Poison Tongue (8 page)

“Saddie was leaving,” he said.

“It’s not Saddie I’m walking away from.”

Monroe dropped his hand from my arm as he reached up and ran his hands through his hair. It was then I noticed how close he was standing, how his bare chest was decorated with line after line of scars. They ran over his wide, muscular chest, the muscles along his sides that were more pronounced with his arms above his head.

I snapped my gaze away.

“It’s all right, Levi.” Saddie walked up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “I was just leaving, and I’m guessing you wouldn’t come here on a social call. You should stay.”

I thought of the bag that hung on my shoulder and what was inside of it. I looked over at Monroe. “I’ll see you later at the diner?” I asked her.

Saddie smiled. “Of course. You can close for me tonight. I have a killer hangover.”

She turned and walked down the dirt path that would take her back to the other edge of town. I watched her back for a few moments while I tried to think of what to say to Monroe.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked.

“Want is a strong word.”

His expression darkened, and his frown deepened. “You say the sweetest things, Levi.”

“I didn’t come over to braid friendship bracelets with you, Monroe.”

“Well, then,” he said as he took another step toward me. He was too close. The scars on his skin glistened in the sunlight. “Tell me why you are here.”

I looked toward the ground momentarily, then back up at him. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I want to come inside.”

“All right. But it’s hotter than the inside of an engine in there, and I don’t have anything to drink but water and cheap Bourbon.”

“Well, forget it, then. I really only came over for lemonade.”

Despite his sour expression, the corner of his lips twitched. I tried my best to keep my glower in place, but the challenge in his eyes forced a smile from me. He turned without saying anything, and I followed him inside.

Monroe hadn’t been exaggerating—the inside of the Poirier house was hot. The second I walked into the front entryway, I collided with a wall of thick heat. “Why’s it so hot in here?”

He shrugged. I could already feel beads of sweat dripping down the back of my neck. I set my bag down on a chair in the living room. The inside of the house looked different already. Some of the walls had been reboarded and even had a picture or two hanging from them. There was a large rug in the center of the room that hadn’t been there before, and a new table next to the couch, with ornate legs and a floral flourish carved into the side.

The sound of small feet against the floor caught my attention. Coin stared up at me with big, blue eyes, pink tongue hanging out, and tail wagging. I smiled as I reached down and scratched behind his ear.

Monroe walked up to me. He’d pulled on a white T-shirt. I couldn’t help it when my eyes sank to the deep V on the front of it.

“So,” he said as he watched my face. “Want to tell me why you stopped by?”

“About that,” I said. “I shouldn’t have just come over. The thought that you might have someone over never even crossed my mind.”

He pursed his lips, obviously unhappy talking about this. “It’s all right,” he said. “You can stop by any time you want.”

I walked over to the fireplace and picked up a black-and-white framed picture. It was Monroe—younger—standing next to a car. His arms were folded across his thick chest, and he was grinning wide at the camera.

“Be nice to Saddie,” I said. “She’s a sweet girl.”

Monroe sighed. “Shit, Levi. It ain’t even like that.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“It was just the one time. It’ll only ever be the one time.”

I bristled. I wanted to turn around and tell him he could sleep with whomever he wanted—that it was none of my business and I didn’t want, or need, an explanation. I had no idea why Monroe Poirier was suddenly the one person in the universe I wanted to argue with the most. “She’s a good person, and she wears her heart on her sleeve. Besides that, she’s my friend, and I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

“She’s a big girl, Levi.”

“I don’t want her to have her heart broken.”

Monroe’s mouth fell into a lopsided grin. “What makes you think it’s not my heart that’s gonna get broken?”

I threw my hands up in the air. “Forget it.”

“Already forgotten.” His grin grew.

I walked over to the chair with my bag on it. Shrugging off the small cardigan I wore over my too-large tank top, I tossed it over the back of the chair. I opened the side of the pouch and pulled out an elastic band. My hair was barely long enough, but I managed to pull it back from my face and fasten it. I then bent over and rolled up the hems of my pants until they were just below my knee.

