Free Poison Princess by Kresley Cole Page A

nobody else on earth knows. And you’re the Empress. Just like the card in my deck. One day, you’ll control all things that root or bloom.”
    I’d been barely listening, dreaming about the ice cream she’d promised me.
    Empress? Was that why I loved plants so much? Was that why they sighed to be near me? Both Death and the cryptic boy had called me Empress as well.
    How insane all of this sounded! What was more likely? Plants moving on command? Or a teenage girl—with a history of mental illness—experiencing a delusion?
    I slowed my steps, doubts arising. Hadn’t I had nightmares about the red witch controlling plants, hurting them? Was all this connected in my overwrought brain?
    Maybe none of this was real. Maybe I was getting worse because Gran had spread her crazy to me—and I wasn’t fighting hard enough for the life I desperately wanted back.
    Evie, do you understand why you must reject your grandmother’s teachings . . . ?
    I gazed at the stalks swaying. I could be hallucinating—right at this moment.
    I turned toward the house in a daze. On the front porch, I readied to face my mother. Easier said than done.
    Mom really could be fierce. A regular Frau Badass. Which was great in some instances, such as when she’d taken over the farm from Gran and grown it into the parish’s largest in less than a decade.
    Not so great in others—such as when she’d resolved to get me well.
    At the front door, I took thirty seconds to compose myself. I need to learn how to whistle. My roommate at the center had taught me that trick. Parents never suspected their children were unhappy/delusional/high when the kid was whistling. Their minds just couldn’t reconcile it.
    As I slipped inside, I puckered my lips, blowing soundless air. Whistling sucked.
    I heard my mom on the phone in the kitchen. Was she upset? I froze. She had to be talking to Gran. Every now and then, my grandmother managed to elude the orderlies and ring home.
    â€œI will fight this tooth and nail. Don’t you dare try to contact her!” Mom said, then paused for long moments. “You won’t convince me of this!” Silence. “Justlisten to yourself! You hurt my little girl—there is no forgiveness! Cry all you like, this number will be changed tomorrow!”
    When she hung up, I joined her in the kitchen. “Gran?”
    Mom smoothed her hair. “It was.”
    I opened my mouth to ask how she was doing, but Mom said, “Anything you’d like to tell me, Evangeline Greene?”
    I hated it when she asked me that. I liked that question as much as I liked self-incrimination.
    Where to begin?
    Grades, schmades, bitches, think I’ll just flunk this year. For the first time in months, I’ve been having delusions. Or else I can make plants do tricks. Can’t decide which scenario I’m hoping for. I’m tempted to play my V card defensively, just to get this gorgeous, usually wonderful senior to back—the hell—off.
    Instead, I told her, “Um, no?”
    â€œYou haven’t spoken to your grandmother?”
    â€œNot at all.” Not since I was a little girl, and Mom had dispatched her to a home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Or at least, the court had, in a plea deal.
    I remembered Mom had once tried to reassure me, calling it “ the place to send relatives with dementia.” I’d gaped in horror.
    Even if Gran had managed to call my cell phone, I would never have answered. My own release from CLC was conditional on two things: medication compliance and zero communication with her.
    I’d agreed to both. Readily. By the end of my stay at CLC, my deprogramming had worked; I’d been convinced that Gran was merely disturbed.
    Instead of prophetic.
    Now I was questioning everything. “I haven’t spoken to her in eight years.”
    Mom relaxed a shade. “She’s a very sick woman,