Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 6

I opened my eyes.
I was standing in the front hallway of Lena’s house. It worked. I had crossed. I was back in
Gatlin, in the world of the living. I was overwhelmed with relief; it was still here.
Gatlin remained. Which meant Lena remained. Which meant everything I’d lost—everything I’d
done—hadn’t been for nothing.
I leaned against the wall behind me. The room stopped spinning, and I lifted my head and
looked around at the old plaster walls.
The familiar flying staircase. The shining lacquered floors.
Ravenwood.
The real Ravenwood. Mortal, solid, and heavy beneath my feet. I was back.
Lena.
I closed my eyes and fought away the prickling tears.
I’m here, L. I did it.
I don’t know how long I stood frozen in place, waiting for a response, like I thought she was
going to come running around the corner and into my arms.
She didn’t.
She didn’t even feel me Kelting.
I drew in a deep breath. The enormity of it all was still hitting me.
Ravenwood looked different than the last time I was here. It wasn’t really a surprise—
Ravenwood was always changing—but even so, I could tell from the black sheets hanging over all
the mirrors and windows that this time things had changed for the worse.
It wasn’t just the sheets. It was the way the snow fell from the ceiling, even though I was
inside. The cold white drifts piled in the doorways and filled the fireplace, swirling into the air like
ash. I looked up to see the ceiling crowded with storm clouds that wound all the way up the
stairwell to the second floor. It was pretty cold even for a ghost, and I couldn’t stop shivering.
Ravenwood always had a story, and that story was Lena’s. She controlled the way the house
looked with her every mood. And if Ravenwood looked like this…
Come on, L. Where are you?
I couldn’t help but listen for her to answer, even though all I heard was silence.
I made my way through the slick ice of the front hall until I reached the familiar sweep of the
grand front stairwell. Then I climbed the white steps, one at a time, all the way to the top.
When I turned to look down, there were no footprints at all.
“L? You in there?”
Come on. I know you can feel me here.
But she didn’t say anything, and as I slipped through the cracked doorway into her bedroom, it
was almost a relief to see she wasn’t inside. I even checked the ceiling, where I had once found her
lying along the plaster.
Lena’s bedroom had changed again, like it always did. This time the viola wasn’t playing by
itself, and there wasn’t writing everywhere, and the walls weren’t glass. It didn’t look like a prison,
the plaster wasn’t cracked, and the bed wasn’t broken.
Everything was gone. Her bags were packed and neatly stacked in the center of the room. The
walls and the ceiling were completely plain, like an ordinary room.
It looked like Lena was leaving.
I got out of there before I could think what that would mean for me. Before I tried to figure out
how I would visit her in Barbados, or wherever she was going.
It was almost as hard to think about as leaving her the first time around.
I found my way out through the massive dining room where I had sat on so many other strange
days and nights. A thick layer of frost covered the table, leaving a dark, wet rectangle on the carpet
immediately below. I slipped through an open door and escaped out to the back veranda, the one
that faced the sloping green hill leading to the river—where it wasn’t snowing at all, just overcast
and gloomy. It was a relief to be back outside, and I followed the path behind the house until I came
to the lemon trees and the crumbling stone wall that told me I was at Greenbrier.
I knew what I was looking for the second I saw it.
My grave.
There it was, among the bare branches of the lemon trees, a mound of fresh soil lined with
stones and covered with a sprinkling of snow.
It didn’t have a headstone, only a plain old cross made of wood. The new dirt hill looked like
something less than a final resting place, which actually made me feel better, rather than worse,
about the whole thing.
The clouds overhead shifted, and a glimmer from the grave caught my eye. Someone had left a
charm from Lena’s necklace on the top of the wooden cross. The sight of it made my stomach flip
over.
It was the silver button that had fallen off her sweater the night we first met in the rain on
Route 9. It had gotten caught in the cracked vinyl of the Beater’s front seat. In a way, it felt like we
had come full circle now, from the first time I saw her to the last, at least in this world.
Full circle. The beginning and the end. Maybe I really had picked a hole in the sky and
unraveled the universe. Maybe there was no kind of slipknot or half hitch or taut-line that could ever
keep it all from coming undone. Something connected my first glimpse of the button to this one,
even though it was just the same old button. Some small bit of universe had stretched from Lena to
me to Macon to Amma to my dad and my mom—and even Marian and my Aunt Prue—back to me
again. I guess Liv and John Breed were in there somewhere, and maybe Link and Ridley. Maybe all
of Gatlin was.
Did it matter?
When I saw Lena for the very first time at school, how could I possibly have known where
this was all headed? And if I had, would I have changed a single thing? I doubted it.
I picked up the silver button carefully. The second my fingers touched it they moved more
slowly, as if I had plunged my hand to the bottom of the lake. I felt the weight of the worthless tin
like it was a pile of bricks.
I put it back on the cross, but it rolled off the edge, falling onto the mounded dirt of the grave.
I was too tired to try to move it again. If someone else was here, would they have seen the button
move? Or did it only seem like that to me? Either way, that button was hard to look at. I hadn’t
thought about what it would feel like to visit my own grave. And I wasn’t ready to rest, in peace or
not.
I wasn’t ready for any of this.
I’d never really thought past the whole dying-for-the-sake-of-the-world part of things. When
you’re alive, you don’t dwell on how you’re going to spend your time once you’re dead. You just
figure you’re gone, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself.
Or you think you’re not really going to die. You’re going to be the first person in the history of
the world who doesn’t have to. Maybe that’s some kind of lie our brains tell us to keep us from
going crazy while we’re alive.
But nothing’s that simple.
Not when you were standing where I was.
And nobody’s any different from anyone else, not when you come right down to it.
These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.
I sat down next to my headstone and flopped back on the hard soil and grass. I plucked a
single blade poking through the scattering of snow. At least it was coming in green. No dead,
brown grass and lubbers now.
Thank the Sweet Redeemer, as Amma liked to say.
You’re welcome. That’s what I’d like to say.
I looked at the grave next to me and touched the fresh, cold soil with my hand, letting it fall
through my fingers. Not a bit dry either. Things really had changed around Gatlin.
I was brought up a good Southern boy, and I knew better than to disturb or disrespect any
grave in town. I had walked circles around graveyards, trailing my mom carefully to avoid
accidentally putting a stray foot on someone’s sacred plot.
It was Link who didn’t know better than to lie on top of the graves and pretend to sleep where
the dead were resting. He wanted to practice—that’s what he said. A dry run. “I want to see what
the view is like from down there. You wouldn’t want a guy to head out for the rest a his life
without knowin’ where it was all takin’ him in the end, would you?”
But when it came to graves, it was a different thing to worry about disrespecting your own.
That’s when a familiar voice caught in the wind, surprising me with how close it was. “You
get used to it, you know.”
I followed the voice a few graves over, and there she was, red hair blowing wild. Genevieve
Duchannes. Lena’s ancestor, the first Caster who had used The Book of Moons to try to bring back
someone she loved—the original Ethan Wate. He was my great-great-great-great-uncle, and it
hadn’t worked out any better for him than it had for me. Genevieve failed, and Lena’s family was
cursed.
The last time I saw Genevieve, I was digging up her grave with Lena, looking for The Book of
Moons.
“Is that—Genevieve? Ma’am?” I sat up.
She nodded, curling and uncurling a loose strand of hair with her hand. “I thought you might
be coming around. I wasn’t sure when. There’s been a lot of talk.” She smiled. “Though your kind
tends to stay in Perpetual Peace. Casters, we go where we like. Most of us stay in the Tunnels. I
feel better here.”
Talk? I bet there was, though it was hard to imagine a town full of ghostly Sheers doing the
talking. More like my Aunt Prue, probably.
Her smile faded. “But you’re just a boy. It’s worse, isn’t it? That you’re so young.”
I nodded in Genevieve’s direction. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, you’re here now, and that’s what matters. I suppose I owe you, Ethan Lawson Wate.”
“You don’t owe me anything, ma’am.”
“I hope to repay the debt one day. Returning my locket meant the world to me, but I don’t
think you’ll see much gratitude from Ethan Carter Wate, wherever he may be. He always was a bit
stubborn that way.”
“What happened to him? If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am.” I’d always wondered about
Ethan Carter Wate—after he came back to life for only a second. I mean, he was the beginning of
all of this, everything that had happened to Lena and me. The other end of the thread we pulled, the
one that had unraveled the entire universe.
Didn’t I have a right to know how his story ended? It couldn’t have been much worse than
mine, could it?