When I faced Monroe, I said, “Now sit down on the sofa and close your eyes.”

He made a choking noise. “What?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Sit down and shut up. And don’t peek.”

He moved backward, never taking his eyes off me, then flopped down on the sofa and spread his long arms across the back of it. After another skeptical look, he closed his eyes. Coin jumped up on the sofa and lay down on his lap.

When I was sure he was no longer watching me through his lashes, I slung my bag back over my shoulder. Monroe said nothing as I padded off down the hallway, wandering in and out of the rooms on his main floor.

I hid one of the hoodoo bags in the back of the pantry behind an ancient rolling pin with more layers of dust than I had layers of skin. Another I hid on the top of the doorframe to the back door.

When it was time to climb to the second story, I found myself clutching the staircase railing. There was something unsettling about the long, dark shadows the trees from the swamp cast against the wooden walls and floorboards through the windows. The glass was foggy and old, cracked in some places. Dreary curtains hung lifelessly around a window at the top of the staircase. Unable to help myself as I walked past, I glanced outside at the swamp. Its gray, murky waters remained still, as though they were made of glass.

I forced myself away from the window, away from the view of the swamp, and down the narrow hallway. The upper level of the house was less finished than the bottom. There were no decorations and little furniture. Dust danced in the empty room to the right. The fragrance of fresh soap and disinfectant filled the room to the left.

At the end of the hallway, a door sat open. I walked to it, peered inside. A simple wooden bed frame sat pressed against the far wall. A large wardrobe in the corner. A large stack of books in the center of the floor. Car magazines and books as thick as encyclopedias with pictures of cars on the covers.

I knelt next to Monroe’s bed. For some reason the action made me frown. Hiding hoodoo bags around Monroe’s house was clinical. And yet, crouching next to his bed, looking at the rumpled sheets that he and Saddie had likely been in minutes ago….

The small bag felt electric in my hand. I lifted the corner of the mattress and shoved it underneath, then left the room swiftly and walked back down the hallway. I forced myself not to think about the sheets on Monroe Poirier’s bed.

He was just how I’d left him, eyes closed, relaxed, legs spread as he leaned back on the sofa. Coin found his stuffed toy in the corner of the room more entertaining now. It squeaked as he gnawed on it.

“I’m finished,” I said.

Monroe opened his eyes. Again, there was that flicker. It was golden, but not in color. Something in his eyes—something about his soul—so badly wanted to shine.

When he stood he reached out and brushed against my neck. I fought against the racing of my heart. Hearts were liars. Hearts couldn’t be trusted, especially not when men like Monroe Poirier were around.

“You have dust on your skin,” he said quietly, looking me over.

“You have dust in your house.”

“It’s an old house. Are you gonna tell me what you were doing?”

“No.”

Something caught his eye. He reached his hand up and gently flicked one of the small hoops in my ear.

“You have golden hoops all up your ear.” He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself as though I was but a figment presented before him.

His gaze traveled from my ear, down my neck, to the amulet I wore. When he reached out and touched it, something lit inside me. I wanted to shove him away. I wanted him to tangle the necklace around his hand until it bit into my skin, and pull me closer by my chain.

When our eyes met, he looked like he’d been thinking the same thing.

I stepped back and his hand fell.

He sighed heavily, his large shoulders slouching. He looked like a defeated man. He was a defeated man. “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that,” he said.

“Will you tell me about your family?” I had no right to ask, but I asked anyway.

Monroe motioned for me to sit on the sofa. He took the seat on the other end but turned toward me. I could tell by the expression on his face that this was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now—telling me about his family. Yet he did so anyway.

“I was born a county over,” he said, “but we came to live here when I was just a kid. It was me and my mama most of the time. The old man was never around. Mama always made up excuses for him. I didn’t believe her. Looking back now, I wish I had pretended to believe them, for her sake.”

He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. “I saw her lying there, blood all over. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. I knew she was dead the moment I saw her.

