Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 5

Off Route 9
After school, Link stayed to play basketball with the guys. Ridley wouldn’t leave without him as long as the cheer squad was in the gym, even
though she wouldn’t admit it.
I stood inside the gym doors and watched Link dribble down the court without breaking a sweat. I watched him sink the ball from the paint, from
the top of the key, from the three-point mark, from center court. I watched the other guys stand there with their mouths hanging open. I watched
Coach sit back on the bleachers with his whistle still stuck in his mouth. I enjoyed every minute, almost as much as Link.
“You miss it?” Lena was watching me from the doorway.
I shook my head. “No way. I don’t want to hang out with the rest of those guys.” I smiled. “And for once, no one’s looking at us.” I held out my hand
and she took it. Hers was warm and soft.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Boo Radley was sitting at the corner of the lot by the stop sign, panting like there wasn’t enough air in the world to cool him off. I wondered if
Macon was still watching us and everyone else through the Caster dog’s eyes. We pulled up next to him and opened the door. Boo didn’t even
hesitate.
We drove up Route 9, where Gatlin’s houses disappeared and turned into rows of fields. This time of year, those fields were usually a mix of
green and brown—corn and tobacco. But this year there was nothing but black and yellow, as far as the eye could see—dead plants, and lubbers
eating their way right onto the road. You could hear them crunching beneath the tires. It looked wrong.
It was the other thing we didn’t like to talk about. The apocalypse that had settled over Gatlin in place of fall. Link’s mom was convinced that the
heat wave and the bugs were the results of the wrath of God, but I knew she was wrong. At the Great Barrier, Abraham Ravenwood had promised
that Lena’s choice would affect both the Caster and Mortal worlds. He wasn’t kidding.
Lena stared out the window, her eyes locked on the ravaged fields. There was nothing I could say that would make her feel any better, or less
responsible. The only thing I could do was try to distract her. “Today was crazy, even for the first day of school.”
“I feel bad for Ridley.” Lena pushed her hair up off her shoulders, twisting it into a messy knot. “She’s not herself.”
“Which means she’s not an evil Siren secretly working for Sarafine. How sorry should I be?”
“She seems so lost.”
“My prediction? She’s gonna mess with Link’s head again.”
Lena bit her lip. “Yeah, well. Ridley still thinks she’s a Siren. Messing with people is part of the job description.”
“I bet she’ll bring down the whole cheer-amid before she’s done.”
“Then she’ll get expelled,” Lena said.
I pulled off at the crossroads, turning off Route 9 and onto the road to Ravenwood. “Not before she burns Jackson to the ground.”
The oak trees grew and arched over the road leading up to Lena’s house, bringing the temperature down a degree or two.
The breeze from the open window blew through Lena’s dark curls. “I don’t think Ridley can stand being in the house. My whole family is acting
crazy. Aunt Del doesn’t know if she’s coming or going.”
“That’s nothing new.”
“Yesterday Aunt Del thought Ryan was Reece.”
“And Reece?” I asked.
“Reece’s powers have been all over the place. She’s always complaining about it. Sometimes she looks at me and freaks out, and I don’t know if
it’s because of something she’s read in my face or because she can’t read anything at all.”
Reece was already cranky enough, under normal circumstances.
“At least you have your uncle.”
“Sort of. Every day Uncle Macon disappears into the Tunnels, and he won’t say what he’s doing down there. Like he doesn’t want me to know.”
“How is that weird? He and Amma never want us to know anything.” I tried to act like I wasn’t worried even as the tires rolled over more lubbers.
“He’s been back for weeks now, and I still don’t know what kind of Caster he is. I mean, except Light. He won’t talk about it, not to anyone.” Not
even me. That’s what she was saying.
“Maybe he doesn’t know himself.”
“Forget it.” She looked out the window, and I took her hand. We were both so hot I could barely feel the burn of her touch.
“Can you talk to your grandma?”
“Gramma spends half her time in Barbados, trying to figure things out.” Lena didn’t say what she really meant. Her family was trying to find a way
to restore the Order—banish the heat and the lubbers and whatever we had to look forward to in the Mortal world. “Ravenwood has more Binding
spells on it than a Caster prison. It’s so claustrophobic that I feel as Bound as the house. It gives new meaning to being grounded.” Lena shook her
head. “I keep hoping Ridley doesn’t feel it, now that she’s a Mortal.”
I didn’t say anything, but I was pretty sure Ridley felt it, because I did. As we got closer to the great house, I could feel the magic—buzzing like it
was a live power line, the weight of a thick fog that had nothing to do with the weather.
The atmosphere of Caster magic, Dark and Light.
I had been able to sense it ever since we came back from the Great Barrier. And when I pulled up to the crooked iron gates that marked the
boundaries of Ravenwood, the air around us crackled, almost as charged as an electrical storm.
The gates themselves weren’t the real barrier. Ravenwood’s gardens, so overgrown while Macon was gone, were the one place in the whole
county that was a refuge from the heat and the bugs. Maybe it was a testament to the power of Lena’s family, but as we passed through the gates, I
could feel the energy from outside pulling one way while Ravenwood pulled the other. Ravenwood was standing its ground—you could tell by the
way the endless brown outside its grounds gave way to green within, the way the gardens remained uneaten, untouched. Macon’s flower beds were
blooming and brilliant, his trees trimmed and orderly, the broad green lawns clipped close and clean, stretching down from the great house to the
Santee River. Even the paths were lined with new gravel. But the outside world was pushing against the gates and the Casts and Bindings keeping
Ravenwood safe. Like waves crashing on the rocks, battering the same reef over and over, eroding a few grains of sand at a time.
Eventually, waves always get their way. If the Order of Things was really broken, Ravenwood couldn’t remain the only outpost of a lost world for
long.
I pulled the hearse up to the house, and before I could say a word, we were out of the car and into the damp air outside. Lena threw herself onto the
cool grass, and I dropped down next to her. I’d been waiting for this moment all day, and I felt sorry for Amma and my dad and the rest of Gatlin,
trapped in town beneath the burning blue sky. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take.
I know.
Crap. I didn’t mean—
I know. You’re not blaming me. It’s all right.
She moved closer, reaching for my face with her hand. I braced myself. My heart didn’t just race anymore when we touched. Now I could feel the
energy draining from my body, as if it was being sucked out. But she hesitated and let her hand drop. “This is my fault. I know you don’t feel like you
can say it, but I can.”
“L.”
She rolled onto her back and stared at the sky. “Late at night I lie in bed, close my eyes, and try to break through it. Try to pull the clouds in and
push the heat away. You don’t know how hard it is. How much it takes from all of us to keep Ravenwood like this.” She picked a blade of green
grass. “Uncle Macon says he doesn’t know what will happen next. Gramma says it’s impossible to know, because this has never happened before.”
“Do you believe them?”
When it came to Lena, Macon was about as forthcoming as Amma was with me. If there was something she could have done differently, he’d be
the last person to tell her.
“I don’t know. But this is bigger than Gatlin. Whatever I did, it’s affecting other Casters outside of my family. Everyone’s powers are misfiring like
mine.”
“Your powers have never been predictable.”
Lena looked away. “Spontaneous combustion is a little more than unpredictable.”
I knew she was right. Gatlin was teetering dangerously on the edge of an invisible cliff, and we had no idea what was at the bottom. But I couldn’t
say that to her—not when she was the one responsible for putting it there. “We’ll figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m not so sure.” She held one hand up to the sky, and I thought back to the first time I followed her into the garden at Greenbrier. I had watched
her tracing clouds with her fingertips, making shapes in the sky. I hadn’t known then what I was getting myself into, but it wouldn’t have mattered.
Everything had changed, even the sky. This time there wasn’t a cloud to trace. There was nothing but the threatening blue heat.
Lena raised her other hand and looked over at me. “This isn’t going to stop. Things are going to keep getting worse. We have to be ready.” She
pulled on the sky with her hands absentmindedly, twisting the air slowly, like taffy between her fingers. “Sarafine and Abraham aren’t going to just
walk away.”
I’m ready.
She looped her finger through the air. “Ethan, I want you to know that I’m not afraid of anything, anymore.”
I’m not either. Not as long as we’re together.
“That’s the thing. If something happens, it will be because of me. And I’ll have to be the one to fix it. Do you understand what I’m saying?” She
didn’t take her eyes off her fingers.
No. I don’t.
“You don’t? Or you don’t want to?”
I can’t.
“You remember when Amma used to tell you not to pick a hole in the sky or the universe would fall through?”
I smiled. “C. O. N. C. O. M. I. T. A. N. T. Eleven down. As in, you go ahead and pull on that thread and watch the whole world unravel like a
sweater, Ethan Wate.”
Lena should’ve been laughing, but she wasn’t. “I pulled on the thread when I used The Book of Moons.”
“Because of me.” I thought about it all the time. She wasn’t the only one of us who had pulled on the one piece of yarn that tied up all of Gatlin
County, above and below the surface.
“I Claimed myself.”
“You had to. You should be proud of that.”
“I am.” She hesitated.
“But?” I watched her carefully.
“But I’m going to have to pay a price, and I’m ready to.”