“I don’t really know. They took him away to the Far Keep. We couldn’t be together, but I’m
sure you know that. I learned it myself, the hard way,” she said, her voice sad and far away.
Her words caught in my mind, snagging on others I’d tried to push off until now. The Far
Keep. The Keepers of The Caster Chronicles—the same ones my mom refused to talk about.
Genevieve didn’t look like she wanted to elaborate either.
Why didn’t anyone want to talk about the Far Keep? What were The Caster Chronicles really
about?
I looked from Genevieve to the lemon trees. Here we were, at the site of the first big fire. It
was the place where her family’s land had burned, and where Lena tried to face off against Sarafine
for the first time.
Funny how history repeated itself around here.
Funnier still how I was about the last person in Gatlin to figure that out.
But I had learned a few things the hard way myself. “It wasn’t your fault. The Book of Moons
sort of plays tricks on people. I don’t think it was ever meant for Light Casters. I think it wanted to
turn you—” She shot me a look, and I stopped talking. “Sorry, ma’am.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. For the first hundred years or so, I felt that way. Like that book
had stolen something from me. Like I’d been duped…” Her voice trailed off.
She was right. She had gotten the short stick.
“But good or bad, I made my own choices. They’re all I have now. It’s my cross to bear, and
I’ll be the one to bear it.”
“But you did it out of love.” So did Lena and Amma.
“I know. That’s what helps me bear it. I just wish my Ethan didn’t have to bear it, too. The
Far Keep is a cruel place.” She looked down at her grave. “What’s done is done. There’s no
cheating death any more than you can cheat The Book of Moons. Someone always has to pay the
price.” She smiled sadly. “I guess you know that, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I guess I do.”
I knew it better than anyone.
A twig snapped. Then a voice called out, even louder.
“Stop following me, Link.”
Genevieve Duchannes disappeared at the sound of the words. I didn’t know how she did it, but
I was so startled that I felt myself start slipping away, too.
I clung to the voice—because it was familiar, and I would’ve recognized it anywhere. And
because it sounded like home, chaos and all.
It was the voice that anchored me in the Mortal realm now, the same way it had kept my heart
bound to Gatlin when I had been alive.
L.
I froze. I couldn’t move, even though she couldn’t see me.
“You tryin’ to give me the slip?” Link was stomping around behind Lena, trying to catch up
with her as she made her way through the lemon trees. Lena shook her head like she was trying to
shake Link.
Lena.
She pushed through the brush, and I caught a glimpse of gold and green eyes. That was it; I
couldn’t help myself.
“Lena!” I shouted as loud as I could, my voice ringing across the white sky.
I took off running across the stubbly frozen ground, through the weeds and all the way down
the rocky path. I flung myself into her arms… and went flying to the ground behind her.
“I’m not just trying. I’m giving you the slip.” Lena’s voice floated over me.
I had almost forgotten. I wasn’t really here, not in a way she could feel. I lay back on the
ground, trying to catch my breath. Then I propped myself up on my elbows, because Lena was
really there, and I didn’t want to miss a second of it.
The way she moved, the tilt of her head, and the soft lilt of her voice—she was perfect, full of
life and beauty and everything I couldn’t have anymore.
Everything that didn’t belong to me.
I’m here. Right here. Can you feel me, L?
“I wanted to check on him. I haven’t been out here all day. I don’t want him to be lonely, or
bored, or mad. Whatever he’s feeling.” Lena knelt next to my grave, next to me, grabbing at
handfuls of cold grass.
I’m not lonely. But I miss you.
Link rubbed his hand through his hair. “You just went to check on his house. Then you
checked on the water tower and your bedroom, and now you’re checkin’ on his grave. Maybe you
should find somethin’ to do other than checkin’ on Ethan.”
“Maybe you should find something to do other than bothering me, Link.”
“I promised Ethan I’d look after you.”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
Link looked as annoyed as Lena seemed frustrated. “What are you talkin’ about? You think I
don’t understand? He was my best friend since kindergarten.”
“Don’t say it like that. He’s still your best friend.”
“Lena.” Link wasn’t getting anywhere.
“Don’t Lena me. Out of everyone, I thought you would understand how things work around
here.” Her face was pale, and her mouth looked funny, like she was about to smile or cry, only she
couldn’t decide which.
Lena, it’ll be okay. I’m right here.
But even as I thought about it, I knew nobody could fix this. The truth was, the moment I
stepped off that water tower everything changed, and nothing was going to change back.
Not anytime soon.
I never knew how bad it would feel from this side. At least for me. Because I could see it all,
but I couldn’t do a thing to change it.
I reached for her hand, sliding my fingers around hers. My hands slipped right through, but if I
really concentrated, I could still feel them, heavy and solid.
For the very first time, nothing shocked me. No burning. It wasn’t like sticking my fingers in
an electrical outlet.
I guess being dead will do that for you.
“Lena, help me out here. I don’t speak chick—you know that—and Rid isn’t here to translate.”
“Chick?” Lena shot him a withering look.
“Aw, come on. I barely speak English, unless we’re talkin’ about the Lowcountry kind.”
“I thought you went looking for Ridley,” Lena said.
“I did, all through the Tunnels. Everywhere Macon sent me and a few places he’d never let me
go. Holy hell—I haven’t found anyone who’s seen her.”
Lena sat down and straightened the line of rocks around my grave. “I need her to come back.
Ridley knows how it all works. She’ll help me figure out what to do.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Link sat down next to her, and next to me.
Just like old times, when the three of us would sit together on the bleachers at Jackson High.
They just didn’t know it.
“He’s not dead. Just like Uncle Macon wasn’t dead. Ethan will come back—you’ll see. He’s
probably trying to find me right now.”
I squeezed her hand. She was right about that, at least.
“Don’t you think you’d be able to tell, if he was?” Link sounded a little doubtful. “If he was
here, don’t you think he’d give us a shout-out or somethin’ like that?”
I tried her hand again, but it was no use.
Will you two pay attention?
Lena shook her head, oblivious. “It’s not like that. I’m not saying he’s sitting here next to us or
something.”
But I was. Sitting next to them or something.
Guys? I’m right here?
Even though I was Kelting, I felt like I was shouting.
“Yeah? How do you know where he is or isn’t? If you’re so sure and all?” Link’s Sunday
school background wasn’t helping him out here. He was probably busy imagining houses made of
clouds, and cherubs with wings.
“Uncle Macon said that new spirits don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. They
barely know how they died or what happened to them in real life. It’s upsetting, suddenly finding
yourself in the Otherworld. Ethan might not even know who he is yet, or who I am.”
I knew who she was. How could I forget something like that?
“Yeah? Well, say you’re right. If that’s the case, you have nothin’ to worry about. Liv told me
that she’d find him. She has that watch a hers all tweaked up, like some kind a Ethan Wate–
ometer.”
Lena sighed. “I wish it was that simple.” She reached for the wooden cross. “This thing’s
crooked again.”
Link looked frustrated. “Yeah? Well, there’s no merit badge for grave diggin’. Not in Gatlin’s
pack meetin’s.”
“I’m talking about the cross, not the grave.”
“You’re the one who wouldn’t let us get a stone,” Link said.
“He doesn’t need a gravestone when he’s not—”
Then her hand froze, because she noticed. The silver button wasn’t where she’d left it.
Of course it wasn’t. It was where I dropped it.
“Link, look!”
“It’s a cross. Or two sticks, dependin’ on how you look at it.” Link squinted. He was starting
to tune out; I could tell by the glazed look in his eyes, the one I’d seen on every school day.
“Not that.” Lena pointed. “The button.”
“Yep. It’s a button, all right. Any way you slice it.” Link was staring at Lena like she was
suddenly the dense one. It was probably a terrifying thought.
“It’s my button. And that’s not where I put it.”
Link shrugged. “So?”
“Don’t you get it?” Lena sounded hopeful.
“Not usually.”
“Ethan’s been here. He moved it.”
Hallelujah, L. It’s about time. We were making some progress here.
I held my arms out to her, and she threw her arms around Link and hugged him tight. Figures.
She pulled back from Link, excited.
“Hey now.” Link looked embarrassed. “It could have been the wind. It could have been—I
don’t know—wildlife or somethin’.”
“It wasn’t.” I knew the mood she was in. There was nothing anyone could say to change her
mind, no matter how irrational it seemed.
“Seem pretty sure a that.”
“I am.” Lena’s cheeks were pink, and her eyes were bright. She opened her notebook,
unclipping the Sharpie from her charm necklace with one hand. I smiled to myself, because I’d
given her that Sharpie at the top of the Summerville water tower, not so long ago.
