The Gatekeeper turned his back to me, moving instead to a glass case behind him. He examined a
collection of charms—amulets hanging from long leather cords, crystals and exotic rocks that
reminded me of the river stones, runes with markings I didn’t recognize. He opened the cabinet and
took out one of the amulets, rubbing the silver disk between his fingers. It reminded me of the way
Amma touched the gold charm she wore around her neck, whenever she got nervous.
“Why don’t you just leave?” I asked. “Take all this stuff and disappear?” I knew the answer
even as I asked the question.
Nobody would stay here unless they had to.
He spun a large enamel globe on a tall stand next to the cabinet. I watched as it turned, strange
shapes spinning past me. They weren’t the continents I was used to seeing in history class.
“I can’t leave. I’m Bound to the Gates. If I venture too far from them, I’ll continue to change.”
He stared down at his bent, gnarled fingers. A chill rushed up my back.
“What do you mean?”
The Gatekeeper turned his hands over slowly, as if he had never seen them before. “There was
a time when I looked like you, dead man. A time when I was a man.”
The words were swimming around in my head, but I couldn’t find a way to make them true.
Whatever the Gatekeeper was—however reminiscent his features were of a man’s—it wasn’t
possible.
Was it?
“I—I don’t understand. How—?” There was no way to say what I was thinking without being
cruel. And if he was a man somewhere inside there, he had suffered more than enough cruelty
already.
“How did I become this?” The Gatekeeper fingered a large crystal hanging from a golden chain.
He picked up a second necklace, made of rings of sugar candy, the kind you could buy at the Stop
& Steal, smoothing it back down inside its velvet-lined case. “The Council of the Far Keep is very
powerful. They have powerful magic at their disposal, stronger than anything I witnessed as a
Keeper.”
“You were a Keeper?” This thing used to be like my mom and Liv and Marian?
His dull green eyes stared back at me. “You might want to take a seat….” He paused. “I don’t
think you told me your name.”
“Ethan.” I’d told him twice now.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ethan. My name is—was—Xavier. No one calls me that anymore, but
you can if it makes things easier.”
I knew what he was trying to say—if it made it easier to imagine him as a man instead of a
monster.
“Okay. Thanks, Xavier.” It sounded funny, even coming from me.
He tapped the case with his fingers, some kind of nervous habit. “And to answer your question,
yes. I was a Keeper. One who made the mistake of questioning Angelus, the head—”
“I know who he is.” I remembered the one named Angelus, the Keeper with the bald head. I
also remembered the ruthless expression on his face when he had come after Marian.
“Then you know he’s dangerous. And corrupt.” Xavier watched me carefully.
I nodded. “He tried to hurt a friend of mine—two, actually. He brought one of them to the Far
Keep to stand trial.”
“Trial.” He laughed, only there was nothing like a smile on his nothing like a face.
“It wasn’t funny.”
“Of course not. Angelus must have been making an example of your friend,” Xavier said. “I
was never given a trial. He finds them dull compared to the punishment.”
“What did you do?” I was afraid to ask, but I felt like I had to.
Xavier sighed. “I questioned the authority of the Council, the decisions they were making. I
never should have done it,” he said quietly. “But they were breaking our vows, the laws we swore
to abide by. Taking things that were not theirs to Keep.”
I tried to imagine Xavier in a Caster library somewhere like Marian, stacking books and
recording the details of the Caster world. He had created his own version of a Caster library here, a
place filled with magical objects—and a few unmagical ones.
“What kind of things, Xavier?”
He glanced around the cavernous room, panicked. “I don’t think we should be talking about
this. What if the Council finds out?”
“How would they?”
“They will. They always do. I don’t know what more they could do to me, but they would
think of something.”
“We’re in the center of a mountain.” My second one today. “It’s not like they can hear you.”
He pulled the collar of the heavy wool robe away from his neck. “You would be surprised at
what they can find out. Let me show you.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant as he moved past a heap of broken bicycles to another glass
cabinet. He opened the doors and took out a cobalt-blue sphere the size of a baseball.
“What is that thing?”