I closed my eyes. “Don’t talk like that.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“You’re waiting for something bad to happen.” I didn’t want to think about it.
Lena played with the charms on her necklace. “It’s not really a question of if but when.”
I’m waiting. That’s what the notebook said.
What notebook?
I didn’t want her to know, but now I couldn’t stop it. And I couldn’t pretend we could go back to the way things were.
The wrongness of everything came crashing down on me. The summer. Macon’s death. Lena acting like a stranger. Running away with John
Breed, and away from me. And then the rest of it, the part that happened before I met Lena—my mom not coming home, her shoes sitting where
she’d left them, her towel still damp from the morning. Her side of the bed not slept in, the smell of her hair still on her pillow.
The mail that still came addressed in her name.
The suddenness of it all. And the permanence. The lonely reality of the truth—that the most important person in your life suddenly ceased to exist.
Which on a bad day meant maybe she had never existed at all. And on a good day, there was the other fear. That even if you were a hundred
percent sure she had been there, maybe you were the only one who cared or remembered.
How can a pillow smell like a person who isn’t even on the same planet as you anymore? And what do you do when one day the pillow just smells
like any old pillow, a strange pillow? How can you bring yourself to put away those shoes?
But I had. And I had seen my mother’s Sheer at Bonaventure Cemetery. For the first time in my life, I believed something actually happened when
you died. My mom wasn’t alone in the dirt in His Garden of Perpetual Peace, the way I’d always been afraid she was. I was letting her go. At least, I
was close.
Ethan? What’s going on?
I wished I knew.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you. No one will.” I said the words even though I knew I wasn’t capable of protecting her. I said them
because I felt like my heart was going to rip itself to shreds all over again.
“I know,” she lied. Lena didn’t say anything else, but she knew what I was feeling.
She pulled down the sky with her hands, as hard as she could, like she wanted to rip it away from the sun.
I heard a loud cracking sound.
I didn’t know where it came from, and I didn’t know how long it would last, but the blue sky broke open, and though there wasn’t a cloud in sight,
we let the rain fall on our faces.
I felt the wet grass, and the raindrops in my eyes. They felt real. I felt my sweaty clothes dampening instead of drying. I pulled her close and held
her face in my hands. Then I kissed her until I wasn’t the only one who was breathless, and the ground beneath us dried and the sky was harsh and
blue again.
Dinner was Amma’s prizewinning chicken potpie. My portion alone was the size of my plate, or maybe home plate. I punctured the biscuit crust with
my fork, letting the steam escape. I could smell the good sherry, her secret ingredient. Every potpie in our county had a secret ingredient: sour
cream, soy sauce, cayenne pepper, even parmesan cheese straight out of the shaker. Secrets and piecrust went hand in hand around here. Slap a
piecrust up top and all the folks in town will kill themselves trying to figure out what’s hiding underneath.
“Ah. That smell still makes me feel about eight years old.” My dad smiled at Amma, who ignored both the comment and his suspiciously good
mood. Now that the semester had started up again at the university, and he was sitting there in his collared teaching shirt, he looked downright
normal. You could almost forget the year he spent sleeping all day, holed up in his office all night “writing” a book that amounted to nothing more
than hundreds of pages of scribble. Barely speaking or eating, until he started the steep, slow climb back to sanity. Or maybe it was the smell of the
pies going to work on me, too. I dug deep.
“You have a good first day of school, Ethan?” my dad asked, his mouth full.
I examined the pie on my fork. “Good enough.”
Everything was chopped up real small, underneath the dough. You couldn’t tell diced chicken from diced vegetables in the tiny chaos of mashedup
pie guts. Crap. When Amma had her cleaver out, it was never a good sign. This potpie was evidence of some kind of furious afternoon I didn’t
want to imagine. I felt sorry for her scarred cutting board. I looked over at her empty plate and knew she wasn’t about to sit down and make small
talk tonight. Or explain why not.
I swallowed. “How about you, Amma?”
She was standing at the kitchen counter tossing a salad so hard I thought she was going to shatter our cracked glass bowl. “Good enough.”
My dad calmly raised his glass of milk. “Well, my day was unbelievable. I woke up with an incredible idea, out of the blue. Must have come to me
last night. During my office hours, I wrote up a proposal. I’m going to start a new book.”
“Yeah? That’s great.” I picked up the salad bowl, concentrating on an oily-looking wedge of tomato.
“It’s about the Civil War. I might even find a way to use some of your mom’s old research. I have to talk to Marian about it.”
“What’s the book called, Dad?”
“That’s the part that hit me out of nowhere. I woke up with the words in my head. The Eighteenth Moon. What do you think?”
The bowl slipped out of my hands, hitting the table and shattering on the floor. Torn-up leaves mixed with jagged pieces of broken glass,
sparkling across my sneakers and the floorboards.
“Ethan Wate!” Before I could say another word, Amma was there, scooping up the soggy, slippery, dangerous mess. Like always. As I got down
on my own hands and knees, I could hear her hissing at me under her breath.
“Not another word.” She might as well have slapped an old piecrust right across my mouth.
What do you think it means, L?
I lay in bed, paralyzed, my face hidden in the pillow. Amma had shut herself up in her room after dinner, which I was pretty sure meant she didn’t
know what was going on with my dad either.
I don’t know.
Lena’s Kelting came to me as clearly as if she was sitting next to me on the bed, as usual. And as usual, I wished she really was.
How would he come up with that? Did we say something about the songs in front of him? Have we messed something up?
Something else. That was the part I didn’t say and tried not to think. The answer came quickly.
No, Ethan. We never said anything.
So if he’s talking about the Eighteenth Moon…
The truth hit us at the same time.
It’s because someone wants him to.
It made sense. Dark Casters had already killed my mom. My dad, just getting back on his feet, was an easy mark. And he had been targeted
once already, the night of Lena’s Sixteenth Moon. There was no other explanation.
My mother was gone, but she had found a way to guide me by sending the Shadowing Songs, Sixteen Moons and Seventeen Moons, which
stayed stuck in my head until I finally started to listen. But this message wasn’t coming from my mom.
L? You think it’s some kind of warning? From Abraham?
Maybe. Or my wonderful mother.
Sarafine. Lena almost never said her name, if she could avoid it. I didn’t blame her.
It has to be one of them, right?
Lena didn’t answer, and I lay there in my bed in the dark silence, hoping it was one of the two. One of the devils we knew, from somewhere in the
known Caster world. Because the devils we didn’t know were too terrifying to think about—and the worlds we didn’t know, even worse.
Are you still there, Ethan?
I’m here.
Will you read me something?
I smiled to myself and reached under my bed, pulling out the first book I found. Robert Frost, one of Lena’s favorites. I opened to a random page.
“We make ourselves a place apart / Behind light words that tease and flout, / But oh, the agitated heart / Till someone really find us out…”
I didn’t stop reading. I felt the reassuring weight of Lena’s consciousness leaning against mine, as real as if her head was leaning against my
shoulder. I wanted to keep her there as long as I could. She made me feel less alone.
Every line felt like it was written about her, at least to me.
As Lena drifted off, I listened to the hum of the crickets until I realized it wasn’t the crickets at all. It was the lubbers. The plague, or whatever Mrs.
Lincoln wanted to call it. The longer I listened, the more it sounded like a million buzz saws in the distance, destroying my town and everything
around it. Then the lubbers faded into something else—the low chords of a song I would recognize anywhere.
I’d been hearing the songs since before I met Lena. Sixteen Moons had led me to her, the song only I could hear. I couldn’t escape them, any
more than Lena could run from her destiny or I could hide from mine. They were warnings from my mom—the person I trusted most, in any world.
Eighteen Moons, eighteen spheres,
From the world beyond the years,
One Unchosen, death or birth,
A Broken Day awaits the Earth…
I tried to make sense of the words, the way I always did. “The world beyond the years” ruled out the Mortal world. But what was coming from this
other world—the Eighteenth Moon or the “One Unchosen”? And who could that be?
The only person it ruled out was Lena. She’d made her choice. Which meant there was another choice to be made—by someone who had yet to
make one.
But the last line was the one that made me sick. “A Broken Day?” That pretty much covered every day now. How could things possibly get more
broken than this?
I wished I had more than a song and that my mom was here to tell me what it meant. More than anything, I wished I knew how to fix everything we
had broken.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 4

Stonewalling
There’s something about walking into school holding hands with a person you actually love. It’s strange—not bad strange. The best strange. I
remembered what made couples hang around attached to each other like cold spaghetti. There were so many ways to be knotted up together.
Arms draped around necks, hands crossed in pockets. We couldn’t even walk next to each other without our shoulders finding a way to bump, as if
our bodies gravitated toward each other on their own. I guess when electric voltage marked each of those tiny connections, you noticed them more
than the average guy.
Even though I should’ve been used to it by now, it still felt weird to walk down the halls while everyone stared at Lena. She would always be the
most beautiful girl in school, no matter what color her eyes were, and everyone here knew it, too. She was that girl—the one who had her own kind
of power, supernatural or not. And there was a look a guy couldn’t help but give that girl, no matter what she’d done or how much of a freak she
would always be.
It was the same look the guys were giving her now.