I winced at the thought now.
Lena scribbled something and ripped out the page of her notebook. She used a rock to hold the
note on top of the cross.
The paper fluttered in the cool breeze but remained where she’d left it.
She wiped a stray tear and smiled.
The paper had only one word on it, but we both knew what it meant. It was a reference to one
of the first conversations we’d ever had, when she told me what it said on the poet Bukowski’s
grave. Only two words: Don’t try.
But the torn piece of paper on my grave was christened with only one word, in all caps. Still
damp and still smelling like Sharpie.
Sharpie and lemons and rosemary.
All the things that were Lena.
TRY.
I will, L.
I promise.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 5

Darkness, it turns out, is about as dark as usual no matter what world you’re in. The invisible
steps beneath the trapdoor—the same ones I’d stumbled and climbed and half-fallen my way down
so many times before—were every bit as invisible as they’d ever been.
And the Lunae Libri?
Nothing had changed about the moss-covered, rocky passageways that led us there. The long
rows of ancient books, scrolls, and parchments were hauntingly familiar. Torches still threw
unsteady flickering shadows across the stacks.
The Caster Library looked the same as always, even though now I was far, far away from
every living Caster.
Especially the one I loved most.
I grabbed a torch from the wall, waving it in front of me. “It’s all so real.”
My mom nodded. “It’s exactly as I remember it.” She touched my shoulder. “A good memory.
I loved this place.”
“Me too.” This was the only place that had offered me any hope when Lena and I faced the
hopeless situation of her Sixteenth Moon. I looked back at my mom, half-hidden in the shadows.
“You never told me, Mom. I didn’t know anything about you being a Keeper. I didn’t know
anything about this whole side of your life.”
“I know. And I’m so sorry. But you’re here now, and I can show you everything.” She took
my hand. “Finally.”
We made our way into the darkness of the stacks, with only the torch between us. “Now, I’m
no reference librarian, but I know my way around these stacks. On to the scrolls.” She looked at
me sideways. “I hope you never touched any of these. Not without gloves.”
“Yeah. I got that down, the first time I burned all my skin off.” I grinned. It was strange to be
here with my mom, but now that I was, I could tell the Lunae Libri had been every bit hers, as
much as it was Marian’s.
She grinned back. “I guess that’s not a problem anymore.”
I shrugged. “Guess not.”
She pointed to the nearest shelf, her eyes bright. It was good to see my mom back in her
natural habitat.
She reached for a scroll. “C, as in crossing.”
After what seemed like hours, we had made zero headway.
I groaned. “Can’t you just tell me how to do this? Why do I have to look it up for myself?” We
were surrounded by piles of scrolls, stacked all around us on the stone table at the very center of
the Lunae Libri.
Even my mom seemed frustrated. “I already told you. I just imagine where I want to go, and
I’m there. If that doesn’t work for you, then I don’t know how to help you. Your soul isn’t the
same as mine, especially not since it was fractured. You need help, and that’s what books are for.”
“I’m pretty sure this isn’t what books are for—visitations from the dead.” I glared at her. “At
least, that’s not what Mrs. English would say.”
“You never know. Books are around for lots of reasons. As is Mrs. English.” She yanked
another stack of scrolls into her lap. “Here. What about this one?” She pulled open a dusty scroll,
smoothing it with her hands. “It’s not a Cast. It’s more like a meditation. To help your mind focus,
as if you were a monk.”
“I’m not a monk. And I’m not any good at meditating.”
“Clearly. But it wouldn’t hurt you to try. Come on, focus. Listen.”
She leaned over the parchment scroll, reading aloud. I read along over her shoulder.
“In death, lie.
In living, cry.
Carry me home
to remember
to be remembered.”
The words hovered in the air, like a strange silvery bubble. I reached out to touch them, but
they faded out of sight as quickly as they had appeared.
I looked at my mom. “Did you see that?”
My mom nodded. “Casts are different in this world.”
“Why isn’t it working?”
“Try it in the original Latin. Here. Read it for yourself.” She held the paper closer to the torch,
and I leaned toward the light.
My voice shook as I said the words.
“Mortuus, iace.
Vivus, fle.
Ducite me domum
ut meminissem
ut in memoria tenear.”
I closed my eyes, but all I could think about was how far I was from Lena. How her curling
black hair twisted in the Caster breeze. How the green and the gold flecks lit her eyes, as bright and
dark as she was.
How I’d probably never see her again.
“Oh, come on, EW.”
I opened my eyes. “It’s no use.”
“Concentrate.”
“I’m concentrating.”
“You’re not,” she said. “Don’t think about where you are now. Don’t think about what you’ve
lost—not the water tower or anything that came after it. Keep your head in the game.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if you were, you wouldn’t be standing here. You would be halfway home, with one
foot back in Gatlin.”
Would I? It was hard to imagine.
“Close your eyes.”
I closed them obediently.
“Repeat what I say,” she whispered.
In the silence, I heard her words inside my mind, like she was speaking aloud to me.
We were Kelting, my mother and I. In death, from the grave, in a faraway world. It seemed
familiar between us, something from long ago, something we had lost.
Carry me home.
Carry me home, I said.
Ducite me domum.
Ducite me domum, I said.
To remember.
Ut meminissem, I said.
And be remembered.
Ut in memoria tenear, I said.
You remember, my son.
I remember, I said.
You will remember.
I will always remember, I said.
I am the one, I said.
You will—
I will—
Remember…

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 3

Go on, Ethan. See for yourself.”
I didn’t look back at my mom when I reached for the doorknob.
Even though she was telling me to go, I was still uneasy. I didn’t know what to expect. I could
see the painted wood of the door, and I could feel the smooth iron of the handle, but I had no way
of knowing if Cotton Bend was on the other side.
Lena. Think about Lena. About home. This is the only way.
Still.
This wasn’t Gatlin anymore. Who knew what was behind that door? It could be anything.
I stared down at the knob, remembering what the Caster Tunnels had taught me about doors
and Doorwells.
And portals.
And seams.
This door might look normal enough—any Doorwell looked pretty much like the next—but that
didn’t mean it was. Like the Temporis Porta. You never knew where you were going to end up. I’d
learned that the hard way.
Quit stalling, Wate.
Get on with it.
What are you, chicken? What do you have to lose now?
I closed my eyes and turned the knob. When I opened them, I wasn’t staring at my street—not
even close.
I found myself on my front porch in the middle of His Garden of Perpetual Peace, Gatlin’s
cemetery. Right in the middle of my mother’s plot.
The cultivated lawns stretched out in front of me, but instead of headstones and mausoleums
decorated with plastic cherubs and fawns, the graveyard was full of houses. I realized I was
looking at the homes of the people buried in the cemetery, if that’s even where I was. Old Agnes
Pritchard’s Victorian was planted right where her plot should have been, with the same yellow
shutters and crooked rosebushes that hung over the walkway. Her house wasn’t on Cotton Bend,
but her little rectangle of grass in Perpetual Peace was directly across from my mom’s plot—the
spot where Wate’s Landing was sitting now.
Agnes’ house looked almost exactly as it had in Gatlin, except her red front door was gone. In
its place was her weathered cement headstone.
AGNES WILSON PRITCHARD BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER & GRANDMOTHER MAY SHE
SLEEP WITH THE ANGELS
The words were still etched into the stone, which fit perfectly into the painted white
doorframe. It was the same at every house as far as I could see—from Darla Eaton’s restored
Federal to the peeling paint of Clayton Weatherton’s place. All the doors were missing, replaced by
the gravestones of the dearly departed.
I turned around slowly, hoping to see my own white door with the haint blue trim. But instead I
was staring at my mother’s headstone.
LILA EVERS WATE BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER SCIENTIAE CUSTOS
Above her name, I saw the Celtic symbol of Awen—three lines converging like rays of light—
carved into the stone. Aside from being large enough to fill the doorway, the headstone was the
same. Every nicked edge, every faded crack. I ran my hand over the face of it, feeling the letters
beneath my fingers.
My mom’s headstone.
Because she was dead. I was dead. And I was pretty sure I had just stepped out of her grave.
That’s when I started to lose it. I mean, can you blame a guy? The situation was a little
overwhelming. There’s not much you can do to prepare for something like that.
I pushed on the gravestone, pounding on it as hard as I could until I felt the stone give way,
and I stepped back inside my house—slamming the door behind me.
