Poison (36 page)

“Twenty-seven! No more!”

“No more!” shouted someone in the crowd. One man shook his fist.

“And now some brainless teenagers”—she pronounced the word “teenagers” as if she were talking about ax murderers—“have taken it upon themselves to bring the
entire population
of a distant community into our midst. Now, these may be fine people, but we don’t know that. We don’t know what they are, or what they want to do to us.”

“Where’s Jeremiah Shaw?” someone called out.

“Where indeed?” Mrs. Fowler pointed to the mansion. “The ringleader of the gang of hooligans at the center of this is himself a Shaw, and one of precious little magic. This is no doubt just another scheme to add more gold to the Shaw family’s already overflowing coffers.”

“At our expense!” a woman near me called out.

So far I’d gone unnoticed in my hooded jacket and muffler. Fortunately, my layers of clothing insulated the poison I carried. But the closer I got to the big stone staircase leading to the mansion’s front door, the more conspicuous I became. It couldn’t be helped. I had to get inside.

“Well, look who’s here,” Mrs. Fowler said, crossing her arms as I neared her podium. “The criminal’s little girlfriend.” She raised her chin to snarl at me. “Come to cheer the traitor on? Or just go to jail with him?”

This last was just rhetoric, I knew, because no witch from Whitfield would ever call the police for something that involved magic. It was our first rule—
keep silent.
But Mrs. Fowler and her small crowd of followers could make life difficult. They already had. At least she didn’t know about the poison inside me. If she had, those people might have panicked.

Still, Livia Fowler didn’t look as if she was going to let me pass. She grabbed the sleeve of my coat—she didn’t know how dangerous that was—and then let go with a shriek, clutching her heart. “What . . . ” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You did this,” she rasped.

I shrank back, but people were already approaching me.
Please leave me alone
, I thought. I didn’t want to hurt them. No matter what they thought of me or my friends, they didn’t deserve to die.

“Stop her!” Mrs. Fowler said, fanning herself.

“Better not,” I said, holding up my hands. A blue-white light emanated from them.

Mrs. Fowler reached out for me, then thought better of it. The others backed away too, parting to form a path for me. But as I got to the massive front door, someone threw a stick at me from behind. Fortunately, I was wearing so many heavy garments that it didn’t really hurt. Still, I was very eager to get inside.

I pounded on the door, but no one came. Well, I reasoned, if I’d been inside, I wouldn’t have let me in either. Then
something hit me hard on the shoulder, and I saw a rock glance off me and land at my feet. At first I couldn’t believe it. Would they actually
stone
me out there in the open?

Another rock struck me in the middle of my back. That one hurt. Then someone hurled a handful of small stones that broke the glass of the door, and I knew I had to get out of there.

It was just like being back in Avalon, with witches pelting me with rocks. In fact, I thought as I looked for an avenue of escape, there was a lot about Whitfield that was like Avalon: a lot of judgment and punishment and fighting for power, and rules made so long ago that they no longer had any meaning. And this crazy prejudice against outsiders, as if “we” were somehow always better than “them,” no matter what.

Were my own people so weak? But I already knew the answer. They were. We all were. It was too easy for human beings to turn into monsters. Look at me. I hadn’t done anything except pick the wrong friend, and I’d become a walking bomb. And Morgan, who’d only wanted her dad to love her. And Mrs. Fowler, who was just scared. And even the Seer of Avalon, who had sold out her people for a stab at immortality.

So easy.

I tried to shake off those feelings. Even if they were true, they weren’t going to help me do what I’d come to do. For that I had to get inside the house, and that meant I had to get away from Livia Fowler and her rock-throwing cronies.

First I leaped out of the way of the next projectile, onto the low wall that was on either side of the stairway. This, I discovered to my dismay, made me more of a target than ever. As a tree branch whizzed over my head, I looked down. The wall may have been low from the front, but behind it was a
drop of nearly ten feet. For a moment I hesitated, trying to decide which would be easier to run with, a broken leg or a broken head. Then another rock hit me hard in my back, and I jumped.

As it turned out I didn’t break either my leg or my head, but the crowd wasn’t about to give up. I took off in a sprint, taking care to keep between the house and the boxwood hedge that surrounded it. My plan, such as it was, was to get to the rear of the mansion, out of sight of the protesters, and then run for the woods on the far side of the lawn, where maybe I’d be able to call someone inside on my cell phone. It wasn’t much of a plan, I admit, but it was
something,
at least some kind of effort.

Just do what you can.
Right then I didn’t know what the best thing to do was. Would it be best to talk Peter out of the whole project? Or help Bryce lead those doomed people out of Avalon? Or would I be of more help casting spells with Gram and the other witches? I only hoped I’d be able to figure out what I was meant to do before it was too late to do anything. As I ran through the knee-high snow with the ugly sounds of the crowd receding behind me, I was becoming aware of a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. It was the feeling—the
knowledge—
that, however I might have screwed up in the past, I had something to offer now. And I had to get into the house.

“Katy!” someone whispered. I looked up. Becca was peering out from behind a narrow door at the back of the house. “I saw what happened out front,” she said, waving me inside. “I can hide you. Hurry.”

“Just get me a blanket,” I said, running up the back steps.
They led to the laundry room, where Becca held out a comforter thick enough to protect her—and whoever else was in the house—from me.

“It was in the dryer,” she said. “So I guess it’s clean.”

“I don’t care.” I snatched it out of her hands and covered myself with it.

“Notice I didn’t ask you what you wanted the blanket for.”

“Good,” I said.