Calm down, Lover Boy.
Lena bumped her shoulder against mine.
I forgot what this walk was like. After Lena’s sixteenth birthday, I lost more and more of her every day. By the end of the school year, she was so
distant I could barely find her in the halls. It was only a few months ago. But now that we were here again, I remembered.
I don’t like the way they’re looking at you.
What way?
I stopped walking and touched the side of Lena’s face, below the crescent-shaped birthmark on her cheekbone. A shiver shot through both of us,
and I leaned down to find her mouth.
This way.
She pulled back, smiling, and dragged me down the hall.
I get the picture. But I think you’re way off. Look.
Emory Watkins and the other guys from the basketball team were staring past us as we walked by his locker. He nodded at me.
I hate to break it to you, Ethan, but they’re not looking at me.
I heard Link’s voice. “Hey, girls. We shootin’ hoops this afternoon or what?” He bumped fists with Emory and kept walking. But they weren’t
looking at him either.
Ridley was a step behind the rest of us, letting her long pink nails trail along the locker doors. When she got to Emory’s, she let the door close
beneath her fingers.
“Hey, girls.” The way Ridley rolled out the words, she still sounded like a Siren.
Emory stammered, and Ridley let her finger trail across his chest as she walked past. In that skirt, she was showing more leg than should have
been legal. The entire team turned to watch her go.
“Who’s your friend?” Emory was talking to Link, but he didn’t take his eyes off Ridley. He’d seen her before—at the Stop & Steal when I first met
her, and at the winter formal, when she trashed the gym—but he was looking for an introduction, up close and personal.
“Who wants to know?” Rid blew a bubble, letting it pop.
Link looked at her sideways and grabbed Ridley’s hand. “Nobody.”
The hallway divided in front of them as an ex-Siren and a quarter Incubus conquered Jackson High. I wondered what Amma would have to say
about that.
Sweet baby in a manger. Heaven help us all.
“Are you kidding? I’m supposed to keep my things in this filthy tin coffin?” Ridley stared into her locker like she thought something was going to pop
out of it.
“Rid, you’ve been to school before, and you had a locker,” Lena said patiently.
Ridley flipped her pink and blond hair. “I must’ve blocked all that out. Post-traumatic stress.”
Lena handed Ridley the combination lock. “You don’t have to use it. But you can put your books inside so you don’t have to carry them around all
day.”
“Books?” Ridley looked disgusted. “Carry?”
Lena sighed. “You’ll get them today, in your classes. And, yes, you have to carry them. You should know how this works.”
Ridley adjusted her shirt to expose a little more shoulder. “I was a Siren the last time I was in school. I didn’t actually go to any of my classes, and I
certainly didn’t carry anything.”
Link clapped his hand down on her shoulder. “Come on. We have homeroom together. I’ll show you how it’s done, Link-style.”
“Yeah?” Ridley sounded skeptical. “How is that any better?”
“Well, for starters, it doesn’t involve any books….” Link seemed more than happy to walk her to class. He wanted to keep an eye on her.
“Ridley, wait! You need this.” Lena waved a binder in the air.
Ridley slipped her arm through Link’s and ignored her. “Relax, Cuz. I’ll use Hot Rod’s.”
I slammed the locker shut. “Your gramma is an optimist.”
“You think?”
Like everyone else, I watched Link and Rid disappear down the hall. “I give this whole little experiment three days, max.”
“Three days? You’re the optimist.” Lena sighed, and we started up the stairs to English.
The air conditioning was running full blast, a pathetic mechanical hum echoing through the halls. But the outdated system didn’t stand a chance
against this heat wave. It was even hotter upstairs in the administration building than it was outside in the parking lot.
As we walked into English class, I stopped for a minute under the fluorescent light, the one that had burned out when Lena and I had collided on
the way into this room the first day I saw her. I stared up at the cardboard squares in the ceiling.
You know, if you look really close, you can still see the burn mark around the new light.
How romantic. The scene of our first disaster. Lena followed my eyes up to the ceiling. I think I see it.
I let my eyes linger on the squares speckled with perforated dots. How many times had I sat in class staring up at those dots, trying to stay awake
or counting them to pass time? Counting minutes left in a class period, periods left in the day—days into weeks, weeks into months, until I got out of
Gatlin?
Lena walked by Mrs. English, who was buried in first day of school papers at her desk, and slid into her old seat on the infamous Good-Eye Side.
I started to follow her, but I sensed someone behind me. It was that feeling you get when you’re in line and the person after you is standing way
too close. I turned around, but no one was there.
Lena was already writing in her notebook when I sat down at the desk next to hers. I wondered if she was writing one of her poems. I was about to
sneak a look when I heard it. The voice was faint, and it wasn’t Lena’s. It was a low whisper, coming from over my shoulder.
I turned around. The seat behind me was empty.
Did you say something, L?
Lena looked up from the notebook, surprised.
What?
Were you Kelting? I thought I heard something.
She shook her head.
No. Are you okay?
I nodded, opening my binder. I heard the voice again. This time I recognized the words. The letters appeared on the page, in my handwriting.
I’M WAITING.
I slammed it shut, clenching my hands to stop them from shaking.
Lena looked up at me.
Are you sure you’re okay?
I’m fine.
I didn’t look up once for the rest of the period. I didn’t look up while I failed the quiz on The Crucible. Not when Lena participated, straight-faced,
in a class discussion about the Salem witch trials. Or when Emily Asher made a less than clever comparison between dear, departed Macon
Ravenwood and the possessed townsfolk in the play, and a ceiling tile suddenly came loose and smacked her on the head.
I didn’t look up again until the bell rang.
Mrs. English was staring at me, her expression so unnerving and blank that for a second I thought both her eyes could have been glass.
I tried to tell myself that it was the first day of school, which could make anyone crazy. That she’d probably just had a bad cup of coffee.
But this was Gatlin, so there was a pretty good chance I was wrong.
Once English was over, Lena and I didn’t have any other classes together until after lunch. I was in Trig and Lena was in Calculus. Link—and now
Ridley—had been bumped down to Consumer Math, the class the teachers enrolled you in when they finally admitted you weren’t going to make it
past Algebra II. Everyone called it Burger Math because all you learned was how to make change. Link’s whole schedule read like the teachers had
decided he was going to be working at the BP station with Ed after graduation. His schedule was basically one big study hall. I had Bio; he had
Rocks for Jocks. I had World History; he had CSS—Cultures of Southern States, or “Checking Out Savannah Snow,” as he called it. Compared to
Link, I looked like a rocket scientist. He didn’t seem to care—or if he did, there were too many girls following him around for him to notice.
To be honest, it didn’t matter, because all I wanted to do was get lost in the familiar blur of the first day of school so I could forget about the crazy
message in my binder.
I guess there’s nothing like a crappy summer filled with near-death experiences to make the first day of school seem great in comparison. Until I
got to the cafeteria, where it was sloppy joe day. Of course it was. Nothing said first day of school like sloppy joes.
I found Lena and Ridley easily enough. They were sitting alone at one of the orange lunch tables, with a steady stream of guys circling like
vultures. Everyone had heard about Ridley by now, and all the guys wanted to check her out.
“Where’s Link?”
Ridley tilted her head toward the back of the lunchroom, where Link was moving from table to table like he was the MVP at the state
championship or something. I noticed her tray, full of chocolate pudding, red Jell-O cubes, and slices of dry-looking angel food cake. “Hungry, Rid?”
“What can I say, Boyfriend? Girl’s got a sweet tooth.” She picked up a bowl of pudding and dug in.
“Don’t tease her. She’s having a bad day,” Lena said.
“Really? That’s a shocker.” I bit into my first deflated sloppy joe. “What happened?”
Lena glanced back at one of the tables. “That happened.”
Link had one foot up on the plastic bench, and he was leaning over the table, talking to the cheer squad. His attention focused on one cheer
captain in particular.
“Aw, that’s nothing. Just Link being Link. You don’t have anything to worry about, Rid.”
“Like I’m worried,” she snapped. “I could care less what he does.” But I looked down at her tray, and four of the pudding bowls were already
empty. “I’m not coming back tomorrow, anyway. This whole school thing is moronic. You move around from room to room like herds or flocks or—”
“Schools?” I couldn’t resist.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Ridley rolled her eyes, annoyed that I couldn’t keep up.
“I was talking about fish. A group of fish is called a school. If you went to school you’d know that.” I ducked to avoid her spoon.
“That isn’t the point.” Lena shot me a warning look.
“The point is, you’re sort of a solo act,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. Ridley went back to her pudding with a serious level of sugar
dedication I respected. She didn’t take her eyes off Link.
“Actually trying to make someone like you is totally demeaning. It’s pathetic. It’s…”
“Mortal?”
“Exactly.” She shuddered, moving on to the Jell-O.
A few minutes later, Link worked his way over to our table. He dropped down next to Ridley, and the side of the table where Lena and I were sitting
lifted right off the ground. At 6'2", I was one of the tallest guys at Jackson, but I only had an inch or so on Link now.
“Hey, man. Take it easy.”
Link eased up a little, and our side of the table smacked down against the linoleum. People were staring. “Sorry. I keep forgettin’. I’m
Transitioning. Mr. Ravenwood said this would be a rough time, when you’re the new kid on the block.”