I stood against the door, breathing in as much air as I could. My front hall looked exactly the
same as it had a moment ago.
My mom looked up at me from the front stairs. She had just opened The Divine Comedy; I
could tell by the way she was still holding her sock bookmark in one hand. It was almost like she
was waiting for me.
“Ethan? Changed your mind?”
“Mom. It’s a graveyard. Out there.”
“It is.”
“And we’re—” The opposite of alive. It was just starting to sink in.
“We are.” She smiled at me because there wasn’t really anything else she could say. “You
stand there as long as you need to.” She looked back down at her book and flipped a page. “Dante
agrees. Take your time. It is only”—she flipped a page—“ ‘la notte che le cose ci nasconde.’ ”
“What?”
“ ‘The night that hides things from us.’ ”
I stared at her as she continued to read. Then, seeing as there weren’t that many options, I
pulled the door open and stepped out.
It took me a while to take it all in, the way it takes your eyes a while to adjust to sunlight. As it turns
out, the Otherworld was just that—an “other world”—a Gatlin right in the middle of the cemetery,
where the dead folks in town were having their own version of All Souls Day. Except it seemed like
this one lasted a lot longer than a day.
I stepped off my porch and onto the grass just to be sure it was really there. Amma’s
rosebushes were planted where they had always been, but they were blooming again, safe from the
record-breaking heat that had killed them when it hit town. I wondered if they were blooming in the
real Gatlin, too.
I hoped so.
If the Lilum kept her promise, they were. I believed she did. The Lilum wasn’t Light or Dark,
right or wrong. She was truth and balance in their purest forms. I didn’t think she was capable of
lying, or she would’ve sugarcoated the truth for me a little. Sometimes I wished she would have.
I found myself wandering across the freshly trimmed lawns, weaving between the familiar
houses scattered throughout the cemetery like a tornado had lifted them right out of Gatlin and
dropped them here. And not just houses—there were people here, too.
I tried heading toward Main Street, instinctively looking for Route 9. I guess I wanted to hike
to the crossroads, where I could take a left up the road to Ravenwood. But the Otherworld didn’t
work that way, and every time I reached the end of the rows of graveyard plots, I found myself
back where I started. The graveyard just kept going in circles. I couldn’t get out.
That’s when I realized I needed to stop thinking in terms of streets and start thinking in terms
of graves and plots and crypts.
If I was going to find my way back to Gatlin, I wasn’t going to walk there. Not on any kind of
Route 9. That was pretty clear.
What had my mom said? You imagine where you want to go, and then you just go. Was that
really all that was standing between Lena and me? My imagination?
I closed my eyes.
L—
“Whatcha doin’ there, boy?” Miss Winifred looked up from sweeping her porch a few houses
away. She was in the pink-flowered housecoat she wore most days back when she was alive.
When we were alive.
I stared. “Nothing. Ma’am.”
Her headstone was behind her, a magnolia tree etched above her name and underneath the word
Sacred. There were a lot of those around here, magnolias. I guess the magnolia carvings were the
red doors of the Otherworld. You were nobody without one.
Miss Winifred noticed me staring and stopped sweeping for a second. She sniffed. “Well, get
on with it, then.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I could feel my face turning red. I knew I wouldn’t be able to imagine myself
anywhere else with those sharp old eyes on me.
Turns out, even in the streets of the Otherworld, Gatlin was no place for the imagination.
“And stay off my lawn, Ethan. You’ll trample my begonias,” she added. That was all. As if I
had wandered onto her property back home.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Winifred nodded and went back to sweeping her porch like it was just another sunny day
on Old Oak Road, where her house was sitting right now back in town.
But I couldn’t let Miss Winifred stop me.
I tried the old concrete bench at the end of our row of plots. I tried the shadowy place behind
the hedges along the edge of Perpetual Peace. I even tried sitting with my back up against the railing
of our own plot for a while.
I was no closer to imagining my way to Gatlin than I was to imagining myself back into the
grave. Every time I closed my eyes, I got this spirit-killing, bone-crushing fear that I was dead in the
ground. That I was gone and that I would never be anywhere again, except at the bottom of a water
tower.
Not back home.
Not with Lena.
Finally, I gave up. There had to be another way.
If I wanted to get back to Gatlin, there was someone who just might know how.
Someone who made it her business to know everything about everyone and, for about the last
hundred years, always had.
I knew where I needed to go.
I followed the path down to the oldest section of the graveyard. Some part of me was afraid I was
going to see the blackened edges where the fire had burned through the roof and Aunt Prue’s
bedroom. But I didn’t need to worry. When I saw it, the house was exactly the way it looked when
I was a kid. The porch swing was rattling and swaying gently in the breeze, a glass of lemonade
sitting on the table beside it. Just how I remembered it.
The door was carved out of good Southern blue granite; Amma had spent hours choosing it
herself. “A woman as right as your aunt deserves the right marker,” Amma had said. “And anyhow,
if she isn’t happy, I’ll never hear the end a it.” Both were probably true. At the top of the
gravestone, a delicate angel with outstretched hands was holding a compass. I was willing to bet
there wasn’t another angel in all of Perpetual Peace, or maybe any cemetery in the South, that was
holding a compass. Carved angels in the Gatlin graveyard held on to every kind of flower, and some
even held on to the gravestones like they were life vests. None held a compass—never a compass.
But for a woman who had spent her life secretly mapping the Caster Tunnels, it was right.
Under the angel was an inscription:
PRUDENCE JANE STATHAM THE BELLE OF THE BALL
Aunt Prue had picked out the inscription herself. Her note said she wanted another “e” on
Ball—making it Balle, which wasn’t even a word. According to Aunt Prue, it sounded more
French that way. But my dad made the point that Aunt Prue, being a patriot, shouldn’t have minded
having her last words written out in plain old Southern American English. I wasn’t so sure, but I
also wasn’t about to enter into that particular conversation. It was just one part of the extensive
instructions she’d left for her own funeral, along with a guest list that required a bouncer at the
church.
Still, it made me smile just looking at it.
Before I even had the chance to knock, I heard the sound of dogs yipping, and the heavy front
door swung open. Aunt Prue was standing in the doorway, her hair still in pink plastic curlers, one
hand on her hip. There were three Yorkshire terriers weaving around her legs—the first three
Harlon Jameses.
“Well, it’s ’bout time.” Aunt Prue grabbed me by the ear quicker than I had ever seen her move
when she was alive, and yanked me into the house. “You were always stubborn, Ethan. But what
you did this time ain’t right. I don’t know what in the Good Lord’s Myst’ry got inta you, but I’ve
got a mind ta send you out front ta get me a switch.” It was a charming custom from Aunt Prue’s
day, to let a kid pick the switch you planned to whip them with. But I knew as well as Aunt Prue
did that she would never hit me. If she was going to, she would have already done it years ago.
She was still twisting my ear, and I had to bend down because she was only half my height.
The whole posse of Harlon Jameses were still yipping, trailing after us as she dragged me toward
the kitchen. “I didn’t have a choice, Aunt Prue. Everyone I loved was going to die.”
“You don’t have ta tell me. I watched the whole thing, and I was wearin’ my good spectacles!”
She sniffed. “And ta think, folks used ta say I was the mell-o-dramatic one!”
I tried not to laugh. “You need your glasses here?”
“Just used ta them, I guess. Feel nekkid without ’em now. Hadn’t figured on that.” She
stopped walking and pointed a bony finger at me. “Don’t you try changin’ the subject. This time
you’ve made a bigger mess than a blind housepainter.”
“Prudence Jane, why don’t you stop hollerin’ at that boy?” An old man’s voice called from the
other room. “What’s done is done.”
Aunt Prue pulled me back into the hall, without loosening her grip on my ear. “Don’t you tell
me what ta do, Harlon Turner!”
“Turner? Wasn’t that—” As she yanked me into the living room, I found myself face to face
with not one but all five of Aunt Prue’s husbands.
Sure enough, the three younger ones—most likely her first three husbands—were eating corn
nuts and playing cards, the sleeves of their white button-down shirts rolled up to the elbows. The
fourth one was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper. He looked up and acknowledged me
with a nod, shoving the little white bowl toward me. “Car nut?”
I shook my head.
I actually remembered Aunt Prue’s fifth husband, Harlon—the one Aunt Prue had named all her
dogs after. When I was a kid, he used to carry around sour lemon hard candy in his pocket, and
he’d sneak me a couple during church. I ate them, too, lint and all. There was no telling what you’d
eat in church, bored out of your skull. Link once drank a whole mini-bottle of Binaca breath spray
during a talk on the atonement. Then he spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening atoning
for that, too.
