Lies Like Poison

by Chelsea Pitcher

  Jack was silent a minute. They were nearing Holloway Manor, and the camera above the gate captured their progress toward the great stone house. The house that had felt haunted for years. The house that felt more haunted now. Raven hoped Jack would stay in his room that night. They could lie under his covers, all wrapped up together. They could protect each other from the storms raging in their hearts and the eerie quiet of the world outside.

  When the car came to a stop, Jack finally spoke. “I don’t understand why you did this. You know I wasn’t at the airport that night. I was at home with my brothers, and if anyone finds out that you lied—”

  “They won’t.” It was Dr. Holloway who spoke the words, his body twisted to look at Jack. His gaze was soft. Kind. “Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve looked after my son. I know you’d never do anything to hurt this family.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Jack agreed, wrapping her arms around herself. “Raven is my family.”

  “I know that, too,” Dr. Holloway said. He put the car in park. “And I will never let anything happen to this family again.” Here, he flashed a watery smile and climbed out of his seat. A moment later, Jack’s door opened and his hand appeared in the doorway. Jack took it, letting Dr. Holloway guide her out of the car.

  Raven followed, joining them in the driveway.

  “You’re welcome to sleep over,” Dr. Holloway said, waving them toward the house. “The boys are settled into the guest rooms, but Lily’s staying at her father’s tonight, so her room will be empty.” At the mention of Andrew Kane, Raven’s stomach flipped. Getting Jack out of that detention center was only step one of his plan.

  The next step was to rescue Lily.

  For now, Raven led Jack into the house, ushering her toward the stairs. Jack could shower and change into something more comfortable. Once they reached the upstairs bathroom, he waved her inside. “We’ll talk after,” was all he said.

  Jack nodded, relief loosening her shoulders. “Thank you. You didn’t have to—”

  “I know.”

  “Your dad didn’t have to—”

  “You heard what he said,” Raven broke in, pulling a black, fluffy towel from the hall closet. One of his mom’s towels. “You’re family now. So you might as well use the amenities.”

  A hint of a smile, and then Jack was plucking the towel from his hands. She disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door with a click. Raven didn’t wait around for her. Instead, he hurried to Lily’s room, putting new sheets on the bed. He fluffed up the pillows, then raided Lily’s closet, but she must’ve taken her entire wardrobe to her dad’s.

  The closet was empty.

  Twenty minutes later, Jack slipped into Lily’s bedroom to find a white collared shirt and jeans laid out on the bed. She closed the door behind her, clutching the towel to her chest. “Raven.”

  “I want you to wear them,” he said. “I mean, if you want to.”

  “You can’t give me your clothes. Not after I stole—”

  “I didn’t even miss them.” He tossed her a smile, striding toward the door. “I’ll come back in a few minutes, after you’re dressed, and we can talk about everything that’s happened. All right?”

  Jack nodded numbly. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

  Raven gave her ample time before knocking on the door. He opened it slowly, peering inside. Jack was sitting on Lily’s bed, her curls damp and dangling over one shoulder. Raven’s white collared shirt clung to her skin. She’d rolled up his jeans on the bottoms, so they didn’t drag on the floor. She looked more comfortable than he’d seen her look since he’d come back from school, and he wanted to empty his dresser drawers and hand over his wardrobe.

  Gingerly, he sat on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to tell me tonight,” he began, tracing his fingers along the lace of Lily’s white bedspread. His fingers ached to touch Jack. To trail across her chest until her heartbeat sprang to life and he knew, definitively, that she was all right. “We can talk about Belle, and the detention center, after you’ve eaten and gotten some sleep.”

  “I have to tell you now.” She lifted a pillow from the bed, then placed it over the heating vent on Lily’s floor. For years Raven had heard his parents arguing through the vent in his bedroom, because his vent connected to theirs. Lily’s might’ve led somewhere different, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “Belle figured something out about me,” Jack said, returning to Raven’s side, “and I want to tell you before she does.”

  “I think I know.”

