Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 46

Plain English
I knocked on the door and stood waiting in a pale yellow circle of porch light. I stared at the door, shifting my weight uncomfortably, my hands
jammed in my pockets. Wishing I wasn’t there. Wishing my heart would stop pounding.
She was going to think I was crazy.
Why wouldn’t she? I was beginning to think so myself.
I saw the bathrobe first, then the fuzzy slippers and the glass eye.
“Ethan? What are you doing out there? Are you with Mitchell?” Mrs. English peeked outside, patting her plastic curlers as if there was a way to
make them look more attractive.
“No, ma’am.”
She looked disappointed and switched to her classroom voice. “Do you have any idea how late it is?”
It was nine.
“Can I come in for a minute? I really need to talk to you.”
Well, not you. Not you exactly.
“Now?”
“It’ll only take a minute. It’s about The Crucible.”
Just not the one you taught us about.
That finally got her, like I knew it would.
I followed her into the parlor for the second time, but she didn’t remember. The collection of ceramic figurines on the mantel over the fireplace was
lined up perfectly again, as if nothing had ever happened there. The only giveaway was the spidery plant. It was gone. I guess some things were too
broken to fix.
“Please have a seat, Ethan.”
I automatically sat in the flowered chair, and then stood right up, because there was nowhere else to sit in the tiny room. No son of Gatlin would sit
while a lady stood. “I’m fine standing. You go ahead, ma’am.”
Mrs. English adjusted her glasses as she sat down. “Well, I have to say, this is a first.”
Anytime now. Wade on in.
“Ethan? Did you want to tell me something in particular about The Crucible?”
I cleared my throat. “This might sound sort of weird, but I need to talk to you.”
“I’m listening.”
Don’t think about it. Say the words. She’ll hear you somehow.
“Yeah, well. That’s sort of the thing. I don’t need to talk to you. I need to talk to—you know. Only you don’t know. The other you.”
“Pardon me?”
“The Lilum. Ma’am.”
“First of all, it’s pronounced Lilian, but I hardly think it’s appropriate for you to call me by my first name.” She faltered. “It must be confusing, my
friendship with your father—”
I didn’t have time for this. “The Demon Queen? Is she there?”
“I beg your pardon!”
Don’t stop.
“The Wheel of Fate? The Endless River? Can you hear me?”
Mrs. English stood up. Her face was red, and she was the angriest I’d ever seen her. “Are you on drugs? Is this some kind of a prank?”
I looked around the room, desperate. My eye stopped on the figurines on the mantel, and I walked over to them. The moon was a stone, pale and
round, a full circle with a crescent shape carved on top of it. “We need to talk about the moon.”
“I’m calling your father.”
Keep trying.
“The Eighteenth Moon. Does that mean anything to you?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her reach for the phone.
I reached for the moon.
The room filled with light. Mrs. English froze in her chair, holding the phone, the room fading around her—
I was at the Temporis Porta, but the doors were wide open. There was a tunnel on the other side, the walls crudely covered in mortar. I stepped
through the doors.
The tunnel was small, the ceiling so low I had to crouch down as I walked. There were marks on the wall, thin lines that looked as if someone was
using them to count. I followed the tunnel a half a mile or so, when I saw the rotted wooden stairs.
Eight steps.
There was a wooden hatch at the top, with an iron ring hanging down toward the stairs. I climbed them carefully, hoping they held my weight.
When I reached the top, I had to slam my shoulder against the wooden hatch to get it open.
Sunlight flooded into the tunnel as I pulled myself out.
I was in the middle of a field, a path just beyond where I was standing. Not a path so much as two snaking, parallel lines where the tall, waving
grass was worn down to dirt. The fields on either side looked gold, like corn and sunshine—not brown, like lubbers and drought. The sky was blue,
what I had come to think of as Gatlin blue. Thin and cloudless.
Hello? Are you there?
She wasn’t here, and I couldn’t believe where I was.
I would’ve recognized it anywhere; I had seen enough pictures of this place—my great-great-great-great-granddaddy Ellis Wate’s plantation. He
was the one who had fought and died on the other side of Route 9 during the Civil War. Right here.
I could see my house—and his—Wate’s Landing in the distance. It was hard to tell if it looked the same, except for the haint blue shutters staring
back at me. I looked down at the hatch, hidden by the dirt and grass, and understood instantly. It was the tunnel that led to the pantry, in the cellar at
my house. I had come out on the other side—the safe side, where slaves using the Underground Railroad could lose themselves in the thick fields.
Why did the Temporis Porta bring me here? What was the Lilum doing at my family’s farm, more than a hundred fifty years in the past?
Lilum? Where are you?
Half of a rusty bicycle lay in a heap by the side of the road. At least, it looked like part of a bicycle. I could see where the metal had been sawed
off in the middle and a hose threaded through the frame. It had been rigged to water the field. A pair of muddy rubber boots stood in the dirt next to
the bike wheel. In the distance, the fields stretched as far as I could see.
What do I have to do?
I looked back down at the rusted half of a bike, and I knew.
A tide of helplessness washed over me. There was no way I could water the field. It was too big, and I was just one person. The sun was growing
hotter, and the leaves were turning browner, and soon the field wouldn’t be gold at all, but burnt and dead, like everything else. I heard the familiar
hum of a swarm. The lubbers were coming.
Why are you showing me this?
I sat down in the dirt and stared up at the blue sky. I saw a fat bee, drunkenly buzzing in and out of the wildflowers. I felt the soil beneath me, soft
and warm even though it was dry. I pressed my fingers deeper into the dirt, dry as coarse sand.
I knew why I was here. Whether or not I could finish it, I had to try.
That’s it, isn’t it?
I yanked on the hot, muddy boots and picked up the rusting metal wheel. I held the handlebars, pushing the wheel in front of me. I started watering
the field, one row at a time. The wheel groaned as it turned, and the heat prickled my neck as I bent into the job, pushing as hard as I could through
the bumps and ruts of the field.
I heard a sound like a massive stone door opening for the first time in a century, or an enormous stone being pushed out of the mouth of a cave.
It was water.
Slowly coming up, returning to the field from whatever old pump or well the hose was attached to.
I pushed harder. Water started to run through the dirt in rivulets. As it ran down the dry trenches in the field, it created tiny rivers that formed small
rivers, which formed decent-sized rivers that I knew would eventually flood the path entirely, to form even bigger ones as far as I could see.
An endless river.
I ran fast as I could. I watched the spokes of the wheel turn faster, pumping the water harder, until the wheel was moving so fast that it looked like
a blur. The force of the water was so strong that the irrigation hose split open like the back of a gutted snake. There was water everywhere. The dirt
was turning to mud beneath my feet, and I was soaking wet. It was like I was riding a bike for the first time, like I was flying—doing something only I
could do.
I stopped, out of breath.
The Wheel of Fate.
I was staring at it, rusty and bent and older than dirt. My Wheel of Fate, here in my hands. In my family’s old field.
I understood.
It was a test. My test. It was mine all along.
I thought about John, lying on my bedroom floor. The Lilum’s voice when she said he wasn’t the Crucible.
It’s me, right?
I’m the Crucible.
I’m the One Who Is Two.
It was always me.
I watched the field as it started to turn green and gold again. The heat subsided. The fat bee flew off into the sky, because the sky was real, not
just a painted bedroom ceiling.
I heard the rumble of thunder, then the crack of lightning, and I stood in the middle of the field, holding the rusty wheel, as the rain began to fall.
The air hummed with magic, like the feeling I had the first time I stepped onto the beach at the Great Barrier—only a hundred times stronger. The
sound was so loud my ears were ringing.
“Lilum?” I shouted with my Mortal voice, sounding small in the middle of the massive field. “I know you’re here. I can feel it.”
“I am.” The voice echoed down from above, from the blinding blue sky. I couldn’t see her, but she was there—not the Mrs. English Lilum, but the
real Lilum. In her nameless, formless state, all around me.
I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
“And?” It was a question.
I knew the answer now. “I know who I am. And what I have to do.”
“Who are you?” The question hung in the air.
I looked up toward the sky, letting the sun fall on my face. I said the words I had been dreading, since the moment they first whispered themselves
in the deepest, darkest reach of my mind.
“I am the One Who Is Two.” I shouted it as loud as I could. “I have one soul in the Mortal world and one soul in the Otherworld.” My voice sounded
different. Sure. “The One Who Is Two.”
I waited in the silence. It was a relief to finally say it, like a crushing weight had been lifted off my back. Like I had been holding up the burning blue
sky.
“You are. There is no other.” There wasn’t a trace of emotion in her voice. “The price must be paid to forge the New Order.”
“I know.”
“It is a crucible. A severe test. You must be sure. By the solstice.”
I stood there for a long time. I felt the cool air and the stillness. I felt all the things I hadn’t felt since the Order had changed.
“If I do this, then everything goes back to the way it was. Lena will be okay without me. The Council of the Far Keep will leave Marian and Liv
alone. Gatlin will stop drying up and cracking open.” I wasn’t asking. I was bargaining.