Harlon looked exactly the way I remembered. He threw his hands up, a sure sign of surrender.
“Prudence, you’re near ’bout the most ornery woman I’ve ever met in my en-tire life!”
It was true, and we all knew it. The other four husbands looked up, a mixture of sympathy and
amusement on their faces.
Aunt Prue let go of my ear and turned to face her latest late husband. “Well, I don’t recollect
askin’ you ta marry me, Harlon James Turner. So I reckon that makes you the most foolish man
I’ve ever met in my en-tire life!” The ears of the three tiny dogs perked up at the sound of their
name.The man reading the paper stood up and patted poor old Harlon on the shoulder. “I think you
ought ta let our little firecracker have some time ta herself.” He dropped his voice. “Or you may end
up passin’ on a second time.”
Aunt Prue seemed satisfied and marched back to the kitchen with the three Harlon Jameses and
me following dutifully. When we reached the kitchen, she pointed to a chair at the table and busied
herself pouring two tall glasses of sweet tea. “If I had known I’d have ta live with the five a those
men, I’d have thought twice ’bout gettin’ married at all.”
And here they were. I wondered why—until I figured out it was better not to. Whatever
unfinished business she had with her five husbands and about as many dogs, I sure didn’t want to
know.
“Drink up, son,” Harlon said.
I glanced at the tea, which looked pretty appealing even though I wasn’t the least bit thirsty. It
was one thing when my mom was cutting me up a fried tomato. I hadn’t thought twice about eating
anything she handed me. Now that I had passed through the graveyard to visit my dead aunt, it
occurred to me that I didn’t know the rules, or anything about the way things worked over here—
wherever here was. Aunt Prue noticed me staring at the glass. “You can drink it, not that you need
ta. But it’s different on the other side.”
“How?” I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start.
“Can’t eat or drink over there, back in the Mortal realm, but you can move things. Just
yesterday, I hid Grace’s dentures. Dropped ’em right down in the Postum jar.” It was just like Aunt
Prue to find a way to drive her sisters crazy from the grave.
“Wait—you were over there? In Gatlin?” If she could go see the Sisters, then I could get back
to Lena. Couldn’t I?
“Did I say that?” I knew she’d have the answer. I also knew she wouldn’t tell me a thing if she
didn’t want me to know.
“Yeah, actually. You did.”
Tell me how I can find my way back to Lena.
“Well now, just for the teeniest minute. Nothin’ ta get all hopped up ’bout. Then I skee-daddled
back ta the Garden here, lickety-split.”
“Aunt Prue, come on.” But she shook her head, and I gave up. My aunt was every bit as
stubborn in this life as she’d been in the last. I tried a new subject. “The Garden? Are we really in
His Garden of Perpetual Peace?”
“Darn tootin’. Every time they bury someone, a new house shows up on the block.” Aunt Prue
sniffed again. “Can’t do a thing ta stop ’em from comin’ either, even if they ain’t your kind a
folks.”
I thought about the headstones instead of doors, all the cemetery plot houses. I’d always
thought the layout of His Garden of Perpetual Peace was kind of like our town, what with the good
plots all lined up one way and the questionable graves pushed out near the edges. Turns out the
Otherworld wasn’t any different.
“Then why don’t I have one, Aunt Prue? A house, I mean.”
“Young ’uns don’t get houses a their own unless their parents outlive ’em. And after seein’ that
room a yours, I don’t see as how you could keep a whole house clean anyway.” I couldn’t really
argue with her on that.
“Is that why I don’t have a gravestone?”
Aunt Prue looked away. There was something she didn’t want to tell me. “Maybe you should
ask your mamma ’bout that.”
“I’m asking you.”
She sighed heavily. “You aren’t buried at Perpetual Peace, Ethan Wate.”
“What?” Maybe it was too soon. I didn’t even know how much time had passed since that
night on the water tower. “I guess they haven’t buried me yet.”
Aunt Prue was wringing her hands, which was only making me more nervous.
“Aunt Prue?”
She took a sip of her sweet tea, stalling. At least it gave her hands something to do. “Amma
isn’t takin’ your leavin’ well, and Lena’s no better. Don’t think I don’t keep an eye on them two.
Didn’t I give Lena my good old rose necklace, so I can get a feel for her every now and again?”
The image of Lena sobbing, of Amma screaming my name right before I jumped, flashed
through my mind. My chest tightened.
Aunt Prue kept on talking. “None a this was supposed ta happen. Amma knows it, and she and
Lena and Macon are havin’ a heap a trouble with your passin’.”
My passing. The words sounded strange to me.
A horrible thought surfaced in my mind. “Wait. Are you saying they didn’t bury me?”
Aunt Prue put her hand to her heart. “Of course they buried you! They did it straightaway.
They just didn’t bury you in the Gatlin cemetery.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Didn’t even have
a proper memorial, I’m ’fraid. No ushers, no sermons. No Psalms or Lamentations.”
“No Lamentations? You sure know how to hurt a guy, Aunt Prue.” I was kidding, but she only
nodded, grim as the grave.
“No program. No funeral potatoes. Nothin’ so much as a supermarket biscuit. Not even a book
a remembrances. Might as well a stuck you in one a them shoe boxes in your bedroom.”
“Then, where did they bury me?” I was starting to get a bad feeling.
“Over at Greenbrier, by the old Duchannes graves. Stuck you in the mud like a possum-bitten
house cat.”
“Why?” I looked at her, but Aunt Prue glanced away. She was definitely hiding something.
“Aunt Prue, answer me. Why did they bury me at Greenbrier?”
She looked right at me, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly. “Now, don’t get yerself all
bowed up. It was jus’ the tiniest excuse for a service. Nothin’ ta write home ’bout.” She sniffed.
“On account a none a the folks in town knowin’ you passed.”
“What are you talking about?” There was nothing folks in Gatlin came out for like a funeral.
“Amma told everyone there was an E-mergency with your aunt in Savannah, and you went on
down there to help her.”
“The whole town? They’re pretending I’m still alive?” It was one thing for Amma to try to
convince my grieving dad I was still around. For her to try to convince the whole town was more
than crazy, even for Amma. “What about my dad? Won’t he figure out something’s going on, when
I never come home? He can’t think I’m down in Savannah forever.”
Aunt Prue stood up and walked over to the counter, where a Whitman’s Sampler was already
opened. She turned the lid over, inspecting the diagram that listed the type of chocolate nestled in
each brown wrapper. Finally, she chose one and took a bite.
I looked at her. “Cherry Cordial?”
She shook her head, showing me. “Messenger Boy.” The rectangular chocolate boy was
missing his head now. “I’ll never know why folks waste their money on fancy candy. If you ask
me, these are the best durned chocolates on this side or the other.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sugared up on drugstore candy, she laid the truth on me. “The Casters put a Charm on your
daddy. He doesn’t know you’re a bit dead either. Every time it looks like he might be sniffin’ ’round
ta the truth, the Casters double up that Charm till he doesn’t know up from down. It ain’t natural, if
ya ask me, but not much ’round Gatlin is. Whole place’s gone downright cattywampus.” She held
out the half-eaten box of candy. “Now have yourself somethin’ sweet. Chocolate makes everything
better. Molasses Chew?”
I was buried at Greenbrier so Lena and Amma and my friends could keep it a secret from
everyone, including my father—who was under the influence of a Cast so powerful that he didn’t
know his own son was gone, just like my mom said.
There wasn’t enough chocolate in the world to make this better.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 4

Getting Aunt Prue to say the one thing you wanted her to say, right when you wanted her to say it,
was like thinking you could ask the sun to shine. At some point, and probably sooner than later, you
had to admit you were at her mercy. I had to, anyway.
Because I was.
I couldn’t stomach one more waxy chocolate, washed down with one more glass of sweet tea,
while one more little dog stared at me, to get at the one thing I needed to know. All I could do was
start begging.
“I have to go to Ravenwood, Aunt Prue. You have to help me. I have to see Lena.”
My aunt sniffed and tossed the box of chocolates back down on the counter. “Oh, I see, now I
have ta have ta have ta? Someone died and made you the Gen’ral? Next you’ll be thinkin’ you need
a statue and a green all your own.” She sniffed again.
“Aunt Prue—” I gave up. “I’m sorry.”
“I reckon you are.”
“I just need to know how to get to Ravenwood.” I knew I sounded desperate, but it didn’t
matter, because I was. I hadn’t been able to walk there or imagine myself there. There had to be
another way.
