Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 6

The Call
I didn't ask her about what she'd written on the water tower, but I didn't forget it. How could I, when all we had done for the past year was count down
to the inevitable? When I finally asked why she'd written it or what she was counting down to, she wouldn't say. And I had the feeling she really didn't
know. Which was even worse than knowing.
It had been two weeks since then, and as far as I could tell Lena still hadn't written anything in her notebook. She was wearing the little Sharpie
on her necklace, but it looked as new as the day I bought it at the Stop & Steal. It was weird not to see her writing, scribbling on her hands or her
worn-out Converse, which she didn't wear much these days. She had started wearing her thrashed black boots instead. Her hair was different, too.
Almost always tied back, as if she thought she could yank the magic right out of it.
We were sitting on the top step of my porch, the same place we had been sitting when Lena first told me she was a Caster, a secret she had
never shared with a Mortal before. I was pretending to read Jekyll and Hyde. Lena was staring down at the blank pages of her spiral notebook, as
if the thin blue lines held the answer to all her problems.
When I wasn't watching Lena, I was staring down my street. My dad was coming home today. Amma and I had visited him on Family Day every
week since my aunt checked him into Blue Horizons. Even though he wasn't back to his old self, I had to admit he was acting almost like a regular
person again. But I was still nervous.
“They're here.” The screen door slammed behind me. Amma was standing on the porch in her tool apron, the kind she preferred over a
traditional one, especially on days like this. She was holding the gold charm around her neck, rubbing it between her fingers.
I looked down the street, but the only thing I saw was Billy Watson riding his bike. Lena leaned forward to get a better look.
I don't see a car.
I didn't either, but I knew I would in about five seconds. Amma was proud, particularly when it came to her abilities as a Seer. She wouldn't say
they were here unless she knew they were coming.
It'll be here.
Sure enough, my aunt's white Cadillac made the right onto Cotton Bend. Aunt Caroline had the window rolled down, what she liked to call 360
air conditioning, and I could see her waving from down the block. I stood up as Amma elbowed her way past me. “Come on, now. Your daddy
deserves a proper homecomin’.” That was code for Get your butt down to the curb, Ethan Wate.
I took a deep breath.
Are you okay? Lena's hazel eyes caught the sun.
Yeah. I lied. She must have known, but she didn't say a word. I took her hand. It was cold, the way she always was now, and the current of
electricity felt more like the sting of frostbite.
“Mitchell Wate. Don't tell me you've been eatin’ anybody's pie but mine. ’Cause you look like you fell into the cookie jar and couldn't find your
way back out.” My dad gave her a knowing look. Amma had raised him, and he knew her teasing held as much love as any hug.
I stood there while Amma fussed over him as if he was ten years old. She and my aunt were chattering away like the three of them had just
come home from the market. My dad smiled at me weakly. It was the same smile he gave me when we visited Blue Horizons. It said, I'm not crazy
anymore, just ashamed. He was wearing his old Duke T-shirt and jeans, and somehow he looked younger than I remembered. Except for the
crinkling lines around his eyes, which deepened as he pulled me in for an awkward hug. “How you doing?”
My voice caught in my throat for a second, and I coughed. “Good.”
He looked over at Lena. “Nice to see you again, Lena. I was sorry to hear about your uncle.” Those were hard-bred Southern manners for you.
He had to acknowledge Macon's passing, even in a moment as awkward as this one.
Lena tried to smile, but she only managed to look as uncomfortable as I felt. “Thank you, sir.”
“Ethan, come on over here and give your favorite aunt a hug.” Aunt Caroline held out her hands. I wanted to throw my arms around her and let
her squeeze the knot right out of my chest.
“Let's go on inside.” Amma waved at my dad from the top of the porch. “I made a Coca-Cola cake and fried chicken. If we don't get in there
soon, that chicken'll have a mind to find its way home.”
Aunt Caroline looped her arm through my dad's and led him up the stairs. She had the same brown hair and small frame as my mom, and for a
second it felt like my parents were home again, walking through the old screen door of Wate's Landing.
“I have to get home.” Lena was clutching her notebook against her chest like a shield.
“You don't have to go. Come in.”
Please.
I wasn't offering to be polite. I didn't want to go in there alone. A few months ago, Lena would have known that. But I guess today her mind was
somewhere else, because she didn't.
“You should spend some time with your family.” She stood up on her toes and kissed me, her lips barely touching my cheek. She was halfway to
the car before I could argue.
I watched Larkin's Fastback disappear down my street. Lena didn't drive the hearse anymore. As far as I knew, she hadn't even looked at it
since Macon died. Uncle Barclay had parked it behind the old barn and thrown a tarp over it. Instead, she was driving Larkin's car, all black and
chrome. Link had foamed at the mouth the first time he saw it. “Do you know how many chicks I could pull with that ride?”
After her cousin had betrayed her whole family, I didn't understand why Lena would want to drive his car. When I had asked her, she'd shrugged
and said, “He won't be needing it anymore.” Maybe Lena thought she was punishing Larkin by driving it. He had contributed to Macon's death,
something she would never forgive. I watched the car turn the corner, wishing I could disappear along with it.
By the time I made it to the kitchen, there was already chicory coffee brewing — and trouble. Amma was on the phone, pacing in front of the sink,
and every minute or two she would cover the receiver with her hand and report the conversation on the other end to Aunt Caroline.
“They haven't seen her since yesterday.” Amma put the phone back to her ear. “You should make Aunt Mercy a toddy and put her to bed until we
find her.”
“Find who?” I looked at my dad, and he shrugged.
Aunt Caroline pulled me over to the sink and whispered the way Southern ladies do when something is too awful to say out loud. “Lucille Ball.
She's missin’.” Lucille Ball was Aunt Mercy's Siamese cat, who spent most of her time running around my great-aunts’ front yard on a leash
attached to a clothesline, an activity the Sisters referred to as exercising.
“What do you mean?”
Amma covered the receiver with her hand again, narrowing her eyes and setting her jaw. The Look. “Seems somebody put the idea in your
aunt's head that cats don't need to be tied up, because they always come back home. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?” It wasn't
a question. We both knew I was the one who had been saying it for years.
“But cats aren't supposed to be on leashes.” I tried to defend myself, but it was too late.
Amma glared at me and turned to Aunt Caroline. “Seems Aunt Mercy's been waitin’, sittin’ on the porch, starin’ at an empty leash hangin’ on the
clothesline.” She took her hand off the receiver. “You need to get her in the house and put her feet up. If she gets lightheaded, boil some dandelion.”
I slunk out of the kitchen before Amma's eyes got any narrower. Great. My hundred-year-old aunt's cat was gone, and it was my fault. I'd have to
call Link and see if he'd drive around town with me and look for Lucille. Maybe Link's demo tapes would scare her out of hiding.
“Ethan?” My dad was standing in the hall, right outside of the kitchen door. “Can I talk to you for a second?” I had been dreading this, the part
where he apologized for everything and tried to explain why he had ignored me for almost a year.
“Yeah, sure.” But I didn't know if I wanted to hear it. I wasn't really angry anymore. When I almost lost Lena, there was a part of me that
understood why my dad had come completely unhinged. I couldn't imagine my life without Lena, and my dad had loved my mom for more than
eighteen years.
I felt sorry for him now, but it still hurt.
My dad ran his hand through his hair and edged closer to me. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.” He paused, staring down at his feet. “I don't
know what happened. One day, I was in there writing, and the next day all I could do was think about your mom — sit in her chair, smell her books,
imagine her reading over my shoulder.” He studied his hands, as if he was talking to them instead of me. Maybe that was a trick they taught you at
Blue Horizons. “It was the only place I felt close to her. I couldn't let her go.”
He looked up at the old plaster ceiling, and a tear escaped from the corner of his eye, running slowly down the side of his face. My dad had lost
the love of his life, and he had come unraveled like an old sweater. I'd watched, but I hadn't done anything about it. Maybe he wasn't the only one to
blame. I knew I was supposed to smile now, but I didn't feel like it.
“I get it, Dad. I wish you'd said something. I missed her, too. You know?”
His voice was quiet when he finally spoke. “I didn't know what to say.”
“It's okay.” I didn't know if I meant it yet, but I could see relief spread across his face. He reached around and hugged me, squeezing my back
with his fists for a second.
“I'm here now. Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Things you need to know when you have a girlfriend.”
There was nothing I wanted to talk about less. “Dad, we don't have to —”
“I have a lot of experience, you know. Your mother taught me a thing or two about women over the years.”
I started planning my escape route.
“If you ever want to talk about, you know …”
I could hurl myself through the study window and squeeze between the hedge and the house.
“Feelings.”
I almost laughed in his face. “What?”
“Amma says Lena's having a hard time with her uncle's passing. She's not acting like herself.”
Lying on the ceiling. Refusing to go to school. Not opening up to me. Climbing water towers. “No, she's all right.”
“Well, women are a different species.”
I nodded and tried not to look him in the eye. He had no idea how right he was.
“As much as I loved your mother, half the time I couldn't have told you what was going on in her head. Relationships are complicated. You know
you can ask me anything.”
What could I ask? What do you do when your heart almost stops beating every time you kiss? Are there times when you should and shouldn't
read each other's minds? What are the early warning signs that your girlfriend is being Claimed for all time by good or evil?
He squeezed my shoulder one last time. I was still trying to put together a sentence when he let go. He was staring down the hall, in the direction
of the study.