  Her head snapped up, swiveling to look at him. “You know? How could you—”

  “Why do you think I gave you my clothes?”

  Silence. It was the kind of deep, oppressive quiet that left a ringing in your ears that you knew you were imagining, and yet… it filled everything. There was a keening in Raven’s mind. A sharp, gutting fear that he’d said the wrong thing, or pushed her too hard. But he wanted to know her so badly. And if “her” wasn’t the right word to be using, he wanted to know that, too.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” he began, and he already felt like he was rambling. Like there were no right words for what he needed to say. “But I want you to know that I know who you are. Deep down. And nothing you could tell me—”

  “Belle thought I murdered Evelyn. She accused me at the detention center. She knows that we kissed the night before you left for school and…” Jack swallowed, fingers tightening on the hem of her shirt. She always grabbed on to something when she felt like she was falling. Raven knew this, and he wanted to reach out his arms and catch her, but he couldn’t do it.

  Not unless she let him.

  “Belle thought I murdered your stepmom and framed her so that I could have you all to myself. But I’d never do that, Raven.”

  “I know that. I know you—”

  “You don’t,” she snapped, and she sounded angry. Defensive. “You make guesses, and you’re trying to be a good person, but that’s not the same as knowing me. There are things I’ve done… things I am that you couldn’t understand.”

  “That’s fine. That’s fair,” he said quickly, ignoring the storm in his chest. The crackle of thunder. The sizzle of lightning. “I’m not trying to tell you I understand. But I want you to talk to me. I want you to know that you can if that’s something you want. It’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to protect yourself. But don’t keep something from me because you think I can’t handle it.”

  Jack took a slow, deep breath, and he wondered if torrential rains were raging inside her, too. If she was drowning in them. “The week before you left for boarding school, I stretched a vine across the attic stairs and tripped the man my mother was seeing. He’d been sneaking up to the boys’ room, hurting them when no one was around, so I hurt him back. I did what I had to do.”

  Raven stared at her, unblinking. “What else?” he managed, his voice cracking. A moment ago, he’d been in the midst of a storm, but now the winds had died down completely, leaving him to pick through the rubble.

  “The detective found a note in the kitchen the night your stepmother was killed. ‘One petal of belladonna. One petal of poppy. Drop into a teacup and stir three times.’ ” Jack looked up, her lip trembling. “Belle called it the Recipe for the Perfect Murder. She wrote it three years ago.”

  “What?” It was the only word Raven could muster. The only sentence his lips could manage to form.

  “We were planning to kill your stepmom,” Jack said softly. “Belle came up with the plan a month before you left town. It was supposed to happen the night before the Apple Blossom Festival, because half the girls in town would be wearing flower garlands.”

  “And some of the boys.” It was a curious thing to stick on, in that moment. But Raven’s mother used to nestle roses in his curls. While the girls in town sported blossoms of pink and white, Arianna Holloway would weave a garland of crimson roses and crown him with it each year. It was one of his favorite memories of her.

  Th
ose garlands had been sacred.

  Jack tilted her head, a soft smile on her face. “Half the girls, and some of the boys,” she corrected, and Raven saw a tear slide down her cheek. “Lily found the recipe in the orchard, and she hid it so she could use it as blackmail.”

  “Blackmail for what?”

  Jack cringed, swallowing audibly. “She wanted to be included in the plan. She suggested we weave poisonous flowers into our garlands so it looked like an accident when a few petals fell into Evelyn’s tea. She was going to weave lilies into her garland, and I was going to weave poppies. With Belle, you can guess.”

  “Belladonna from her garden.”

  A nod, as she wiped away the tear. In spite of everything she’d told him, Raven’s fingers twitched at the movement. He wanted to soothe her suffering. To find any wounds she might be hiding and kiss them with gentle lips. “As we got closer to the night of the murder, Belle started to hint that we should each drop a few belladonna berries into Evelyn’s tea along with the petals. Just to make sure the plan worked. But after Mom’s boyfriend fell down the stairs, I realized I couldn’t go through with the poisoning. I knew how it felt to take someone’s life in my hands. And if you’d ever found out that I’d killed your stepmom, you wouldn’t have been able to look at me.”