Lena kicked me under the table, trying not to laugh.
Ridley was less subtle. “I think all this sugar is making me sick. Oh wait, did I say sugar? I meant sap.” She looked at Link. “And when I said sap, I
meant you.”
Link smiled. This was the Ridley he liked best. “Your uncle said no one would understand.”
“Yeah, I bet it’s really tough being the Hulk.” I was kidding, but I wasn’t far off.
“Dude, it’s no joke. I can’t sit down for more than five minutes or people start throwing their food at me, like they expect me to eat it.”
“Well, you did have a reputation for being a human garbage disposal.”
“I could still eat if I wanted to.” He looked disgusted. “But food doesn’t taste like anything. It’s like chewin’ on cardboard. I’m on the Macon
Ravenwood diet. You know, snackin’ on a few dreams here and there.”
“Whose dreams?” If Link was feeding off my dreams, I was going to kick his ass. They were confusing enough without him.
“No way. Your head’s too full a crazy for me. But you wouldn’t believe what Savannah dreams about. Let’s just say she’s not thinking about the
state finals.”
No one wanted to hear the details—especially not Ridley, who was stabbing at her Jell-O. I tried to spare her. “That’s a visual I can live without,
thanks.”
“It’s cool. But you’ll never guess what I saw.” If he said Savannah in her underwear, he was a dead man.
Lena was thinking the same thing. “Link, I don’t think—”
“Dolls.”
“What?” It wasn’t the answer Lena was expecting.
“Barbies, but not the ones girls had in elementary school. These puppies are all dressed up. She’s got a bride, Miss America, Snow White. And
they’re in this big glass case.”
“I knew she reminded me of a Barbie.” Ridley stabbed another cube.
Link slid closer to her. “You still ignorin’ me?”
“You’re not worth the time it takes to ignore.” Ridley stared through the jiggling red cube. “I don’t think Kitchen makes this. What’s it called again?”
“Jell-O Surprise.” Link grinned.
“What’s the surprise?” Ridley examined the red gelatin more closely.
“What they put in it.” He flicked the cube with his finger, and she pulled it away.
“Which is?”
“Ground-up hooves, hides, and bones. Surprise.”
Ridley looked at him, shrugged, and put the spoon in her mouth. She wasn’t going to give him an inch. Not as long as he was creeping around
Savannah Snow’s bedroom at night and flirting with her all day.
Link looked over at me. “So, you wanna shoot some hoops after school?”
“No.” I shoved the rest of the sloppy joe into my mouth.
“I can’t believe you’re eating that. You hate those things.”
“I know. But they’re pretty good today.” A Jackson first. When Amma’s cooking was off and the cafeteria’s was on, maybe it really was the End of
Days.
You know, you can play basketball if you want to.
Lena was offering me something, the same thing Link was. A chance to make peace with my former friends, to be less of an outcast, if that was
possible. But it was too late. Your friends were supposed to stand by you, and now I knew who my friends really were. And who they weren’t.
I don’t want to.
“Come on. It’s cool. All that crazy stuff with the guys is history.” Link believed what he was saying. But history was hard to forget when it included
tormenting your girlfriend all year.
“Yeah. People around here aren’t into history.”
Even Link caught my sarcasm. “Well, I’m gonna hit the court.” He didn’t look at me. “I might even go back on the team. I mean, it’s not like I was
really off.”
Not like you. That’s the part he didn’t say.
“It’s really hot in here.” Sweat was dripping down my back. So many people, crammed into one room.
You okay?
No. Yeah. I just need to get some air.
I stood up to go, but the door looked like it was a mile away.
This school had a way of making you feel small. As small as it was, maybe even smaller. I guess some things never change.
Turns out, Ridley wasn’t interested in studying the cultures of the Southern states any more than she was interested in Link studying Savannah
Snow, and five minutes into the period she convinced him they should switch to World History. Which wouldn’t have surprised me except switching
classes usually involved taking your schedule to Miss Hester—then lying and begging and, if you were really stuck, crying. So when Link and Ridley
showed up in World History and he told me that his schedule had miraculously changed, I was more than suspicious.
“What do you mean, your schedule changed?”
Link dropped his notebook onto the desk next to me and shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute Savannah sits down next to me, then Ridley comes
in and sits on the other side, and the next thing I know, World History’s printed on my schedule. Rid’s, too. She shows the teacher, and we get
kicked right outta class.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked as Ridley settled into her seat.
“Manage what?” She looked at me innocently, clicking and un-clicking her creepy scorpion belt buckle.
Lena wasn’t letting her off that easy. “You know what he’s talking about. Did you take a book from Uncle Macon’s study?”
“Are you actually accusing me of reading?”
Lena lowered her voice. “Were you trying to Cast? It’s not safe, Ridley.”
“You mean not safe for me. Because I’m a stupid Mortal.”
“Casting is dangerous for Mortals, unless you’ve had years of training, like Marian. Which you haven’t.” Lena wasn’t trying to rub it in, but every
time she said the word “Mortal,” Ridley cringed. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire.
Maybe it was too hard to hear from a Caster. I jumped in. “Lena’s right. Who knows what could happen if something went wrong?”
Ridley didn’t say a word, and for a second it seemed like I had single-handedly put out the flames. But as she turned to face me, her blue eyes
blazing as bright as her yellow ones ever had, I realized how wrong I was.
“I don’t remember anyone complaining when you and your little British Marian-in-training were Casting at the Great Barrier.”
Lena blushed and looked away.
Ridley was right. Liv and I had Cast at the Great Barrier. It was how we freed Macon from the Arclight, and why Liv would never be a Keeper. And
it was a painful reminder of a time when Lena and I were as far away from each other as two people could be.
I didn’t say anything. Instead I stumbled over my thoughts, crashing and burning in the silence while Mr. Littleton tried to convince us how
fascinating World History was going to be. He failed. I tried to come up with something to say that would rescue me from the awkwardness of the
next ten seconds. I failed.
Because even though Liv wasn’t at Jackson, and she spent all her days in the Tunnels with Macon, she was still the elephant in the room. The
thing Lena and I didn’t talk about. I had only seen Liv once since the night of the Seventeenth Moon, and I missed her. Not like I could tell anyone
that.
I missed her crazy British accent, and the way she mispronounced Carolina so it sounded like Carolin-er. I missed her selenometer that looked
like a giant plastic watch from thirty years ago, and the way she was always writing in her tiny red notebook. I missed the way we joked around and
the way she made fun of me. I missed my friend.
The sad part was, she probably would have understood.
I just couldn’t tell her.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 3

Mortal Girls
As we drove down Dove Street, it was hard to believe our town had ever been anything but brown. The grass looked like burnt toast before you
scraped off the black parts. The Beater was about the only thing that hadn’t changed. Link was actually driving the speed limit for once, even if it
was only because he wanted to check out what was left of our neighbors’ front yards.
“Man, look at Mrs. Asher’s azaleas. Sun’s so hot, they turned black.” Link was right about the heat. According to the Farmers’ Almanac, and the
Sisters, who were Gatlin’s walking almanac, it hadn’t been this hot in Gatlin County since 1942. But the sun wasn’t what had killed Mrs. Asher’s
azaleas.
“They aren’t burnt. They’re covered in lubbers.”
Link hung out the window to get a better look. “No way.”
The grasshoppers had shown up in droves three weeks after Lena Claimed herself, and two weeks after the worst heat wave in seventy years hit.
Lubber grasshoppers weren’t your run-of-the-mill green grasshoppers, like the ones Amma found in the kitchen every now and then. Lubbers were
black, with an angry slash of yellow running down their backs, and they traveled in swarms. They were like locusts, devouring every inch of green in
town, including the General’s Green. General Jubal A. Early’s statue was standing on a brown circle of dead grass, his sword drawn and covered
with a black army of its own.
Link sped up a little. “That’s nasty. My mom thinks they’re one a the plagues a the apocalypse. She’s waitin’ for the frogs to show up and the
water to run red.”
For once I couldn’t blame Mrs. Lincoln. In a town built on equal parts religion and superstition, it was hard to ignore an unprecedented infestation
of grasshoppers that had descended on Gatlin like a black cloud. Every day seemed like an End of Days kind of a day. And I wasn’t about to knock
on Mrs. Lincoln’s door and tell her it was most likely the result of my Caster girlfriend splitting the moon and disrupting the Order of Things. We were
having a hard enough time convincing Link’s mom that his new physique wasn’t the result of steroids. He had already been to Doc Asher’s office
twice this month.
When we pulled into the parking lot, Lena was already there, and something else had changed. She wasn’t driving her cousin Larkin’s Fastback
anymore. She was standing next to Macon’s hearse, in a vintage U2 T-shirt with the word W A R written across the top, a gray skirt, and her old black
Chucks. There was fresh Sharpie inked across the toes. It was crazy how a hearse and a pair of sneakers could cheer a guy up.
A million thoughts ran through my head. That when she looked at me, it was like there was no one else in the world. That when I looked at her, I
noticed every detail about her while everything else faded away. That I was only myself when we were together.