“You know you get more bees with honey, sugar. Crossin’ over from one side ta the next
hasn’t done much ta improve your manners, Ethan Wate. Bossin’ an old woman like that.”
I was losing patience with my aunt. “I said I’m sorry. I’m kind of new at this, remember? Can
you please help me? Do you know anything about how to get from here to Ravenwood?”
“Do you know I’m bone tired a this conversation?”
“Aunt Prue!”
She clamped her teeth shut and stuck out her chin, the way Harlon James did when he got a
lock on a bone.
“There has to be a way I can see her. My mom came to visit me twice. Once in a fire Amma
and Twyla made in a graveyard, and once in my own room.”
“Pretty powerful stuff, crossin’ like that. Then again, your mamma’s always been stronger
than most folks. Why don’tcha ask her?” She looked irritated.
“Crossing?”
“Crossin’ over. Not for the faint a heart. For most a us, you just can’t get there from here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you can’t make preserves till you learn how ta boil water, Ethan Wate. Gotta put in
the time. Get used ta the water ’fore you jump in.” Not that Aunt Prue could ever bottle anything
that wouldn’t burn a hole in your bread, according to Amma.
I crossed my arms, annoyed. “Why would I jump into boiling water?”
She glared at me, fanning herself with a folded piece of paper the way she had on the thousand
Sundays when I drove her to church.
The rocker stopped. Bad sign.
“I mean, ma’am.” I held my breath until the rocker started to squeak again. This time I lowered
my voice. “If you know something, please help me. You said you went to see Aunt Grace and Aunt
Mercy. And I know I saw you when I was at your funeral.”
Aunt Prue twisted her mouth like her dentures were hurting. Or like she was trying to keep her
thoughts to herself. “You had your whole mess a split-up souls back then. You could see all sorts a
things a Mortal ain’t supposed ta see. I ain’t seen Twyla since that day either, and she’s the one
who crossed me over in the first place.”
“I can’t figure this out on my own.”
“ ’Course you can. You can’t just show up ’round here and ’spect ta do whatcha like, easy as
bad pie in a box. That’s all part a crossin’. It’s like fishin’. Why would I just hand you the catfish
when I should be teachin’ you how ta fish?”
I put my head in my hands. At that particular moment, I would have been plenty fine with bad
pie in a box. “And where can a guy learn to catch a catfish around here?”
There was no answer.
I looked up to see Aunt Prue dozing in her rocking chair, the folded paper she’d been fanning
herself with resting in her lap. There was no waking Aunt Prue from one of her naps. Not before,
and probably not now.
I sighed, gently taking the makeshift fan out of her hand. It unfolded partway, revealing the
edge of a drawing. It looked like one of her maps, only half-drawn, more of a doodle than anything
else. Aunt Prue couldn’t sit still long without starting to sketch out her whereabouts, even in the
Otherworld.
Then I realized it wasn’t a map of His Garden of Perpetual Peace—or if it was, the graveyard
world was bigger than I thought.
This wasn’t just any map.
It was a map of the Lunae Libri.
“How can there be a Lunae Libri in the Otherworld? It’s not a grave, right? Nobody died there?”
My mom didn’t look up from her copy of Dante. She hadn’t looked up when I swung open the
front door either. She couldn’t hear a word anyone said when she was lost in those pages. Reading
was her own version of Traveling.
I stuck my hand between her face and the yellowed pages, wiggling my fingers. “Mom.”
“What?” My mom looked as startled as a person could look when you hadn’t actually snuck up
on them.
“Let me save you some time. I saw the movie. The office building catches fire.” I closed the
book and held out Aunt Prue’s folded paper. My mom took it, smoothing it out in her hands.
“I knew Dante was ahead of his time.” She smiled, turning over the paper.
“Why was Aunt Prue drawing this?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. She just kept staring at the
paper.
“If you’re going to start asking yourself why your aunt does anything, you’ll be busy for the
rest of eternity.”
“Why did she need a map?” I asked.
“What your aunt needs is to find someone else to talk to besides you.”
That was all she said. Then she gave up, standing and slipping her arm around my shoulders.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
I followed my mom right down the street that wasn’t a street, until we came to a plot that
wasn’t just a plot, and a familiar grave that wasn’t even a grave. I stopped walking as soon as I saw
where we were.
My mom laid her hand on Macon’s gravestone, a wistful smile creeping across her face. She
pushed on the stone, and it swung open. Ravenwood’s front hall stood there, ghostly and deserted,
as if nothing had changed except that Lena’s family had gone to Barbados or something.
“So?” I couldn’t bring myself to step inside. What use was Ravenwood without Lena or her
family? It almost made me feel worse to be here in her home and still so far away.
My mom sighed. “So. You’re the one who wanted to go to the Lunae Libri.”
“You mean the secret stairway into the Tunnels? Will it lead into the Lunae Libri?”
“Well, I don’t mean the Gatlin County Library.” My mom smiled.
I pushed past her into the hallway and took off running. By the time she caught up to me, I had
made it all the way to Macon’s old room. I flipped up the carpet and yanked open the trapdoor.
There they were.
The invisible stairs leading down into the Caster darkness.
And beyond, the Caster Library.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 2

There she was, standing in the kitchen in her bare feet, her hair the same as I remembered—half
up, half down. A crisp white button-down shirt—what my dad used to call her “uniform”—was still
covered with paint or ink from her last project. Her jeans were rolled at her ankles like always,
whether or not it was in style. My mom never cared about stuff like that. She was holding our old,
black iron frying pan filled with green tomatoes in one hand and a book in the other. She had
probably been cooking while she read, without looking up. Humming some part of a song she didn’t
even realize she was humming and probably couldn’t hear.
That was my mom. She seemed exactly the same.
Maybe I was the only one who had changed.
I took a step closer, and she turned toward me, dropping the book. “There you are, my sweet
boy.”I felt my heart turning inside out. Nobody else called me that; they wouldn’t want to and I
wouldn’t let them. Just my mom. Then her arms caught me, and the world folded around us as I
buried my face in her hug. I breathed in the warm smell and the warm feeling and the warm
everything that was my mom to me.
“Mom. You’re back.”
“One of us is.” She sighed.
That’s when it hit me. She was standing in my kitchen, and I was standing in my kitchen,
which meant one of two things: Either she had come back to life, or…
I hadn’t.
Her eyes filled with something—tears, love, sympathy—and before I knew it, her arms were
around me again.
My mom always understood everything.
“I know, sweet boy. I know.”
My face found its old hiding place in the crook of her shoulder.
She kissed the top of my head. “What happened to you? It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
She pulled back so she could see me. “None of it was supposed to end this way.”
“I know.”
“Then again, it’s not like there’s a right way to end a person’s life, is there?” She pinched my
chin, smiling down into my eyes.
I had memorized it. The smile, her face. Everything. It was all I had left during the time she
was gone.
I’d always known she was alive somewhere, in some way. She had saved Macon and sent me
the songs that shepherded me through every strange chapter of my life with the Casters. She’d been
there the whole time, just like she had when she was alive.
It was only one moment, but I wanted to keep it that way as long as I could.
I don’t know how we got to the kitchen table. I don’t remember anything except the solid
warmth of her arms. But there I sat, in my regular chair, as if the past few years had never even
happened. There were books everywhere—and from the looks of it, my mom was partway through
most of them, as usual. A sock, probably fresh from the laundry, was stuck in The Divine Comedy.
A napkin poked halfway out of The Iliad, and on top of that a fork marked her place in a volume of
Greek mythology. The kitchen table was full of her beloved books, one pile of paperbacks higher
than the next. I felt like I was back in the library with Marian.
The tomatoes sizzled in the pan, and I breathed in the scent of my mother—yellowing paper
and burnt oil, new tomatoes and old cardboard, all laced through with cayenne pepper.
No wonder libraries made me so hungry.
My mom slid a blue and white china platter onto the table between us. Dragonware. I smiled
because it had been her favorite. She dropped hot tomatoes onto a paper towel, sprinkling pepper
across the plate.
“There you go. Dig in.”
I tucked my fork into the nearest slice. “You know, I haven’t eaten one of these since you—
since the accident.” The tomato was so hot it burned my tongue.
I looked at my mom. “Are we—is this—?”
She returned the look blankly.
I tried again. “You know. Heaven?”
She laughed, pouring sweet tea into two tall glasses—tea being the only other thing my mom
knew how to make. “No, not Heaven, EW. Not exactly.”
