Poison (29 page)

“Please. I didn’t mean . . . ” I began, but I knew that what I was saying was so foolish, so useless.
I hadn’t meant to kill
her.
As if that made everything all right. As if anything would ever be right again.

I staggered away from them, looking from the lifeless girl who had begged for my help to the rocks where Bryce had been carried off, and my heart was so heavy with grief and shame that I felt as if it were going to fall out of my chest. I had destroyed them both.

My knees buckled, but before I hit the ground, someone grabbed me by the collar of my sweater and shoved me toward the cave where the bats had come from.

Over my shoulder I saw her face. “You,” I whispered, meeting Morgan’s eyes.

•

“Relax,” Morgan said. “She’s not dead. They’re just sensitive here. She only had to be close to you to get knocked out by your mojo.”

I blinked in astonishment.

“Move.” Her rudeness seemed to wake me out of my guilty torpor. “Into the bat cave, Robin.”

I stared at her in shock and disgust. “How . . . How . . . ”

She sighed. “Just get inside.”

I noticed that she was dressed in rags, like the other witches of Avalon. Without her sophisticated clothes and perfect makeup, Morgan looked ordinary, almost pitiful. She reminded me of what I thought mountain people who lived a hundred years ago might look like. Her pathetic appearance made me feel less afraid of her as I let her lead me deeper into the cave.

It was obviously a home, despite its primitive structure. There was a fire burning inside an earthen pit, beneath an
opening that let out the smoke and let in a single shaft of bright sunlight. Nearby were a few cratelike blocks made of wood that served as chairs and a rickety table on which burned a smelly candle that popped and spewed black smoke.

“Not much like the Emporium of Remarkable Goods, is it,” Morgan said bitterly.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, completely flummoxed. She was the last person I thought I’d find in this place.

“Waiting for you,” she said with a smile.

I shook my head, trying to hold myself together. “Look, Morgan, if there’s an antidote to what I’ve got, what I did to that girl—”

“I told you, she’ll be fine,” she said. “For a while anyway. They’re all dying, though. It’s just a matter of time.”

“From . . . the water?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want it to drag on like this. I thought you’d just come in with guns blazing. It was a mistake to put you into the lake. That lessened the effect of the poison. I didn’t plan it that way.” She leaned against one of the uneven damp walls. A spider crawled beside her. “But then, in the end, I suppose it doesn’t make much difference how it happens.”

“It happened because of me,” I said hotly, before I remembered who had started all this. “Because of
you
.”

She waved me away. “Don’t be stupid. It’s because of
her.
” She gestured with her head.

“Who? The Seer?”

“She’s the one who’s kept us all in the Stone Age, and it’s killing us. Killed us already,” she said. “There’s no hope here. No future. And anyone who tries to make one is killed.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “She didn’t pollute the lake,” I said levelly. “I did.”

Morgan laughed. She
laughed.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “You want the prize for wallowing in guilt, you got it.”

I opened my mouth to speak a couple of times, but closed it again. She was beyond unbelievable. “You make me sick,” I said finally. “They’re all going to die here, Morgan, and you’re laughing about it.”

She looked at her nails. “That was the point.”

I buried my face in my hands.

“Oh, stop being boring.”

That was it. If killing off an entire civilization was boring, Morgan was about to get very bored. Bored to death. I lunged at her, claws out.

She caught me by both wrists. “Hey, you were trying to kill me, you little turd,” she said.

I took a long look at her hands, enclosing my wrists. “You’re not . . . ”

“Poisoned? No.” She pushed me away. “I gave the ring to you, so I’m immune. Too bad, huh?”

“I . . . ” I felt my eyes filling with tears. What was I becoming? In the end was I any better than she was? “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I really was. It had been a terrible thing for me to do, no matter what.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said. “Is there anything you’re
not
sorry for?”

I turned away from her.

“Sooner or later, babe, you’ve got to accept that you’re not perfect.”

I whirled around to face her.
“Not perfect?”
I shouted. “I
kill people by touching them, Morgan!” Angrily I wiped my eyes. “Oh, what do you care? As soon as you met me, you sent me into a lake to drown.”

Her eyebrows raised. “I beg your pardon?”

“Get off it, Morgan. You know that you wanted—expected—me to die there.”

“You mean when you went through the tankard?” She gave a disgusted sigh. “I hardly think I tried to kill you, especially since I was the one who pulled you out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your precious Peter,” Morgan said, morphing in front of my eyes into an exact duplicate of Peter Shaw. “Do you still believe after all this time that he rescued you?”

For a moment all I could do was gape. She looked
exactly
like Peter, except for the expression on his face. Peter would never have looked at me with such disdain. “No one rescued me,” I muttered, trying to remember what had happened. I’d been in the water, I remembered that. And then Peter . . . well, he’d just sort of
appeared.
“He told me how to get back,” I recalled. Morgan nodded. “Are you saying that was you?”

“Do you really think your boyfriend would have told you to find the tankard?”

I was confused. “But then why . . . ”

“Would you have listened if it had been anyone besides Peter telling you what to do?”

I guessed she knew me better than I’d thought.

“What about being your own hero, Katy?”