“Nothing is certain. But—” I stood there and waited for the Lilum to answer. “There will be order again. A New Order.”
If I was going to die, there was one more thing I wanted. “And Amma won’t have to pay whatever price she owes the bokor.”
“That bargain was made willingly. I cannot alter it.”
“I don’t care! Do it anyway!” But I knew she wouldn’t, even as I said it.
“There are always consequences.”
Like me. The Crucible.
I closed my eyes and thought about Lena and Amma and Link. Marian and my dad. My mom. All the people I loved.
All the people I’d lost.
The people I couldn’t risk losing.
There wasn’t a lot to decide. Not as much I thought there would be. I guess some decisions are made before you make them. I took a step and
found my way back into the light. “Promise me.”
“It is binding. An oath. A promise, as you call it.”
That wasn’t good enough. “Say it.”
“Yes. I promise.” Then she said a word that wasn’t in any language or even any kind of sound I could understand. But the word itself sounded like
thunder and lightning, and I understood the truth in it.
It was a promise.
“Then I’m sure.”
A second later, I was standing in Lilian English’s parlor again, while she lay collapsed in the flowered chair. I could hear my father’s voice coming
from the other end of the phone in her hand.
“Hello? Hello—”
My brain shifted to autopilot. I picked up the phone, hung up on my dad, and called 911 for the very Mortal Lilian English. I had to put the phone
down without saying a word, because Sissy Honeycutt worked dispatch down at the station house, and she’d recognize my voice for sure. I couldn’t
get caught at my unconscious English teacher’s house twice. But it didn’t matter. Now they had the address. They would send out the ambulance,
like they did before.
And Mortal Mrs. English wouldn’t remember I had been there at all.
I drove straight to Ravenwood without stopping, without thinking, without turning on the radio or rolling down the window. I didn’t remember how I got
there. One minute I was driving through town, and the next I was pounding on Lena’s front door. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was trapped in the
wrong atmosphere, in some kind of terrible nightmare.
I remember slamming my fist on the Caster moon as many times as I could, but it didn’t respond to my touch. Maybe there was no way to hide
how different I was. How incomplete.
I remember calling and crying and Kelting her name, until Lena finally opened the door in her purple Chinese pajamas. I remembered them from
the night she told me her secret, that she was a Caster. Sitting on my front steps in the middle of the night.
Now, sitting on hers, I told her mine.
What happened after that was too painful to remember at all.
We lay in Lena’s old iron bed, tangled together like we could never be taken apart. We couldn’t touch, but we couldn’t not touch. We couldn’t stop
staring at each other, but every time our eyes met, it only hurt more. We were exhausted, but there was no way we could sleep.
There wasn’t enough time to whisper all the things we needed to say. But the words themselves didn’t matter. We were only thinking one thing.
I love you.
We counted the hours, the minutes, the seconds.
We were running out of all of them.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 44

Hybrid
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’M WAITING.
There he was. My other half. The dream staggered on like a movie I’d seen so many times that I started to cut and recut it myself, as it erupted
into flashes—
Hard hitting.
Chucks kicking.
Deadweight.
Falling…
“Ethan!”
I rolled out of my bed and landed on my bedroom floor.
“No wonder Incubuses keep showing up in your room. You sleep like the dead.” John Breed was standing over me. From where I was lying, he
looked twenty feet tall. He also looked like he could kick my ass better than I had been kicking my own in my dream.
It was a weird thought. But what came next was weirder.
“I need your help.”
John was sitting in the chair at my desk, which I had started to think of as the Incubus chair.
“I wish you guys could figure out some way to sleep.” I pulled my faded Harley Davidson shirt over my head. Ironic, considering I was sitting
across from John.
“Yeah. That’s not really an option.” He stared up at my blue ceiling.
“Then I wish you could figure out that the rest of us need to—”
John cut me off. “It’s me.”
“What?”
“Liv told me everything. The One Who Is Two guy—it’s me.”
“Are you sure?” I wasn’t even sure I believed him.
“Yeah. I figured it out today at your aunt’s funeral.”
I glanced at the clock. He should have said yesterday, and I should’ve been asleep. “How?”
He got up and paced across the room. “I always knew it was me. I was born to be two things. But at the funeral, I knew this was something I had to
do. I felt it, when the Seer was talking.”
“Amma?” I knew Aunt Prue’s funeral had been emotional for my family, the whole town really, but I hadn’t expected it to affect John. He wasn’t part
of either of those things. “What do you mean, you always knew?”
“It’s my birthday tomorrow, right? My Eighteenth Moon.” He didn’t sound too happy about it, and I couldn’t blame him. Considering it was bringing
on the end of the world and everything.
“Do you know what you’re saying?” I still didn’t trust him.
He nodded. “I’m supposed to make the trade, like the Demon Queen said. My pathetic screwed-up experiment of a life for a New Order. I almost
feel bad for the universe. I’m getting a bargain. Except for the fact that I won’t be around to see it.”
“But Liv will,” I said.
“Liv will.” He dropped back down in the chair, holding his head in his hands.
“Damn.”
He looked up. “Damn? That’s the best you can come up with? I’m ready to lay down my life here.”
I almost couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind—what would make a guy like him willing to die. Almost.
I knew what it felt like to be willing to sacrifice yourself for the girl you loved. I was going to do the same thing at the Great Barrier, when we faced
Abraham and Hunting. At Honey Hill, when we faced the fires and Sarafine. I would have died for Lena a thousand times over.
“Liv’s not going to be happy.”
“No. She’s not,” he agreed. “But she’ll understand.”
“I think things like this are pretty hard to understand. And I’ve been trying for a while now.”
“You know what your problem is, Mortal?”
“The end of the world?”
John shook his head. “You think too much.”
“Yeah?” I almost laughed.
“Trust me. Sometimes, you gotta trust your gut instincts.”
“So, what does your gut want me to do?” I said it slowly, without looking at him.
“I didn’t know until I got here.” He walked over to me and grabbed my arm. “The place you were dreaming about. The big white tower. That’s
where I need to go.”
Before I could tell him what I thought about him digging through my dreams, Incubus-style, I heard the rip and we were gone….
I couldn’t see John. I couldn’t see anything but darkness and a silver streak of widening light. When I stepped through, I heard the ripping sound
again, and saw her face.
Liv was waiting for us on the top of the water tower.
She stormed toward us, furious. But she wasn’t looking at me. “Are you completely insane? Did you think I wouldn’t know what you were up to?
Where you’d come?” She started to cry.
John stepped in front of me. “How did you know where I was?”
She waved a piece of paper in the air. “You left a note.”
“You left her a note?” I asked.
“It just said good-bye… and some other stuff. It didn’t say where I was going.”
I shook my head. “She’s Liv. You didn’t know she’d figure it out?”
She held up her wrist. The dials were practically exploding off her selenometer. “The One Who Is Two? You didn’t think I would instantly know it
was you? If you hadn’t walked in on me writing about it, I would never have even told you.”
“Liv.”
“I’ve been trying to find a way around this for months now.” She closed her eyes.
He reached out for her. “I’ve been trying to find a way around you.”
“You don’t have to do this.” Liv shook her head, and John pulled her close against his chest, kissing her forehead.
“Yeah. I do. For once in my life, I want to be the guy who does the right thing.”
Liv’s blue eyes were red from crying. “I don’t want you to go. We only just—I never had a chance. We never had a chance.”
He put his thumb on her lip. “Shh. We did. I did.” He looked out into the night, but he was still talking to her. “I love you, Olivia. This is my chance.”
She didn’t respond, except for the tears running down her face.
He took a step toward me, pulling me up by the arm. “Take care of her for me, will you?”
I nodded.
He leaned closer. “If you hurt her. If you touch her. If you let anyone break her heart, I will find you and kill you. And then I’ll keep hurting you from the
other side. Understand?”
I understood better than he knew.
He let go of me and took his jacket off. He handed it to Liv. “Keep it. To remember me by. And there’s something else.” He reached into one of
the pockets. “I don’t remember my mother, but Abraham said this belonged to her. I want you to have it.” It was a gold bracelet with an inscription in
Niadic, or some other Caster language only Liv would know how to read.
Liv’s knees buckled, and she started sobbing.
John held her so tight that the tips of her toes were barely touching the ground. “I’m glad I finally met someone I wanted to give it to.”
“Me, too.” She could barely speak.
He kissed her gently and stepped away from her.
He nodded at me.
And threw himself over the edge of the railing.
I heard her voice, echoing through the darkness. The Lilum.
The Balance is not paid.
Only the Crucible can make the sacrifice.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 45

The Wrong One
When I opened my eyes, I was back in my bedroom. I stared up at my blue ceiling, trying to figure out how I got here. We had ripped, but it couldn’t
have been because of John. I knew that much, because he was lying on my bedroom floor, unconscious.
It must have been someone else. Someone who was more powerful than an Incubus. Someone who knew about the Eighteenth Moon.