“A Third Eye.” He held it in his palm carefully. “It allows you to see the past, a specific
memory in time.”
The color began to swirl inside the ball, churning like storm clouds. Until it cleared, and a
picture came into view…
A young man was sitting behind a heavy wooden desk in a dimly lit study. His long robe
appeared to be too big for him, much like the ornately carved chair he was sitting in. His
hands were clasped together as he leaned heavily on his elbows. “What is it now,
Xavier?” he asked impatiently.
Xavier ran his hands through his dark hair and over his face, his green eyes darting
around the room. It was obvious that he was dreading the conversation. He twisted the
cord of his own robe in his lap. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir. But certain events have
come to my attention—atrocities that violate our vows and threaten the mission of the
Keepers.”
Angelus looked bored. “What atrocities are you referring to, Xavier? Has someone
failed to file a report? Lost a crescent key to one of the Caster libraries?”
Xavier straightened. “We’re not talking about lost keys, Angelus. Something is
going on in the dungeons below the Keep. At night I hear the screams, bloodcurdling
screams you can’t—”
Angelus waved off the comment. “People have nightmares. We can’t all sleep as
blissfully as you. Some of us run the Council.”
Xavier pushed back from his chair and stood. “I’ve been down there, Angelus. I
know what they are hiding. The question is, do you?”
Angelus whipped around, his eyes narrowing. “What is it you think you’ve seen?”
The rage in Xavier’s eyes was impossible to ignore. “Keepers using Dark power—
Casting—as if they are Dark Casters. Conducting experiments on the living. I’ve seen
enough to know that you must take action.”
Angelus turned his back on Xavier, facing the window that overlooked the vast
mountains surrounding the Far Keep. “Those experiments, as you call them, are for their
protection. There is a war, Xavier. Between Light and Dark Casters, and the Mortals are
caught in the middle.” He turned. “Do you want to watch them die? Are you prepared to
take responsibility for that atrocity? Your acts have already cost you enough, wouldn’t
you agree?”
“For your protection,” Xavier corrected. “That is what you meant, isn’t it,
Angelus? Mortals are caught in the middle of the war. Or have you become something
beyond Mortal?”
Angelus shook his head. “It’s clear we aren’t going to agree on this matter.” He
started to speak the words of a Cast in low tones.
“What are you doing?” Xavier pointed at Angelus. “Casting? This is not right. We
are the balance—we observe and Keep the records. Keepers do not cross the line into the
world of magic and monsters!”
Angelus closed his eyes and continued the incantation.
Xavier’s skin seared and blackened, as if it was burnt.
“What are you doing?” he cried.
The charcoal color spread like a rash, the skin tightening as it turned impossibly
smooth. Xavier screamed, clawing at his own skin.
Angelus spoke the final word of the Cast and opened his eyes in time to watch
Xavier’s hair fall out in tufts.
He smiled at the sight of the man he was destroying. “It seems to me that you are
crossing a line right now.”
Xavier’s limbs started to lengthen unnaturally, bones cracking and breaking.
Angelus listened. “You should consider having a bit more sympathy for monsters.”
Xavier dropped to his knees. “Please. Have mercy….”
Angelus stood over the Keeper, who was almost unrecognizable. “This is the Far
Keep. Removed from the Mortal and Caster worlds. The vows are the words I speak, and
the laws the ones I choose.” He pushed Xavier’s devastated body over with his boot.
“There is no mercy here.”
The images faded, replaced by the swirling blue haze. For a second, I didn’t move. I felt like I had
just witnessed a man’s execution—and he was standing right next to me. What was left of him.
Xavier looked like a monster, but he was a good guy, trying to do the right thing. I shuddered,
thinking about what could have happened to Marian if Macon and John hadn’t gotten there in time.
If I hadn’t made a deal with the Lilum.
At least I knew enough not to regret what I did. As bad as things were, they could have been
worse. I knew that now.
“I’m sorry, Xavier.” I didn’t know what else to say.
He put the Third Eye back on the shelf. “That was a long time ago. But I thought you should
know what they are capable of, since you are so anxious to get inside. If I were you, I would run
the other way.”