It was impossible to put into words, and even if I could I wasn’t sure the words would be right. But I didn’t have to try, because Lena and I never
had to say the things we felt. We could think them, and Kelting took care of the rest.
Hi.
What took you so long?
I climbed out of the passenger seat, the back of my shirt already soaked with sweat. Link seemed immune to the heat, another perk of being part
Incubus. I slipped into Lena’s arms and breathed her in.
Lemons and rosemary. The scent I had followed through the halls of Jackson before I saw her for the first time. The one that had never faded,
even when she walked into the darkness and away from me.
I leaned down carefully to kiss her without brushing against any other part of her body. These days, the more we touched, the less I could breathe.
The physical effects of touching her had intensified, and even though I tried to hide it, she knew.
I felt the jolt as soon as our lips met. The sweetness of her kiss was so perfect and the shock of her skin so powerful that my head was always left
spinning. But now there was something else—the feeling she was inhaling my breath every time our lips met, pulling an invisible string I couldn’t
control. Lena arched her neck and pulled away before I could move.
Later.
I sighed, and she blew me a kiss.
But, L, it’s been…
A whole nine hours?
Yeah.
I smiled at her, and she shook her head.
I don’t want you to spend the first day of school in the nurse’s office.
Lena was more worried about me than I was. If something happened to me—which was a pretty big possibility, since it was becoming harder to
kiss her, and even harder to stay away—I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand to think about not touching her. Things were changing. That feeling—the pain
that wasn’t pain—was still there even when we were apart. There should be a name for it, the perfect ache I felt in the empty places she usually
filled.
Is there a word to describe that? Heartache, maybe? Is that how they came up with the word? Except I felt it in my gut, my head, my entire body. I
saw Lena when I was looking out windows and staring at walls.
I tried to focus on something that didn’t hurt. “I like your new wheels.”
“You mean my old ones? Ridley threw a fit about riding in a hearse.”
“Where’s Rid?” Link was already scanning the parking lot.
Lena gestured at the hearse behind her. “She’s in there changing her clothes.”
“She can’t change at home like a normal person?” I asked.
“I heard that, Short Straw,” Ridley called out from inside the car. “I am not”—a ball of crumpled fabric flew through the driver’s side window,
landing in a heap on the steaming asphalt—“a normal person.” She said it like normal was an affliction. “And I am not wearing this mass-produced
piece of mall crap.” Ridley was squirming around, the leather seat squeaking as flashes of blond and pink hair whipped in and out of view. A pair of
silver shoes flew out the window. “I look like I belong on the Disney Channel.”
I bent down and picked up the offensive piece of clothing. It was a short, printed dress from a chain store at the mall in Summerville. It was a
variation of the same dress Savannah Snow, Emily Asher, Eden Westerly, and Charlotte Chase—the queens of the cheerleading squad—and
therefore half the girls at Jackson High, wore.
Lena rolled her eyes. “Gramma decided Ridley needed to dress more appropriately now that she would be going to a Mortal high school.” Lena
dropped her voice. “You know, as a Mortal.”
“I heard that!” A white tank top flew out the window. “Just because I’m a disgusting Mortal doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.” Lena glanced
over her shoulder and moved away from the car. Ridley stepped out of the hearse and adjusted her new outfit—a bright pink T-shirt and a black
sliver of material that she was passing off as a skirt. The shirt was slashed all over and safety-pinned in a few places, hanging down on one side to
show off Ridley’s shoulder.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever look like a Mortal, Babe.” Link tugged uncomfortably on his own T-shirt, which looked like his mom had shrunk it in the
wash.
“Thank God for small favors. And don’t call me Babe.” Ridley grabbed the dress, holding it between two fingers. “We should give this thing to
Goodwill. Maybe they can sell it as a Halloween costume.”
Lena stared at a belt buckle slung low around Ridley’s waist. “Speaking of Goodwill, what’s that?”
“What? This old thing?” It was an oversize buckle on a battered black leather belt, with some kind of insect caught in a rock or plastic or
something. I think it was a scorpion. It was creepy and weird, and very Ridley. “Just trying to fit in.” Ridley smiled, smacking her gum. “You know. All
the cool kids are wearing them.” Without her signature lollipops, she was about as cranky as my dad when Amma switched him to decaf.
Lena let it go. “You’re gonna have to change back before we go home, or Gramma will figure out what you’re up to.” Ridley ignored her and
dropped the crumpled dress onto the hot asphalt, stepping on it with her superhigh sandals.
Lena sighed and held out her hand. The dress flew up toward her fingers, but before it reached them the fabric burst into flames. Lena yanked her
hand back, and the dress hit the ground, the edges already charred.
“Holy crap!” Link stomped on the material until there was nothing left but a smoldering black mess. Lena turned red.
Ridley was unfazed. “Way to go, Cuz. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
Lena watched the last curl of black smoke disappear. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” Ridley looked bored.
Lena’s powers had been out of whack ever since she Claimed herself, which was dangerous, considering she was both Light and Dark. Her
powers had always been unpredictable, but now she could cause anything from downpours and hurricane-force winds to forest fires.
Lena sighed, frustrated. “I’ll get you another one before the end of the day, Rid.”
Ridley rolled her eyes, digging through her purse. “Don’t do me any favors.” She pulled out her sunglasses.
“Good idea.” Link slid on his scratched black wraparound shades, which had been cool for about ten minutes when we were in sixth grade. “Let’s
groove, Sugar Cube.”
They turned toward the steps, and I saw my chance. I reached for Lena’s arm and pulled her close. She pushed my brown hair, which was always
a little too long, out of my eyes and looked up at me from under her thick black lashes. One perfectly gold eye and one dark green one stared back
at me. Her eyes had never changed back after the night Sarafine called the Seventeenth Moon out of time. She looked up at me with the gold eye
of a Dark Caster and the green eye of a Light one—a constant reminder of the moment Lena realized she possessed both types of power. But her
eyes were also a reminder that her choice had changed things for both the Caster and the Mortal worlds. And for us.
Ethan, don’t—
Shh. You worry too much.
I wrapped my arms around her, and the feel of her burned through my veins. I could feel the intensity of it as I struggled to keep my shallow
breaths even. She tugged gently on my lower lip as we kissed, and I was light-headed and disoriented in seconds. To me, we weren’t standing in
the middle of the parking lot. Images flashed through my mind, and I had to be hallucinating, because now we were kissing in the water, in Lake
Moultrie—on my desk in English—at the lunch tables—behind the bleachers—in the garden at Greenbrier.
Then a shadow passed over me, and I felt something that wasn’t the result of her kiss. I’d had the same feeling before, on top of the water tower,
in my dream. A suffocating dizziness wrapped itself around me, and Lena and I weren’t in the garden anymore. We were surrounded by dirt, kissing
in an open grave.
I was going to pass out.
As my knees buckled, a voice cut through the air and our kiss, and Lena tore herself away from me.
“Hey there. How y’all doin’?” Savannah Snow.
I collapsed against the side of the hearse, sliding to the ground. Then I felt someone pulling me up, my feet barely touching the asphalt.
“What’s wrong with Ethan?” Savannah drawled. I opened my eyes.
“The heat, I guess.” Link grinned and put me down. Lena looked shocked, but Ridley looked worse. Because Link was smiling like someone had
just offered him a record deal. That someone being Savannah Snow—cheer captain, Third Degree Burns–level hot—and the Holy Grail of
unattainable girls at Stonewall Jackson High.
Savannah stood there, squeezing her books against her chest so hard her knuckles turned white. She was wearing almost the same dress
Ridley had tossed onto the asphalt seconds earlier. Emily Asher was trailing behind her, wearing her own version of Savannah’s outfit, looking
confused. Savannah stepped closer to Link, with only her books between them. “What I really meant was, how are you?”
Link ran his hand through his hair nervously and took a step back. “I’m good. What’s up?”
Savannah flipped her blond ponytail and bit her lower lip suggestively, sticky pink lip gloss melting in the sun. “Not much. Just wonderin’ if you’re
goin’ to the Dar-ee Keen after school. Maybe you can give me a ride.”
Emily looked as surprised as I was. Savannah was more likely to give up her position on the cheer squad than agree to ride in Link’s rusted shell
of a car. Since riding around with Savannah was one of the requirements of being her sidekick, Emily spoke up. “Savannah, we have a ride. Earl is
takin’ us, remember?”
“You ride with Earl. I think I’d rather ride with Link.” Savannah was still staring at Link like he was a rock star.
Lena shook her head at me.
I told you. It’s the John Breed effect. Not too shabby for a quarter Incubus. You can’t expect a Mortal girl not to feel it.
That was an understatement.
Just Mortal girls, L?
She pretended not to know what I was talking about.
Not all Mortal girls. Look—
She was right. Link didn’t seem to be having the same effect on Emily. The more Savannah licked her lips, the more nauseated Emily appeared.
Ridley grabbed Link’s arm, jerking him away from Savannah. “He’s busy this afternoon, sweetheart. You should listen to your friend.” Her eyes
weren’t yellow anymore, but Ridley looked as intimidating as her former Dark Caster self.
