Poison Tongue Read online

  “Hey,” I said in reply.

  I grabbed my apron off the hook it hung from in the back room. As I pulled it over my head, Saddie walked in through the door carrying two trays full of plates on her forearms. It had always amazed me how she could manage to carry five piping-hot plates of food at once and manage not to drop any, especially since she was a few inches taller than me and the self-titled clumsy one.

  “Levi, thank God, you’re here,” she said. Her face was flushed red and her forehead covered in sweat.

  Saddie’s honey-colored hair hung neatly over her shoulder, the day of waiting tables both inside and outside the diner giving her a warm glow. The easy smile on her face was affectionate, and I could tell how grateful she was that my shift had begun.

  When we’d been in school together, we’d never spoken two words to one another. Now, we talked almost every day and relied on each other.

  “Where else would I be?” I took the trays from her and began loading dishes into the dishwater.

  She stretched, cracking her back. “Who knows. Off chasing witches, probably.”

  I grinned at her. She grinned back.

  Saddie was the only person outside of my family and Annamae whom I’d spoken with about some of the oddities of my family. But whereas Annamae took me seriously, Saddie always thought I was joking.

  She turned and looked over her shoulder as the front door chimed. “We’d better get out there. It’s starting to pick up.”

  “You got plans tonight?”

  Saddie almost always had plans. Her catlike eyes and long, thin legs saw to that. She looked just like the typical girl next door, and even I couldn’t deny she was naturally beautiful.

  “You know I don’t kiss and tell, Levi.”

  I smiled as she turned and grabbed the coffeepot off the burner and made her way out front. I followed behind her, taking a stack of menus as I did, and walked to the front door to seat the small lineup of customers.

  THE DINNER rush passed quickly, almost without me even noticing. It was busy, even for a Friday night. The diner bustled, people talking loudly, laughing, enjoying their hot meals and cheap coffee. I joked along with them, talking with some of the local customers whom I knew more about than some folks knew their own families.

  It wasn’t until Hud called out from the back that we’d only be taking orders for another half hour that I noticed how dark it had grown outside and how the diner had slowly cleared out. I walked behind the counter and leaned against it, looking at Saddie as she closed the cash register.

  “You have a date tonight,” I said.

  She turned to me. “How could you tell?”

  “Lipstick, for one. You’re also smiling more than usual.”

  “Hey, I’m always smiley. And bubbly.”

  I said nothing, just slowly let the smile spread across my face. She laughed as she reached out with the towel that had been thrown over her shoulder, and she hit me with it.

  The door chimed and immediately the diner fell silent.

  It felt like the atmosphere changed, like night had fallen and had swallowed up all the light and ease in the room. Like a wild horse sprinting forward, the memory of my dream last night collided with me. It hit me so hard I almost stumbled backward.

  The familiar twist of haze around my neck squeezed the air from my throat. That hard, unrelenting pressure forced itself against my skin. Purple swirls danced in front of my eyes, and blackness stretched far, so far, into nothing….

  “Levi.”

  I gasped.

  “Hey!” Saddie stood in front of me, her hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  I blinked at her. My stomach was in knots. The nausea hit me harder than the memory of my dream. Droplets of sweat traveled down the back of my neck, along my spine.

  “Yes,” I choked out.

  My limbs weren’t working right. My body felt like I’d been dipped in molasses and hung out in the sun to dry. The air I sucked in was thick and scratched my throat. The edges of my vision were blurred as blackness seeped in.

  “You look sick,” Saddie said. Her brows were low over her eyes, and her grip on my shoulders tightened.

  “Something’s not right, Saddie.”

  Right as she opened her mouth to speak, her gaze flickered to a place beyond my shoulder. Like a thick, corded rope had tied itself around me, I turned, slowly, to see what had caught her attention.