“Because I know,” she said quietly. “Everyone knows.”

I looked at the floor. “Are you saying I’m not welcome?”

“You are to me,” she said. That meant a lot. “And to Peter.”

I swallowed. I wished she hadn’t said that. This was no time to get emotional. “I just want to help,” I said, trying to act casual as I nodded toward the interior of the house. “So what’s going on?”

She sighed. “You’re too late,” she said. “It’s already started.”

Well, that’s one option I don’t have to think about anymore,
I reasoned. “Okay. There are still some things—”

“You were supposed to stop Peter!” she screeched, planting her hands on her hips. “I mean, I asked you,
begged
you, but you hung up on me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, remembering that I’d been on the phone with Becca when my dad and Mim had come home. “I got here as fast as I could.”

She blew air out between her lips. “Well, Bryce is already in Avalon.”

“And Peter?”

“Peter’s at the controls in the lab here while Bryce is on the other side, trying to get the Travelers through. Only there are a lot of witches over there trying to stop them.”

“Are the Travelers fighting back?”

“What with? Those guys don’t even have pitchforks, let alone weapons. All they’ve been able to do so far is put up a kind of wall made out of whatever they could get their hands on. But they won’t be able to hold out long. Those shape-shifters are going to kill Bryce the second they get the chance. They’ll kill them all. And then they’ll come here and kill us, too.”

And then I knew. I understood the message. There was something I could do, after all. Something I could do that no one else could.

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Look, even if you get Peter to shut it down, I don’t think Bryce is going to leave without the Travelers at this point.”

I didn’t have time to talk, but she needn’t have worried about that. I knew that Peter wouldn’t shut it down for me or anyone else. “Which way is the lab?” I asked.

Becca pointed. “Through the kitchen and down the long hall. Hey, what are you going to do?”

“Whatever I can,” I said.

•  •  •

The lab was full of people, including Hattie, Miss P, and Gram, who were pressed together in a circle, deep in concentration. I think Peter was the first to notice me, although I don’t know how he did, since I was behind him. But at the moment I walked in, before the room quieted and people started to flee in panic, Peter turned away from the console where he was sitting and looked right into my eyes.

Then the fear in the room took root.

“Who is that?”

“What’s she doing here?”

“Get her away!”

“Clear out! It’s the poison girl!”

The crowded room suddenly split into two groups with a wide space in the center with only me in it. Me, and the console where Peter sat before a huge screen at the front of the room. On the screen three vultures were flying from a familiar outcropping of rock toward a ragged group of people huddled behind a makeshift barrier.

“Katy!” I heard Gram call out, but I was already running.

“Let me through,” I said. Peter closed his eyes in anguish. He knew. He knew me, and he knew what had to happen if the Travelers were going to be saved. “Now!” I shouted.

Peter nodded once.
Good-bye, my love
, I thought as I leaped through the screen into Avalon.

•

“Katy?” Bryce was so surprised that he almost touched me.

“Keep the Travelers away from me,” I said as I moved past the barrier Bryce had built to protect the Avalonians from the Seer’s witches. The blanket was still wrapped tightly around me. “I’ll try to cover you.”

Once I was in the open, I took off the blanket and my winter coat. The vultures recognized me immediately. For a moment they seemed to hesitate in midflight, shimmering between the glamour that made them appear as birds and their true human forms. I knew they were afraid of me. One of them even tried to turn back, but was attacked by the others until it wheeled around and hurtled forward toward me, shrieking, its talons out, the shadow of its black wings spreading over me.

I knew I had to kill it, but when the actual moment came to strike, I think I would have preferred almost anything else. As the vulture speeded toward me, I had a very strong impulse to run back behind the barrier and hide with my hands over my
head. But then, I knew, I’d really be of no use to anyone.

I gathered all the strength of the terrible power in my hands and shot it out at the vulture. It fell to earth, not a bird at all but an old woman who seemed to grow older with every second until, by the time she might have struck the ground, there was nothing left of her but dust.

Behind me the Travelers cheered. “Go, Katy!” Bryce shouted, pumping his fist in the air. But I didn’t feel like it had been any kind of victory. I kept seeing the old woman’s face as she fell, her rags flapping around her like broken wings.

“Look out!” Bryce shouted, pointing at the sky behind me. I whirled around before I could think anymore about the vulture—the person—I’d just killed. Because that was what I was there for. To kill. I’d known it when I’d come. It was what I was good for, maybe the only thing I was good for anymore.

So I choked down the bile in my throat and shot the poison out of my hands. It lit up the sky like a forest fire. Four of the witches fell, disintegrating before they hit the ground. But two others managed to escape by changing themselves into snakes that shot through the crowd of Travelers like lightning bolts, attacking the line of people waiting to come through the narrow portal that Peter had created.

The Travelers screamed and scattered while Bryce tried vainly to round them up as the snakes slithered from one person to another, biting indiscriminately.

“Help us,” someone wailed. I couldn’t use my poison this close to the crowd. I knew I’d kill them all. All I could do was find the snakes.

I lumbered behind the barrier. A few people fled from me in terror. Some had already tried to run away, back to the caves
and huts where they had lived all their lives. They now lay dead in the field. The others were too panicked by the snakes in their midst to notice them, or me. Trying not to get too close to anyone, I walked toward where the two snakes were slithering among the Travelers. One of them hissed malevolently as I approached.

“What are you going to do, poison me?” I asked softly as I grabbed the snakes in my two hands. They squirmed wildly before the inevitable happened, and they disintegrated.

I shuddered, wishing I could have removed my hands from my body, from my memory.