Poison Princess Excerpt
Chapter 7
Sterling, Louisiana
The night before the Flash
“This is creepy,” Mel said as we waded through dried-out brush near the abandoned mill on my farm. Again I wondered why my boyfriend Brandon had chosen this remote place for a late-night kick-back with a few couples.
Mel and I had driven as close as we dared in her Beamer, then started walking into the withered woods. The fog was so thick I could barely see where I was stepping. Another of my grandmother’s sayings surfaced: Be wary of droughts—snakes slither about. “This was not my idea, Mel.”
“I should seriously hope not. Two cheerleaders going out into the woods, at night, to a supposedly haunted sugar mill?”
“I can’t decide if it sounds like the beginning of a joke or a horror flick.”
She raised her brows.“Hey, you’ve still got your endangered V-card. Which means you’ll make it to closing credits—I’m s.o.l.” Wild-child Mel, never sugarcoating.
“Do you think the others are already here? Maybe they parked on the opposite side? I should try to call.” Then I remembered I’d left my overnight stuff and phone locked in her car, along with my precious sketchbook, full of drawings of the terrifying visions I’d been having. I turned, but couldn’t see the Beamer through the fog.
“Call?” Mel hastily said. “Don’t be silly. We’re almost there, right?”
As we neared what was left of the mill, I murmured, “Did you hear something?” I rubbed my nape, again feeling like I was being watched—
Lights blinded me. Bodies lunged at me, faces rushing closer.
I shrieked at the top of my lungs.
Shouts of “Surprise!” faded, dozens of students startled into silence by my reaction. Grace Anne, Katherine, Brandon. All of them looked stunned.
Oh. My. God. This is a surprise birthday party. Someone had strung up lights all over the walls. Speakers perched atop rusted cane crushers. Kegs sat in aged iron kettles.
I’d just humiliated myself in front of all of these people.
Mel’s jaw had dropped at my scream. Just when I was about to burst into tears, she recovered, saying loudly, “Evie! You totally knew about this, didn’t you, bitches? Freak out the surprisers?” Then she imitated my shriek, punctuating it with a yodeled “Lay-hee-hoo.”
When people started laughing, I forced a smile. “Yep. I knew. Been waiting all day to do that!” Keep smiling, Evie!
Now everyone relaxed, some giving me play punches on my shoulder like I’d just done something cool, a funny prank. Good save, Mel.
Out of the corner of her mouth, she muttered, “You had no idea, did you?”
“None-point-none.”
Brand swooped me up then and swung me around until I was truly laughing. “I hope you don’t mind.”
I bit my bottom lip. Maybe if the party didn’t get any bigger or the music too loud—
A horn honked. And another. Mel, Brand, and I gazed out the front entrance. Down an old tractor trail, headlight after headlight shone through the fog. It looked like a mass evacuation was pointed directly at the mill.
The last thing I needed was for my mom to call the cops, not realizing it was her daughter throwing the rager. “Look, guys, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
Mel and Brandon blinked at me in confusion. Evie Greene didn’t often utter those words.
“It’s not like we’re going to trash your house,” Brand said. “It’s outside.”
I was already on thin ice at home. “My mom—”
“Will never know. We’ve got, like, five miles between us and your house. Plus the walls keep the sound down.”
Wouldn’t it be abnormal for me to not have a sixteenth-birthday kegger? Hell, if Mom found out, she might take it as a good sign. She’d been rebellious with Gran and usually wasn’t too strict with me.
On the other hand, she might reconsider Brandon being “such a good boy” or hit her limit with Mel’s hijinks.
Earlier tonight, Mel had called her “Woman Who Spawned Evie” to her face. Mom had been unamused.
I didn’t know what I’d do if she outlawed either of them. They meant everything to me.
“I promise you, it’ll be okay,” Brand said. “Scout’s honor.” Instead of the three-finger Scout salute, he held up a peace sign.
I was wavering when Brand dug into his pocket. “Oh, I almost forgot! Your birthday present. Was saving this for Monday, but I thought you might want to wear it tonight.” He handed me a wrapped box with a crushed ribbon.
I ripped it open to find a huge solitaire on a white-gold chain. Stunning.
Mel clasped her hands over her chest, saying in a cajoling tone, “And all he wants is to throw a rager in your sugar mill?” Then she frowned. “Wow. That sounded raunchy.”
“Do you like it?” he asked, seeming nervous. Which was so adorable.
Game. Set. Match. “I love it. And I love my surprise party.” I stood on my toes to give him a quick kiss. “Thank you.”
He grinned, handing me a sweating Solo cup of beer. “Cheers, Eves!”
I raised my cup, hesitating. Would alcohol act wonky with my psych-pills?
But hey, how much worse could my head get? “Cheers, guys!”
For the next hour everybody partook heartily of keg juice, until we were—in Brand’s estimation—”fitshaced!” More and more people showed up, turning my party into a wild and woolly kegger. I saw faces I didn’t recognize, spied letterman jackets from other schools.
Over the course of the night, I’d watched several of Mel’s ill-fated attempts to flirt with Spencer. Yet now, as she danced with me up on a ledge, he was actually checking her out.
She and I sang so loudly I was losing my voice, danced so madly to the thumping music that the world was spiraling. For once, I didn’t fight it. We were laughing at something when I saw Jackson Deveaux leaning his shoulder against the crumbling brick wall in the back.
Then I noticed the other Cajun transfer students beginning to mingle with the crowd. Clotile’s racy outfit made mine—a shimmery Versace halter, black micromini, and knee-high Italian boots—look Amish.
But I couldn’t muster any outrage that they were all here. With a shrug, I thought, This ought to end well.
As I danced, Brand’s eyes were glued to me, not on Clotile. I cast a triumphant look in Jackson’s direction.
His darkened gaze was locked on me as well.
Flustered, I reached out two arms for Brand, prompting him to come help me down. But he swung me up instead, twirling me around in his arms. I laughed, throwing my head back. Spinning . . . spinning . . .
Tingling nose? No, no, not another hallucination! But I knew the symptom, knew there was nothing I could do to stop this.
Suddenly I saw the cryptic boy from my earlier vision. He gave me a defiant kind of shrug—like he’d done something I might get mad at?
On my next rotation, he’d disappeared, but I saw that blurry-faced girl. The archer from before?
I gasped, then caught a glimpse of movement in the tree limbs above. There was another boy! He was dressed in old-timey clothing, with long black hair and jet-black wings.
A last character joined the rotation, a boy with electricity sparking all around his body.
The girl and those two boys looked like they lay in wait for me, ready to pounce.
I twisted in Brandon’s grip until he let me down. With a hearty laugh, he said, “Evie, you about to yuke, or what?”
Or what! Or what!
I put my hand to my forehead—because now as my gaze darted around, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Those kids had disappeared like mist.