Savannah didn’t think so, or she didn’t care. “Oh, sorry. Are you two together?” She paused for a second, pretending to appear thoughtful. “No.
That’s right, you aren’t.”
Anyone who spent any time at the Dar-ee Keen knew that Link and Ridley’s on-again, off-again relationship was off at the moment. Savannah
hooked her arm through Link’s other arm. A challenge. “I guess that means Link can make his own decisions.”
Link untangled himself from both of them and draped his arms over their shoulders. “Ladies, ladies. There’s no need to fight. There’s plenty a this
to go around.” He puffed out his chest, even though it was big enough already. Normally, I would’ve laughed at the idea of two girls fighting over
Link, except they weren’t just any two girls. We were talking about Savannah Snow and Ridley Duchannes. Supernatural or not, they were the two
most powerful Sirens mankind had ever been lucky—or unlucky—enough to encounter, depending on how they used their powers of persuasion.
“Savannah, let’s go. We’re gonna be late for class.” Emily sounded disgusted. I wondered why Link’s Incubus magnetism didn’t work on her.
Savannah wedged herself tighter under his arm. “You should find yourself a guy who’s more”—she looked at Ridley and her safety-pinned shirt
—“like you.”
Ridley shrugged Link’s arm off her shoulder. “And you should be careful who you talk to like that, Barbie.” Savannah was lucky Ridley didn’t have
her powers anymore.
This is about to get ugly, L.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to let Rid get kicked out on her first day. I won’t give Principal Harper the satisfaction.
“Ridley, let’s go.” Lena walked over and stood next to her cousin. “She’s not worth it. Trust me.”
Savannah was about to fire back, when something distracted her. She crinkled her nose. “Your eyes—they’re two different colors. What’s wrong
with you?”
Emily wandered over to get a better look. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed Lena’s eyes. They were impossible to miss. But I
had hoped we would make it past the parking lot before the first wave of gossip hit. “Savannah, why don’t you—”
Lena interrupted before I could finish. “I would ask you the same question, but we all know the answer.”
Ridley crossed her arms. “Let me give you a hint. It begins with B and rhymes with bitch.”
Lena turned her back on Savannah and Emily, heading for Jackson’s broken concrete steps. I grabbed her hand, the energy pulsating up my
arm. I expected Lena to be shaky after facing off against Savannah, but she was calm. Something had changed, and it was more than just her eyes.
I guess when you’ve faced a Dark Caster who also happens to be your mother, and a hundred-and-fifty-year-old Blood Incubus who is trying to kill
you, a few cheerleaders aren’t that intimidating.
You okay?
Lena squeezed my hand.
I’m okay.
I could hear Ridley’s shoes smacking against the concrete behind us. Link jogged up alongside me. “Man, if this is what I have to look forward to,
this year is gonna rock.”
I tried to convince myself he was right as we cut across the brown grass, dead lubbers crunching under our feet.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 2

Linkubus
I was standing on the top of the white water tower, with my back to the sun. My headless shadow fell across the warm painted metal, disappearing
off the edge and into the sky. I could see Summerville stretching out before me, all the way to the lake, from Route 9 to Gatlin. This had been our
happy place, mine and Lena’s. One of them, at least. But I wasn’t feeling happy. I felt like I was going to throw up.
My eyes were watering, but I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the light.
Come on, already. It’s time.
I clenched and unclenched my fists—staring out at the tiny houses, the tiny cars, and the tiny people—waiting for it to happen. The dread churned
in my stomach, heavy and wrong. Then the familiar arms slammed into my waist, knocking the air out of me and dragging me down to the metal
ladder. My jaw hit the side of the railing, and I stumbled. I lurched forward, trying to throw him off.
Who are you?
But the harder I swung, the harder he hit me. The next punch landed in my stomach, and I doubled over. That’s when I saw them.
His black Chucks. They were so old and beat-up, they could have been mine.
What do you want?
I didn’t wait for an answer. I lunged for his throat, and he went for mine. That’s when I caught a look at his face, and I saw the truth.
He was me.
As we stared into each other’s eyes and clawed at each other’s throats, we rolled over the edge of the water tower and fell.
The whole way down, I could only think one thing.
Finally.
My head hit the floor with a crack, and my body followed a second later, the sheets tangled around me. I tried to open my eyes, but they were still
blurred with sleep. I waited for the panic to subside.
In my old dreams, I had tried to keep Lena from falling. Now I was the one falling. What did that mean? Why did I wake up feeling like I’d already
fallen?
“Ethan Lawson Wate! What in our Sweet Redeemer’s name are you doin’ up there?” Amma had a particular way of shouting that could haul you
right back up out of Hades, as my dad would say.
I opened my eyes, but all I could see was a lonely sock, a spider working its way aimlessly through the dust, and a few beat-up, spine-busted
books. Catch-22. Ender’s Game. The Outsiders. A few others. The thrilling view under my bed.
“Nothing. Just shutting the window.” I stared at my window, but I didn’t close it. I always slept with it open. I’d started leaving it open when Macon
died—at least, when we thought he’d died—and now it was a reassuring habit. Most people felt safer with their windows closed, but I knew a
closed window couldn’t protect me from the things I was afraid of. It couldn’t keep out a Dark Caster or a Blood Incubus.
I wasn’t sure anything could.
But if there was a way, Macon seemed determined to find it. I hadn’t seen much of him since we came back from the Great Barrier. He was
always in the Tunnels anyway, or working on some kind of protective Cast to Bind Ravenwood. Lena’s house had become the Fortress of Solitude
since the Seventeenth Moon, when the Order of Things—the delicate balance that regulated the Caster world—was broken. Amma was creating
her own Fortress of Solitude here at Wate’s Landing—or Fortress of Superstition, as Link called it. Amma would’ve called it “taking preventative
measures.” She had lined every windowsill with salt and used my dad’s rickety stepladder to hang cracked glass bottles upside down on every
branch of our crepe myrtle tree. In Wader’s Creek, bottle trees were as common as cypresses. Now whenever I saw Link’s mom at the Stop &
Steal, Mrs. Lincoln said the same thing—“Caught any evil spirits in those old bottles yet?”
I wish we could catch yours. That’s what I wanted to say. Mrs. Lincoln stuffed in a dusty brown Coke bottle. I wasn’t sure any bottle tree could
handle that.
Right now, I just wanted to catch a breeze. The heat rolled over me as I leaned against my old wooden bed frame. It was thick and suffocating, a
blanket you couldn’t kick off. The relentless South Carolina sun usually let up a little by September, but not this year.
I rubbed the lump on my forehead and stumbled to the shower. I turned on the cold water. I let it run for a minute, but it still came out warm.
Five in a row. I had fallen out of bed five straight mornings, and I was afraid to tell Amma about the nightmares. Who knew what she would hang
on our old crepe myrtle next? After everything that happened this summer, Amma had closed in on me like a mother hawk protecting her nest.
Every time I stepped out of the house, I could almost feel her shadowing me like my own personal Sheer, a ghost I couldn’t escape.
And I couldn’t stand it. I needed to believe that sometimes a nightmare was just a nightmare.
I smelled the bacon frying, and turned up the water. It finally went cold. It wasn’t until I was drying off that I noticed the window had closed without
me.
“Hurry up, Sleepin’ Beauty. I’m ready to hit the books.” I heard Link before I saw him, but I almost wouldn’t have recognized his voice. It was deeper,
and he sounded more like a man and less like a guy who specialized in banging on the drums and writing bad songs.
“Yeah, you’re ready to hit something, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the books.” I slid into the chair next to his spot at our chipped kitchen table. Link
had bulked up so much that it looked like he was sitting in one of those tiny plastic chairs from elementary school. “Since when do you show up on
time for school?”
At the stove, Amma sniffed, one hand on her hip, the other pushing at scrambled eggs with the One-Eyed Menace, her wooden spoon of justice.
“Morning, Amma.” I could tell I was about to get an earful, from the way she had one hip cocked up higher than the other. Kind of like a loaded
pistol.
“Feels more like afternoon to me. ’Bout time you decided to join us.” Standing at a hot stove on an even hotter day, she didn’t break a sweat. It
would take more than the weather to force Amma to budge an inch out of her way of doing things. The look in her eye reminded me of that as she
sent a whole henhouse’s worth of eggs tumbling across my blue and white Dragonware plate. The bigger the breakfast, the bigger the day, in
Amma’s mind. At this rate, by the time I graduated I’d be one giant biscuit floating in a bathtub full of pancake batter. A dozen scrambled eggs on
my plate meant there was no denying it. It really was the first day of school.
You wouldn’t expect me to be itching to get back to Jackson High. Last year, with the exception of Link, my so-called friends had treated me like
crap. But the truth was, I couldn’t wait for a reason to get out of my house.
“You eat up, Ethan Wate.” Toast flew onto the plate, chased by bacon and sealed with a healthy glop of butter and grits. Amma had put out a
placemat for Link, but there was no plate on it. Not even a glass. She knew Link wouldn’t be eating her eggs, or anything else she whipped up in our
kitchen.
But not even Amma could tell us what he was capable of now. No one knew, least of all Link. If John Breed was some kind of Caster-Incubus
hybrid, Link was one generation removed. As far as Macon could tell, Link was the Incubus equivalent of some distant Southern cousin you ran into
every couple of years at a wedding or a funeral and called the wrong name.