  Snakes coiled themselves around his body—a blue one twining around his leg, a red-and-gold-flecked snake wrapped twice around his waist. The yellow end of a tail slipped out from just around his bicep, while a pair of ruby-red eyes glowed from beneath the darkness of his hair. A huge black snake slithered and hissed as it slinked around his neck. It ran its smooth body against his Adam’s apple, tightening, and then turned its yellow gaze on me.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the serpent as it wrapped itself around him, growing larger and longer until it became the darkness that surrounded him. It became a shadow, a part of him.

  “Levi!”

  I blinked again. Saddie stood in front of me, a frantic look in her eyes.

  “Sorry.” I slipped from her grasp, unwilling and unable to meet her eyes. My heart slammed wildly. “It’s nothing.”

  She stared at me for a few soundless moments. “It’s not nothing. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I pulled myself up straighter and squared my shoulders, not wanting her to see how sick I felt, how terrified I was.

  “Well, I’m already waiting on two tables, and I was going to ask if you’d mind closing up tonight so I can get outta here early,” Saddie said with a quick glance toward the clock. When she looked at me again, her cheeks were red. “I have a date.”

  I swallowed hard. My gaze shifted toward the far booth in the back corner.

  “Will you, Levi?” Saddie asked. “Please? I’ll owe you one.”

  When I didn’t answer, she followed my line of sight.

  “Do you know him?”

  “No,” I replied without tearing my gaze from him.

  “He’s awfully handsome.”

  He was.

  He was cataclysmically handsome. But the wicked things always were.

  I knew better. I knew to listen to my mind and my soul, not my eyes. Sight was a sense that liked to play tricks, the favored weapon of all things evil.

  His hair was charcoal-black, longer in the front, shaved short on the sides. His nose was slightly crooked, his straight jawline peppered with stubble. A thick neck led down to wide, defined shoulders covered by a denim jacket.

  He sat in the far back booth staring down at his hands. The dim lighting from the light above our heads and the falling sun on the horizon cast dark shadows against his face, emphasizing the darkness against his light skin.

  I stared at him, blatantly—rudely. Each time I blinked, I saw a flicker of the dark serpent curling around his neck.

  When his gaze caught on me, I saw how cold and empty his pale eyes were. They were so light they could’ve been translucent. They were clear, empty skies full of nothing but clouds and atmosphere.

  It didn’t hit me like the memory of my dream. It shoved against me slowly, like a mammoth pounding against a door I was desperately trying to close. His gaze sent my heart into a frenzy, my stomach into recoil, my mind into a kaleidoscope.

  “I can’t serve him.” Forcing myself to stop gaping at the strange man had been painful, like peeling back skin.

  She put her hands on her hips, looking less annoyed and more confused. “Why? He’s just a man.”

  “No. I don’t think so.” There was more to that man than met the eye. Something simmered beneath the surface—something dark that no words could explain.

  Saddie looked at him again over my shoulder, and then back at me. “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m afraid I might go over there and tell him to go back to whatever place in hell he came from.”

  “Wow.”


  “There’s something not right about him.”

  It was Saddie’s turn to gape at me. “I know you have a good sense of folks and all, Levi, but he can’t be that bad. Honestly, he looks a little sad.”

  “I can’t go near him, Saddie. I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Fine.” She scooped up the coffeepot off the burner. “But you’ll have to take the other tables then.”

  “That’s fine.” I would work the next three of her shifts for free if it meant I didn’t have to go near that man.

  She swayed her hips as she walked over to him, coffeepot in hand. I watched as she leaned over across the table to talk to him. It was only then he seemed to remember where he was.

  I tore my gaze away from them as I forced myself to walk to the tables Saddie had been helping. The table of people who’d been sitting in the center booth, laughing and joking loudly, had quieted, all of them staring at the man in the corner booth.

  He’d sucked the air and life out of the diner when he walked in. The few tables Saddie had been helping began to clear out, their voices hushed, their gazes either on the man in the corner or on their shoes.