  A beat, as Raven exhaled. “But you didn’t do it.”

  “I came close. And I almost killed that man because of what he was doing to my brothers. I wanted to kill him, Raven.”

  He nodded, his eyes never leaving her face. “If I ever found the man who shot my mom, I would wrap my hands around his throat—”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  Raven’s face broke into a grin. It was the kind of sharp, jagged grin that Belle had flashed a hundred times, before threatening someone with the flowers from her garden. That smile held no compassion. Only malice. “I would do what I needed to do.” He scooted toward her, across the bed. “Do you want to tell me the other secret you’ve been keeping? The one that’s been crushing you?”

  Jack lowered her head. Her lips didn’t part. Her eyes didn’t find him.

  But his fingers laced through hers, tightening until she squeezed back. “Why is this secret worse than almost killing someone?”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Then why does it scare you more?” He lifted his free hand and tilted her chin toward him, finding her nervous gaze.

  She glanced at him, then looked down. “Don’t make me do this.”

  “I won’t. I promise. But I need you to know something.” Raven slid off the bed, kneeling before her. He took her face in his hands. “There is nothing about you that will make me love you less. Do you understand?”

  Tears slid down her cheeks. “You love me?” she whispered, as Raven fought to catch the tears before they fell. His fingers brushed her lashes, dancing across her cheeks. She leaned into his touch, and it made him feel brave. Bold. Reckless.

  “I’ve loved you since the first day we met. You found me in the trees, and you rescued me from all my fears. All my sadness. You felt like a part of my family, and I thought I knew what that meant for a really long time. Then I looked up at you from that glass coffin and I knew you were the only one who could wake me from the nightmare I’d been living in.”

  Jack inhaled sharply, her forehead dipping toward his. “I couldn’t look at you in that coffin. Not until you opened your eyes. You stared up at me, and I felt like you saw me so clearly…” Jack pulled back, arms wrapping around herself. “I don’t know how to do this, Raven. I don’t know how to say this without it changing everything. I’m probably going to lose my mom over it, and if I lose you—”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” he said, taking the edges of her collar in his hands. The shirt had been his, but it was definitely, definitely Jack’s now. “You could never lose me, because you’re my family.”

  “Your dad is your family,” Jack replied. “He still thinks of me as Poppy, and if he finds out who I am, he could treat me differently. He could treat you differently for being with me.”

  “My dad?” Raven huffed, shaking his head. “The guy who tossed me aside when it wasn’t convenient to keep me around? I’m not going to hide how I feel to make things easier for him. And I would never ask you to hide who you are.” A nod in the darkness. Raven wanted to see Jack’s face, so he reached over and flicked on the lamp beside Lily’s bed. “If you want me to know, you can tell me. If you don’t, it’s all right. We’ll eat dinner. We’ll get some rest and—”

  “Sometimes I don’t feel like a girl. I mean, I’m not a girl.” Jack swallowed, looking down. “I’m a boy.”

  “You’re a boy,” Raven repeated, his fingers still wrapped around Jack’s collar. Brushing the skin beneath. “How long have you known?”

  “Honestly?” Jack glanced up at him. “I think I’ve known since I was a little kid. I remember asking my mom for boys’ clothes when I started preschool. I remember asking for a different name after Flynn was born. A name more like his.”

  Raven raised his eyebrows, taking a breath. “I had no idea. I mean, you never mentioned anything.”

  “My mom got really mad when I said those things. She told me girls didn’t dress like little boys, and she said my name was perfect for me. She’d braid my hair and tell me I was beautiful. I hated it, Raven. But I think her saying those things made me want to hide inside myself, you know?” Jack’s voice was shaking a little, his fingers toying with a thread on his jeans. “If my own mom thought it was wrong to want those things, what would the world think?”