The framed portrait of Ethan Carter Wate was hanging in the hallway. I still wasn't used to seeing it, even though I was the one who had hung it
there the day after Macon's funeral. It had been hidden under a sheet my whole life, which seemed wrong. Ethan Carter Wate had walked away
from a war he didn't believe in and died trying to protect the Caster girl he loved.
So I had found a nail and hung the painting. It felt right. After that, I went into my dad's study and picked up the sheets of paper strewn all over
the room. I looked at the scribbles and circles one last time, the evidence of how deep love can run and how long loss can last. Then I cleaned up
and threw the pages away. That felt right, too.
My dad walked over to the painting, studying it as if he was seeing it for the first time. “I haven't seen this guy in a long time.”
I was so relieved we had moved on to a new subject, the words came tumbling out. “I hung it up. I hope it's okay. But it seemed like it belonged
out here, instead of under some old sheet.”
For a minute, my dad stared up at the portrait of the boy in the Confederate uniform, who didn't look much older than me. “This painting always
had a sheet over it when I was a kid. My grandparents never said much about it, but they weren't about to hang a deserter on the wall. After I
inherited this place, I found it covered up in the attic and brought it down to the study.”
“Why didn't you hang it up?” I never imagined that my dad had stared at the same hidden outline when he was a kid.
“I don't know. Your mother wanted me to. She loved his story — the way he walked away from the war, even though it ended up costing him his
life. I meant to hang it. I was just so used to seeing it covered up. Before I got around to it, your mom died.” He ran his hand along the bottom of the
carved frame. “You know, you were named after him.”
“I know.”
My dad looked at me as if he was looking at me for the first time, too. “She was crazy about that painting. I'm glad you hung it up. It's where he
belongs.”
I didn't escape the fried chicken or Amma's guilt trip. So after dinner, I drove around the Sisters’ neighborhood with Link looking for Lucille. Link
called her name between bites of a chicken leg wrapped in an oily paper towel. Every time he ran his hand over his spiky blond hair, the shine got
shinier from all the grease.
“You shoulda brought more fried chicken along. Cats dig chicken. They eat birds in the wild.” Link was driving slower than usual so I could keep
an eye out for Lucille while he beat time to “Love Biscuit,” his band's terrible new song, on the steering wheel.
“Then what? You'd drive around while I hung out the window with a chicken leg in my hand?” Link was so transparent. “You just want more of
Amma's chicken.”
“You know it. And Coca-Cola cake.” He hung his drumstick bone out the window. “Here, kitty kitty …”
I scanned the sidewalk, looking for a Siamese cat, but something else caught my eye — a crescent moon. It was on a license plate stuck
between a bumper sticker of the Stars and Bars, the Confederate flag, and one for Bubba's Truck and Trailer. The same old South Carolina plates
with the state symbol I had seen a thousand times, only I'd never thought about it before. A blue palmetto and a crescent moon, maybe a Caster
moon. The Casters really had been here a long time.
“Cat's stupider than I thought, if he doesn't know about Amma's fried chicken.”
“She. Lucille Ball's a girl.”
“It's a cat.” Link swerved, and we turned the corner onto Main. Boo Radley was sitting on the curb, watching the Beater roll by. His tail thumped,
one lonely thump of recognition, as we disappeared down the road. The loneliest dog in town.
At the sight of Boo, Link cleared his throat. “Speakin’ a girls, how're things with Lena?” He hadn't seen much of her, though he'd seen more than
most people had. Lena spent most of her time at Ravenwood under the watchful eyes of Gramma and Aunt Del, or hiding from their watchful eyes,
depending on the day.
“She's dealing.” It wasn't a lie, exactly.
“Is she? I mean, she seems kinda different. Even for Lena.” Link was one of the few people in town who knew Lena's secret.
“Her uncle died. That kind of thing changes you.” Link should've known that better than anyone. He'd watched me try to make sense of my
mother's death, and then a world without her in it. He knew it was impossible.
“Yeah, but she hardly talks, and she's wearin’ his clothes. Don't you think that's sorta weird?”
“She's fine.”
“If you say so, man.”
“Just drive. We have to find Lucille.” I looked out the window at the empty street. “Stupid cat.”
Link shrugged and cranked up the volume. His band, the Holy Rollers, shuddered through the speakers. “The Girl's Gone Away.” Getting
dumped was the theme of every song Link wrote. It was his way of dealing. I still hadn't figured out mine.
We never found Lucille, and I never got the conversation with Link, or my dad, out of my mind. My house was quiet, which isn't what you want a
house to be if you're trying to run away from your thoughts. The window in my room was open, but the air was as hot and stagnant as everything else
today.
Link was right. Lena was acting strange. But it had only been a few months. She'd snap out of it, and things would be the way they were before.
I dug through the piles of books and papers on my desk, looking for A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my go-to book for taking my mind off
things. Under a stack of old Sandman comics, I found something else. It was a package, wrapped in Marian's signature brown paper and tied with
string. But it didn't have GATLIN COUNTY LIBRARY stamped on it.
Marian was my mother's oldest friend and the Gatlin County Head Librarian. She was also a Keeper in the Caster world — a Mortal who
guarded Caster secrets and history, and, in Marian's case, the Lunae Libri, a Caster Library filled with secrets of its own. She had given me the
package after Macon died, but I had forgotten all about it. It was his journal, and she thought Lena would want to have it. Marian was wrong. Lena
didn't want to see it or touch it. She wouldn't even let it into Ravenwood. “You keep it,” she had said. “I don't think I could bear to see his
handwriting.” It had been collecting dust on my desk ever since.
I turned it over in my hands. It was heavy, almost too heavy to be a book. I wondered what it looked like. It was probably old, made of cracked
leather. I untied the string and unwrapped it. I wasn't going to read it, just look at it. But when I pulled the paper away, I realized it wasn't a book. It
was a black wooden box, intricately carved with strange Caster symbols.
I ran my hand over the top, wondering what he wrote about. I couldn't imagine him writing poetry like Lena. It was probably full of horticultural
notes. I opened the lid carefully. I wanted to see something Macon had touched every day, something that was important to him. The lining was
black satin, and the pages inside were unbound and yellowed, written in Macon's fading spidery script. I touched a page, with a single finger. The
sky began to spin, and I felt myself pitching forward. The floor rushed up to meet me, but as I hit the ground, I fell through it and found myself in a
cloud of smoke —
Fires burned along the river, the only traces of the plantations that had stood there just hours ago. Greenbrier was already engulfed in
flames. Ravenwood would be next. The Union soldiers must have been taking a break, drunk from their victory and the liquor they had
pillaged from the wealthiest homes in Gatlin.
Abraham didn't have much time. The soldiers were coming, and he was going to have to kill them. It was the only way to save
Ravenwood. The Mortals didn't stand a chance against him, even if they were soldiers. They were no match for an Incubus. And if his
brother, Jonah, ever came back from the Tunnels, the soldiers would have two of them to contend with. The guns were Abraham's only
concern. Even though Mortal weapons couldn't kill his kind, the bullets would weaken him, which might give the soldiers the time they
needed to set fire to Ravenwood.
Abraham needed to feed, and even through the smoke, he could smell the desperation and fear of a Mortal nearby. Fear would make
him strong. It provided more power and sustenance than memories or dreams.
Abraham Traveled toward the scent. But when he materialized in the woods beyond Greenbrier, he knew he was too late. The scent was
faint. In the distance, he could see Genevieve Duchannes hunched over a body in the mud. Ivy, Greenbrier's cook, was standing behind
Genevieve, clutching something against her chest.
The old woman saw Abraham and rushed toward him. “Mr. Ravenwood, thank the Lord.” She lowered her voice. “You have to take this.
Put it somewhere safe till I can come for it.” Pulling a heavy black book from the folds of her apron, she thrust it into Abraham's hands. As
soon as he touched it, Abraham could feel its power.
The book was alive, pulsating against his palms as if it had a heartbeat. He could almost hear it whispering to him, beckoning him to
take it — to open it and release whatever was hiding inside. There were no words on its cover, only a single crescent moon. Abraham ran
his fingers over the edges.
Ivy was still talking, mistaking Abraham's silence for hesitation. “Please, Mr. Ravenwood. I got no one else to give it to. And I can't leave
it with Miss Genevieve. Not now.” Genevieve raised her head as if she could hear them through the rain and the roar of the flames.
The moment Genevieve turned toward them, Abraham understood. He could see her yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. The eyes of a
Dark Caster. In that moment, he also understood what he was holding.
The Book of Moons.
He had seen the Book before, in the dreams of Genevieve's mother, Marguerite. It was a book of infinite power, a book Marguerite
feared and revered in equal measure. One she hid from her husband and her daughters, and would never have allowed into the hands of a
Dark Caster or an Incubus. A book that could save Ravenwood.
Ivy scooped something from inside the folds of her skirt and rubbed it across the face of the Book. The white crystals rolled down over
the edges. Salt. The weapon of superstitious island women, who brought their own brand of power with them from the Sugar Islands, where
their ancestors were born. They believed it warded off Demons, a belief that had always amused Abraham. “I'll come for it, soon as I can. I
swear.”
“I will keep it safe. You have my word.” Abraham brushed some of the salt from the Book's cover so he could feel its heat against his
skin. He turned back toward the woods. He would walk a few yards, for Ivy's benefit. It always scared the Gullah women to see him Travel, to
be reminded of what he was.