Link stretched his arms behind his head, relaxed. The wooden chair creaked under his weight. “It’s been a long summer, Wate. I’m ready to get
back in the game.”
I swallowed a spoonful of grits and had to fight the urge to spit them out. They tasted weird, dry. Amma had never made a bad batch of grits in her
life. Maybe it was the heat. “Why don’t you ask Ridley how she feels about that, and get back to me?”
He winced, and I could tell the subject had already come up. “It’s our junior year, and I’m the only Linkubus at Jackson. I got all the charm and
none a the harm. All the muscle and none a the—”
“What? You have a rhyme for muscle? Hustle? Bustle?” I would’ve laughed, but I was having a hard time getting my grits down.
“You know what I mean.” I did. It was a little more than ironic. His on-again, off-again girlfriend, Lena’s cousin Ridley, had been a Siren—able to
get any guy, anywhere, to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it. Until Sarafine took Ridley’s powers, and she became a Mortal just
days before Link became part Incubus. Not long after that bite, we could all see the transformation beginning, right in front of our eyes.
Link’s ridiculously greasy spiked hair became ridiculously cool greasy spiked hair. He packed on the muscle, popping out biceps like the
inflatable water wings his mother used to make him wear long after he knew how to swim. He looked more like a guy in an actual rock band than a
guy who dreamed about being in one.
“I wouldn’t mess with Ridley. She may not be a Siren anymore, but she’s still trouble.” I scooped grits and eggs onto my toast, slapped bacon in
the middle, and rolled it all up together.
Link looked at me like he wanted to puke. Food didn’t have the same appeal now that he was part Incubus. “Dude, I’m not messin’ with Ridley.
I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”
I was starting to have my doubts. I shrugged and stuffed half my breakfast sandwich into my mouth. It tasted wrong, too. Guess I undershot on the
bacon.
Before I could say another word, a hand clamped down on my shoulder, and I jumped. For a second, I was back at the top of the water tower in
my dream, bracing for an attack. But it was only Amma, ready for her usual first day of school lecture. At least, that’s what I thought. I should’ve
noticed the red string tied around her wrist. A new charm always meant the clouds were rolling in.
“Don’t know what you boys are thinkin’, sitting here like today’s just another day. It’s not over—not the moon or this heat or that business with
Abraham Ravenwood. You two are actin’ like done is done, the lights are on and it’s time to leave the picture show.” She lowered her voice. “Well,
you’re as wrong as walkin’ barefoot in church. Things have consequences, and we haven’t seen the half a them.”
I knew about consequences. They were everywhere I looked, no matter how hard I tried not to see them.
“Ma’am?” Link should have known to keep his mouth shut when Amma was going dark.
She clenched Link’s shirt tighter, creating fresh cracks in the Black Sabbath iron-on decal. “Stick close to my boy. There’s trouble runnin’ through
you now, and I’m ten kinds a sorry ’bout that. But it’s the kind a trouble that may keep you fools from gettin’ into any more. You hear me, Wesley
Jefferson Lincoln?”
Link nodded, scared. “Yes, ma’am.”
I looked up at Amma from my side of the table. She hadn’t relaxed her grip on Link, and she wasn’t about to let go of me anytime soon. “Amma,
don’t get yourself all worked up. It’s just the first day of school. Compared to what we’ve been through, this is nothing. It’s not like there are any
Vexes or Incubuses or Demons at Jackson High.”
Link cleared his throat. “Well, that isn’t exactly true.” He tried to smile, but Amma twisted his shirt even harder, until he rose up from the seat of his
chair. “Ow!”
“You think this is funny?” Link was smart enough to keep his mouth shut this time. Amma turned to me. “I was there when you lost your first tooth in
that apple, and your wheels in the Pinewood Derby. I’ve cut up shoe boxes for dioramas and iced hundreds a birthday cupcakes. Never said a
word when your water collection up and evaporated like I said it would.”
“No, ma’am.” It was true. Amma was the constant in my life. She was there when my mom died, almost a year and a half ago, and when my dad
lost himself because of it.
She let go of my shirt as suddenly as she had taken it, smoothed her apron, and lowered her voice. Whatever had brought on this particular storm
had passed. Maybe it was the heat. It was getting to all of us.
Amma looked out the window, past Link and me. “I’ve been here, Ethan Wate. And I will be, long as you are. Long as you need me. Not a minute
less. Not a minute more.”
What was that supposed to mean? Amma had never talked to me that way before—like there would ever be a time when I wasn’t here or I
wouldn’t need her.
“I know, Amma.”
“You look me in the eye and tell me you’re not as scared as I am, five miles down.” Her voice was low, nearly a whisper.
“We made it back in one piece. That’s what matters. We can figure everything else out.”
“It’s not that simple.” Amma was still talking as quietly as if we were in the front pew at church. “Pay attention. Has anything, even one thing, felt
the same since we got back to Gatlin?”
Link spoke up, scratching his head. “Ma’am, if it’s Ethan and Lena you’re worried about, I promise you as long as I’m around, with my
superstrength and all, nothin’s gonna happen to them.” He flexed his arm proudly.
Amma snorted. “Wesley Lincoln. Don’t you know? The kind a things I’m talkin’ about, you could no more keep from happenin’ than you could
keep the sky from fallin’.”
I took a swig of my chocolate milk and almost spit it out all over the table. It tasted too sweet, sugar coating my throat like cough syrup. It was like
my eggs, which had tasted more like cotton, and the grits more like sand.
Everything was off today, everything and everyone. “What’s wrong with the milk, Amma?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Ethan Wate. What’s wrong with your mouth?”
I wish I knew.
By the time we were out the door and in the Beater, I turned back for one last look at Wate’s Landing. I don’t know why. She was standing in the
window, between the curtains, watching me drive away. And if I didn’t know better, and I didn’t know Amma, I would have sworn she was crying.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 1

Sugar and Salt
In Gatlin, it’s funny how the good things are all tied up with the bad. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. But either way, you end up taking
your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses, as Amma would say.
I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere. I only know Gatlin, and this is what I know: By the time I got back to my usual seat at church with the
Sisters, the only news being passed along with the collection plate was that the Bluebird Café had stopped serving up hamburger soup, peach pie
season was winding down, and some hooligans had stolen the tire swing from the old oak near the General’s Green. Half the congregation was
still shuffling down the carpeted aisles in what my mom used to call Red Cross shoes. With all the purple knees puffing up where the knee-highs
ended, it felt like a whole sea of legs was holding its breath. At least I was.
But the Sisters still propped their hymnals open to the wrong pages with their curled knuckles, wadded up handkerchiefs buried in the spotted
roses of their hands. Nothing kept them from singing the melody, loud and shrill, as they tried to drown one another out. Except Aunt Prue. She
accidentally hit on a real harmony about three notes out of three hundred, but nobody minded. Some things didn’t have to change, and maybe they
shouldn’t. Some things, like Aunt Prue, were meant to be off-key.
It was as if this summer had never happened, and we were safe within these walls. Like nothing but the thick, colored sunlight streaming through
the stained-glass windows could force its way in here. Not Abraham Ravenwood or Hunting and his Blood Pack. Not Lena’s mother Sarafine or the
Devil himself. Nobody else could get past the fierce hospitality of the ushers handing out programs. And even if they did, the preacher would keep
on preaching and the choir would keep on singing, because nothing short of the apocalypse could keep folks in Gatlin out of church or each other’s
business.
But outside these walls, this summer had changed everything, in both the Caster and Mortal worlds, even if the folks in Gatlin didn’t know it. Lena
had Claimed herself both Light and Dark and split the Seventeenth Moon. A battle between Demons and Casters had ended in death on both
sides and opened a crack in the Order of Things the size of the Grand Canyon. What Lena had done was the Caster equivalent of smashing the
Ten Commandments. I wondered what the folks in Gatlin would think about that, if they’d ever know. I hoped they wouldn’t.
This town used to make me feel claustrophobic, and I hated it. Now it felt more like something expected, something I would miss someday. And
that day was coming. No one knew that better than I did.
Sugar and salt and kicks and kisses. The girl I loved had come back to me and broken the world. That’s what actually happened this summer.
We’d seen the last of hamburger soup and peach pie and tire swings. But we’d seen the start of something, too.
The beginning of the End of Days.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 43

Sunrise
Can't you dig any faster?”
Link and I glared at Ridley from where we stood, a few feet down in Macon's grave. The one he'd never spent a minute in. I was already
dripping, and the sun wasn't even up yet. Link, with his newfound strength, had yet to break a sweat.
“No, we can't. And yes, I know you're totally grateful we're doin’ this instead a you, Babe.” Link waved his shovel at Ridley.
“Why does the long way have to take so long?” Ridley looked at Lena, disgusted. “Why are Mortals so sweaty and boring?”
“You're a Mortal now. You tell me.” I tossed a shovelful of dirt in Ridley's direction.
“Don't you have a Cast for this sort of thing?” Ridley flopped down next to Lena, who sat cross-legged beside the grave, looking through an
old book about Incubuses.