I must have looked worried, like I thought we had somehow ended up in the other place. But
that couldn’t be right either, because—as cheesy as it sounded—being with my mom again was
Heaven, whether or not the universe thought of it that way. Then again, the universe and I hadn’t
agreed on much lately.
My mom pressed her hand against my cheek and smiled as she shook her head. “No, this isn’t
any kind of final resting place, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then why are we here?”
“I’m not sure. You don’t get a user’s manual when you check in.” She took my hand. “I
always knew I was here because of you—some unfinished business, something I needed to teach
you or tell you or show you. That’s why I sent you the songs.”
“The Shadowing Songs.”
“Exactly. You kept me plenty busy. And now that you’re here, I feel like we were never apart.”
Her face clouded over. “I always hoped I would get to see you again. But I hoped I would be
waiting a lot longer. I’m so sorry. I know it must be terrible for you right now, leaving Amma and
your father. And Lena.”
I nodded. “It sucks.”
“I know. I felt the same way,” she said.
“About Macon?” The words came tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Her cheeks went red. “I guess I deserved that. But not everything that happens in a mother’s
life is something she needs to discuss with her seventeen-year-old son.”
“Sorry.”
She squeezed my hand. “You were the person I didn’t want to leave, most of all. And you were
the person I worried about leaving, most of all. You and your father.
“Your father, thankfully, is in the exceptional care of the Ravenwoods. Lena and Macon have
him under some powerful Casts, and Amma’s spinning stories of her own. Mitchell has no idea
what’s happened to you.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Amma tells him you’re in Savannah with your aunt, and he believes it.” Her smile
wavered, and she looked past me into the shadows. I knew she must be worried about my dad,
despite whatever Casts he was under. My sudden departure from Gatlin was probably hurting her
as much as it was me—standing by and watching it all happen, without being able to do anything
about it.
“But it’s not a long-term solution, Ethan. Right now everyone is just doing the best that they
can. That’s usually how it is.”
“I remember.” I’d been through it once before.
We both knew when.
She didn’t say anything after that, just picked up a fork of her own. We ate together in silence
for the rest of the afternoon, or for a moment. I couldn’t tell which was which anymore, and I
wasn’t sure it mattered.
We sat out on the back porch picking shiny-wet cherries out of the colander and watching the stars
come out. The sky had faded to a darkish blue, and the stars appeared in crazy bright clusters. I
saw stars from the Caster sky and the Mortal sky. The split moon hung between the North Star and
the Southern Star. I didn’t know how it was possible to see two skies at once, two sets of
constellations, but it was. I could see everything now, like I was two different people at the same
time. Finally, an end to the whole Fractured Soul thing. I guess one of the perks of dying was
having both halves of my soul back together.
Yeah, right.
Everything had come together now that it was over, or maybe because it was over. I guess life
was like that sometimes. It all looked so simple, so easy from here. So unbelievably bright.
Why was this the only solution? Why did it have to end like this?
I leaned my head against my mom’s shoulder. “Mom?”
“Sweetheart.”
“I need to talk to Lena.” There it was. I’d finally said it. The one thing that had kept me from
being able to exhale all day. The thing that had made me feel like I couldn’t sit down, like I couldn’t
stay. Like I had to get up and go somewhere, even if I had nowhere to go.
As Amma used to say, the good thing about the truth is it’s true, and there’s no arguing with
the truth. You may not like it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. That’s all I had to hold on to
right about now.
“You can’t talk to her.” My mom frowned. “At least, it’s not easy.”
“I need to tell her I’m okay. I know her. She’s waiting for a sign from me. Just like I was
waiting for a sign from you.”
“There’s no Carlton Eaton to run your letter over to her, Ethan. You can’t send a letter from
this world, and you can’t get to hers. And even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to write one.
You don’t know how many times I wished it was possible.”
There had to be a way. “I know. If it was, I would’ve heard from you more.”
She looked up toward the stars. Her eyes shone with reflected light as she spoke.
“Every day, my sweet boy. Every single day.”
“But you found a way to talk to me. You used the books in the study, and the songs. And I
saw you that night I was at the cemetery. And in my room, remember?”
“The songs were the Greats’ idea. I suppose because I had been singing to you since you were
a baby. But everyone’s different. I don’t think you can send anything like a Shadowing Song to
Lena.”
“Even if I knew how to write one.” My songwriting skills made Link look like one of the
Beatles.
“It wasn’t easy for me, and I’d been kicking around here a whole lot longer than you have.
And I had help from Amma, Twyla, and Arelia.” She squinted up at the twin skies. “You have to
remember, Amma and the Greats have powers that I know nothing about.”
“But you were a Keeper.” There had to be things she knew that they didn’t.
“Exactly. I was a Keeper. I did what the Far Keep asked me to do, and I didn’t do what the Far
Keep didn’t want me to do. You don’t mess with them, and you don’t mess with their record of
things.”
“The Caster Chronicles?”
She picked a cherry from the bowl, examining it for spots. She took so long to answer, I was
starting to think she hadn’t heard me. “What do you know about The Caster Chronicles?”
“Before Aunt Marian’s trial, the Council of the Far Keep came to the library, and they brought
the book with them.”
She put the old metal colander down on the step beneath us. “Forget about The Caster
Chronicles. All of that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I’m serious, Ethan. We’re not out of danger, you and I.”
“Danger? What are you talking about? We’re already—you know.”
She shook her head. “We’re only partway home. We’ve got to find out what’s keeping us here,
and move on.”
“What if I don’t want to move on?” I wasn’t ready to give up. Not as long as Lena was waiting
for me.
Once again, she didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, my mom sounded about as dark
as I’d ever heard her. “I don’t think you have a choice.”
“You did,” I said.
“It wasn’t a choice. You needed me. That’s why I’m here—for you. But even I can’t change
what happened.”
“Yeah? You could try.” I found myself crushing a cherry in my hand. The juice ran red
between my fingers.
“There’s nothing to try, Ethan. It’s over. It’s too late.” She barely whispered, but it felt like she
was shouting.
Anger welled up inside me. I hurled a cherry across the yard, then another, then the whole
bowlful. “Well, Lena and Amma and Dad need me, and I’m not just going to give up. I feel like I
shouldn’t be here—like this is all a huge mistake.” I looked at the empty bowl in my hands. “And
it’s not cherry season. It’s winter.” I looked up at her, my eyes blurring with tears, though all I
could feel was anger. “It’s supposed to be winter.”
My mom put her hand on mine. “Ethan.”
I pulled away. “Don’t try to make me feel better. I missed you, Mom. I did. More than
anything. But as happy as I am to see you, I want to wake up and have this not be happening. I
understand why I had to do it. I get it. Fine. But I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know. Not this.” Was that the truth? Had I really thought I could get out of sacrificing
my own good for the good of the world? Did I think the One-Who-Is-Two thing was a joke?
I guess it was easier to play the hero. But now that it was real—now that I had to own up to an
eternity of what and who I’d lost—suddenly it didn’t seem so easy.
My mom’s eyes welled up, worse than mine. “I’m so sorry, EW. If there was a way I could
change things, I would.” She sounded as miserable as I felt.
“What if there is?”
“I can’t change everything.” My mom looked down at her bare feet on the step below her. “I
can’t change anything.”
“I’m not ready for some stupid cloud, and I don’t want to get my wings when some stupid bell
rings.” I threw the metal bowl. It went clattering down the stairs, rolling across the back lawn. “I
want to be with Lena and I want to live and I want to go to the Cineplex and eat popcorn until I’m
sick and drive too fast and get a ticket and be so in love with my girlfriend that I make a total fool
out of myself every day for the rest of my life.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do,” I said, louder than I’d intended. “You had a life. You fell in love—twice.
And you had a family. I’m seventeen. This can’t be the end for me. I can’t wake up tomorrow and
know that I’m never going to see Lena again.”
My mother sighed, sliding her arm around me and pulling me close.
I said it again because I didn’t know what else to say. “I can’t.”
She rubbed my head like I was a sad, scared little kid. “Of course you can see her. That’s the
easy part. I can’t guarantee you can talk to her, and she won’t be able to see you, but you can see
her.”
I looked at her, stunned. “What are you talking about?”
“You exist. We exist here. Lena and Link and your father and Amma, they exist in Gatlin. It’s
not that one plane of existence is more or less real. They’re just different planes. You’re here and
Lena’s there. In her world, you’ll never be fully present. Not like you were. And in our world, she’ll
never be like us. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to see her.”
“How?” At that moment, it was the only thing I wanted to know.