“Put it away, Mr. Ravenwood. Whatever you do, don't open it. That book brings nothin’ but misery to anyone who messes with it. Don't
listen to it when it calls you. I'll come for it.” But Ivy's warning had come too late.
Abraham was already listening.
When I came to, I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at my ceiling. It was painted sky blue, like all the ceilings in our house, to fool the
carpenter bees that nested there.
I sat up, dizzy. The box was beside me, the lid shut. I opened it, and the pages were inside. This time I didn't touch them.
None of this made sense. Why was I having visions again? Why was I seeing Abraham Ravenwood, a man who folks in town had been
suspicious of for generations because Ravenwood was the only plantation to survive the Great Burning? Not that I believed much of anything the
folks in town had to say.
But when Genevieve's locket triggered the visions, there had been a reason. Something Lena and I needed to figure out. What did Abraham
Ravenwood have to do with us? The common thread was The Book of Moons. It was in the locket visions and in this one. But the Book was gone.
The last time anyone had seen it was the night of Lena's birthday, when it was lying on the table in the crypt, surrounded by fire. Like so many things,
it was nothing but ashes now.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 5

Falling
In the next few weeks, I successfully convinced Lena to leave the house with me a total of three times. Once to the movies with Link — my best
friend since second grade — where even her signature combination of popcorn and Milk Duds didn't cheer her up. Once to my house to eat
Amma's molasses cookies and watch a zombie marathon, my version of a dream date. It wasn't. And once for a walk along the Santee, where we
ended up turning around after ten minutes with sixty bug bites between us. Wherever she was, she didn't want to be.
Today was different. She had finally found somewhere she was comfortable, even if it was the last place I expected.
I walked in her room to find her lying sprawled across the ceiling, arms flung across the plaster, her hair spread out like a black fan around her
head.
“Since when can you do that?” I was used to Lena's powers by now, but since her sixteenth birthday they seemed to be getting stronger and
wilder, as if she was awkwardly growing into herself as a Caster. With every day, Lena the Caster girl was more unpredictable, stretching her
powers to see what she could do. As it turned out, what she could do these days was cause all kinds of trouble.
Like the time Link and I were driving to school in the Beater, and one of his songs came on the radio as if the station was playing it. Link was so
shocked he'd swerved a good two feet into Mrs. Asher's front hedge. “An accident,” Lena said with a crooked smile. “One of Link's songs was
stuck in my head.” Nobody had ever gotten one of Link's songs stuck in their head. But Link had believed her, which made his ego even more
unbearable. “What can I say? I have that effect on the ladies. This voice is as smooth as butter.”
A week after that, Link and I had been walking down the hall, and Lena came up and gave me a big hug, right as the bell was ringing. I figured
she had finally decided to come back to school. But she wasn't actually there at all. It was some kind of projection, or whatever the Caster word was
for making your boyfriend look like an idiot. Link thought I was trying to hug him, so he called me “Lover Boy” for days. “I missed you. Is that such a
crime?” Lena thought it was funny, but I was starting to wish Gramma would step in and ground her, or whatever it was you did to a Natural who was
up to no good.
Don't be a baby. I said I was sorry, didn't I?
You're as big a menace as Link in fifth grade, the year he sucked all the juice out of my mom's tomatoes with a straw.
It won't happen again. I swear.
That's what Link said back then.
But he stopped, right?
Yeah. When we stopped growing tomatoes.
“Come down.”
“I like it better up here.”
I grabbed her hand. A current crept through my arm, but I didn't let go, pulling her down onto the bed next to me.
“Ouch.” She was laughing. I could see her shoulder shudder even though her back was to me. Or maybe she wasn't laughing but crying, which
was rare these days. The crying had mostly stopped and had been replaced by something worse. Nothing.
Nothing was deceptive. Nothing was much harder to describe or fix or stop.
Do you want to talk about it, L?
About what?
I pulled her closer, resting my head on hers. The shaking slowed, and I held her as tight as I could. Like she was still on the ceiling, and I was the
one hanging on.
Nothing.
I shouldn't have complained about the ceiling. There were crazier places you could hang out. Like where we were now.
“I have a bad feeling about this.” I was sweating, but I couldn't wipe my face. I needed my hands to stay right where they were.
“That's weird.” Lena smiled down at me. “Because I have a very good feeling about it.” Her hair was blowing in a breeze, though I wasn't sure
which kind. “Besides, we're almost there.”
“You realize this is insane, right? If a cop drives by, we're gonna get arrested or sent to Blue Horizons to visit my dad.”
“It's not crazy. It's romantic. Couples come here all the time.”
“When people go to the water tower, L, they aren't talking about the top of the water tower.” Which is where we would be in a minute. Just the
two of us, a wobbly iron ladder about a hundred feet above the ground, and a bright blue Carolina sky.
I tried not to look down.
Lena had talked me into climbing to the top. There was something about the excitement in her voice that made me go along with it, as if
something so stupid might be able to make her feel the way she did the last time we were here. Smiling, happy, in a red sweater. I remembered,
because there was a piece of red yarn hanging from her charm necklace.
She must have remembered, too. So here we were, stuck on a ladder, looking up so we didn't look down.
Once we reached the top and I looked out at the view, I understood. Lena was right. It was better up here. Everything was so far away that it
didn't even matter.
I let my legs dangle over the edge. “My mom used to collect pictures of old water towers.”
“Yeah?”
“Like the Sisters collect spoons. Only for my mom, it was water towers and postcards from the World's Fair.”
“I thought all water towers looked like this one. Like a big white spider.”
“Somewhere in Illinois, there's one shaped like a ketchup bottle.”
She laughed.
“And there's one that looks like a little house, this high off the ground.”
“We should live there. I'd go up once and never come back down.” She lay back on the warm white paint. “I guess in Gatlin it should be a peach,
a big old Gatlin peach.”
I leaned back next to her. “They already have one, but it's not in Gatlin. It's over in Gaffney. Guess they thought of it first.”
“What about a pie? We could paint this tank to look like one of Amma's pies. She'd like that.”
“Haven't seen one of those. But my mom had a picture of one shaped like a corncob.”
“I'd still rather have the house.” Lena stared up at the sky, where there wasn't a cloud in sight.
“I'd take the corncob or the ketchup, if you were there.”
She reached for my hand and we stayed like that, at the edge of Summerville's plain white water tower, looking out at Gatlin County as if it was
a tiny toy land full of tiny toy people. As small as the cardboard village my mom used to keep under our Christmas tree.
How could people that small have any problems at all?
“Hey, I brought you something.” I watched as she sat up, looking at me like a little kid.
“What is it?”
I looked over the edge of the water tower. “Maybe we should wait until we can't fall to our deaths.”
“We're not going to die. Don't be such a chicken.”
I reached into my back pocket. It wasn't anything special, but I'd had it for a while now, and I was hoping it might help her find her way back to
herself.
I pulled out a mini Sharpie, with a key ring on it.
“See? It fits on your necklace, like this.” Trying not to fall, I reached for Lena's necklace, the one she never took off. A tangle of charms, each
one meant something to her — the flattened penny from the machine at the Cineplex, where we had our first date. A silver moon Macon had given
her the night of the winter formal. The button from the vest she was wearing the night in the rain. They were Lena's memories, and she carried them
with her as if she might lose them without proof of those few perfect moments of happiness.
I snapped the Sharpie onto the chain. “Now you can write wherever you are.”
“Even on ceilings?” She looked at me and smiled, a little crooked, a little sad.
“Even on water towers.”
“I love it.” She spoke quietly, pulling the cap off the Sharpie.
Before I knew it, she was drawing a heart. Black ink on white paint, a heart hidden at the top of the Summerville water tower.
I was happy for a second. Then I felt like I was falling all the way down. Because she wasn't thinking about us. She was thinking about her next
birthday, the Seventeenth Moon. She was already counting down.
In the center of the heart, she didn't write our names.
She wrote a number.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 4

Lemons and Ash
When I pulled up in front of Ravenwood, Lena was sitting on the crumbling veranda, waiting. She was wearing an old button-down shirt and jeans
and her beat-up Chuck Taylors. For a second, it seemed as if it could've been three months ago and today was just another day. But she was also
wearing one of Macon's pinstriped vests, and it wasn't the same. Now that Macon was gone, something about Ravenwood felt wrong. Like going to
the Gatlin County Library if Marian, its only librarian, wasn't there, or to the DAR without the most important daughter of the Daughters of the
American Revolution herself, Mrs. Lincoln. Or to my parents’ study without my mom.
Ravenwood looked worse every time I came. Staring out at the archway of weeping willows, it was hard to imagine the garden had deteriorated
so quickly. Beds of the same kinds of flowers Amma had painstakingly taught me to weed as a kid were fighting for space in the dry earth. Beneath
the magnolias, clusters of hyacinth were tangled with hibiscus, and heliotrope infested the forget-me-nots, as if the garden itself was in mourning.
Which was entirely possible. Ravenwood Manor had always seemed to have a mind of its own. Why should the gardens be any different? The
weight of Lena's grief probably wasn't helping. The house was a mirror for her moods, the same way it had always been for Macon's.
When he died, he left Ravenwood to Lena, and sometimes I wondered whether it would have been better if he hadn't. The house was looking
bleaker by the day, instead of better. Every time I drove up the hill, I found myself holding my breath, waiting for the smallest sign of life, something
new, something blooming. Every time I reached the top, all I saw were more bare branches.