She was just so
harsh.
“Whatever,” I said. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Came to watch,” she said, smiling. “Those bird-women
are
old
. They’re dropping already.” She held out her hands, palms up. “Can’t live without water.”

“What about the others?” I shouted. “The innocent ones.”

“I’m the innocent one,” she said. “And I’ve already been punished. Now it’s their turn.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake.” I stood up. “You’re insane.”

“Why? Because I want to get rid of this place, this place that’s so poisonous it makes you look like cotton candy?”

“Because you’re destroying people who had nothing to do with what happened to you!” But it was pointless to talk to her. “Fine, do whatever you want. I only want to get rid of this stupid ring.”

“Then you came to the wrong place. Or haven’t you noticed that our so-called Seer isn’t interested in helping you . . . or anyone else?”

I swallowed.

“It’s getting stronger, isn’t it,” she said. “The poison.”

“Do you care?”

She shrugged again.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said. “But for the record, destroying Avalon isn’t going to kill the Seer. She’s immortal, in case you didn’t know.”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “Once everyone’s gone, she’ll have this whole world to herself. A master without slaves. A queen whose subjects are all ghosts.”

I headed toward the mouth of the cave. “Great. Enjoy yourself, Morgan.”

“Don’t go out there,” she said. “Those hags are looking for you, waiting for you. If they see you, you’re dead.”

I looked back at her for what I hoped was the last time. “Then they’ll save everyone a lot of trouble,” I said.

•  •  •

As I walked out of the cave, I saw the witches on the rock outcropping begin to stir. They had spotted me. Now they were coming for me, sliding down the rock or leaping off it, transforming into animals and other things I didn’t ever want to see up close. Two of them changed in midair into the huge vultures I recognized, their tattered robes morphing into wings, their voices rising in a wild scream as they sped toward me over the meadow.

I ran blindly, without any idea which way the versimka was. I could hear the witch creatures behind me now, their shrieks and cries growing louder as their wings made shadows over my head. When I felt the first talon’s scratch on my back, I whirled around.

“Get away!” I spat, and light poured out of me. One of the witches fell to the ground before I could close my eyes. I heard the others dropping behind me as I ran, ablaze like a torch with my own dangerous power.

Poison. You are poison,
a voice inside me said.
You are death.

“No!” I screamed. I tried to cover my face with my hands, but the light emanating from them was too bright.

Then a voice, familiar, close. “Katy!”

“Who . . . Where . . . ”

“Over here!”

I stumbled, squinting. “Peter?” I called. “Is it really you, this time?”

“What?”

“Don’t come near me. I’m—”

“Katy!” Before I could see past my poisonous light, Peter
caught me in his arms. “I’ve found a way inside,” he said as he pulled me through what felt like a membrane of thick air. Those were the last words he spoke.

I screamed as we fell to the floor together in a room filled with electronic equipment. Against the oddly ornate nineteenth-century walls stood my great-grandmother, Hattie Scott, and Miss P. All of them looked shocked, their faces frozen into masks of horrified surprise.

Before I even saw him, I knew what I had done.

Peter wasn’t breathing. He lay on the floor like a rag doll, dead.

He was dead.

•

I skittered away, blinking, trying to hold my poison in, trying to retract it, take it back.

Miss P fainted. Hattie ran up to Peter and held him, rocking and wailing. By the time Gram knelt beside them, the nimbus around me had dimmed to nearly nothing.

“He’s gone,” Gram said, looking at me.

I felt myself shaking all over. Sparks were flying out my fingers, and my throat opened to let out a moan that would have poured out of me like a river, but I didn’t let that happen.

“Take him to Eric,” I said in a hoarse whisper, using every ounce of control I could muster to keep my voice steady.

“Can’t you see!” Hattie shouted in a burst of anger. “Can’t you see it’s too late for that?”

“Hattie, please. She’s only trying to help.”

“I don’t want her help!” she shrieked. “I want her out of here! Do you understand?”

“Shh,” Gram said, placing her hand on Hattie’s arm.

“Eric can help him,” I said levelly. “He helped me.”

“Were you
dead
?” Hattie growled.

I had to tell her. “Yes,” I said quietly. “I was.”

Both Hattie and Gram swiveled their heads to face me. Miss P was just coming to, bewildered.

“It happened last year,” I said. “I died and Eric brought me back.”

Gram and Hattie exchanged glances.

“Take him, Gram,” I said. “Take him to Eric.”

Gram blinked for a moment, then nodded her head. “All right.” She stood up. When Hattie kept rocking with Peter in her arms, Gram pried her hands away. “Come on, Hattie,” she said gently.

“Why should we listen to her?” Hattie choked, weeping.

Gram sighed. “Because it’s the only hope we have. Take his arms, Hattie.”

As the three women were struggling with Peter’s weight, Gram turned to me again. “Where is Bryce?” she asked.

The word seemed to roll in the pit of my stomach before clawing its way up my throat and bursting from my mouth: “Gone.”

Everything hung still for a moment, as if all the air had left the room. Then a low moan escaped from Hattie. “Steady,” Gram said.

I took a step forward. “Maybe I can—”

“No,” Hattie said.

“I think perhaps you’d better go for now,” Miss P said, coughing softly. “If you’re all right.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m—” I began, but “sorry” wouldn’t begin to express what I felt.