“A man was crouched down next to her, leaning over her, looking at her, his hand at her waist. I don’t remember if I thought anything besides ‘That’s the man who killed my mama.’ And then he looked up and saw me.

“I was a fuckin’ kid, Levi. A damn kid. But I was the man of the house and I knew how to protect myself, even if I hadn’t been there to protect her. We kept a shotgun behind the chair in the living room. I was standing right next to it. When I grabbed it and cocked it in my hands, it felt like the most normal thing in the entire world.

“He screamed something, shot up, put his hand out. I dunno what he said. I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about him to this day. I thought he was the man who’d killed my mama. He came toward me. I don’t know if it was panic or instinct or fear, but I pulled that trigger. Not once did I ever think about not pulling that trigger. Not for a second did I recognize him.”

I leaned back against the arm of the sofa and looked at the man who was bleeding out in front of me. After all these years, he was still dying from this. I couldn’t tell if it was from the guilt of pulling that trigger or the guilt of not being able to be there to save her, but I knew as well as I knew that the sky was blue that this was killing him.

“And it was your dad,” I said, my eyes not leaving his face.

“I didn’t know it was him,” he replied softly. “I hadn’t seen him in almost a year. And even then I barely remembered what he looked like. He was never around. Even when the sheriff and his boys showed up and asked me if I knew who that man was, I told them I didn’t. And it was true.”

“But no one believed you?”

“I got in trouble as a kid. I knew the sheriff on a first-name basis. I fucked around, I messed up a lot, made stupid choices. Only thing the old man ever said to me was how big of a disappointment I turned out to be.”

I furrowed my brow. “I don’t get why they’d still hold that against you if it had been an accident. You were a kid.”

He smiled sadly as he looked down at his hands. “Daddy was a cop. He could also be a mean son of a bitch, but he was a cop.”

“Did you have any other family?”

“An aunt, not that that made the whole mess any better. She’s my dad’s adopted sister. Lived up in Baton Rouge, but came down as soon as she heard. Only met her a handful of times before that. Never saw her again after that day.

“I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when the sheriff told her what I’d done. Her eyes became blank—not dark—just… blank. The last words out of her mouth to me were a curse. She cursed me to forever be followed by darkness.

“I was at her house one time—couldn’t have been more than seven years old. Always hated going there almost as much as she hated me being there. I wandered into the spare bedroom this one time, found boxes of books, strange jars on shelves full of shit that smelled like something dead. These books had pictures in them I didn’t understand. My mama found me and snatched the books away when she caught me looking. Said I was never to go back into that room and never look at those books again.”

Monroe leaned back and scratched the back of his neck. “I’d never really put much thought into it until I was older and thought maybe there was a darkness following me around. Now, I’m not so sure. Never believed in curses or anything supernatural, but this kind of feeling in my chest—I ain’t sure it could be anything else.”

“There is darkness in your soul. A curse,” I told him. His eyes met mine. “I can see it strangling you. It’s not a feeling or a shadow, it’s as real to me as the moon in the sky. It’s a serpent around your neck, an endless pit of darkness swallowing your soul.”

“Is that what you see when you look at me? A tortured soul?”

I looked down at my hands, trying to force my gaze away from the snake slithering up Monroe’s side. Its tail rattled and scales rustled when it rubbed against the fabric of his thin T-shirt.

I couldn’t force myself to look, to accept that the snake was part of him, that they would always be one and the same. It had wrapped itself around his neck, and as badly as I wanted to look at Monroe and see a man, that’s not what I saw when I looked at him.

“Levi,” he said gently.

“It’s almost always there, coiled around your neck.”

“The snake?”

I nodded. “Your soul.”

“How can you see things like that? How can you see a person’s soul?”

“Our family blood is laced with something that pulls darkness our way. It’s in our blood. We can see and feel things most people can’t. And while my gran could talk to those who have passed, and Mama can sometimes see things that haven’t yet happened, I’m a magnet for darkness.