Lena climbed into the Volvo, a complaint already on her lips. “I don't want to go.”
“No one wants to go to school.”
“You know what I mean. That place is awful. I'd rather stay here and study Latin all day.”
This wasn't going to be easy. How could I convince her to go somewhere I didn't even want to go? High school sucked. It was a universal truth,
and whoever said these were supposed to be the best years of your life was probably drunk or delusional. I decided reverse psychology was my
only shot. “High school is supposed to be the worst years of your life.”
“Is that so?”
“Definitely. You have to come back.”
“And that will make me feel better how, exactly?”
“I don't know. How about, it's so bad, it'll make the rest of your life seem great in comparison?”
“By your logic, I should spend the day with Principal Harper.”
“Or try out for cheerleading.”
She twirled her necklace around her finger, her distinctive collection of charms knocking against each other. “It's tempting.” She smiled, almost
a laugh, and I knew she was going with me.
Lena rested her shoulder against mine the whole way to school. But when we got to the parking lot, she couldn't bring herself to get out of the car. I
didn't dare turn off the engine.
Savannah Snow, the queen of Jackson High, walked past us, hitching her tight T-shirt above her jeans. Emily Asher, her second in command,
followed behind, texting as she slid between cars. Emily saw us and grabbed Savannah by the arm. They stopped, the response of any Gatlin girl
whose mamma had raised her right, when faced with a relative of the recently departed. Savannah clutched her books to her chest, shaking her
head at us sadly. It was like watching an old silent movie.
Your uncle's in a better place now, Lena. He's up at the pearly gates, where a chorus a angels is leadin’ him to his ever-lovin’ Maker.
I translated for Lena, but she already knew what they were thinking.
Stop it!
Lena slid her battered spiral notebook in front of her face, trying to disappear. Emily held up her hand, a timid half-wave. Giving us our space,
letting us know she was not only well bred but sensitive. I didn't have to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking either.
I'm not comin’ over there, because I'm a lettin’ you grieve in peace, sweet Lena Du-channes. But I will always, and I do mean always, be here
for you, like the Good Book and my mamma taught me.
Emily nodded to Savannah, and the two of them walked slowly and sadly away, as if they hadn't started the Guardian Angels, Jackson's version
of a neighborhood watch, a few months ago with the sole purpose of getting Lena kicked out of school. In a way, this was worse. Emory ran to catch
up with them, but he saw us and slowed to a somber walk, rapping on the hood of my car as he walked by. He hadn't said a word to me in months,
but now he was showing his support. They were all so full of crap.
“Don't say it.” Lena had rolled herself down into a ball in the passenger's seat.
“Can't believe he didn't take off his cap. His mamma's gonna kick the tar outta him when he gets home.” I turned off the engine. “Play this right
and you might make the cheer squad after all, sweet Lena Du-channes.”
“They're … they're such —” She was so angry for a minute I regretted saying it. But it was going to be happening all day, and I wanted her to be
prepared before she set foot in the halls of Jackson. I had spent too much time being Poor Ethan Wate Whose Mamma Died Just Last Year not to
know that.
“Hypocrites?” That was an understatement.
“Sheep.” That, too. “I don't want to be in their squad, and I don't want a seat at their table. I don't want them to even look at me. I know Ridley was
manipulating them with her powers, but if they hadn't thrown that party on my birthday — if I had stayed inside Ravenwood like Uncle Macon had
wanted …” I didn't need her to finish. He might still be alive.
“You can't know that, L. Sarafine would have found another way to get to you.”
“They hate me, and that's how it should be.” Her hair was beginning to curl, and for a second I thought there was going to be a downpour. She
put her head in her hands, ignoring the tears that were losing themselves in her crazy hair. “Something has to stay the same. I'm nothing like them.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you never were, and you never will be.”
“I know, but something's changed. Everything's changed.”
I looked out my window. “Not everything.”
Boo Radley stared back at me. He was sitting on the faded white line of the parking space next to ours, as if he had been waiting for this
moment. Boo still followed Lena everywhere, like a good Caster dog. I thought about how many times I had considered giving that dog a ride.
Saving him some time. I opened the door, but Boo didn't move.
“Fine. Be that way.” I started to pull the door closed, knowing Boo would never get in. As I did, he leaped up into my lap, across the gearshift,
and into Lena's arms.
She buried her face in his fur, breathing deeply, as if the mangy dog created some kind of air that was different from the air outside.
They were one quivering mass of black hair and black fur. For a minute, the whole universe seemed fragile, like it could fall apart if I so much as
blew in the wrong direction or pulled the wrong thread.
I knew what I needed to do. I couldn't explain the feeling, but it came over me as powerfully as the dreams had, when I saw Lena for the first
time. The dreams we had always shared, so real they left mud in my sheets, or river water dripping onto my floor. This feeling was no different.
I needed to know what thread to pull. I needed to be the one who knew the right direction. She couldn't see her way clear of where she was right
now, so it had to be me.
Lost. That's what she was, and it was the one thing I couldn't let her be.
I turned on the car and shifted into reverse. We had only made it as far as the parking lot, and I knew without a word that it was time to drive
Lena home. Boo kept his eyes closed the whole way.
We took an old blanket back to Greenbrier and curled up near Genevieve's grave, on a tiny patch of grass next to the hearthstone and the crumbling
rock wall. The blackened trees and meadows surrounded us on every side, tufts of green only beginning to push through the hard dirt. Even now it
was still our spot, the place where we had first talked after Lena shattered the window in English class with a look — and her Caster powers. Aunt
Del couldn't stand to see the burnt cemetery and ruined gardens anymore, but Lena didn't mind. This was the last place she had seen Macon, and
that made it safe. Somehow, looking at the wreckage from the fire was familiar, even reassuring. It had come and taken everything in its path, and
then it was gone. You didn't have to wonder what else was coming or when it would get here.
The grass was wet and green, and I wrapped the blanket around us. “Come closer, you're freezing.” She smiled without looking at me.
“Since when do I need a reason to come closer?” She settled back into my shoulder and we sat in silence, our bodies warming each other and
our fingers braided together, the shock moving up my arm. It was always that way when we touched — a gentle jolt of electricity that intensified with
our every touch. A reminder Casters and Mortals couldn't be together. Not without the Mortal ending up dead.
I looked up at the twisted black branches and the bleak sky. I thought about the first day I followed Lena to this garden, the way I'd found her
crying in the tall grass. We had watched the gray clouds disappear from an otherwise blue sky, clouds she moved just by thinking about them. The
blue sky — that's what I was to her. She was Hurricane Lena, and I was regular old Ethan Wate. I couldn't imagine what my life would be like without
her.
“Look.” Lena climbed over me and reached up into the crumbling black branches.
A perfect yellow lemon, the only one in the garden, surrounded by ash. Lena pulled it loose, and black flakes flew into the air. The yellow peel
gleamed in her hand, and she let herself fall back into my arms. “Look at that. Not everything burned.”
“It'll all grow back, L.”
“I know.” She didn't sound convinced, turning the lemon over and over in her hands.
“This time next year, none of this will be black.” She looked up at the branches and the sky above our heads, and I kissed her on her forehead,
her nose, the perfect crescent-shaped birthmark on her cheekbone, as she tilted up toward me. “Everything will be green. Even these trees will
grow again.” As we pushed our feet against each other, kicking off our shoes, I could feel a familiar prick of electricity every time our bare skin met.
We were so close, her curls were falling into my face. I blew, and they scattered.
I was caught in her drag, struck by the current that bound us together and kept us apart. I leaned in to kiss her mouth, and she held the lemon in
front of my nose, teasing. “Smell.”
“Smells like you.” Like lemons and rosemary, the scent that had drawn me to Lena when we first met.
She sniffed it, making a face. “Sour, like me.”
“You don't taste sour to me.” I pulled her closer, until our hair was full of ash and grass, and the bitter lemon was lost somewhere beneath our
feet at the bottom of the blanket. The heat was on my skin, like fire. Even though all I could feel was a biting cold whenever I held her hand lately,
when we kissed — really kissed — there was nothing but heat. I loved her, atom by atom, one burning cell at a time. We kissed until my heart began
skipping beats, and the edges of what I could see and feel and hear began to fade into darkness….
Lena pushed me away, for my own good, and we lay in the grass as I tried to catch my breath.
Are you okay?
I'm — I'm good.
I wasn't, but I didn't say anything. I thought I smelled something burning and realized it was the blanket. It was smoldering from underneath,
where it was touching the ground.
Lena pushed herself up and pulled back the blanket. The grass beneath us was charred and trampled. “Ethan. Look at the grass.”
“What about it?” I was still trying to catch my breath, but I was trying not to show it. Since Lena's birthday, things had only gotten worse,
physically. I couldn't stop touching her, though sometimes I couldn't stand the pain of that touch.
“It's burnt now, too.”
“That's weird.”
She looked at me evenly, her eyes strangely dark and bright at the same time. She tossed the grass. “It was me.”
“You are pretty hot.”
“You can't be joking right now. It's getting worse.” We sat next to each other, looking out at what was left of Greenbrier. But we weren't really
looking at Greenbrier. We were looking at the power of the other fire. “Just like my mom.” She sounded bitter.
Fire was the trademark of a Cataclyst, and Sarafine's fire had burnt every inch of these fields the night of Lena's birthday. Now Lena was
starting fires unintentionally. My stomach tightened.