  I took the last few orders of a few customers lingering about and served them their food. Hud called out from the back room that the kitchen was closed, and soon after, the diner was vacated. The last table out of the door was a group of four men in their twenties and thirties. They were a noisy group who Saddie usually served because they tipped well when she wore a low-cut shirt.

  Saddie went into the back room and hollered that she was going to get a ride home with Hud. I told her I’d lock up the diner and set the alarms. When I heard the click of the back door shutting and locking, I relaxed.

  Until I saw the shadowed man still sitting in the corner booth.

  I froze, as if my bones had turned to ice and shattered in the silence.

  He looked up. Then he seemed to notice that no one else was there and the diner had fallen into an uneasy silence.

  When his gaze locked on me, I swallowed hard. I gripped the counter, squeezing it so tightly the metal edges dug into my skin. He rose from the booth. The lights flickered, or maybe I was blinking frantically. I didn’t dare drag my eyes off him for even a moment.

  Words my gran had told me long ago rang in my ears: Don’t turn your back on the devil, Levi. The moment you do, he’ll wrap his ugly soul around you.

  He stopped in front of me.

  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked quietly. His voice was deep and raw.

  “No.” I matched his cool stare with the frost in my voice.

  A moment passed before he said, “You shouldn’t be.”

  “I don’t trust you.” I watched the black snake slither around his throat, flicking its tail into his onyx hair.

  “I can’t blame you.” He leaned forward, towering over me, his massive frame blocking out the overhead lights. His gaze, as it raked up my body, was a taunt. He whispered, “I don’t think I’d trust myself around you either.”

  The snake hissed.

  My heart thudded in my chest. My flesh was on fire, my eyes useless and clouded in soot and ash. Currents of electricity surged and rushed, tingling in every vein as if I’d been asleep for a thousand years and only now, finally, I was beginning to wake.

  And then he was gone. He turned his back to me and walked out through the front door of the diner. The soft chime of the bell sounded like thunder in my ears.

  I was safe.

  He was gone and I could move, could breathe, could think. I was safe. Panting heavily, I loosened my grip on the countertop and hunched over. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed the revulsion in my stomach to subside.

  He was the deep, dark swamp on the edge of the bayou. Even then I felt him calling me. My body yearned for him, to go to him, to wrap myself in his dark waters and inhale deeply until I drowned.

  It took me a few moments to pull myself together. I focused on the silence of the diner, the easy lights from up above my head. I locked the front, checking twice to make sure it was bolted tight. I went to each booth and pulled down the blinds, covering the windows. When I pulled the apron off and hung it on the hook in the back room, the glimmering of the amulet around my neck caught my eye. It was cool in my palm, yet warm at the same time. It was comforting and solid and made the ache in my heart subside.

  The night air was hot and heavy, weighted like a thick cloud of smog. The sky was crimson, the moon hidden somewhere behind an overlay of blues and blacks. Crickets chirped in the distance, and a dog howled somewhere far away. The smells of fried chicken and cherry pie faded away as I distanced myself from the diner, and were replaced with the aroma of moss and dirt and a warm, Louisiana summer night.

  The moment I walked around the front of the diner, my stomach sank. In the parking lot that should’ve been empty stood a group of men. Their figures were illuminated by the streetlights, their shadows long.

  When I approached them, I noticed it was the four men from the diner. They stood in a circle, and in the bull’s-eye was the dark man I’d spoken to only minutes before. The four men were yelling at him as they closed in, saying things I couldn’t fully understand.

  “Murderer,” one sneered.

  “Devil’s child,” said another. “You’re evil. Worse than evil.”

  But he stood in the center, his body rigid, his head bowed as if he couldn’t hear a word they were saying. It wasn’t until the first man charged him that he seemed to notice they were there at all.

  The man who’d charged him I recognized as Ricky Jr., the son of Ricky, the hardware store owner. I’d always thought him to be a gentle, kind person who was a little on the shy side. Now, as I watched him raising his fists and screaming profanities at the man I didn’t know, I thought differently.

