Sometimes Link could be a real idiot.
“Libro what? Book of Moons? What does that mean?” Link looked from me to The Stars and
Stripes, scratching his head. You would have thought I was bringing up the subject for the first
time.
“Three words. It’s a book, Link. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” It was only the book that had
destroyed our lives, and the lives of all the Casters in my family before me on our sixteenth
birthdays.
“That’s not what I meant.” He looked hurt.
I knew what Link meant.
But I didn’t know why Ethan was asking for The Book of Moons any more than Link did. So I
just kept staring at the newspaper in the middle of the kitchen.
Amma was behind me, and she didn’t say a word. She’d been that way for a while now—since
Ethan. The silence was as wrong as everything else. It was strange to not hear her banging around
in her kitchen. Even stranger that we were sitting around Ethan’s kitchen table trying to figure out
the message he’d left in today’s crossword puzzle. I wondered if he could see us or knew we were
here.
surrounded by strangers who love me
(un)strangers made strange
by pain
I felt my fingers twitch, looking for the pen that wasn’t there. I fought the poetry off. It was a
new habit. It hurt too much to write now. Three days after Ethan left, the word NO appeared, inked
in black Sharpie on my left hand. WORDS appeared on my right.
I hadn’t written a word since, not on paper. Not in my notebook. Not even on my walls. It
seemed like forever since I had.
How long had Ethan been gone? Weeks? Months? It was all one long blur, as if time had
stopped when he left.
Everything had stopped.
Link stared up at me from where he was sitting on the kitchen floor. When he unfolded his
new quarter-Incubus body like that, he took up most of the kitchen. There were arms and legs
everywhere, like a praying mantis, only with muscles.
Liv studied her own copy of the puzzle from the table—clipped and taped into her trusty red
notebook, covered in her neatly penciled analysis—while John leaned over her shoulder. The way
they moved together, you would think it hurt them not to touch.
Unlike Casters and Mortals.
A human and a hybrid Incubus. They don’t know how good they have it. Nothing catches fire
when they kiss.
I sighed, resisting the urge to Cast a Discordia on them. We were all here. You would have
thought nothing had changed. Only one person was missing.
Which made everything different.
I folded up the morning paper, sinking into the chair next to Liv. “Book of Moons. That’s all it
says. I don’t know why I keep reading it. If I read this thing any more times, I’m going to burn a
hole in it with my eyes.”
“You can do that?” Link looked interested.
I wriggled my fingers in front of him. “Maybe I can burn more than just paper. So don’t tempt
me.”
Liv smiled at me sympathetically. As if the situation called for anything like a smile. “Well then,
I suppose we have to think. Those are three rather specific words. So it seems the messages are
changing.” She sounded precise and logical, like a British version of Marian, as she always did.
“And?” Link sounded irritated, like he always did lately.
“So what’s going on… over there?” Where Ethan is. Liv didn’t say it. Nobody wanted to. Liv
pulled the three crossword puzzles out of her notebook. “At first, it seems like he just wants you to
know he is…”
“Alive? Hate to break it to you—” Link said, but John kicked him under the table. Amma
dropped a pan behind me, sending it clattering toward where Link sat on the floor. “Oww. You
know what I meant.”
“Around,” John corrected him, looking from Amma to me. I nodded, feeling Amma’s hands
slip down to rest on my shoulders.
I touched her hand with mine; her fingers curled tightly around it. Neither one of us wanted to
let go. Especially now that it was possible Ethan wasn’t gone forever. It had been weeks since
Ethan had started sending me messages through The Stars and Stripes. It didn’t matter what they
said. They all said the same thing to me.
I’m here.
I’m still here.
You’re not alone.
I wished there was a way I could say it to him.
I squeezed Amma’s fingers harder. I tried to talk to her about it right after I found the first
message, but she just muttered something about a fair trade and how it was her mess to sort out.
How it was what she aimed to do, sooner or later.
But she didn’t doubt me. Neither did my uncle, not anymore. In fact, Uncle Macon and Amma
were the only ones who really believed me. They understood what I was going through, because
they had gone through it themselves. I didn’t know if Uncle Macon would ever get over losing Lila.
And Amma seemed to be having as hard a time without Ethan as I was. They had seen the proof,
too. Uncle Macon was there when I saw Ethan’s crossword for the first time. And Amma had all
but seen Ethan standing in the kitchen of Wate’s Landing.