“The grass will grow back, too.”
“What if I don't want it to?” she said softly, strangely, as she let another handful of charred grass fall through her fingers.
“What?”
“Why should it?”
“Because life goes on, L. The birds do their thing, and the bees do theirs. Seeds get scattered, and everything grows back.”
“Then it all gets burnt again. If you're lucky enough to be around me.”
There was no point arguing with Lena when she was in one of these moods. A lifetime with Amma going dark had taught me that. “Sometimes
it does.”
She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them. Her shape cast a shadow much larger than she actually was.
“But I'm still lucky.” I moved my leg until it caught the light, throwing a long line of my shadow into hers.
We sat like that, side by side, with only our shadows touching, until the sun went down and they stretched toward the black trees and
disappeared into dusk. We listened to the cicadas in silence and tried not to think until the rain started falling again.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 3

Burnt Waffles
Four eggs, four strips of bacon, a basket of scratch biscuits (which by Amma's standard meant a spoon had never touched the batter), three kinds
of freezer jam, and a slab of butter drizzled with honey. And from the smell of it, across the counter buttermilk batter was separating into squares,
turning crisp in the old waffle iron. For the last two months, Amma had been cooking night and day. The counter was piled high with Pyrex dishes —
cheese grits, green bean casserole, fried chicken, and of course, Bing cherry salad, which was really a fancy name for a Jell-O mold with cherries,
pineapple, and Coca-Cola in it. Past that, I could make out a coconut cake, orange rolls, and what looked like bourbon bread pudding, but I knew
there was more. Since Macon died and my dad left, Amma kept cooking and baking and stacking, as if she could cook her sadness away. We
both knew she couldn't.
Amma hadn't gone this dark since my mom died. She'd known Macon Ravenwood a lifetime longer than I had, even longer than Lena. No
matter how unlikely or unpredictable their relationship was, it had meant something to both of them. They were friends, though I wasn't sure either of
them would've admitted it. But I knew the truth. Amma was wearing it all over her face and stacking it all over our kitchen.
“Got a call from Dr. Summers.” My dad's psychiatrist. Amma didn't look up from the waffle iron, and I didn't point out that you didn't actually need
to stare at a waffle iron for it to cook the waffles.
“What'd he say?” I studied her back from my seat at the old oak table, her apron strings tied in the middle. I remembered how many times I had
tried to sneak up on her and untie those strings. Amma was so short they hung down almost as long as the apron itself, and I thought about that for
as long as I could. Anything was better than thinking about my father.
“He thinks your daddy's about ready to come home.”
I held up my empty glass and stared through it, where things looked as distorted as they really were. My dad had been at Blue Horizons, in
Columbia, for two months. After Amma found out about the nonexistent book he was pretending to write all year, and the “incident,” which is how
she referred to my dad nearly jumping off a balcony, she called my Aunt Caroline. My aunt drove him to Blue Horizons that same day — she called it
a spa. The kind of spa you sent your crazy relatives to if they needed what folks in Gatlin referred to as “individual attention,” or what everyone
outside of the South would call therapy.
“Great.”
Great. I couldn't see my dad coming home to Gatlin, walking around town in his duck pajamas. There was enough crazy around here already
between Amma and me, wedged in between the cream-of-grief casseroles I'd be dropping off at First Methodist around dinnertime, as I did almost
every night. I wasn't an expert on feelings, but Amma's were all stirred up in cake batter, and she wasn't about to share them. She'd rather give
away the cake.
I tried to talk to her about it once, the day after the funeral, but she had shut down the conversation before it even started. “Done is done. Gone
is gone. Where Macon Ravenwood is now, not likely we'll ever see him again, not in this world or the Other.” She sounded like she'd made her
peace with it, but here I was, two months later, still delivering cakes and casseroles. She had lost the two men in her life the same night — my father
and Macon. My dad wasn't dead, but our kitchen didn't make those kinds of distinctions. Like Amma said, gone was gone.
“I'm makin’ waffles. Hope you're hungry.”
That was probably all I'd hear from her this morning. I picked up the carton of chocolate milk next to my glass and poured it full out of habit.
Amma used to complain when I drank chocolate milk at breakfast. Now she would have cut me up a whole Tunnel of Fudge cake without a word,
which only made me feel worse. Even more telling, the Sunday edition of the New York Times wasn't open to the crossword, and her black, extrasharp
#2 pencils were hidden away in their drawer. Amma was staring out the kitchen window at the clouds choking the sky.
L. A. C. O. N. I. C. Seven across, which means I don't have to say a thing, Ethan Wate. That's what Amma would have said on any other day.
I took a gulp of my chocolate milk and almost choked. Sugar was too sweet, and Amma was too quiet. That's how I knew things had changed.
That, and the burnt waffles smoking in the waffle iron.
I should have been on my way to school, but instead I turned onto Route 9 and headed for Ravenwood. Lena hadn't been back to school since
before her birthday. After Macon's death, Principal Harper had generously granted her permission to work at home with a tutor until she felt up to
coming back to Jackson. Considering he had helped Mrs. Lincoln in her campaign to get Lena expelled after the winter formal, I'm sure he was
hoping that would be the day after never.
I admit, I was a little jealous. Lena didn't have to listen to Mr. Lee drone on about the War of Northern Aggression and the plight of the
Confederacy or sit on the Good-Eye Side in English. Abby Porter and I were the only ones sitting there now, so we had to answer all the Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde questions in class. What prompts Dr. Jekyll to turn into Mr. Hyde? Were they really any different after all? Nobody had the slightest
clue, which was the reason everyone on Mrs. English's glass-eye side was sleeping.
But Jackson wasn't the same without Lena, at least not for me. That's why after two months, I was begging her to come back. Yesterday, when
she said she'd think about it, I told her she could think about it on the way to school.
I found myself back at the fork in the road. It was our old road, mine and Lena's. The one that had taken me off Route 9 and up to Ravenwood the
night we met. The first time I realized she was the same girl I'd been dreaming about, long before she ever moved to Gatlin.
As soon as I saw the road, I heard the song. It drifted into the Volvo as naturally as if I had turned on the radio. Same song. Same words. Same
as it had for the last two months — when I turned on my iPod, stared at the ceiling, or read a single page of Silver Surfer over and over, without
even seeing it.
Seventeen Moons. It was always there. I tried turning the dials on the radio, but it didn't matter. Now it was playing in my head instead of
coming out of the speakers, as if someone was Kelting the song to me.
Seventeen moons, seventeen years,
Eyes where Dark or Light appears,
Gold for yes and green for no,
Seventeen the last to know …
The song was gone. I knew better than to ignore it, but I also knew how Lena acted every time I tried to bring it up.
“It's a song,” she would say dismissively. “It doesn't mean anything.”
“Like Sixteen Moons didn't mean anything? It's about us.” It didn't matter if she knew it or even if she agreed. Either way, it was the moment
Lena usually switched from defense to offense, and the conversation veered off track.
“You mean it's about me. Dark or Light? Whether or not I'm going to go all Sarafine on you? If you've already decided I'm going Dark, why don't
you admit it?”
At that point, I would say something stupid to change the subject. Until I learned not to say anything at all. So we didn't talk about the song that
was playing in my head, same as it was in hers.
Seventeen Moons. We couldn't avoid it.
The song had to be about Lena's Claiming, the moment she would become Light or Dark forever. Which could only mean one thing: she wasn't
Claimed. Not yet. Gold for yes and green for no? I knew what the song meant — the gold eyes of a Dark Caster or the green eyes of a Light one.
Since the night of Lena's birthday, her Sixteenth Moon, I had tried to tell myself it was all over, that Lena didn't have to be Claimed, that she was
some kind of exception. Why couldn't it be different for her, since everything else about her seemed to be so exceptional?
But it wasn't different. Seventeen Moons was proof. I'd heard Sixteen Moons for months before Lena's birthday, a harbinger of things to come.
Now the words had changed again, and I was faced with another eerie prophecy. There was a choice to be made, and Lena hadn't made it. The
songs never lied. At least, they hadn't yet.
I didn't want to think about it. As I headed up the long rise leading to the gates of Ravenwood Manor, even the grinding sound of the tires on
gravel seemed to repeat the one inescapable truth. If there was a Seventeenth Moon, then it had all been for nothing. Macon's death had been for
nothing.
Lena would still have to Claim herself for Light or Dark, deciding her fate forever. There was no turning back for Casters, no changing sides.
And when she finally made her choice, half her family would die because of it. The Light Casters or the Dark Casters — the curse promised only
one side could survive. But in a family where generations of Casters had no free will and had been Claimed for Light or Dark on their own sixteenth
birthdays without any say in the matter, how was Lena supposed to make that kind of choice?
All she had wanted, her whole life, was to choose her own destiny. Now she could, and it was like some kind of cruel cosmic joke.
I stopped at the gates, turned off the engine, and closed my eyes, remembering — the rising panic, the visions, the dreams, the song. This time,
Macon wouldn't be there to steal away the unhappy endings. There was nobody left to get us out of trouble, and it was coming fast.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 1

Caster Girl
I used to think our town, buried in the South Carolina backwoods, stuck in the muddy bottom of the Santee River valley, was the middle of nowhere.