I leaned against the cold wall of the cavern. “I wish I could.”
“Why do you want so badly to get in there?”
I was sure he couldn’t think of one good reason. For me, one reason was all I needed.
“Someone added a page in The Caster Chronicles, and I ended up dead. If I can destroy it—”
Xavier reached his hands toward me as if he was going to grab me by the shoulders and shake
some sense into me. But he drew them back before he touched me. “Do you have any idea what
they’ll do to you if you’re caught? Look at me, Ethan. I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“Lucky? You?” I shut my mouth before I accidentally made it worse. Was he nuts?
“They’ve done this to others, Mortals and Casters alike. It’s Dark power.” His hands were
shaking. “Most of them have gone mad, left to wander the Tunnels or the Otherworld like animals.”
It was exactly the way Link had described the creature that attacked him the night Obidias
Trueblood died. But what Link had encountered wasn’t an animal. It was a man, or something that
had been a man once—driven crazy as his body was mutated and tortured.
I felt sick.
The walls of the Far Keep were hiding more than The Caster Chronicles.
“I don’t have a choice. If I don’t destroy the page, I can’t get back home.” I could almost see
his mind spinning. “There has to be a Cast—something in The Book of Stars or one of your books
that could help me.”
Xavier whipped around, pointing a broken finger inches from my face. “I would never let
anyone touch one of my books or use them to Cast! Have you learned nothing here?”
I backed up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ll find another way, but I still have to get
inside.”
Everything about his demeanor had changed when I suggested using a Cast. “You still have
nothing to offer. I can’t show you the Gates unless you give me something in return.”
“Are you serious?” But I could tell from his expression that he was. “What the hell do you
want?”
“The Book of Moons,” he said without hesitation. “You know where it is. That’s my price.”
“It’s in the Mortal realm. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m dead. And by the way, Abraham
Ravenwood has it. He’s not what you’d call a nice guy.” I was beginning to think that getting past
the Gates was going to be the hardest part of finding my way home, if it was even possible.
Xavier started moving toward the slit in the rock that led back to the outside. “I think we both
know there are ways around that. If you want to get through the Gates, bring me The Book of
Moons.”
“Even if I could get it, why would I give you the most powerful book in the Caster world?” I
practically shouted. “How do I know you won’t use it to do something terrible?”
His unnaturally large eyes widened. “What could be more terrible than how I am standing
before you now? Is there something worse than watching your body betray you? Feeling your
bones break as you move? Do you think I can risk the trade the Book might choose to make?”
He was right. You couldn’t get something from The Book of Moons without giving something
in return. We’d all learned that, the hard way. The other Ethan Wate. Genevieve. Macon and Amma
and Lena and me. The Book made the choice.
“You could change your mind. People get desperate.” I couldn’t believe I was lecturing a
desperate man about desperation.
Xavier turned to face me, his body already partially hidden in shadow. “Because I know what it
is capable of—what it could do in the hands of men like Angelus—I would never speak a word
from that book. And I would be sure it never left this room, so no one else could either.”
He was telling the truth.
Xavier was terrified of magic, Light or Dark.
It had destroyed him in the worst possible way. He didn’t want to Cast or wield supernatural
power. If anything, he wanted to protect himself and others from that kind of power. If there was
anywhere The Book of Moons would be safe, it was here—safer than in the Lunae Libri or some
other faraway Caster library. Safer than hidden in the depths of Ravenwood or buried in
Genevieve’s grave. No one would ever find it here.
That was when I decided I was going to give it to him.
There was only one problem.
I had to figure out how to get it away from Abraham Ravenwood first.
I looked at Xavier.
“How many powerful objects would you say you’ve got in this room, Xavier?”
“It doesn’t matter. I told you—they’re not to be used.”
I smiled. “What if I were to tell you I could get you The Book of Moons, but I’d need your
help? Your help, and the help of a few of your treasures?”
He made a strange expression, twisting his uneven mouth from one side to the other. I really,
really hoped it was a smile.
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