Someone who had known everything, all along—including the one thing I was just starting to figure out for myself, right now.
Liv was shaking John, still sobbing. “Wake up, John. Please, wake up.”
He opened his eyes for a second, confused. “What the hell?”
She threw her arms around him. “Not hell. Not even heaven.”
“Where am I?” He was disoriented.
“My room.” I sat up and leaned against the wall.
“How did I get here?”
“Don’t ask.” I wasn’t about to try to explain that the Lilum had somehow transported us here.
I was more worried about what it meant.
It wasn’t John Breed.
And there was someone I had to talk to.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 42

Passing Strange
Sixteen bodies were lying in the county mortuary. According to the Shadowing Song from my mom, there should have been eighteen. I didn’t know
why the earthquakes had stopped and Abraham’s army of Vexes had disappeared. Maybe destroying the town had lost its appeal once we were
gone and the town was, well, destroyed. But if I knew anything about Abraham, there was a reason. All I knew was that this kind of broken math, the
place where the rational met the supernatural, was what my life was like now.
And I knew without a doubt that two more bodies would join the sixteen. That’s how much I believed in the songs. Number seventeen and number
eighteen. Those were the numbers I had in the back of my mind as I drove out to County Care. The power was out there, too.
And I had a terrible feeling I knew who number seventeen would be.
The backup generator was flickering on and off. I could tell by the way the safety lights were flashing. Bobby Murphy wasn’t at the front desk; in fact,
nobody was. Today’s catastrophic events at His Garden of Perpetual Peace weren’t going to raise too many eyebrows at County Care, a place
most people didn’t know about until tragedy struck. Sixteen. I wondered if there were even sixteen autopsy tables at the mortuary. I was pretty sure
there weren’t.
But a trip to the mortuary was probably a regular event around here. There was more than one revolving door between the dead and the living as
you made your way down these hallways. When you walked through the doors of County Care, your universe shrunk, smaller and smaller, until your
whole world was your hallway, your nurse, and your eight-by-ten antiseptic peach of a room.
Once you walked in here, you didn’t care much about what happened out there. This place was a kind of in-between world. Especially since every
time I took Aunt Prue’s hand, it felt like I ended up in another one.
Nothing seemed real anymore, which was ironic because outside these walls, things were more real than they’d ever been. And if I didn’t figure
out what to do about a few of them—like a powerful Lilum from the Demon world, an unpaid blood debt that was destroying Gatlin, and a few larger
worlds beyond—there weren’t going to be any antiseptic peaches left to call home.
I walked down the dark hallway toward Aunt Prue’s room. The safety lights flashed on, and I saw a figure in a hospital gown standing at the end of
the hallway, holding an IV. Then the safety lights flashed off, and I couldn’t see anything. The lights came on again, and the figure was gone.
The thing is, I could have sworn it was my aunt.
“Aunt Prue?”
The lights went out again. I felt really alone—and not the peaceful kind of alone. I thought I saw something moving in the darkness, and then the
safety lights flashed back on.
“What the—” I jumped back, spooked.
Aunt Prue was standing right in front of me, her face inches from mine. I could see every wrinkle, every mark from every tear, and every road, like
a map of the Caster Tunnels. She beckoned me with one finger, like she wanted me to follow. Then she held her finger to her lips.
“Shh.”
The lights went out, and she was gone.
I ran, fumbling my way through the darkness until I found my aunt’s room. I pushed on the door, but it didn’t open. “Leah, it’s me!”
The door swung open, and I saw Leah holding a finger to her lips. It was almost exactly like the gesture Aunt Prue had made in the hallway. I was
confused.
“Shh.” Leah locked the door behind me. “It’s time.”
Amma and Macon’s mother, Arelia, were sitting next to the bed. She must have come to town for Aunt Prue. Their eyes were closed, and they
held hands over Aunt Prue’s body. At the foot of the bed, I could barely make out a shimmering presence, the flutter of a thousand tiny braids and
beads.
“Aunt Twyla? Is that you?” I saw a flash of smile.
Amma shushed me.
I felt Aunt Prue’s gnarled hand clutching mine, patting me reassuringly.
Shh.
I smelled something burning, and realized a handful of herbs was smoking in a painted ceramic bowl on the windowsill. Aunt Prue’s bed was
covered with her familiar bedspread, the one with the little balls stitched all over it, instead of her hospital sheets. Her flowered pillows were behind
her head. Harlon James IV was curled by her feet. There was something different about Aunt Prue. There wasn’t a tube or a monitor or even a
piece of tape attached to her body. She was dressed in her crocheted slippers and her best pink flowered housecoat, the one with the mother-ofpearl
buttons. As if she were going out for one of her drives, to inspect every front yard on the street and complain about who needed a new coat of
paint on their house.
I was right. She was number seventeen.
I pushed between Amma and Arelia and took Aunt Prue’s hand. Amma opened one eye and shot me a look. “Hands to yourself, Ethan Wate. You
don’t need to go where she’s goin’.”
I stood taller. “She’s my aunt, Amma. I want to say good-bye.”
Arelia shook her head, without opening her eyes. “No time for that now.” Her voice sounded like it was drifting into the room from far away.
“Aunt Prue came to find me. I think she has something to tell me.”
Amma opened her eyes, raising an eyebrow. “There’s the world a the livin’, and there’s the world a the done-livin’. She’s had a good life, and
she’s ready. And right now, I’ve got enough trouble keepin’ the folks I care about here with the livin’. So if you don’t mind…” She sniffed, as if she
was trying to get dinner on the table and I was getting in the way.
I gave her a look I’d never given Amma before. One that said: I mind.
She sighed and took my hand in one of hers, my aunt’s hand in the other. I closed my eyes and waited. “Aunt Prue?”
Nothing happened.
Aunt Prue.
I opened one eye. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“Can’t say as I know. All that fussin’, and those Demons makin’ all that racket, probably scared her off.”
“All those bodies,” Arelia whispered.
Amma nodded. “Too many folks movin’ to the Otherworld tonight.”
“But it’s not finished yet. There’ll be eighteen. That’s what the song said.”
Amma looked at me, her expression broken. “Maybe the song’s wrong. Even the cards and the Greats are wrong sometime or another. Maybe
not everything rolls down the hill as quick as you think.”
“Those are my mom’s songs, and she said eighteen. She’s never wrong, and you know it.”
I know, Ethan Wate. She didn’t have to say it. I could see it in her eyes, in the way her jaw was set and her face was lined.
I held out my hand again. “Please.”
Amma looked over her shoulder. “Leah, Arelia, Twyla, come give us a hand here.”
We joined hands, creating a circle—Mortal and Caster. Me, the lost Wayward. Leah, the Light Succubus. Amma, the Seer who was lost in the
darkness. Arelia, the Diviner who knew more than she wanted to. And Twyla, who had once called the spirits of the dead, a Sheer in the Otherworld.
The light to show Aunt Prue the way home.
They were all part of my family now.
Here we were, holding hands in a hospital room, saying good-bye to someone who was in so many ways already long gone.
Amma nodded to Twyla. “You mind doin’ the honors?”
Within seconds, the room disappeared into shadow instead of light. I felt the wind blowing, even though we were inside.
Or so I thought.
The darkness solidified, until we were standing in an enormous room, facing a vault door. I recognized it immediately—the vault in the back of
Exile, the club from the Tunnels. This time, the room was empty. I was alone.
I put both hands on the door, touching the silver wheel that opened it. I pulled as hard as I could, but I couldn’t make the wheel turn.
“You’re gonna have ta put a little more muscle inta it, Ethan.” I turned around, and Aunt Prue was standing behind me, in her crocheted slippers
and her housecoat, leaning heavily on her IV pole. It wasn’t even attached to her body.
“Aunt Prue!” I hugged her, feeling the bones behind her papery skin. “Don’t go.”
“That’s enough a your fussin’. You’re as bad as Amma. She’s been here ’most every night this week, tryin’ ta get me ta stay. Keeps putting
somethin’ that smells like Harlon James’ old diapers under my pillow.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve had my fill a this place. They don’t even have my
stories on the TV here.”
“Can’t you stay? There are so many parts of the Tunnels left to map. And I don’t know what Aunt Mercy and Aunt Grace are going to do without
you.”
“That’s why I wanted ta talk ta you. It’s important, so you pay attention, ya hear?”
“I’m listening.” I knew there was something she needed to tell me, something none of the others could know.
Aunt Prue leaned in on her IV and whispered. “You gotta stop ’em.”
“Stop who?” The hair on the back of my neck was standing up.
Another whisper. “I know exactly what they’re fixin’ ta do, which is invite half a the town ta my party.”
Her “party.” She’d mentioned it before. “You mean your funeral?”
She nodded. “Been plannin’ it since I was fifty-two, and I want it ta go just the way I want. Good china and linens, the good punch bowl, and Sissy
Honeycutt singin’ ‘Amazin’ Grace.’ I left a list a the D-tails underneath a my dresser, if it made it over ta Wate’s Landin’.”