A place where nothing ever happened and nothing would ever change. Just like yesterday, the unblinking sun would rise and set over the town of
Gatlin without bothering to kick up so much as a breeze. Tomorrow my neighbors would be rocking on their porches, heat and gossip and
familiarity melting like ice cubes into their sweet tea, as they had for more than a hundred years. Around here, our traditions were so traditional it
was hard to put a finger on them. They were woven into everything we did or, more often, didn't do. You could be born or married or buried, and the
Methodists kept right on singing.
Sundays were for church, Mondays for doing the marketing at the Stop & Shop, the only grocery store in town. The rest of the week involved a
whole lot of nothing and a little more pie, if you were lucky enough to live with someone like my family's housekeeper, Amma, who won the bake-off
at the county fair every year. Old four-fingered Miss Monroe still taught cotillion, one empty finger of her white-gloved hand flapping as she sashayed
down the dance floor with the debutantes. Maybelline Sutter was still cutting hair at the Snip ’n’ Curl, though she had lost most of her eyesight
around the same time she turned seventy, and now she forgot to put the guard down on the clippers half the time, shearing a skunk stripe up the
back of your head. Carlton Eaton never failed, rain or shine, to open your mail before he delivered it. If the news was bad, he would break it to you
himself. Better to hear it from one of your own.
This town owned us, that was the good and the bad of it. It knew every inch of us, every sin, every secret, every scab. Which was why most
people never bothered to leave, and why the ones who did never came back. Before I met Lena that would have been me, five minutes after I
graduated from Jackson High. Gone.
Then I fell in love with a Caster girl.
She showed me there was another world within the cracks of our uneven sidewalks. One that had been there all along, hidden in plain sight.
Lena's Gatlin was a place where things happened — impossible, supernatural, life-altering things.
Sometimes life-ending.
While regular folks were busy cutting back their rosebushes or picking past worm-eaten peaches at the roadside stand, Light and Dark
Casters with unique and powerful gifts were locked in an eternal struggle — a supernatural civil war without any hope of a white flag waving. Lena's
Gatlin was home to Demons and danger and a curse that had marked her family for more than a hundred years. And the closer I got to Lena, the
closer her Gatlin came to mine.
A few months ago, I believed nothing would ever change in this town. Now I knew better, and I only wished it was true.
Because the second I fell in love with a Caster girl, no one I loved was safe. Lena thought she was the only one cursed, but she was wrong.
It was our curse now.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 2

Perpetual Peace
The rain dripping off the brim of Amma's best black hat. Lena's bare knees hitting the thick mud in front of the grave. The pinpricks on the back of
my neck that came from standing too close to so many of Macon's kind. Incubuses — Demons who fed off the memories and dreams of Mortals,
like me, as we slept. The sound they made, unlike anything else in the universe, when they ripped open the last bit of dark sky and disappeared just
before dawn. As if they were a pack of black crows, taking off from a power line in perfect unison.
That was Macon's funeral.
I could remember the details as if it had happened yesterday, even though it was hard to believe some of it had happened at all. Funerals were
tricky like that. And life, I guess. The important parts you blocked out altogether, but the random, slanted moments haunted you, replaying over and
over in your mind.
What I could remember: Amma waking me up in the dark to get to His Garden of Perpetual Peace before dawn. Lena frozen and shattered,
wanting to freeze and shatter everything around her. Darkness in the sky and in half the people standing around the grave, the ones who weren't
people at all.
But behind all that, there was something I couldn't remember. It was there, lingering in the back of my mind. I had been trying to think of it since
Lena's birthday, her Sixteenth Moon, the night Macon died.
The only thing I knew was that it was something I needed to remember.
The morning of the funeral it was pitch-black outside, but patches of moonlight were shining through the clouds into my open window. My room was
freezing, and I didn't care. I had left my window open the last two nights since Macon died, like he might just show up in my room and sit down in my
swivel chair and stay awhile.
I remembered the night I saw him standing by my window, in the dark. That's when I found out what he was. Not a vampire or some mythological
creature from a book, as I had suspected, but a real Demon. One who could have chosen to feed on blood, but chose my dreams instead.
Macon Melchizedek Ravenwood. To the folks around here, he was Old Man Ravenwood, the town recluse. He was also Lena's uncle, and the
only father she had ever known.
I was getting dressed in the dark when I felt the warm pull from inside that meant Lena was there.
L?
Lena spoke up from the depths of my mind, as close as anyone could be and about as far away. Kelting, our unspoken form of communication.
The whispering language Casters like her had shared long before my bedroom had been declared south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It was the secret
language of intimacy and necessity, born in a time when being different could get you burned at the stake. It was a language we shouldn't have
been able to share, because I was a Mortal. But for some inexplicable reason we could, and it was the language we used to speak the unspoken
and the unspeakable.
I can't do this. I'm not going.
I gave up on my tie and sat back down on my bed, the ancient mattress springs crying out beneath me.
You have to go. You won't forgive yourself if you don't.
For a second, she didn't respond.
You don't know how it feels.
I do.
I remembered when I was the one sitting on my bed afraid to get up, afraid to put on my suit and join the prayer circle and sing Abide With Me
and ride in the grim parade of headlights through town to the cemetery to bury my mother. I was afraid it would make it real. I couldn't stand to think
about it, but I opened my mind and showed Lena….
You can't go, but you don't have a choice, because Amma puts her hand on your arm and leads you into the car, into the pew, into the pity
parade. Even though it hurts to move, like your whole body aches from some kind of fever. Your eyes stop on the mumbling faces in front of
you, but you can't actually hear what anyone is saying. Not over the screaming in your head. So you let them put their hand on your arm, you
get in the car, and it happens. Because you can make it through this if someone says you can.
I put my head in my hands.
Ethan —
I'm saying you can, L.
I shoved my fists into my eyes, and they were wet. I flipped on my light and stared at the bare bulb, refusing to blink until I seared away the tears.
Ethan, I'm scared.
I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.
There weren't any more words as I went back to fumbling with my tie, but I could feel Lena there, as if she was sitting in the corner of my room.
The house seemed empty with my father gone, and I heard Amma in the hall. A second later, she was standing quietly in the doorway clutching her
good purse. Her dark eyes searched mine, and her tiny frame seemed tall, though she didn't even reach my shoulder. She was the grandmother I
never had, and the only mother I had left now.
I stared at the empty chair next to my window, where she had laid out my good suit a little less than a year ago, then back into the bare lightbulb
of my bedside lamp.
Amma held out her hand, and I handed her my tie. Sometimes it felt like Lena wasn't the only one who could read my mind.
I offered Amma my arm as we made our way up the muddy hill to His Garden of Perpetual Peace. The sky was dark, and the rain started before we
reached the top of the rise. Amma was in her most respectable funeral dress, with a wide hat that shielded most of her face from the rain, except for
the bit of white lace collar escaping beneath the brim. It was fastened at the neck with her best cameo, a sign of respect. I had seen it all last April,
just as I had felt her good gloves on my arm, supporting me up this hill once before. This time I couldn't tell which one of us was doing the
supporting.
I still wasn't sure why Macon wanted to be buried in the Gatlin cemetery, considering the way folks in this town felt about him. But according to
Gramma, Lena's grandmother, Macon left strict instructions specifically requesting to be buried here. He purchased the plot himself, years ago.
Lena's family hadn't seemed happy about it, but Gramma had put her foot down. They were going to respect his wishes, like any good Southern
family.
Lena? I'm here.
I know.
I could feel my voice calming her, as if I had wrapped my arms around her. I looked up the hill, where the awning for the graveside service would
be. It would look the same as any other Gatlin funeral, which was ironic, considering it was Macon's.
It wasn't yet daylight, and I could barely make out a few shapes in the distance. They were all crooked, all different. The ancient, uneven rows of
tiny headstones standing at the graves of children, the overgrown family crypts, the crumbling white obelisks honoring fallen Confederate soldiers,
marked with small brass crosses. Even General Jubal A. Early, whose statue watched over the General's Green in the center of town, was buried
here. We made our way around the family plot of a few lesser-known Moultries, which had been there for so long the smooth magnolia trunk at the
edge of the plot had grown into the side of the tallest stone marker, making them indistinguishable.
And sacred. They were all sacred, which meant we had reached the oldest part of the graveyard. I knew from my mother, the first word carved
into any old headstone in Gatlin was Sacred. But as we got closer and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I knew where the muddy gravel path was
leading. I remembered where it passed the stone memorial bench at the grassy slope, dotted with magnolias. I remembered my father sitting on
that bench, unable to speak or move.
My feet wouldn't go any farther, because they had figured out the same thing I had. Macon's Garden of Perpetual Peace was only a magnolia
away from my mother's.
The twisting roads run straight between us.
It was a sappy line from an even sappier poem I had written Lena for Valentine's Day. But here in the graveyard, it was true. Who would have
thought our parents, or the closest thing Lena had to one, would be neighbors in the grave?
Amma took my hand, leading me to Macon's massive plot. “Steady now.”
We stepped inside the waist-high black railing around his gravesite, which in Gatlin was reserved for the perimeters of only the best plots, like a
white picket fence for the dead. Sometimes it actually was a white picket fence. This one was wrought iron, the crooked door shoved open into the
overgrown grass. Macon's plot seemed to carry with it an atmosphere of its own, like Macon himself.