  The night was dark and the lighting poor. I could barely make out what was happening besides the colliding of forms, the smacking of fists against flesh, the thud of bodies hitting the pavement.

  With one man moaning on the ground, another rounded on the man in the center.

  “You don’t belong here, Poirier,” he yelled. “Not after what you’ve done.”

  All three men came at him at once. He landed a blow to Ricky Jr.’s nose, making him scream, but the other two men were on top of him the next second. They dropped him to the ground, one man kicking his ribs, the other cracking knuckles against his face, drawing out misty sprays of blood that fell to the pavement.

  That man was evil. His soul was darker than black. It was a multitude of endless pits, each deeper than the last.

  And yet.

  Buried somewhere inside that soul of his, some place hidden and secret, there’d been a flicker of something, something I couldn’t ignore.

  “Hey!” I yelled, rushing toward them. Everyone froze, all eyes on me. “I called the sheriff. He’ll be here in less than a minute.”

  “What the hell, Levi!” Ricky Jr. shouted back. He cupped his nose, blood seeping through his fingers. “Do you even know who he is? Do you know what he’s done?”

  “I know you ain’t the sheriff and his crimes aren’t punishable by you.”

  The sound of screeching tires in the distance seemed to startle them. The men on the ground jumped up and took off. Ricky Jr. gave me one final look before dashing off after them toward the unlit alley.

  A figure writhed on the ground, a deep moan sounding through the dense air. He sat up slowly, and like a songbird oblivious to the dangers of the wetland, I took a step toward him. And then another. And then another.

  “You all right?” I clutched the amulet in my sweaty palm as I looked down at him, not that I thought it would do me a world of good standing so near a man like him.

  The streetlights flickered above us. He sat on the ground, his legs bent, his elbows resting on his knees. Red bloodstains coated the jean jacket he wore, along with the white T-shirt pulled tight across his chest. He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side.

&
nbsp; He had a cut above his eyebrow that drizzled blood down the side of his cheek, along his chin, and down his throat. His busted lip wept blood. A circular red mark covered half his face, the yellow tinge of a bruise already beginning to form around the edges.

  When he looked up, the lights played tricks. His eyes were so clear, I thought I might’ve been wrong about him—about his soul. There was something that flickered there, something golden and lovely—something that was crying out to be set free.

  But then I saw it—the snake. Its head came from the darkness behind him. It slinked over his shoulder, across his blood-covered chest, around his arm, and back up to his throat.

  I stumbled backward, and whatever gold I’d seen in his eyes vanished, leaving nothing but ash in its place.

  “You should go,” he said quietly as he looked back down at the gravel he sat on.

  “What are you?” I whispered without daring to go a fraction closer.

  “Just a man,” he said. “A bleeding man, a broken man, a cursed man. But if you ask anyone around here, they’ll say I’m a murderer, a fiend, a monster.” Again his gaze met mine. “Some say I’m the devil.”

  My hands shook and my teeth chattered despite the heat. “Are you?”

  Long, loaded moments passed before he spoke again. “Maybe.”

  Unable to stop myself, I turned away from him and closed my eyes. Even the sight of him coated my sanity in something unnatural. His boots slid against the pavement as he stood.

  In the distance, under the streetlight, was Ward standing, waiting, watching. I wrapped my arms around myself, fighting against the chill that didn’t exist, and began walking toward my oldest friend.

  “You got a name?” a deep voice called out from behind me.

  My gran’s old warning about the devil played like a recording in my ears.

  “Levi,” I said over my shoulder, regretting it the moment it slipped past my lips.

  “You might’ve saved my life tonight, Levi.”

  “I won’t make that mistake again,” I yelled in reply.

  When I reached Ward, he looked down at me, a weariness in his eyes. I walked past him, knowing he’d turn and walk beside me.