“It’s simple. Just go.”
“What do you mean, go?” She was making it sound easy, but I had a feeling there was more to
it.
“You imagine where you want to go, and then you just go.”
It didn’t seem possible, even though I knew my mom would never lie to me. “So if I just wish
myself to Ravenwood, I’ll be there?”
“Well, not from our back porch. You have to leave Wate’s Landing before you can go
anywhere. I think our homes have the Otherworld equivalent of a Binding on them. When you’re at
home, you’re here with me and nowhere else.”
A shiver went down my spine as she said the words. “The Otherworld? Is that where we are?
What it’s called?”
She nodded, wiping her cherry-stained hand on her jeans.
I knew I wasn’t anywhere I’d been before. I knew it wasn’t Gatlin, and I knew it wasn’t
Heaven. Still, something about the word seemed farther away than anything I’d ever known.
Farther even than death. Even though I could smell the dusty concrete of our back patio and the
fresh cut grass stretching beyond it. I could feel the mosquitoes biting and the wind moving and the
splinters of the old wooden steps at my back. All it felt like was loneliness. It was just us now. My
mom, and me, and my backyard full of cherries. Some part of me had been waiting for this ever
since her accident, and another part of me knew, maybe for the first time, it would never be
enough.
“Mom?”
“Yes, sweet boy?”
“Do you think Lena still loves me, back in the Mortal realm?”
She smiled and tousled my hair. “What kind of silly question is that?”
I shrugged.
“Let me ask you this. Did you love me when I was gone?”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to.
“I don’t know about you, EW, but I knew the answer to that question every day we were
apart. Even when I didn’t know anything else about where I was or what I was supposed to be
doing. You were my Wayward, even then. Everything always brought me back to you. Everything.”
She smoothed my hair out of my face. “You think Lena’s any different?”
She was right.
It was a stupid question.
So I smiled and took her hand and followed her inside. I had things to figure out and places to
go—that much I knew. But some things I didn’t have to figure out. Some things hadn’t changed,
and some things never would.
Except me. I had changed, and I would give anything to change back.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 1

A blur of blue sky over my head.
Cloudless.
Perfect.
Just like the sky in real life, only a little more blue and a little less sun in my eyes.
I guess the sky in real life isn’t actually perfect. Maybe that’s what makes it so perfect.
Made it.
I squeezed my eyes shut again.
I was stalling.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to see whatever was out there to see. Of course the sky looked
better—Heaven being what it was and all.
Not to assume that’s where I was. I’d been a decent guy, as far as I could tell. But I had seen
enough to know that everything I thought about everything had pretty much been wrong so far.
I had an open mind, at least by Gatlin’s standards. I mean, I’d heard all the theories. I had sat
through more than my share of Sunday school classes. And after my mom’s accident, Marian told
me about a Buddhism class she took at Duke taught by a guy named Buddha Bob, who said paradise
was a teardrop inside a teardrop inside a teardrop, or something like that. The year before that, my
mom tried to get me to read Dante’s Inferno, which Link told me was about an office building that
caught fire, but actually turned out to be about a guy’s voyage into the nine circles of Hell. I only
remember the part my mom told me about monsters or devils trapped in a pit of ice. I think it was
the ninth circle of Hell, but there were so many circles down there that after a while they all sort of
ran together.
After what I’d learned about underworlds and otherworlds and sideways worlds, and whatever
else came in the whole triple-layer cake of universes that was the Caster world, that first glimpse of
blue sky was fine by me. I was relieved to see there was something that looked like a cheesy
Hallmark card waiting for me. I wasn’t expecting pearly gates or naked cherub babies. But the blue
sky, that was a nice touch.
I opened my eyes again. Still blue.
Carolina blue.
A fat bee buzzed over my head, climbing high into the sky—until he banged into it, just as he
had a thousand times before.
Because it wasn’t the sky.
It was the ceiling.
And this wasn’t Heaven.
I was lying in my old mahogany bed in my even older bedroom at Wate’s Landing.
I was home.
Which was impossible.
I blinked.
Still home.
Had it been a dream? I desperately hoped so. Maybe it was, just like it had been every single
morning for the first six months after my mom died.
Please let it have been a dream.
I reached down and searched the dust under my bed frame. I felt the familiar pile of books and
pulled one out.
The Odyssey. One of my favorite graphic novels, though I was pretty sure Mad Comix had
taken a few liberties with the version Homer wrote.
I hesitated, then pulled out another. On the Road. The first sight of the Kerouac was undeniable
proof, and I rolled to one side until I could see the pale square on my wall where, until a few days
ago—was that all it had been?—the tattered map had hung, with the green marker lines circling all
the places from my favorite books I wanted to visit.
It was my room, all right.
The old clock on the table next to my bed didn’t seem to be working anymore, but everything
else looked about the same. It must be a warm day, for January. The light that came flooding in
from the window was almost unnatural—sort of like I was in one of Link’s bad storyboards for a
Holy Rollers music video. But aside from the movie lighting, my room was exactly the way I’d left
it. Just like the books under my bed, the shoe boxes holding my whole life story were still there
lining my walls. Everything that was supposed to be there was there, at least as far as I was
concerned.
Except Lena.
L? You there?
I couldn’t feel her. I couldn’t feel anything.
I looked at my hands. They seemed all right. No bruises. I looked at my plain white T-shirt. No
blood. No holes in my jeans or my body.
I went to my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror above my sink. There I was. Same
old Ethan Wate.
I was still staring at my reflection when I heard a sound from downstairs.
“Amma?”
My heart felt like it was pounding, which was pretty funny, since when I woke up, I wasn’t
even sure it was beating. Either way, I could hear the familiar sounds of my house, coming from
down in the kitchen. Floorboards creaked as someone moved back and forth in front of the
cupboards and the burners and the old kitchen table. Same old footsteps, going about the same old
business as usual in the morning.
If it was morning.
The smell of our old frying pan on the burner came wafting up from downstairs.
“Amma? That’s not bacon, is it?”
The voice was clear and calm. “Sweetheart, I think you know what I’m cooking. There’s only
one thing I know how to cook. If you can call it that.”
That voice.
It was so familiar.
“Ethan? How much longer are you going to make me wait to give you a hug? Been down here a
long time, darling.”
I couldn’t understand the words. I couldn’t hear anything except the voice. I’d heard it before,
not that long ago, but never like this. As loud and clear and full of life as if she was downstairs.
Which she was.
The words were like music. They chased all the misery and confusion away.
“Mom? Mom!”
I raced down the stairs, three at a time, before she could answer.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 50

Finally
I was standing on the top of the white water tower, facing the moon. I had no shadow, and if there were any stars, I couldn’t see them. Summerville
was stretched out before me, a scattering of tiny lights, all the way to the blackness of the lake.
This had been our happy place, mine and Lena’s. One of them, at least. But I was alone now. I wasn’t feeling happy. I wasn’t feeling anything but
fear—and like I wanted to throw up.
I could still hear Amma screaming.
I knelt for a second, resting my hands on the painted metal. I looked down and saw a heart, drawn in black Sharpie. I smiled, remembering, and
stood up.
It is time. There is no turning back now.
I stared out at the tiny lights, waiting to get up the courage to do the unthinkable. The dread churned in my stomach, heavy and wrong.
But this was right.
As I closed my eyes, I felt the arms slam into my waist, knocking the air out of me, dragging me down to the metal ladder. I caught a glimpse of
him—of me—when my jaw hit the side of the railing, and I stumbled.
He was trying to stop me.
I tried to throw him off. I leaned forward and saw my Chucks kicking. Then I saw his Chucks kicking. They were so old and thrashed they could
have been mine. This was how I remembered it from the dream. This was how it was supposed to be.
What are you doing?
This time, he was asking me.
I threw him against the floor, and he landed on his back. I grabbed the collar of his shirt, and he grabbed mine.
We looked into each other’s eyes, and he saw the truth.
We were both going to die. It seemed like we should be together when it happened.
I pulled out the old Coke bottle Amma had left sitting on the kitchen table earlier. If a whole bottle tree could catch a whole lot of lost souls, maybe
one Coke bottle could hold on to mine.
I’ve been waiting.
I saw his face change.
His eyes widen.
He lunged at me.
I wouldn’t let go.
We stared into each other’s eyes and clawed at each other’s throats.
As we rolled over the edge of the water tower
and fell
the
whole
way
down,
I
was
only
thinking
one
thing
...LENA
Nineteen Moons—

Categories: Beautiful Chaos