Inside the railing stood Lena's family: Gramma, Aunt Del, Uncle Barclay, Reece, Ryan, and Macon's mother, Arelia, under the black canopy on
one side of the carved black casket. On the other side, a group of men and a woman in a long black coat kept their distance from both the casket
and the canopy, standing shoulder to shoulder in the rain. They were all bone-dry. It was like a church wedding split by an aisle down the middle,
where the relatives of the bride line up opposite the relatives of the groom like two warring clans. There was an old man at one end of the casket,
standing next to Lena. Amma and I stood at the other end, just inside the canopy.
Amma's grip on my arm tightened, and she pulled the gold charm she always wore out from underneath her blouse and rubbed it between her
fingers. Amma was more than superstitious. She was a Seer, from generations of women who read tarot cards and communed with spirits, and
Amma had a charm or a doll for everything. This one was for protection. I stared at the Incubuses in front of us, the rain running off their shoulders
without leaving a trace. I hoped they were the kind that only fed on dreams.
I tried to look away, but it wasn't easy. There was something about an Incubus that drew you in like a spider's web, like any good predator. In the
dark, you couldn't see their black eyes, and they almost looked like a bunch of regular guys. A few of them were dressed the way Macon always
had, dark suits and expensive-looking overcoats. One or two looked more like construction workers on their way to get a beer after work, in jeans
and work boots, their hands shoved in the pockets of their jackets. The woman was probably a Succubus. I had read about them, mostly in comics,
and I thought they were just old wives’ tales, like werewolves. But I knew I was wrong because she was standing in the rain, dry as the rest of them.
The Incubuses were a sharp contrast to Lena's family, cloaked in iridescent black fabric that caught what little light there was and refracted it, as
if they were the source themselves. I had never seen them like this before. It was a strange sight, especially considering the strict dress code for
women at Southern funerals.
In the center of it all was Lena. The way she looked was the opposite of magical. She stood in front of the casket with her fingers quietly resting
upon it, as if Macon was somehow holding her hand. She was dressed in the same shimmering material as the rest of her family, but it hung on her
like a shadow. Her black hair was twisted into a tight knot, not a trademark curl in sight. She looked broken and out of place, like she was standing
on the wrong side of the aisle.
Like she belonged with Macon's other family, standing in the rain.
Lena?
She lifted her head, and her eyes met mine. Since her birthday, when one of her eyes had turned a shade of gold while the other remained
deep green, the colors had combined to create a shade unlike anything I'd ever seen. Almost hazel at times, and unnaturally golden at others. Now
they looked more hazel, dull and pained. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to pick her up and carry her away.
I can get the Volvo, and we can drive down the coast all the way to Savannah. We can hide out at my Aunt Caroline's.
I took another step closer to her. Her family was crowded around the casket, and I couldn't get to Lena without walking past the line of
Incubuses, but I didn't care.
Ethan, stop! It's not safe —
A tall Incubus with a scar running down the length of his face, like the mark of a savage animal attack, turned his head to look at me. The air
seemed to ripple through the space between us, like I had chucked a stone into a lake. It hit me, knocking the wind out of my lungs as if I'd been
punched, but I couldn't react because I felt paralyzed — my limbs numb and useless.
Ethan!
Amma's eyes narrowed, but before she could take a step the Succubus put her hand on Scarface's shoulder and squeezed it, almost
imperceptibly. Instantly, I was released from his hold, and the blood rushed back into my limbs. Amma gave her a grateful nod, but the woman with
the long hair and the longer coat ignored her, disappearing back into line with the rest of them.
The Incubus with the brutal scar turned and winked at me. I got the message, even without the words. See you in your dreams.
I was still holding my breath when a white-haired gentleman, in an old-fashioned suit and string tie, stepped up to the coffin. His eyes were a
dark contrast to his hair, which made him seem like some creepy character from an old black and white movie.
“The Gravecaster,” Amma whispered. He looked more like the gravedigger.
He touched the smooth black wood, and a carved crest on the top of the coffin began to glow with a golden light. It looked like some old coat of
arms, the kind of thing you saw at a museum or in a castle. I saw a tree with great spreading boughs, and a bird. Beneath it there was a carved sun,
and a crescent moon.
“Macon Ravenwood of the House of Ravenwood, of Raven and Oak, Air and Earth. Darkness and Light.” He took his hand from the coffin, and
the light followed, leaving the casket dark again.
“Is that Macon?” I whispered to Amma.
“The light's symbolic. There's nothin’ in that box. Wasn't anythin’ left to bury. That's the way with Macon's kind — ashes to ashes and dust to
dust, like us. Just a whole lot quicker.”
The Gravecaster's voice rose up again. “Who consecrates this soul into the Otherworld?”
Lena's family stepped forward. “We do,” they said in unison, everyone except Lena. She stood there staring down at the dirt.
“As do we.” The Incubuses moved closer to the casket.
“Then let him be Cast to the world beyond. Redi in pace, ad Ignem Atrum ex quo venisti.” The Gravecaster held the light high over his head,
and it flared brighter. “Go in peace, back to the Dark Fire from where you came.” He threw the light into the air, and sparks showered down onto the
coffin, searing into the wood where they fell. As if on cue, Lena's family and the Incubuses threw their hands into the air, releasing tiny silver objects
not much bigger than quarters, which rained down onto Macon's coffin amidst the gold flames. The sky was starting to change color, from the black
of night to the blue before the sunrise. I strained to see what the objects were, but it was too dark.
“His dictis, solutus est. With these words, he is free.”
An almost blinding white light emanated from the casket. I could barely see the Gravecaster a few feet in front of me, as if his voice was
transporting us and we were no longer standing over a gravesite in Gatlin.
Uncle Macon! No!
The light flashed, like lightning striking, and died out. We were all back in the circle, looking at a mound of dirt and flowers. The burial was over.
The coffin was gone. Aunt Del put her arms protectively around Reece and Ryan.
Macon was gone.
Lena fell forward onto her knees in the muddy grass.
The gate around Macon's plot slammed shut behind her, without so much as a finger touching it. This wasn't over for her. No one was going
anywhere.
Lena?
The rain started to pick up almost immediately, the weather still tethered to her powers as a Natural, the ultimate elemental in the Caster world.
She pulled herself to her feet.
Lena! This isn't going to change anything!
The air filled with hundreds of cheap white carnations and plastic flowers and palmetto fronds and flags from every grave visited in the last
month, all flying loose in the air, tumbling airborne down the hill. Fifty years from now, folks in town would still be talking about the day the wind
almost blew down every magnolia in His Garden of Perpetual Peace. The gale came on so fierce and fast, it was a slap in the face to everyone
there, a hit so hard you had to stagger to stay on your feet. Only Lena stood straight and tall, holding fast to the stone marker next to her. Her hair
had unraveled from its awkward knot and whipped in the air around her. She was no longer all darkness and shadow. She was the opposite — the
one bright spot in the storm, as if the yellowish-gold lightning splitting the sky above us was emanating from her body. Boo Radley, Macon's dog,
whimpered and flattened his ears at Lena's feet.
He wouldn't want this, L.
Lena put her face in her hands, and a sudden gust blew the canopy out from where it was staked in the wet earth, sending it tumbling backward
down the hill.
Gramma stepped in front of Lena, closed her eyes, and touched a single finger to her granddaughter's cheek. The moment she touched Lena,
everything stopped, and I knew Gramma had used her abilities as an Empath to absorb Lena's powers temporarily. But she couldn't absorb Lena's
anger. None of us were strong enough to do that.
The wind died down, and the rain slowed to a drizzle. Gramma pulled her hand away from Lena and opened her eyes.
The Succubus, looking unusually disheveled, stared up at the sky. “It's almost sunrise.” The sun was beginning to burn its way up through the
clouds and over the horizon, scattering odd splinters of light and life across the uneven rows of headstones. Nothing else had to be said. The
Incubuses started to dematerialize, the sound of suction filling the air. Ripping was how I thought of it, the way they pulled open the sky and
disappeared.
I started to walk toward Lena, but Amma yanked my arm. “What? They're gone.”
“Not all a them. Look —”
She was right. At the edge of the plot, there was only one Incubus remaining, leaning against a weathered headstone adorned with a weeping
angel. He looked older than I was, maybe nineteen, with short, black hair and the same pale skin as the rest of his kind. But unlike the other
Incubuses, he hadn't disappeared before the dawn. As I watched him, he moved out from under the shadow of the oak directly into the bright
morning light, with his eyes closed and his face tilted toward the sun, as if it was only shining for him.
Amma was wrong. He couldn't be one of them. He stood there basking in the sunlight, an impossibility for an Incubus.
What was he? And what was he doing here?
He moved closer and caught my eye, as if he could feel me watching him. That's when I saw his eyes. They weren't the black eyes of an
Incubus.
They were Caster green.
He stopped in front of Lena, jamming his hands in his pockets, tipping his head slightly. Not a bow, but an awkward show of deference, which
somehow seemed more honest. He had crossed the invisible aisle, and in a moment of real Southern gentility, he could have been the son of
Macon Ravenwood himself. Which made me hate him.
“I'm sorry for your loss.”
He opened her hand and placed a small silver object in it, like the ones everyone had thrown onto Macon's casket. Her fingers closed around it.
Before I could move a muscle, the unmistakable ripping sound tore through the air, and he was gone.
Ethan?
I saw her legs begin to buckle under the weight of the morning — the loss, the storm, even the final rip in the sky. By the time I made it to her
side and slid my arm under her, she was gone, too. I carried her down the sloping hill, away from Macon and the cemetery.