I said it out loud again to everyone, for the tenth time. “Of course he’s around. I told you, he’s
going somewhere. He’s got some kind of plan. He’s not just sitting there, waiting in a grave full of
dirt. He’s trying to get back to us. I’m sure of it.”
“How sure?” Link asked. “You’re not sure, Lena. Nothin’s sure, except death an’ taxes. And
when they said it, I think they were talkin’ more about stayin’ dead, not comin’ back again.”
I didn’t know why Link was having so much trouble believing that Ethan was still there, that he
could come home again. Wasn’t Link the one who was part Incubus? He knew as well as anyone
that strange things happened around here all the time. Why was it so hard for him to believe that this
particular strange thing could be happening?
Maybe losing Ethan was harder on Link than it was for the rest of them. Maybe he couldn’t let
himself risk losing his best friend all over again, even if it was only the idea of him. No one knew
what Link was going through.
Except me.
While Link and Liv returned to arguing about whether or not Ethan was actually gone, I felt
myself slipping into the fog of nagging doubts that I worked so hard to push out of my mind.
They just kept coming.
What if this whole thing really was my imagination, like Reece and Gramma kept saying? What
if they were right, and it was just too hard for me to accept my life without him? And it wasn’t just
them—Uncle Macon wouldn’t try anything to bring him back either.
And if it was real—if Ethan could hear me—what would I say?
Come home.
I’m waiting.
I love you.
Nothing he didn’t already know.
Why bother?
I refused to write, but the words were hard to even think now.
words same as always
same as nothing
when nothing is the same
There was no point in saying it to myself.
John kicked Link again, and I tried to focus on the present. The kitchen and the conversation.
All the things I could do for Ethan, rather than all the things I felt about him.
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Ethan is—around.” Liv looked at Link, who kept
quiet this time. “Like I said, it seemed he spent all his energy trying to convince us of that a few
weeks ago.”
“Right around the time you measured the energy spiking at Ravenwood,” John reminded her.
Liv nodded, flipping pages in her notebook.
“Or maybe Reece was just usin’ the microwave,” Link muttered.
“Which was the same time Ethan moved the button at his grave,” I said obstinately.
“Or maybe it was just windy.” Link sighed.
“Something was definitely going on.” John moved his foot closer to Link, the threat of another
good kick shutting Link up for a while. I thought about slapping a Silentium Cast on him, but it
didn’t seem right. Plus, knowing Link, it would take more than magic to shut him up.
Liv went back to examining the papers in front of her. “But then, quite soon, his messages
began to change. It’s like he figured something out. What he needed to do.”
“To come home,” I said.
“Lena, I know you want to think that’s what’s happenin’.” Amma’s voice was bleak. “And I
felt my boy here, same as you. But we don’t know which end is up. There are no easy answers,
not when it comes to gettin’ someone in or outta the Otherworld. Believe me, if there was an easy
way, I would’ve already done it.”
She sounded so haggard and tired. I knew she had been working on getting Ethan home as
hard as I had. And I’d tried everything at first—everything and everyone. The problem was trying
to get Light Casters to talk about raising the dead. And I didn’t have quite the access to the Dark
Casters that I used to. Uncle Macon had come for me the moment I’d set foot in Exile. I suspected
he made some kind of deal with the bartender, a shifty-looking Blood Incubus who looked like he’d
do anything if he was thirsty enough.
“But we don’t know that’s not it,” I said, looking at Liv.
“True. The logical assumption would be that wherever Ethan was, he would be trying to get
back.” Liv carefully erased a small mark in the margin. “To where you are.” She didn’t look at me,
but I knew what she meant. Liv and Ethan had a history of their own, and even though Liv had
found something better for her with John, she was always very careful of how she spoke about
Ethan, especially to me.
She tapped the pencil. “First the river rock. Now The Book of Moons. He must need them for
something.”
John pulled the last puzzle toward him. “If he needs The Book of Moons, it’s a good sign. It
has to be.”
“A mighty powerful book, on this side or the other. A book like that would be worth bargaining
for.” Amma rubbed my shoulders as she spoke, and I felt a shiver go down my spine.
John looked at both of us. “Bargaining for what? Why?”
Amma said nothing. I suspected she knew more than she was saying, which was usually the
case. Plus, she hadn’t even mentioned the Greats in weeks, which was unlike her. Especially now
that Ethan was in their care, technically speaking. But I had no idea what Amma was up to any
more than I knew what Ethan was planning.
I finally answered for both of us, because there was only one possible answer. “I don’t know.