I couldn’t believe this was the reason she’d brought me here. But then again, it was Aunt Prue. “Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s all about the guest list, Ethan.”
“I get it. You want to make sure all the right people are there.”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “No. I want ta make sure the wrong ones aren’t. I want ta make sure certain people stay out. This isn’t a pig
pick at the firehouse.”
She was serious, although I saw a sparkle in her eye that made it seem like she was about to break out into one of her infamously unharmonic
fake-opera versions of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
“I want you ta slam the door before Eunice Honeycutt sets foot in the buildin’. I don’t care if Sissy’s singin’, or that woman brings the Lord
Almighty on her arm. She’s not havin’ any a my punch.”
I grabbed her in a hug so big that I lifted her tiny crocheted feet right off the ground. “I’m going to miss you, Aunt Prue.”
“ ’Course ya are. But it’s my time, and I got things ta do and husbands ta see. Not ta mention a few Harlon Jameses. Now, would you mind gettin’
the door for an old woman? I’m not feelin’ like myself today.”
“That door?” I touched the metal vault in front of us.
“The very one.” She let go of the IV stand and nodded at me.
“Where does it go?”
She shrugged. “Can’t tell you. Just know it’s where I’m meant to go.”
“What if I’m not supposed to open it or something?”
“Ethan, are you tellin’ me you’re afraid ta open a silly little door? Turn the durned wheel already.”
I put my hands on the wheel and yanked on it as hard as I could. It didn’t move.
“You gonna make an old woman do the heavy liftin’?” Aunt Prue pushed me aside with one feeble hand and reached out to touch the door.
It sprang open beneath her hand, blasting light and wind and spraying water into the room. I could see a glimpse of blue water beyond. I offered
her my arm, and she took it. As I helped her over the threshold, we stood there for a second on opposite sides of the door.
She looked over her shoulder, into the blue behind her. “Looks like this here’s my path. You want ta walk me a ways, like you promised you
would?”
I froze. “I promised I’d walk you out there?”
She nodded. “Sure did. You’re the one who told me ’bout the Last Door. How else would I know ’bout it?”
“I don’t know anything about a Last Door, Aunt Prue. I’ve never been past this door.”
“Sure ya have. You’re standin’ past it this very minute.”
I looked out, and there I was—the other me. Hazy and gray, flickering like a shadow.
It was the me from the lens of the old video camera.
The me from the dream.
My Fractured Soul.
He started walking toward the vault door. Aunt Prue waved in his direction. “You goin’ ta walk me up ta the lighthouse?”
The moment she said it, I could see the pathway of neat stone steps leading up a grassy slope to a white stone lighthouse. Square and old, one
simple stone box on top of another, then a white tower that reached high into the unbroken blue of the sky. The water beyond was even bluer. The
grass that moved with the wind was green and alive, and it made me long for something I had never seen.
But I guess I had seen it, because there I was coming down the stone pathway.
A sick feeling turned in my stomach, and suddenly someone twisted my arm behind me, like Link was practicing wrestling moves on me.
A voice—the loudest voice in the universe, from the strongest person I knew, thundered in my ear. “You go on ahead, Prudence. You don’t need
Ethan’s help. You’ve got Twyla now, and you’ll be fine once you get up there to the lighthouse.”
Amma nodded with a smile, and suddenly Twyla was standing next to Aunt Prue—not a made-of-light-Twyla but the real one, looking the same as
she did the night she died.
Aunt Prue caught my eye and blew me a kiss, taking Twyla’s arm and turning back toward the lighthouse.
I tried to see if the other half of my soul was still out there, but the vault door slammed so hard it echoed through the club behind me.
Leah spun the wheel with both hands, as hard as she could. I tried to help, but she pushed me away. Arelia was there, too, muttering something I
couldn’t understand.
Amma still had me in a hold so tight that she could’ve won the state championship if we really were at a wrestling match.
Arelia opened her eyes. “Now. It has to be now.”
Everything went black.
I opened my eyes, and we were standing around Aunt Prue’s lifeless body. She was gone, but we already knew that. Before I could say or do
anything, Amma had me out of the room and halfway down the hall.
“You.” She could barely speak, a bony finger pointing at me. Five minutes later, we were in my car, and she only let go of my arm so I could drive
us home. It took forever to figure out a way to get back to the house. Half of the roads in town had been closed off because of the earthquake that
wasn’t an earthquake.
I stared at the steering wheel and thought about the wheel on the vault door. “What was that? The Last Door?”
Amma turned and slapped me in the face. She’d never laid a hand on me, not in her entire life or mine.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 43

Cream of Grief
The cream-colored paper was thick and folded eight times, with a purple satin ribbon tied around it. I found it in the bottom drawer of the dresser,
just like Aunt Prue said I would. I read it to the Sisters, who argued about it with Thelma until Amma stepped in.
“If Prudence Jane wanted the good china, we’re usin’ the good china. No sense arguin’ with the dead.” Amma folded her arms. Aunt Prue had
only been gone two days. It seemed wrong to be calling her dead so soon.
“Next you’ll be tellin’ me she didn’t want fun’ral potatoes.” Aunt Mercy wadded up another handkerchief.
I checked the paper. “She does. But she doesn’t want you to let Jeanine Mayberry make them. She doesn’t want stale potato chips crumbled on
the top.”
Aunt Mercy nodded as if I was reading from the Declaration of Independence. “It’s the truth. Jeanine Mayberry says they bake up better that way,
but Prudence Jane always said it was on account a her bein’ so cheap.” Her chin quivered.
Aunt Mercy was a mess. She hadn’t done much of anything but wad up handkerchiefs ever since she heard that Aunt Prue had passed. Aunt
Grace, on the other hand, had busied herself with writing condolence cards, letting everyone know how sorry she was that Aunt Prue was gone,
even though Thelma explained that it was the other folks who were supposed to send them to her. Aunt Grace had looked at Thelma like she was
crazy. “Why would they send them ta me? They’re my cards. An’ it’s my news.”
Thelma shook her head, but she didn’t say anything after that.
Whenever there was a disagreement about something, they made me read the letter again. And Aunt Prue’s letter was about as eccentric and
specific as my Aunt Prue herself.
“Dear Girls,” the letter began. To each other, the Sisters were never the Sisters. They were always the Girls. “If you’re reading this, I’ve been
called to my Great Reward. Even though I’ll be busy meeting my Maker, I’ll still be watching to be sure my party goes according to my
specifications. And don’t think I won’t march right outta my grave and up the center aisle a the church if Eunice Honeycutt sets one foot into the
building.”
Only Aunt Prue would need a bouncer for her funeral.
It went on and on from there. Aside from stipulating that all four Harlon Jameses be in attendance along with Lucille Ball, and selecting a
somewhat scandalous arrangement of “Amazing Grace” and the wrong version of “Abide With Me,” the biggest surprise was the eulogy.
She wanted Amma to deliver it.
“That’s nonsense.” Amma sniffed.
“It’s what Aunt Prue wanted. Look.” I held out the paper.
Amma wouldn’t look at it. “Then she’s as big a fool as the rest a you.”
I patted her on the back. “No sense arguing with the dead, Amma.” She glared at me, and I shrugged. “At least you don’t have to rent a tuxedo.”
My dad stood up from his seat on the bottom stair, defeated. “Well, I’d better go start rounding up the bagpipes.”
In the end, the bagpipes were a gift from Macon. Once he heard about Aunt Prue’s request, he insisted on bringing them in all the way from the
Highlands Elks Club in Columbia, the state capital. At least, that’s what he said. Knowing him, and the Tunnels, I was convinced they came from
Scotland that same morning. They played “Amazing Grace” so beautifully when folks first arrived that nobody would walk into the church. A huge
crowd formed around the front walkway and the sidewalk, until the reverend insisted they all come inside.
I stood in the doorway, watching the crowd. A hearse—a real hearse, not Lena and Macon’s—sat parked out in front of the building. Aunt Prue
was being buried in the Summerville Cemetery until His Garden of Perpetual Peace reopened for business. The Sisters called it the New
Cemetery, since it had only been open about seventy years.
The sight of the hearse brought back a memory, the first time I saw Lena drive through Gatlin on my way to school last year. I remembered
thinking it was an omen, maybe even a bad one.
Had it been?
Looking back on everything that had happened, everything that had brought me from that hearse to this one, I still couldn’t say.
Not because of Lena. She would always be the best thing that had ever happened to me. But because things had changed.
We both had. I understood that.
But Gatlin had changed, too, and that was harder to understand.
So I stood in the doorway of the chapel, watching it happen. Letting it happen, because I didn’t have a choice. The Eighteenth Moon was two
days away. If Lena and I didn’t figure out what the Lilum wanted—who the One Who Is Two actually was—there was no way to predict how much
more things would change. Maybe this hearse was another omen of things to come.
We had spent hours in the archive, with nothing to show for it. Still, I knew that was where Lena and I would be again, as soon as the funeral was
over. There was nothing left to do but try. Even if it seemed hopeless.
You can’t fight fate.