She slept curled in my bed, on and off, for a night and a day. She had a few stray twigs matted in her hair, and her face was still flecked with
mud, but she wouldn't go home to Ravenwood, and no one asked her to. I had given her my oldest, softest sweatshirt and wrapped her in our
thickest patchwork quilt, but she never stopped shivering, even in her sleep. Boo lay at her feet, and Amma appeared in the doorway every now and
then. I sat in the chair by the window, the one I never sat in, and stared out at the sky. I couldn't open it, because a storm was still brewing.
As Lena was sleeping, her fingers uncurled. In them was a tiny bird made of silver, a sparrow. A gift from the stranger at Macon's funeral. I tried
to take it from her hand just as her fingers tightened around it.
Two months later, and I still couldn't look at a bird without hearing the sound of the sky ripping open.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Creatures - Chapter 33

2.12
Silver Lining
I looked at my cell. It was broken.
The time still read 11:59.
But I knew it was well after midnight, because the fireworks finale had started, even though it was raining. The Battle of Honey Hill was over for
another year.
I lay in the middle of the muddy field, letting the rain wash over me. As I watched the small-time fireworks attempt to explode in the still drizzling
night sky, everything was cloudy. My mind just couldn’t focus. I had fallen, hit my head and a few other places, too. My stomach, my hip, my whole left
side ached. Amma was going to kill me when I came home, banged up like this.
All I remembered was, one second I was holding onto that stupid angel statue, and the next second I was lying flat on my back in the mud, here. I
thought a piece of that statue broke off when I was trying to climb to the top of the crypt, but I wasn’t really sure. Link must have carried me out here
after I knocked myself out like an idiot. Aside from that, it was like my mind had been wiped clean.
I guess that’s why I didn’t understand why Marian, Gramma, and Aunt Del were huddled near the crypt, crying. Nothing could have prepared me
for what I saw when I finally stumbled over there.
Macon Ravenwood. Dead.
Maybe he had always been dead, I didn’t know, but now he was gone. I knew that much. Lena threw herself onto his body, the rain drenching
both of them.
Macon, wet from the raindrops for the first time.
The next morning, I pieced together a few things about the night of Lena’s birthday. Macon was the only casualty. Apparently, Hunting had
overpowered him after I lost consciousness. Gramma explained that feeding on dreams was much less substantial than feeding on blood. I guess
he had never really stood a chance against Hunting. Still, it hadn’t stopped him from trying.
Macon always said he would do anything for Lena. In the end, he was a man of his word.
Everyone else seemed to be all right, at least physically. Aunt Del, Gramma, and Marian had dragged themselves back to Ravenwood, with
Boo trailing behind them, whimpering like a lost pup. Aunt Del couldn’t understand what had happened to Larkin. Nobody knew how to break the
news to her that she had not one but two bad seeds in her family, so no one said a thing.
Mrs. Lincoln didn’t remember anything, and Link had a hard time explaining what she was doing in the middle of the battlefield in her petticoat
and pantyhose. She had been appalled to find herself in the company of Macon Ravenwood’s family, but had been civil as Link helped her to the
Beater. Link had a lot of questions, but I figured it could wait until Algebra II. It would give us both something to do when things returned to normal,
whenever that would be.
And Sarafine.
Sarafine, Hunting, and Larkin were gone. I knew that because when I came to, they had disappeared, and Lena was there, leaning against me
as we walked back toward Ravenwood. I was fuzzy on the details, like everything else right now, but it appeared that Lena, Macon, all of us had
underestimated Lena’s powers as a Natural. She had somehow managed to block out the moon and save herself from being Claimed after all.
Without the Claiming, it looked like Sarafine, Hunting, and Larkin had fled, at least for now.
Lena still wasn’t talking about it. She still wasn’t talking much at all.
I had fallen asleep on the floor of her bedroom, next to her, our hands still intertwined. When I woke up, she was gone and I was alone. Her
bedroom walls, the same ones that had been so covered with writing you couldn’t see an inch of the white walls underneath all the black, were now
completely blank. Except for one, the wall that faced the windows was covered from floor to ceiling with words, only the writing no longer looked like
Lena’s. The girly script was gone. I touched the wall as if I could feel the words, and I knew she had been up all night, writing.
macon ethan
i lay my head down on his chest and cried because he had lived
because he had died
a dry ocean, a desert of emotion
happysad darklight sorrowjoy swept over me, under me
i could hear the sound but i could not understand the words
and then i realized the sound was me, breaking
in one moment i was feeling everything and i was feeling nothing
i was shattered, i was saved, i lost everything, i was given
everything else
something in me died, something in me was born, i only knew
the girl was gone
whoever i was now, i would never be her again this is the way
the world ends not with a bang but a whimper
claim yourself claim yourself claim yourself claim
gratitude fury love despair hope hate
first green is gold but nothing green can stay
don’t
try
nothing
green
can
stay
T. S. Eliot. Robert Frost. Bukowski. I recognized some of the poets from her shelf and her walls. Except for the Frost, Lena got it backward, which
wasn’t like her. Nothing gold can stay, that’s how the poem goes.
Not green.
Maybe it all looked the same to her now.
I stumbled down into the kitchen, where Aunt Del and Gramma were talking in low tones about arrangements. I remembered the low tones and the
arrangements when my mom died. I hated them both. I remembered how much it hurt for life to go on, for aunts and grandmothers to be making
plans, calling relatives, sweeping up the pieces when all you wanted to do was crawl into the coffin, too. Or maybe plant a lemon tree, fry some
tomatoes, build a monument with your bare hands.
“Where’s Lena?” My tone was not low, and I startled Aunt Del. Nothing could startle Gramma.
“Isn’t she in her room?” Aunt Del was flustered.
Gramma calmly poured herself another cup of tea. “I believe you know where she is, Ethan.”
I did.
Lena was lying on the crypt, right where we had found Macon. She was staring up at the gray morning sky, muddy and wet in her clothes from the
night before. I didn’t know where they had taken his body, but I understood her impulse to be here. To be with him, even without him.
She didn’t look at me, though she knew I was there. “Those hateful things I said, I’ll never get to take them back. He never knew how much I
loved him.”
I lay down next to her in the mud, my sore body groaning. I looked over at her, her black hair curling, and her dirty wet cheeks. The tears ran
down her face, but she didn’t try to wipe them away. Neither did I.
“He died because of me.” She stared up at the gray sky, unblinking. I wished there was something I could say to make her feel better, but I knew
better than anyone that words like that didn’t really exist. So I didn’t say them. Instead, I kissed all the fingers on Lena’s hand. I stopped when my
mouth tasted metal, and I saw it. She was wearing my mom’s ring on her right hand.
I held up her hand.
“I didn’t want to lose it. The necklace broke last night.”
Dark clouds were blowing in and out. We hadn’t seen the last of the storm, I knew that much. I wrapped my hand around hers. “I never loved you
any more than I do, right this second. And I’ll never love you any less than I do, right this second.”
The gray expanse was just a moment of sunless calm, in between the storm that had changed our lives forever, and the one still to come.
“Is that a promise?”
I squeezed her hand.
Don’t let go.
Never.
Our hands twisted into one. She turned her head, and when I looked into her eyes, I noticed for the first time that one was green, and one was
hazel—actually, more like gold.
It was almost noon by the time I started the long walk home. The blue skies were streaked with dark gray and gold. The pressure was building, but it
seemed a few hours from breaking. I think Lena was still in shock. But I was ready for the storm. And when it came, it would make Gatlin’s hurricane
season look like a spring shower.
Aunt Del had offered to drive me home, but I wanted to walk. Though every bone in my body ached, I needed to clear my head. I jammed my
hands in my jeans pockets and felt the familiar lump. The locket. Lena and I would have to find a way to give it back to the other Ethan Wate, the one
lying in his grave, just as Genevieve had wanted us to. Maybe it would give Ethan Carter Wate some peace. We owed them both that much.
I came down the steep road leading up to Ravenwood and found myself once again at the fork in the road, the one that had seemed so
frightening before I knew Lena. Before I knew where I was going. Before I knew what real fear felt like, and real love.
I walked past the fields and down Route 9, thinking of that first drive, that first night in the storm. I thought about everything, how I had almost lost
my dad and Lena. How I had opened my eyes to see her staring at me, and all I could think was how lucky I was. Before I realized we had lost
Macon.
I thought about Macon, his books tied with string and paper, his perfectly pressed shirts, and his even more perfect composure. I thought about
how hard things were going to be for Lena, missing him, wishing she could hear his voice one more time. But I would be there for her, the way I
wished someone had been there for me when I lost my mom. And after the past few months, after my mom sent us that message, I didn’t think
Macon was really gone, either. Maybe he was still out there somewhere, looking out for us. He had sacrificed himself for Lena, I was sure of that.
The right thing and the easy thing are never the same. No one knew that better than Macon.
I looked up at the sky. The swirls of gray were seeping across the flat blue, as blue as the paint on my bedroom ceiling. I wondered if that one
shade of blue really kept the carpenter bees from nesting. I wondered if those bees really believed it was the sky.
It’s crazy what you see if you aren’t really looking.
I pulled my iPod out of my pocket and turned it on. There was a new song on the playlist.
I stared at it for a long time.
Seventeen Moons.
I clicked on it.
Seventeen moons, seventeen years,
Eyes where Dark or Light appears,
Gold for yes and green for no,
Seventeen the last to know.

Categories: Beautiful Creatures