  “So you hid inside yourself.”

  A nod. “For years. Then I met you, and you let me rescue you, and you let me be your knight and… it felt so right. I told myself maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Maybe the world was wrong about what girls could be.”

  “Because girls can be knights.”

  “Yes.”

  “And girls can wear whatever clothes they want, and girls can be named Jack.”

  “Exactly.” Jack smiled, and Raven was struck by the light in his eyes. How bright would Jack burn if that light was finally allowed to come out? How happy would he be if he actually got to be himself?

  “I decided I didn’t have to change myself. Or become myself, all the way. I could change the world, and I could be a girl who rescued princes and climbed towers and called herself Jack. But every time I got closer to making the world how I wanted it to be, I felt this twinge in my stomach, like I was missing something. Rewriting a fairy tale instead of admitting the hero wasn’t a girl named Jack. He was a boy.” Jack sucked in a breath. He wasn’t crying anymore, but Raven would stay close, just in case tears spilled over his cheeks again.

  Raven would stay close because he’d always wanted to be close to Jack. “What changed?” he asked, taking Jack’s hands. “Did you realize something while I was away at boarding school?”

  Jack shook his head. “It was almost the opposite of that. You went away to boarding school, and Belle stopped talking to me. I thought maybe she’d figured something out. Maybe she suspected there was something different about me, and she didn’t want to be around me anymore, and if that was true… well, I could lose my mom next. I could lose my brothers, because my mom would try to keep me away from them, so I couldn’t be a boy.” Jack pulled his hands away from Raven, curling them into fists. “I couldn’t be a boy, because I would lose everything, so I pushed myself away instead. I lived in denial and I didn’t look anyone in the eye for years. Then you came home and…”

  “You looked me in the eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  Raven smiled softly. “And you wanted me to know.”

  “No.” Jack chuckled, a sharp, brittle sound. “No, I was terrified of you knowing. I retreated into myself even more until that officer came and slid cuffs around my wrists. He locked me in a cell and he told me I could be there for a long time. And suddenly I realized… I was going to lose everything anyway. I was going to lose everyone, a
nd I’d never even found myself. I’d never even faced myself all the way.”

  “So you did.”

  “I’m trying.” Jack’s head dipped down, his fingers digging into the blankets. “I’m trying, Raven, but I’m so scared. Everything’s going to be different now.”

  “You’re right.” Carefully, with the most delicate of movements, Raven cupped Jack’s face. He trailed his fingers across Jack’s lips. “Everything’s going to be so much better. You get to be who you really are, and I get to know you, so just… keep talking to me, all right? Keep letting me know you.”

  Jack shook his head, finally meeting Raven’s gaze. Gripping it. “The time for talking has passed,” he said, a soft smile on his lips.

  “Has it, now?” Raven was smiling too. Grinning, actually, as gardens bloomed inside him. There were petals strewn across his heart. He wished he’d had time to trail petals across the bed, but then again, this wasn’t his room. “Should we go—”

  “No time.” Jack guided him up from the floor, where he’d been kneeling, reverently, and then they were falling backward onto the bed. “I need you now. But, Raven?” A pause, as Jack’s gaze evaded his. “Did it change anything, what I told you? Did it make you love me less?”

  Raven leaned in, brushing his lips across Jack’s forehead. His nose. His chin. Before his lips found Jack’s, and he lost himself in a kiss that he would remember for the rest of his life, he whispered into Jack’s mouth, “More.”

  19

  I Can’t Do This Without You

  Jack woke to a thrumming in his heart. Raven’s limbs were entangled with his, and he thought he’d do anything to stay in this warm, dark place. But his bladder protested. And so he lifted Raven’s pale brown arm from where it was draped over his body and climbed carefully off the bed.

  His footsteps were silent on the carpet. The bedroom door opened with a barely audible click. Out in the hallway, the hardwood floor met Jack’s feet with a soft slapping sound, and for that he was grateful. There was something unsettling about this eerily silent house.