Was that what my mom had said?
“I don’t see my horse-drawn carriage. White horses, that’s what my letter said.” I would’ve known that voice anywhere.
Aunt Prue was standing next to me. No glimmer, no shine. Just plain as day Aunt Prue. If she wasn’t still wearing the clothes she died in, I
would’ve mistaken her for one of the guests at her own funeral.
“Yeah, well. We had a little trouble finding one. Since you’re not Abraham Lincoln.”
She ignored me. “I thought I made it clear, I wanted Sissy Honeycutt ta be the one singin’ ‘Amazin’ Grace,’ just like she did at Charlene Watkins’
service. And I don’t see her. But these fellas really put some lung inta it, which I ’preciate.”
“Sissy Honeycutt said we’d have to invite Eunice if we wanted her to sing.” That was explanation enough for Aunt Prue. We turned back to the
pipers. “I think it’s the only hymn they know. I’m not sure they’re actually Southern.”
She smiled. “ ’Course they ain’t.”
The music spun out over the crowd, drawing everyone a few feet closer. I could tell Aunt Prue was pleased, no matter what she said.
“Still, it’s a fine crowd. Biggest one I seen in years. Bigger than all my husbands’ put together.” She looked at me. “Don’t you think so, Ethan?”
I smiled. “Yes, ma’am. It’s a fine crowd.” I pulled on the collar of my tux shirt. In the hundred-degree winter heat, I was about to pass out. But I didn’t
tell her that.
“Now, put your jacket on an’ show a little respect for the D-ceased.”
Amma and my dad reached a compromise on the eulogy. Amma wouldn’t deliver it, but she would read a poem. When she finally told us what she
was reading, nobody gave it much thought. Except that it meant we got to cross off two items on Aunt Prue’s list at the same time.
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
The words hit me like bullets. The darkness was deepening, and though I didn’t know what the eventide was, it felt like it was falling fast. It wasn’t
just comforts that were fleeing, and it was more than Earth’s joys and glories that were passing away.
Amma was right. So was the guy who wrote the hymn. Change and decay was all I could see.
I didn’t know if there was anyone or anything who changest not, but if there was, I would do more than ask them to abide with me.
I wanted them to rescue me.
By the time Amma folded the paper back up, you could’ve heard a pin drop. She stood at the podium, every bit Sulla the Prophet as the original.
That’s when I realized what she had done.
It wasn’t a poem, not the way she had read it. It wasn’t even a hymn anymore.
It was a prophecy.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 41

Demon Door
Abraham lifted The Book of Moons, and the pages began to turn again, flipping so fast I was sure they would tear. When they stopped, he ran his
fingers over the pages reverently. This was his bible. Framed by the black smoke behind him, Abraham began to read.
“ON DA RK E S T DA Y S , W HE N B LOOD IS S P ILLE D,
A LE GION OF DE MONS T O A V E NGE T HOS E K ILLE D.
IF A MA RK E D DOOR CA NNOT B E FOUND,
T HE E A RT H W ILL OP E N, T O OFFE R ONE FROM T HE GROUND.
“S A NGUINE E FFUS O, A T RIS DIE B US ,
ORIE T UR DA E MONUM LE GIO UT INT E RFE CT OS ULCIS CA T UR.
S I IA NUA NOT A T A INV E NIRI NON P OT UE RIT ,
T E LLUS HIS CA T UT DE T E RRA IP S A IA NUA M OFFE RA T .”
I didn’t want to hang around to see the legion of Demons that Abraham was calling to finish us off. The Vexes were enough for me. I grabbed
Lena’s hand and pulled her up, running from the fire and Lena’s dead mother, from Abraham and The Book of Moons and whatever evil he was
summoning.
“Ethan! We’re going the wrong way.”
Lena was right. We should have been running toward Ravenwood, instead of through the tangled cotton fields that used to be part of Blackwell,
the plantation that once stood on the other side of Greenbrier. But there was nowhere else to go. Abraham was standing between Ravenwood and
us, his sadistic smile revealing the truth. This was a game, and he was enjoying it.
“We don’t have a choice. We have to—”
Lena cut me off before I could finish. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”
The sky darkened above us, and I heard a low rumbling sound. But it wasn’t thunder or the unmistakable screams of Vexes.
“What is that?” I was dragging Lena up the hill that used to lead from the road to Blackwell Plantation.
Before she could answer, the ground started moving beneath us. It felt like it was rolling under my feet, and I struggled to keep my balance. The
rumbling sound was getting louder, and there were other noises—trees splitting and falling, the strangled symphony of thousands of lubbers, and a
faint cracking coming from behind us.
Or below us.
Lena saw it first. “Oh my God!”
The earth was cracking down the middle of the dirt road, the split heading right for us. As the crack spread, the ground opened up, and dirt
poured into the fissure like quicksand being sucked into a hole.
It was an earthquake.
It seemed impossible because quakes didn’t happen in the South. They happened in places out west, like California. But I’d seen enough
movies to recognize one.
The sound was as terrifying as the sight of the ground consuming itself. The black streak of Vexes above us reared back, heading straight for us.
The ground behind us was splitting faster, tearing like a seam.
“We can’t outrun it! Or them!” Lena’s voice was ragged. “We’re trapped!”
“Maybe not.” I looked over the side of the hill and saw the Beater skidding across the road below us. Link was driving like his mom had just
caught him drinking in church. There was something in front of the Beater, moving even faster than the car.
It was Boo. Not the lazy black dog that slept at the foot of Lena’s bed. This was a Caster dog that looked like a wolf, and ran faster than one.
Lena looked back. “We’ll never make it!”
Abraham was still standing in the distance, untouched by the winds swirling around him. He turned to look over the side of the hill, where the
Beater was racing along the road below.
I looked down, too. Link was hanging out the window shouting at me. I couldn’t hear him, but whatever he was urging us to do—jump, run, I didn’t
even know—there was no time.
I shook my head silently, glancing back at Abraham one last time. Link’s eyes followed mine.
Then he was gone.
The Beater was still moving, but the driver’s seat was empty. Boo jumped out of the way as the car sped past him, ignoring the curve in the road.
The Beater flipped, crashing down onto the road over and over.
I saw the roof cave in at the same time I heard the rip—
A hand fumbled for my arm. I was pitched into the black void that transported Incubuses from one place to another, but I didn’t need to see to
know it was Link’s hand digging into my skin.
I was still spiraling through the void when I felt his fingers slipping. Then I was falling, and the world came back into view. Slices of the dark sky
and flashes of brown—
My back hit something hard, more than once.
I watched the sky pull farther and farther away as I got closer to the ground. But my body slammed against something solid, and suddenly I wasn’t
falling anymore.
Ethan!
My arm was caught, and the pain tore up my shoulder. I blinked. I was trapped in a sea of long, brown… branches?
“Dude, are you okay?” I turned slowly toward the sound of his voice. Link was standing at the base of the tree, staring up at me. Lena was beside
him, completely panicked.
“I’m trapped in a tree. What do you think?”
Relief spread across Lena’s face.
“I think I just saved your ass with my superpowers.” Link was grinning.
“Ethan, can you get down?” Lena asked.
“Yeah. I don’t think anything’s broken.” I untangled my legs from the branches carefully.
“I can rip you down,” Link offered.
“No, thanks. I got it.” I was afraid of where I might end up if he gave it another shot.
It hurt every time I moved, so it took me a few minutes to climb down. As soon as I hit the ground, Lena threw her arms around me. “You’re okay!”
I didn’t want to mention that if she squeezed me any tighter, I wouldn’t be. I could already feel what little energy I had left draining out of me. “I think
so.”
“Hey, you two are heavier than you look. And it was my first time. Cut me some slack.” Link was still grinning. “I did save your lives.”
I held out my fist. “You did, man. We’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
He tapped his knuckles against mine. “I guess that makes me a hero.”
“Great. Now your head’s gonna be even bigger, if that’s possible.” He knew what I was really saying—thanks for saving my ass and the girl I
love.
Lena hugged him. “Well, you’re my hero.”
“I did sacrifice the Beater.” Link looked over at me. “How bad was it?”
“Bad.”
He shrugged. “Nothin’ a little duct tape can’t fix.”
“Hope you’ve got a lot of it. How did you find us, anyway?”
“You know how they say animals can sense tornados and earthquakes and stuff like that? Guess it’s the same for Incubuses.”
“The earthquake,” Lena whispered. “Do you think it made it to town?”
“It’s already hit,” Link said. “Main Street split open right down the middle.”
“Is everyone okay?” I meant Amma, my dad, and my hundred-year-old aunts.
“I dunno. My mom took a mess a people down to the church, and they’re holed up in there. She said somethin’ about the foundation and the steel
in the beams and some show she saw on the nature channel.” Leave it to Mrs. Lincoln to rescue everyone on her street with educational
programming and a talent for ordering people around. “When I left, she was screamin’ about the apocalypse and the seven signs.”
