?”

“I don't know. That's the reason I have to get to Gran. She will have all the answers.”

“Is
she
psychic?”

Good question. “I honestly don't know. She could be.” Or maybe she'd learned all this Arcana stuff from her own mother, information handed down through the generations.

Hadn't Gran told me she herself was a
chronicler
? Matthew had mentioned something about it as well.

“If your grandmother knows so much, then why the hell didn't she teach you before she packed up for the beach?” Jackson said. “Let me guess: There was some secret passing-down-the-baton ceremony on your sixteenth birthday that never came about—”

“She was sent away when I was eight. Everybody said she was insane. I was forbidden to talk about what she'd taught me.”

“You
have
to remember something.”

“Not enough. I was forbidden even to think about her.”

“Nobody can control what you think about,” Jackson said.

I gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, but they
can
.” I recalled sitting at a cold metal table with my primary shrink. I'd glanced down, confused to see a puddle of saliva pooling. Even when dosed so heavily—with a billion milligrams of don't-give-a-shit drugs pumping through me—I'd been
humiliated
to realize the drool was coming from me. He'd asked,
“Evie, do you understand why you must reject your grandmother's teachings . . . ?”

Jackson slid his gaze to me. “They get into that head of yours?”

How to tell him I'd been drugged to within an inch of my life in an echoing ward, then hypnotized until I could barely remember my name?

No, not
hypnotized
—that might've been beneficial. Hypnosis that made things worse? That was called
brainwashing
.

“Yes,” I said simply.
Let's see how he likes that for an answer.

He let it drop. “So, do you hear voices right now?” When I eventually nodded, he did a double take. “Like
right
now?”

“Don't look at me like I'm a freak, Jackson. I hate that look!” I squeezed my eyes shut, mortified. His nuthouse and
fous
cracks hadn't helped things.

Why had I revealed so much to him?

Oh yeah, because he'd shared with me. One difference: I didn't judge him.

“Did you just get your feelings hurt again? Damn,
cher
, I doan know my way around this with you.”

I opened my eyes but wouldn't look at him. “Around what?”

“Being with a girl like you.” Now I had to raise my brows at him. “Yeah, with your
bebins
and your girly ways. You got soft hands, and you're . . . soft.
But
I doan think you're a freak.”

“How could you not?” I imagined what Brandon's reaction might have been if he were the one here with me tonight. Would he be able to handle my confession? Then I remembered that I probably wouldn't have survived this long without Jackson.

“Look, Evie, I saw some things before the Flash, things that couldn't be explained. Hell, my grand
mère
was rumored to be a
traiteuse
.”

A kind of Cajun medicine woman. “Really?”

He nodded. “After the Flash, I'm ready to believe just about anything. Do these voices make me uneasy?
Mais
yeah. Am I itching to know what causes them?
Ouais.
But that doan mean I think less of you for hearing them.” He curled his forefinger under my chin, until our eyes met—and I could see he was telling the truth. “Just glad you told me a secret.” He canted his head. “Though you got a thousand more,
non
?”

So many more.

One of those voices belongs to Death on a pale horse, and he wants to kill me. I communicate “clairaudiently” with a crazy boy who gives me nosebleeds when he thinks I'm not listening hard enough. Just about every morning, I wake up to the scent of blood and the sound of agonized screams.

My gaze dropped, and he lowered his hand.

“What're the voices saying now?”

“They're quiet enough to ignore,” I said. “When I'm around others, they pipe down.” I peered up at him from under a lock of hair and admitted, “But never as much as they've done around you.”

“Evangeline,” he sighed. “It ain't ever goan to be easy with you, is it?”

Though I feared more and more that he would get sick of me and leave one day, I answered honestly, “Nope.”

DAY 235 A.F.
DEEPER IN MISSISSIPPI

“Do you need to slow down?” Jackson yelled over the winds.

I shook my head, wanting to continue on. We'd left Haven almost two weeks ago; I was beginning to fear we'd never get out of this state.

Bandannas over our faces and sunglasses in place, we meandered through another deserted town, with a windstorm whipping around us—and tremors beneath our feet.

Lucky for us, the storms had become more sporadic and shorter, lasting just an hour or two a day. A blessing, since we remained carless.

Even if Jackson could fix a vehicle, the tank would be empty.

On foot, we'd started seeing gaunt-cheeked survivors every now and then, peeking out from behind barricaded windows. Much to Jackson's annoyance, I always gave them a tentative wave. But none of them had wanted anything to do with us. . . .

“You stay right behind me,” he said now, pressing on. He would always walk first, blocking the wind for me, insisting I draft behind him.

During the worst part of the storms, I would curl my forefinger around one of his belt loops, which always seemed to amuse him.

I did so now, dumbly following his broad back down yet another “main” street. During daylight hours, Jackson usually had the shotgun in hand, with his bow and bag slung over his shoulders.