Read Poison Tongue for Free Online Page B

she continued. “Focus internally. Focus on nothing. Let your thoughts and feelings guide you naturally to the edge of the darkness. Do not step past that edge. Be aware of the edge. Be wary of it. And as much as you might like to, do not step over that line.”
    I thought of Monroe, the man who’d murdered his own father. I thought of the way my body became electric when he was near, how his frozen gaze led to ice fields that covered his soul.
    Every time I tried to force my mind blank, images of his cold stare and those dark waters of the swamp filled my head. They were my consciousness now. They were what I saw when I closed my eyes, what I dreamed of when I slept, what I lusted after when I was awake.
    “Now,” Mama said, “reach out and cut the deck of cards in front of you.”
    I reached out in front of me. My fingertips brushed against the smooth tops of the worn cards.
    Mama gasped and I opened my eyes, startled. A strong gust had burst the window open, leaving the curtains to flutter toward us in the heavy breeze from outside. The bare branches of the tree outside shot and rattled against the glass pane of the window. Cards flew up into the air, scattered around us on the table, the floor, on my lap. It rained tarot cards. They flipped in the air like trapeze artists tumbling down, down to the safety net below.
    “Levi.” Mama had a serious note to her voice.
    “I know.”
    “Make some mojo bags, Levi. Give one to your sister too. Keep them with you always. Never let one be further than your pocket or under your pillow.”
    “Don’t be afraid, Mama.” I had a slight shake in my voice I hoped she couldn’t detect.
    “Something evil wants you, sweetheart,” she said pleadingly, as if willing me to never leave our small house again. “Something worse than evil.”
    “Maybe it’s the devil,” I replied, trying to lighten the mood.
    Her blank stare remained fixed above my head, her brow furrowing, her jaw locked tight.
    “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”
     
     
    SILVI LOVED sunflowers.
    They were just about the only thing with color she tolerated. She hated the bright flickers of fire, but loved the colorless smoke it brought. She loved to look at untouched coloring books and press her tiny fingers against the blank page and black ink. She loved tales of ghosts and goblins and all things wicked, and could barely sleep at night without me first telling her an old ghost story that Gran told us a million times over.
    But sunflowers—Silvi loved sunflowers.
    “Look at this one, Ward!” Her pale blond head of hair barely crested the top of the flowers.
    Ward left my side and strode over to where she was. He bent forward and looked at the bright yellow petals of the smiling, open-faced flower that pointed up toward the clear blue sky.
    “That is a good flower,” he said.
    I smiled. Ward knew nothing about flowers and couldn’t care less if we were standing in a field of flowers just then or a vacant desert made only of sand dunes. But Ward always humored Silvi. It was in his nature.
    The sunflower field was only a short walk from our house. It was an oddity, that sunflower field, because it stood in a vacant lot surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of dirt and plains.
    The first time I’d ever laid eyes on that sunflower field, I had only been about five or six. That hot summer day, I’d turned to my mama and asked, “Who planted this sunflower field, Mama?”
    She’d turned to me and smiled as she tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “No one planted it, Levi. It was born from the driest, most cracked parts of the earth. When there’s nothing but nothing, some good is allowed to grow.”
    The day was hot, the sky was clear, and the air was humid. That morning, Silvi had said it was the perfect day to visit the sunflower field. She’d said the same thing countless times before, sometimes during the hot, summer evenings, or when the autumn sunset laid its eyes on the field. According to