“We have to get to my house.” We didn’t live as close to church as Link did, and I was pretty sure Wate’s Landing wasn’t built to withstand
earthquakes.
“There’s no way. The road split right behind me as soon as I turned off a Route 9. We’re gonna have to go through Perpetual Peace.” It was hard
to believe Link was volunteering to go into the cemetery at night, in the middle of a supernatural earthquake.
Lena put her head on my shoulder. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve had a bad feelin’ since I got back from Neverland and turned into a Demon.”
When we walked through the gates of His Garden of Perpetual Peace, it was anything but peaceful. Even with the glowing crosses, it was so dark I
could barely see. The lubbers were going nuts, buzzing so loud that it sounded like we were in the center of a wasps’ nest. Lightning cut through the
darkness, cracking the sky the way the earthquake had cracked the earth.
Link was leading the way, since he was the only one who could see much of anything. “You know, my mom’s right about one thing. In the Bible, it
says there’ll be earthquakes at the end.”
I looked at him like he was nuts. “When was the last time you read the Bible? In Sunday school, when we were nine?”
He shrugged. “Just sayin’.”
Lena bit her bottom lip. “Link could be right. What if Abraham didn’t cause this, and it’s a result of the Order being broken? Like the heat and the
bugs and the lake drying up?”
I knew she felt responsible, but this wasn’t caused by a Mortal End of Days. This was a supernatural apocalypse. “And Abraham just happened to
be reading about cracking open the earth to let all the Demons out?”
Link looked over at me. “What do you mean, lettin’ the Demons out? Lettin’ them outta where?”
The ground started to tremble again. Link stopped, listening. It seemed like he was trying to determine where the quake was coming from, or
where it would hit next. The rumbling changed to a creaking sound, as if we were standing on a porch that was about to collapse. It sounded like a
thunderstorm underground.
“Is another one going to hit?” I couldn’t decide if it was better to run or stand still.
Link looked around. “I think we should—”
The ground underneath us seized, and I heard the asphalt splitting. There was nowhere to go, and not enough time to get there, anyway. The
asphalt was crumbling around me, but I wasn’t falling down. Pieces of the road were jutting up toward the sky.
They scraped against each other, forming a crooked concrete triangle, until they stopped. The glowing crosses started flickering out.
“Tell me that isn’t what I think it is.” Link was backing away from the dead grass, dotted with plastic flowers and headstones. It looked like the
headstones were shifting. Maybe another aftershock was coming, or worse.
“What are you talking about?” The first gravestone came out of the dirt before he had time to answer. It was another earthquake—at least, that’s
what I thought.
But I was wrong.
The gravestones weren’t falling over.
They were being pushed up from underneath.
Stones and dirt were flying into the air and coming back down like bombs being dropped from the sky. Rotted caskets forced their way out of the
ground. Hundred-year-old pine boxes and black lacquered coffins were rolling down the hill, breaking open and leaving decaying corpses in their
wake. The smell was so disgusting, Link was gagging.
“Ethan!” Lena screamed.
I grabbed her hand. “Run!”
Link didn’t need to be told twice. Bones and boards were flying through the air like shrapnel, but Link was taking the hits for us like a linebacker.
“Lena, what’s happening?” I didn’t let go of her hand.
“I think Abraham opened some kind of door into the Underground.” She stumbled, and I pulled her back to her feet.
We reached the hill that led to the oldest part of the cemetery, the one I had pushed Aunt Mercy’s wheelchair up more times than I could count.
The hill was dark, and I tried to avoid the huge holes I could barely see.
“This way!” Link was already at the top. He stopped, and I thought he was waiting for us. But when we made it up the hill, I realized he was staring
out into the graveyard.
The mausoleums and tombs had exploded, littering the ground with hunks of carved stone, bones, and body parts. There was a plastic fawn lying
in the dust. It looked like someone had dug up every grave on the hill.
There was a corpse standing at the far end of what used to be the good side of the hill. You could tell it had been buried for a while by the state of
decay. The corpse was staring at us, but it had no eyes. The sockets were completely empty. Something was inside it, animating what was left of
the body—the way the Lilum had been inside Mrs. English.
Link put up his arm to keep us behind him.
The corpse cocked its head to one side, as if it was listening. Then a dark mist poured out of its eyes, nose, and mouth. The body went slack and
dropped to the ground. The mist spiraled like a Vex, then shot across the sky and out of the graveyard.
“Was that a Sheer?” I asked.
Link answered before Lena. “No. It was some kinda Demon.”
“How do you know?” Lena whispered, as if she was afraid she might wake more of the dead.
Link looked away. “The same way a dog knows when it sees another dog.”
“It didn’t look like a dog to me.” I was trying to make him feel better, but we were way past that.
Link stared at the body lying on the ground where the Demon stood only moments ago. “Maybe my mom’s right and this is the End a Days.
Maybe she’s gonna get a chance to use her wheat grinder and her gas masks and that inflatable raft after all.”
“A raft? Is that what’s strapped to the roof of your garage?”
Link nodded. “Yeah. For when the waters rise and the Lowcountry floods and God takes his vengeance on all us sinners.”
I shook my head. “Not God. Abraham Ravenwood.”
The ground had finally stopped shaking, but we didn’t notice.
The three of us were shaking so hard, it was impossible to tell.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 40

The Day After Forever
Was that real?” Lena whispered. I pointed to the doors, where smoke was snaking out from under the bottom of the wood.
I grabbed Marian and hugged her, at the same time Liv did. I backed away, awkwardly, and Lena took my place.
“Thank you,” Marian whispered.
Macon clapped his hand on John’s arm. “I can’t decide if that was a brilliant act of pure selflessness back there, or if it was simply an attempt to
collect all our powers for yourself.”
John shrugged. “I noticed you didn’t give me any skin.” I remembered the cuff of Macon’s shirt pulled down over his hand.
“You aren’t quite ready to share my power. Either way, I owe you greatly. You showed real courage back there. I won’t soon forget it.”
“Oh, come on. Those guys were jerks. It was nothing.” He walked away from Macon, but I could see the pride on his face. I could see it on Liv’s
face even more clearly.
Marian took Macon’s arm, and he started helping her back through the tunnel. At the rate they were going, even the short span of the dirt tunnel
was going to be a long hike.
“This is ridiculous,” said John, and in a rip we were all gone.
In seconds, we were in Macon’s study.
“What are Angelus’ powers, exactly?” I was still trying to figure out what we had witnessed.
“I don’t know, but he certainly didn’t seem to want us to find out.” Macon was deep in thought.
“Yeah. He got us out of there pretty fast. I didn’t get to touch him,” John said.
“I feel horrible. Do you think I torched that beautiful old room?” Lena was lost in a different thought entirely.
John laughed. “No, I did.”
“It’s an evil room,” Macon said. “We can only hope you did.”
“Why would that guy Angelus involve himself so closely with this case? What could this be, like one page in The Caster Chronicles?” John
asked.
Macon helped Marian into a chair. “He loathes Mortals.”
She was still shaking. Macon pulled a blanket from the foot of his bed and wrapped it around her. I remembered Marian doing the same for the
Sisters the night of the Vex attack. The worlds—they weren’t two separate universes anymore, Caster and Mortal. It was all crashing together now.
Things couldn’t stay like this, not for long.
Liv pulled her chair next to Marian’s and put her arms around her. Lena twitched a finger in the direction of Macon’s fireplace grating. Flames
lurched up from the logs, shooting ten feet up to the ceiling. At least it wasn’t rain.
“Maybe it’s not just him. Maybe it’s Abraham.” John sighed. “He doesn’t give up easily.”
Macon’s brow furrowed. “That’s interesting. Angelus and Abraham. A common goal, perhaps?”
Liv spoke up. “Are you suggesting that the Keepers are in collusion with Abraham? Because that is so wrong, on so many levels. It can’t possibly
be true.”
John warmed his hands in front of the fire. “Did anyone notice how many Dark Casters were in that room?”
“I noticed the one you kicked in the head.” I smiled.
“That was an accident.” John shrugged.
Macon shook his head. “Either way, the sentencing occurred. We have a week to figure something out before…” We all looked at Marian. She
was in shock, it was pretty clear. Her eyes were closed, and she pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, rocking herself. I think she was
reliving the whole night.
Macon shook his head. “Hypocrites.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I have my own suspicions about what the Far Keep is up to, and I can’t say it has anything to do with keeping the peace. Power changes people.
I’m afraid they are no longer the principled leaders they once were.” Macon had trouble hiding the disappointment in his face.
And the exhaustion. He was making a good show of it, but he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. And now that he did sleep, I was always
surprised to find he needed it as much as the rest of us. “But Marian is back home with us, safe and sound.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. She
didn’t look up.
“For now.” I wanted to go back, bash down the Temporis Porta, and beat the crap out of everyone in that room. I couldn’t stand to see Marian like
this. Macon sank into the chair next to her. “For now. Which is all I can say for any of us, these days. We have a week until the sentence—since she
was found guilty of treason. It should take that long for a Perfidia Proclamation to take effect. I won’t let anything else happen to her, Ethan. That is
more than a promise.”