It’s not like I can ask him.”
“Why not? Can’t you Cast something?” John looked frustrated.
“It doesn’t work like that.” I wished it did.
“Some kind of Reveal Cast?”
“There’s nothing to Cast it on.”
“His grave?” John looked at Liv, but she shook her head. No one had an answer, because none
of us had ever even contemplated anything like this before. A Cast on someone who wasn’t even on
this plane of existence? Short of raising the dead—which Genevieve had done to start this whole
mess in the first place, and I had done again, more than a hundred years later—what could anyone
do?
I shook my head. “What does it matter? Ethan wants it, and we have to get it to him. That’s
the important thing.”
Amma chimed in. “Besides, only one kind a bargain my boy would be makin’ over there. Only
one thing he wants bad enough. And that would be to get himself back home again, sure as the
sunrise.”
“Amma’s right.” I looked at them. “We have to get him the Book.”
Link sat up. “Are you sure, Lena? Are you absolutely death-and-taxes sure it’s Ethan who’s
even sendin’ us these messages? What if it’s Sarafine? Or even Colonel Sanders?” He shuddered.
I knew who Link meant. Abraham, in his rumpled white suit and his string tie. Satan himself, at
least as far as Gatlin County was concerned.
That really would be the worst-case scenario.
“It’s not Sarafine. I’d know.”
“Would you really know if it was her?” Link rubbed his hair, which was sticking out in a
thousand different directions. “How?”
Through the window, I watched as Mr. Wate’s Volvo pulled into the driveway. I knew the
conversation was over, even before I felt Amma’s hands stiffen on my shoulders. “I just would.”
Wouldn’t I?
I stared at the stupid crossword puzzle as if it could give me some kind of answer, when all it
could tell me was that I knew nothing at all.
The front door opened as the back door banged shut. John and Liv must have disappeared out
the back. I braced for the inevitable.
“Afternoon, kids. You waitin’ for Ethan to get home?” Mr. Wate looked at Amma hopefully.
Link scrambled to his feet, but I looked away. I couldn’t bear to answer.
More than anything. More than you know.
“Yes, sir. Waitin’s hardly the word. Bored outta my thick skull without Ethan around.” Link
tried to smile, but even he looked like he was about to cry.
“Cheer up, Wesley. I miss him as much as you do.” Mr. Wate reached for Link’s spiked hair,
rubbing it with one hand. Then he opened the pantry and looked inside. “You hear anything from
our boy today, Amma?”
“Afraid not, Mitchell.”
Mr. Wate stopped short, frozen in place with a box of cereal in his hand. “I’ve half a mind to
drive down to Savannah myself. It makes no sense, keeping a boy out of school this long.
Something’s not right.” His face clouded over.
I focused my eyes on the tall, gaunt figure of Mitchell Wate, just as I had so often since Ethan
died. Once he was fixed in my sight, I slowly began reciting the words of the Oblivio Cast that
Gramma had taught me to repeat every time I saw Ethan’s dad.
He stared at me, curious. My eyes didn’t even flicker. Only my lips began to move, and I
whispered the words as they formed in my mind.
“Oblivio, Oblivio, Non Abest.
Oblivion, Oblivion, He Is Not Gone.”
A bubble expanded inside my chest the moment I formed the Cast, pushing past me toward
Ethan’s father, reaching right across the room and wrapping itself around him. The room seemed to
stretch and contract, and I thought for a moment the bubble was about to pop.
Then I felt the air snap around us, and suddenly it was over, and the air was just air, and
everything seemed normal again.
As normal as things could be.
Mr. Wate’s eyes brightened and glazed over. He shrugged, smiling at me, sticking one hand
back inside the cereal box. “Ah well, what are you going to do? He’s a good kid. But if Ethan
doesn’t get his tail home from Caroline’s soon, he’s going to be mighty behind when he gets back.
At this rate, he’ll be doing homework all the way through spring break. You tell him that for me,
will you?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell him.” I smiled, wiping at my eye before anything like a tear could fall. “I’ll tell
him the next time I talk to him.”
That’s when Amma almost threw the pan of pork chops down on the burner. Link shook his
head.
I turned and fled. I tried not to think, but the words followed me, like a curse, like a hex.
oblivion eyes on a cereal box,
the warm blinds of a father
lost and last to know
lost and last to love
last boy lost
you can’t see
even a bubble
once it’s
popped
I fought off the words.
But you couldn’t unpop a bubble.
Even I knew that.
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