The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black Read Free Book Online Page B

the scent could blow to them? What if they didn't even need to get close to the flowers?
    He wanted to tell his parents about werewolves and have them row back out to the boat, but that plan would never work. Dad didn't believe the facts that Alex read if they contradicted his ideas about things. Just because it's in a book , he was fond of saying, that doesn't make it true .
    Alex could just imagine his father sniffing the flower to prove his point.
    Anna ran up to where Dad was cooking the grouper. Her legs were covered in sand and she had on a hooded cover-up over her bathing suit. “Is it almost done?” she asked.
    The fire lit her eyes. As he looked at his father and mother, he saw the flames reflect in their eyes too. He shuddered.
    What if he went and sniffed the flower first? Then he would be the wolf. Then he would have no reason to be afraid. And if he started turning, he could tell them to run and get off the island before he finished transforming. He would know what was happening. He would be experiencing nature.
    And if the flowers weren't the flowers from the book, no one would know he'd made a mistake or that he'd been so worried about his own family eating him up.
    He took a step toward the flowers. Then another. He imagined the scent of them drifting to him, a combination of his mother's perfume and sweat. That couldn't be the real smell.
    "Alex,” Mom called. “The food's done. What are you looking for?"
    "Is there a lizard?” Anna asked. She was heading toward him.
    "No,” he said. “I just have to pee.” That stopped Anna.
    The white flowers blew in the breeze. His heart was beating so hard that he felt like he couldn't catch his breath, like each beat was a punch in the chest. He reached for a bud, pulling it free. The plant sprang back, petals scattering. He brought the single flower to his nose, crushing it, inhaling sharply.
    He was hungry, hungrier than he could remember being in a long while. He thought of the plum and tried to remember why he hadn't finished it.
    "Wash your hands in the ocean when you're done,” his mother said. Alex was so surprised by her voice that he dropped the blossom. She didn't know what he was doing, he reminded himself.
    Ripping the plant out of the ground, he shredded it. Just to be safe. Just to be sure.
    He walked back to the fire, waiting for his skin to start itching. It didn't.
    Alex ate two potatoes, three ears of corn, and most of the tail of the fish. He felt good, so full of relief that when Anna bounced up to him in the light of the setting sun and wanted to play tic-tac-toe in the wet sand, he agreed.
    She drew the board in the sand and made a big X in the middle. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn."
    He drew an O in the upper left-hand corner. Their mother was gathering up the plates to take back to the boat. He wondered if she was going to make dessert. He was still kind of hungry.
    Anna drew an X in the bottom right corner. He hated going second. One of the facts of tic-tac-toe was that the person who goes first is twice as likely to win as the person who goes second.
    Looking at Anna's red bathing suit through the hooded cover-up made it seem like he could see past her skin to the raw meat underneath. His stomach growled and Anna laughed. She found every gross body sound to be hysterical.
    "Come on, kids,” their mother called. “It's too dark to play."
    He looked up. There was only a sliver of a moon. The sun had slid all the way under the water.
    Alex's stomach cramped and he winced. He thought about the fish, sitting in the ice chest all day. Maybe it had gone bad.
    Anna laughed. “You should see your face. Your eyes got really big. Big enough to—"
    His hands cramped, too, curling up into claws. Anna stopped laughing.
    "Mom!” he yelled, panicked. His vision shifted, went blurry. “Mom!"
    Anna shrieked.
    "What's the matter?” His mother's voice sounded close and he remembered that he was supposed to warn them.
    "Get away!” His voice