Liv slumped at the study table, an inconsolable mess. “If someone is going to make sure nothing else happens to Marian, it’s me. If I hadn’t gone
with you—if I had stayed in the library, like I was supposed to…”
“Now who’s the emo Caster girl?” Lena poked Liv in the arm. “That’s my thing. You’re supposed to be the chipper blond brainiac, remember?”
“How rude of me. I do apologize.” Liv smiled and Lena smiled back, drawing her arm around Liv, as if they were friends. I guess, in a way, they
were. These days, we were bound by the common threat of our fate. Because the Eighteenth Moon was almost here, and none of us had any
answers.
John sat down next to Liv, protectively. “It’s not your fault.” He shot me a dirty look. “It’s his.” So much for friendship.
I stood up. “We’ve got to get Aunt Marian home.”
For the first time, she looked up at me. “I… can’t.”
I understood. She wouldn’t be sleeping alone, not anytime soon. That was the first night Liv and Marian were under one roof again, only this time
it was in Liv’s room, and their roof was the ceiling of the Tunnels. I wondered if Concealment Casts worked against Keepers, too. Mostly, I just
hoped they worked.
There was one place we could go, no matter how badly our worlds were spiraling out of control. The place where it had all started for Lena and me.
The place that was ours.
The morning after Marian’s trial, we went to find it again.
The crumbling garden at Greenbrier was still black and charred, but you could see where the grass had started to grow. The tiny stems weren’t
green, though. They were brown, like everything else in Gatlin County. The invisible walls that protected Ravenwood from being ravaged didn’t
extend here.
Still, it was our place. I led Lena through the garden to the hearthstone where we first discovered Genevieve’s locket. It seemed like it had all
happened years ago, instead of the year before.
Lena sat on the stone, pulling me down after her. “Do you remember how beautiful it was here?”
I looked at her, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. “It still is.”
“Do you think about what it would be like if this was all gone? If we can’t fix this, and there’s no New Order?”
I barely thought about anything else, beyond heat and bugs and dried-up lakes. What would be next? A flood? “I don’t know if it would matter.
Maybe we’d be gone, too, and we wouldn’t even know the difference.”
“I think we’ve both seen enough of the Otherworld to know that’s not true.” She knew I was trying to make her feel better. “How many times have
you seen your mom? She knows what’s happening, maybe better than anyone.”
There was nothing I could say. Lena was right, but I couldn’t let her shoulder the burden of all this alone. “You didn’t do this intentionally, L.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel any better about destroying the world.”
I pulled her against my chest, feeling the gentle rhythm of her heartbeat. “The world isn’t destroyed. Not yet.”
She picked at the dry grass. “But someone’s life will be. The One Who Is Two has to be sacrificed to create the New Order.” Neither one of us
could forget it, though we hadn’t gotten any closer to figuring it out.
And if the Eighteenth Moon really was on John’s birthday, then we had only five days left to find the One. Marian’s life—all our lives—hung in the
balance.
Him.
Her.
It could be anyone.
Whoever it was, I wondered what they were doing now—if they had any idea. Maybe they weren’t worried at all. Maybe they would never even
see it coming.
“Don’t worry. John bought us some time. We’ll think of something.” She smiled. “It was cool to see him doing something for us, instead of against
us.”
“Yeah. If he was.” I don’t know why, but I still couldn’t give that guy a break. Even if Lena was willing to give Liv a chance.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lena sounded annoyed.
“You heard Macon. What if he was using the opportunity to siphon off all of your powers?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we have to take it on faith.”
I didn’t want to do that. “Why should we?”
“Because people change. Things change. Everything and everyone we know has changed.”
“What if I don’t want to?” I didn’t.
“It doesn’t matter. We change whether we want to or not.”
“Some things don’t,” I said. “We don’t get to decide how the world works. Rain falls down, not up. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
That’s the way it is. Why is that concept so hard for you Casters to understand?”
“I guess we’re sort of control freaks.”
“You think?”
Lena’s hair curled. “It’s hard not to do things when you can do them. And in my family, there’s not much we can’t do.”
“Really?” I kissed her.
She smiled underneath my lips. “Shut up.”
“Is it hard not to do this?” I kissed her neck. Her ear. Her lips.
“How about this?” She opened her mouth to complain, but no words came out.
We kissed until my heart was faltering. Even then, I’m not sure we would have stopped, but we did.
Because I heard a rip.
Time and space opened up. I saw the tip of his cane as Abraham Ravenwood slipped through a hole in the sky, the air slamming shut behind
him.
He was wearing a dark suit and his stovepipe hat, which made him look like Abraham Lincoln’s father. “Did I hear something about the New
Order?” He took off his hat and tapped the brim, shaking off nonexistent dust. “Turns out, broken suits me just fine. And I’m sure my boy John will
feel the same way, once he’s back where he belongs.”
Before I had a chance to respond, I heard the sound of footsteps in the dirt. A second later, I saw her black motorcycle boots.
“I would have to agree.” Sarafine was standing outside the stone arch, her black hair as curly and wild as Lena’s. Even though it was a hundred
degrees, she was wearing a long black dress with strips of fabric crisscrossing her body. It reminded me of a straitjacket.
Lena—
She didn’t answer, but I could sense her heart pounding.
Sarafine’s gold eyes fixed on me. “The Mortal world is in a state of beautiful chaos and destruction, which will ultimately lead to an exquisite end.
We couldn’t have planned this better ourselves.” That was easy for her to say, since their original plan failed.
There was something chilling about seeing Sarafine here, after watching her set Lena’s childhood home on fire with Lena and her father still
inside. But it was also impossible to shake the images of the girl, not much older than Lena, battling the Darkness within her—and losing.
I pulled Lena to her feet, her hand burning mine the moment our skin touched.
Lena. I’m right here with you.
I know.
Her voice sounded empty.
Sarafine smiled at Lena. “My damaged, half-shadowed daughter. I would love to say how nice it is to see you again, but that would be a lie. And I
am nothing if not honest.”
The color had drained from Lena’s face, and she was standing so still I almost wasn’t sure she was breathing. “Then I guess you’re nothing,
Mother. Because we both know you’re a liar.”
Sarafine flexed her fingers. “You know what they say about glass houses and stones. I wouldn’t throw any if I were you, darling. You are looking at
me through one gold eye.”
Lena flinched, and the wind started to blow.
“It’s not the same.” I said. “Lena has Light and Dark in her.”
Sarafine waved her hand as if I was an annoying insect, a lubber trying to crawl my way out of the sunshine. “There is Light and Darkness within
us all, Ethan. Haven’t you learned that by now?”
A chill crawled up my spine.
Abraham leaned forward on his cane. “Speak for yourself, my dear. The heart of this old Incubus is as black as the tar in hell.”
Lena wasn’t interested in Abraham’s heart, or Sarafine’s lack of one. “I don’t know what you want, and I don’t care. You should leave before Uncle
Macon senses you’re here.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that.” Abraham’s empty black eyes were fixed on Lena. “We have business to attend to.”
Every time I heard his voice, the rage welled up inside me. I hated him for what he’d done to Aunt Prue. “What kind of business? Destroying the
whole town?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get to that.” Abraham pulled a polished gold pocket watch from his jacket and checked it. “But first, we have to kill the One Who Is
Two.”
How does he know who it is, L?
Don’t Kelt. She can hear you.
I held Lena’s hand tighter, feeling my skin blister beneath hers. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me, boy!” He lifted his cane in one hand, pointing it at me. “Did you think we wouldn’t figure it out?”
Sarafine was staring at Lena’s eyes. She hadn’t seen them the night she called the Seventeenth Moon. She had been locked in some kind of
Dark Caster dream state. “We do have The Book of Moons, after all.”
Thunder rumbled through the air, but even as angry as she was, Lena couldn’t bring the rain. “You can have the Book. We don’t need it to forge
the New Order.”
Abraham didn’t appreciate being challenged, especially not by a Caster who was half Light. “No. You’re right, little girl. You need the One Who Is
Two. But we aren’t going to let you sacrifice yourself. We’re going to kill you first.”
I forced my thoughts into the part of my mind I could lock away from Lena, because if she knew what I was thinking, Sarafine would, too. Even in
that private part of my mind, the same thought kept fighting its way out.
They thought the One Who Is Two was Lena.
And they were going to kill her.
I tried to push Lena behind me. But the second I moved, Abraham extended his hand and lifted it into the air. My feet rose off the ground, and I
was thrown back, an iron grip locked around my throat. Abraham began to close his hand, and I could feel an invisible glove closing around my
neck. “You have caused me enough trouble for two lifetimes. That ends here.”
“Ethan!” Lena screamed. “Leave him alone!”
But the hand only tightened. I could feel it beginning to crush my windpipe. My body was jerking and shaking, and I remembered John when he
was in the Tunnels with Lena. The weird jerking and twitching he seemed unable to control.
Was this what it felt like to be in the grip of Abraham Ravenwood?