“How did you guys manage to get that book out of the Lunae Libri, anyway?” Link was hoping Lena could find out something about hybrids.
“It's not a bank holiday.” We'd gotten in enough trouble in the Lunae Libri during the past year.
Ridley shot Link a look that probably would've brought him to his knees when she was still a Siren. “He has a lot of pull with the librarian,
Genius.”
As soon as she said it, the book Lena was holding caught fire. “Oh, no!” She yanked her hands back before they were burnt. Ridley stomped
on the book. Lena sighed. “I'm sorry. It just happens.”
“She meant Marian,” I said defensively.
I avoided her eyes and busied myself with my shovel. Lena and I were back to being, well, us. There wasn't a second I didn't think about the
proximity of her hand to my hand, her face to mine. There wasn't a moment when we were awake that I could bear to have her voice out of my
head, after I'd lost it for so long. She was the last person I spoke to at night and the first person I reached for in the morning. After everything we
had been through, I would've traded places with Boo if I could. That's how badly I never wanted to let her out of my sight.
Amma had even started setting a place for Lena at the table. At Ravenwood, Aunt Del kept a pillow and a comforter folded next to the
downstairs couch for me. Nobody said a word about curfews or rules or seeing too much of each other. Nobody expected us to trust the world
with each other if we weren't together.
The summer had gone beyond that. You couldn't un-happen things. Liv had happened. John and Abraham had happened. Twyla and
Larkin, Sarafine and Hunting — they weren't people I could just forget. School would be the same if you ignored the fact that my best friend was
an Incubus and the second hottest girl in school was a declawed Siren. General Lee and Principal Harper, Savannah Snow and Emily Asher,
they would never change.
Lena and I would never be the same.
Link and Ridley were so supernaturally altered, they weren't even in the same universe.
Liv was hidden in the library, happy to be safely tucked away in the stacks for a while. I had only seen her once since the night of the
Seventeenth Moon. She was no longer training to be a Keeper, but she seemed okay with it.
“We both know I would never have been happy watching from the sidelines,” she'd said. I knew it was true. Liv was an astronomer, like
Galileo; an explorer, like Vasco da Gama; a scholar, like Marian. Maybe even a mad scientist, like my mom.
I guess we all needed to start over.
Plus, I got the feeling Liv liked her new teacher as much as her old one. Liv's education had been turned over to a certain former Incubus
who spent his days out of sight — in Ravenwood or his favorite study, an old haunt in the Caster Tunnels — with Liv and the Head Caster
Librarian as his only Mortal companions.
It wasn't how I expected the summer to turn out. Then again, when it came to Gatlin, I never knew what was going to happen. At some point, I
had stopped trying.
Stop thinking and start digging.
I dropped my shovel and pushed up against the side of the grave. Lena leaned over on her stomach, her ratty Converse kicking up behind
her. I put my hands around her neck and pulled her mouth to mine until our kiss made the graveyard spin.
“Kids, kids. Keep it clean. We're ready.” Link leaned on his shovel and stood back to survey his handiwork. Macon's grave was open, not
that there was a coffin down there.
“Well?” I wanted to get this over with. Ridley pulled a small bundle of black silk out of her pocket and held it in front of her.
Link pulled back as if she had shoved a torch in his face. “Watch it, Rid! Don't get that thing anywhere near me. Incubus kryptonite,
remember?”
“Sorry, Superman, I forgot.” Ridley climbed down into the hole, holding the bundle carefully with one hand, and placed it in the bottom of
Macon Ravenwood's empty grave. My mom may have saved Macon with the Arclight, but we saw it for what it was — dangerous. A supernatural
prison I didn't want to see my best friend trapped inside. Six feet under was where the Arclight belonged, and Macon's grave was the safest
place any of us could think of.
“Good riddance,” Link said as he pulled Ridley up out of the grave. “Isn't that what you're supposed to say when good defeats evil at the end
of the movie?”
I looked at him. “Have you ever read a book, man?”
“Dig.” Ridley rubbed dirt off her hands. “At least, that's what I say.”
Link piled shovelful after shovelful of dirt over the bundle while Ridley watched, without taking her eyes off the grave.
“Finish it,” I said.
Lena nodded, jamming her hands in her pockets. “Let's get out of here.”
The sun began to rise over the magnolias in front of my mom's grave. It didn't bother me anymore, because I knew she wasn't there. She
was somewhere, everywhere else, still watching out for me. Macon's hidden room. Marian's archive. Our study at Wate's Landing.
“Come on, L.” I pulled Lena by the arm. “I'm sick of the dark. Let's go watch the sunrise.” We took off, running down the grassy hill like kids —
past the graves and magnolias, past the palmettos and oaks tangled in Spanish moss, past the uneven rows of grave markers and weeping
angels and the old stone bench. I could feel her shivering in the early morning air, but neither of us wanted to stop. So we didn't, and by the time
we reached the bottom of the hill, we were almost falling, almost flying. Almost happy.
We didn't see the eerie golden glow pierce through small cracks and fissures in the dirt shoveled over Macon's grave.
And I didn't check the iPod in my pocket, where I might have noticed a new song in the playlist.
Eighteen Moons.
But I didn't check, because I didn't care. No one was listening. No one was watching. No one existed in the world but the two of us —
The two of us, and the old man in the white suit and string tie, who stood at the crest of the hill until the sun began to rise and the shadows fell
back into their crypts.
We didn't see him. We only saw the fading night and the rising blue sky. Not the blue sky in my bedroom, but the real one. Even though it
might look different to each of us. Only now I wasn't so sure the sky looked the same to any two people, no matter what universe they lived in.
I mean, how could you be sure?
The old man walked away.
We didn't hear the familiar sound of space and time rearranging as he ripped into the last possible moment of night — the darkness before
the dawn.
Eighteen Moons, eighteen spheres,
From the world beyond the years,
One Unchosen, death or birth,
A Broken Day awaits the Earth …

After

Categories: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness - Chapter 44

Siren's Tears
Ridley stood in her room at Ravenwood, the room that used to belong to Macon. But nothing remained the same except the four walls, a
ceiling, and a floor, and possibly the paneled bedroom door.
Which she shut, with a heavy click, and bolted. She turned to face her room, her back against the door. Macon had decided to take another
room at Ravenwood, though he spent most of his time in his study in the Tunnels. So this room belonged to Ridley now, and she was careful to
keep the trapdoor leading down into the Tunnels locked under thick pink shag carpeting. The walls were covered with spray painted graffiti,
black and neon pink mostly, with shots of electric green, yellow, and orange. They weren't words, exactly — more like shapes, slashes,
emotions. Anger, bottled in a can of cheap spray paint from the Wal-Mart in Summerville. Lena had offered to do it for her, but Ridley insisted
on doing it herself, Mortal-style. The reeking fumes made her head ache, and the splattering paint made a huge mess of everything. It was
exactly what she wanted and exactly how she felt.
She'd made a mess of everything.
No words. Ridley hated words. Mostly, they were lies. Her two-week incarceration in Lena's room had been enough to make her hate poetry
for a lifetime.
Mybeatingheartbleedingneedsyou —
Whatever.
Ridley shuddered. There was no accounting for taste in the family gene pool. She pushed herself away from the door and walked over to the
wardrobe. With the slightest touch, she opened the white wooden doors, revealing a lifetime's careful collection of clothing, the hallmark of a
Siren. Which, she reminded herself, she wasn't.
She dragged a pink footstool to the shelves and climbed up on it, her pink platform shoes slipping back and forth over her pink striped knee
socks. It had been a Harajuku kind of a day, not often seen around Gatlin. The looks she got at the Dar-ee Keen were priceless. At least it had
passed the afternoon.
One afternoon. Out of how many?
She felt along the top of the shelf until she found it, a shoe box from Paris. She smiled and pulled it down. Purple velvet four-inch peep-toes,
if she remembered. Of course she remembered. She'd had some damn fine times in those shoes.
She dumped the contents of the box onto her black and white bedspread. There it was, half-shrouded in silk, still covered with crumbling dirt.
Ridley slumped down on the floor next to her bed, resting her arms on the edge. She wasn't stupid. She just wanted to look, as she had
every night for the past two weeks. She wanted to feel the power of something magical, a power she would never have again.
Ridley wasn't a bad girl. Not really. Besides, even if she was, what did it matter? She was powerless to do anything about it. She'd been
tossed aside like last year's mascara.
Her cell phone rang, and she picked it up from her nightstand. A picture of Link popped up on the screen. She clicked it off and tossed it into
the endless pink shag.
Not now, Hot Rod.
She had another Incubus on her mind.
John Breed.
Ridley settled back into place, tilting her head to the side as she watched the sphere begin to glow a subtle shade of pink.
“What am I going to do with you?” She smiled because, for once, it was her decision to make, and because she had yet to make it.
three
The light grew brighter and brighter until the room was bathed in a wash of rose-colored light, which made almost everything else disappear
like thin pencil lines that had been only partly rubbed out.
two
Ridley closed her eyes — a little girl blowing out a birthday candle, to make a wish —
one
She opened her eyes.
It was decided.

Categories: Beautiful Darkness