Lena started to run toward me, but Sarafine flicked out her fingers, and a perfect circle of fire flew up around Lena. It reminded me of Lena’s
father, standing in the midst of the flames as Sarafine watched him burn to death.
Lena threw her own palm forward, and Sarafine flew back. She hit the ground hard, skidding across the dirt faster than was humanly possible.
She stood up, brushing off her dirty dress with her bloody hands. “Someone’s been practicing.” Sarafine smiled. “Me, too.”
She turned her hand in a circle in front of her, and a second ring of fire surrounded the first.
Lena! Get out of there!
I couldn’t choke out the words. I didn’t have enough air.
Sarafine advanced. “There will be no New Order. The universe has already brought Darkness upon the Mortal world. But things will get worse.”
Lightning sliced across the Carolina blue sky, touching down on the old stone arch, reducing it to rubble.
Sarafine’s golden yellow eyes were glowing, and Lena’s gold and green ones started to glow, too. The flames of the outer circle around Lena
were spreading, touching the perimeter of the inner one.
“Sarafine!” Abraham shouted. “Enough of these games. Kill her, or I will.”
Sarafine stalked toward Lena, her dress blowing around her ankles. The Four Horsemen had nothing on her. She was rage and vengeance,
wrath and malice, in beautifully twisted human form. “You have shamed me for the last time.”
The sky began to darken above us, forming a dense black cloud.
I tried to pull away from the supernatural grip, but every time I moved, Abraham closed his hand more and the vise around my neck tightened. It
was hard to force my eyes to stay open. I kept blinking, trying not to pass out.
Lena thrust her open hands into the fire, and the circle pushed away from her. The flames didn’t die down, but they were expanded outward at
Lena’s command.
The black cloud followed Sarafine, swirling above her. I blinked harder, trying to concentrate. I realized it wasn’t a storm cloud trailing Sarafine.
It was a swarm of Vexes.
Sarafine called out above the hissing fire. “On the first day, there was Dark Matter. On the second, an Abyss from which, on the third day, the
Dark Fire rose. On the fourth day, from the smoke and flame, all Power was born.” She stopped just outside the blazing circle. “On the fifth, the
Lilum, the Demon Queen, was spun from the ash. And on the sixth came the Order, to balance an energy that knew no bounds.”
Sarafine’s hair began to singe from the heat. “On the seventh, there was a book.”
The Book of Moons appeared on the ground in front of her, the pages flipping themselves. They stopped abruptly, and the Book lay open at
Sarafine’s feet, impervious to the flames.
Sarafine began to recite from memory.
“FROM T HE V OICE S IN T HE DA RK NE S S , I COME .
FROM T HE W OUNDS OF T HE FA LLE N, I A M B ORN.
FROM T HE DE S P A IR I B RING FORT H, I A M CLA IME D.
FROM T HE HE A RT OF T HE B OOK , I HE A R T HE CA LL.
W HE N I S E E K IT S V E NGE A NCE , IT IS A NS W E RE D.”
The moment she spoke the last word, the fire parted, creating a path through the center of the blaze.
I saw Sarafine raise her hands in front of her and close her eyes. She flicked her fingers open on both hands, and fire sparked on the tips. But her
face twisted in confusion. Something wasn’t right.
Her powers weren’t working.
The flames never left her fingers, and the sparks rained down, igniting her dress.
I struggled with the last bit of strength I had left in me. I was going to lose consciousness. I heard a voice in a remote corner of my mind. It wasn’t
Lena or the Lilum, or even Sarafine. It was whispering something over and over, so softly I couldn’t hear it.
The death grip around my neck loosened, but when I glanced at Abraham, the position of his hand hadn’t changed. I gasped, inhaling so fast the
air choked me. The words in my head were getting louder.
Two words.
I’M WAITING.
I saw his face—my face—for a split second. It was my other half, my Fractured Soul. He was trying to help me.
The invisible hand was ripped from my neck, and air tore through my lungs. Abraham’s expression was a mixture of shock, confusion, and fury.
I stumbled as I ran toward Lena, still trying to catch my breath. By the time I reached the edge of the burning circle, Sarafine was trapped inside
another, clutching the bottom of her burnt dress.
I stopped a few feet away. The heat was so intense I couldn’t get any closer. Lena was standing in front of Sarafine, on the other side of the
blazing ring. Her hair was singed from the heat, her face black from the smoke.
The cloud of Vexes was moving away from her and toward Abraham. He was watching, but he wasn’t helping Sarafine.
“Lena! Help me!” Sarafine called, dropping to her knees. She looked so much like Izabel the night she was Claimed, lying at her mother’s feet. “I
never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted any of this.”
Lena’s blackened face was filled with rage. “No. You wanted me dead.”
Sarafine’s eyes were watering from the smoke, which almost made it look like she was crying. “My life has never been about what I wanted. My
choices were made for me. I tried so hard to fight the Darkness, but I wasn’t strong enough.” She coughed, trying to rub the smoke away. With her
face streaked and her eyes swollen and red, the gold in them was hard to see. “You have always been the strong one, even as a baby. That’s how
you survived.”
I recognized the confusion in Lena’s eyes. Sarafine was a victim of the curse Lena had feared her whole life—the curse that had spared Lena.
Was this who her mother could have been? “What do you mean, how I survived?”
Sarafine coughed, black smoke swirling around her. “There was a terrible storm, and the rain put out the fire. You saved yourself.” She sounded
relieved, as if she hadn’t left Lena for dead.
Lena stared at her mother. “And today you were going to finish what you started.”
An ember fell onto Sarafine’s dress, and it caught fire again. She slapped at the charred fabric with her bare hand until it went out. She lifted her
eyes to meet Lena’s. “Please.” Her voice was so hoarse, it was hard to hear. She reached out her hand toward Lena. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I
just had to make him believe I was.”
She was talking about Abraham, the one who had lured Lena’s mother into the Dark, the one who was standing there watching her burn.
Lena was shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. “How can I trust you?” But even as she said it, the flames began to die down in the
space between them.
Lena started to reach out her hand.
Their fingertips were inches apart.
I could see the burns on Sarafine’s arm as she reached for Lena. “I’ve always loved you, Lena. You’re my little girl.”
Lena closed her eyes. It was hard to look at Sarafine, with her hair singed and her skin blistering. It had to be even harder if she was your mother.
“I wish I could believe you….”
“Lena, look at me.” Sarafine seemed to be breaking. “I’ll love you until the day after forever.”
I remembered the words from the vision. The last thing Sarafine said to Lena’s father before she left him to die. “I’ll love you until the day after
forever.”
Lena remembered, too.
I saw her face twist in agony as she yanked her hand back. “You don’t love me. You aren’t capable of love.”
The fire surged up where it had died down only a minute before, trapping Sarafine. She was being consumed by the flames she once controlled,
her powers as unpredictable as any Caster’s.
“No!” Sarafine screamed.
“I’m sorry, Izabel,” Lena whispered.
Sarafine lunged forward, catching the sleeve of her dress on fire. “You little bitch! I wish you had burned to death like your miserable father! I will
find you in the next life—”
But screams reached a crescendo as the flames swept over Sarafine’s body in seconds. It was worse than the bloodcurdling shrieking of the
Vexes. It was the sound of pain and death and misery.
Her body fell, and the flames moved over it like a swarm of locusts, leaving nothing but the raging fire. At the same moment, Lena dropped to her
knees, staring at the place where her mother’s hand had hung in the air a minute before.
Lena!
I closed the distance between us, dragging her away from the fire. She was coughing, trying to catch her breath.
Abraham came closer, the black cloud of demonic spirits above him. I pulled Lena to me as we watched Greenbrier burn for the second time.
He was standing over us, the tip of his cane practically touching the melted toe of my sneaker. “Well, you know what they say. If you want
something done right, do it yourself.”
“You didn’t help her.” I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t care that Sarafine was dead. But why hadn’t he?
Abraham laughed. “Saved me the trouble of killing her myself. She wasn’t worth her weight in salt anymore.”
I wondered if Sarafine had realized how expendable she was. How worthless she was in the eyes of the master she served? “But she was one of
you.”
“Dark Casters are nothing like me and my kind, boy. They’re like rats. Plenty more where Sarafine came from.” He looked at Lena, his face
darkening to match his empty eyes. “Once your little girlfriend’s dead, getting rid of them will be my next order of business.”
Don’t listen to him, L.
But she wasn’t listening to Abraham. She wasn’t listening to anyone. I knew, because I could hear her stumbling over the same words in her mind,
again and again.
I let my mother die.
I let my mother die.
I let my mother die.
I pushed Lena behind me, even though she had a better chance of fighting Abraham than I did. “My aunt was right. You are the Devil.”
“She’s too kind. But I wish I was.” He pulled out his gold pocket watch, checking the time. “But I do know a few Demons. And they’ve been waiting
a long time to pay this world a visit.” Abraham slid the watch back into his jacket. “Looks like you kids are out of time.”

Categories: Beautiful Chaos