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

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 38

The Verdict
A few hours later, Lena was shaking me.
Wake up. You have to wake up, Ethan—
I sat up with a start. “I’m awake!” Only I looked around, confused, because it wasn’t Lena shaking me, it was Liv. Even though I could still hear the
echo of Lena’s voice lingering in my head.
“Ethan. It’s me. Please—you’ve got to wake up.”
I looked at her through half-open eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
Liv frowned. “I’m afraid not. This is real.”
I rubbed my hand through my hair, confused. It was still pitch-dark outside, and I couldn’t even remember dreaming. I only remembered Lena’s
voice and the urgent feeling something was wrong. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Marian. She’s gone. Come on.”
Things were starting to fall into place. I was in my room. Liv was in my room. I wasn’t dreaming. Which meant—
“Wait. How did you get in here?”
Liv looked embarrassed. “I hitched a ride.” She pointed to the scorpion belt around her waist and glanced behind her.
An Incubus was sitting in the corner of my bedroom.
Great.
John picked up my jeans from the floor and tossed them at me. “Hurry up, Boy Scout.” For a guy who didn’t have to sleep, he was as grouchy in
the middle of the night as I was.
Liv blushed, turning around, and a few seconds later I heard the familiar ripping sound. Only for the first time, it was for me.
“Where are we?”
Nobody answered. Then I heard John’s voice in the darkness. “No clue.”
“Don’t you have to know where you’re going to rip? Isn’t that the way it works?” I asked.
“Is that some kind of Mortal word for Traveling? Real clever.” He sounded annoyed, which I was used to by now. “Sort of. Usually.”
The shadows were shifting, and I rubbed my eyes, trying to see in the dark. I stretched out my hands, but I couldn’t feel anything.
“Usually?”
“I was following the signal.”
“What signal?”
My eyes adjusted from the darkness of Traveling to the darkness of wherever we had Traveled to. As the blurry shadows lightened from black to
gray, I realized we were crammed into a tiny space.
Liv looked at John. “An Ad Auxilium Concitatio. It’s an ancient Homing Cast, like a Caster SOS. But only a Cypher can detect one.”
John shrugged. “I hung out with one at Exile with Rid and—” He didn’t finish, but we all knew who he was talking about. “I picked up some Cypher
skills.”
I shook my head. Cyphers? There was so much about Lena’s world I would never understand, no matter how hard I tried.
“You’re a handy guy,” I said, annoyed.
“Who sent it?” Liv asked.
“I did.” Lena was standing behind us in the darkness. I could barely see her face, but her green and gold eyes were shining. She looked over at
John. “I was hoping you would pick it up.”
“Glad I’m good for something.”
“The Far Keep is trying Marian for treason. It’s going on right now.” Lena sounded grim. “Uncle Macon went after Marian, but he wouldn’t let me
come. He said it was too dangerous.”
Marian was on trial. It was really happening, the way I was afraid it would, ever since the day Liv and I found the Temporis Porta.
Everything I’d been feeling—the doubt, the panic, the wrongness—caught up with me in a crashing wave that nearly knocked my feet out from
under me. Like I was drowning. Or falling.
“Don’t worry.” Liv tried to sound reassuring. “I’m sure she’s fine. This whole thing is my fault, not hers. The Council will have to admit that, sooner
or later.”
John held up his hand. “Ignis.” A warm yellow flame flickered from the center of his palm.
“New party trick?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Fire was never really my thing. Guess I picked it up from hanging out with Lena.” Normally I would have punched him. At least, I
would have wanted to.
Lena grabbed my hand. “These days I can’t even light a candle without torching the place.”
Light flooded the room, and I didn’t have time to hit him, because now I knew exactly where we were. Again.
I was on the other side of the pantry door. Ten feet under my kitchen, in my own house.
I grabbed the old lantern and took off down the crumbling tunnel, toward the door in the ceiling no one ever opened, to the place where the
ancient doors would be waiting for me.
“Wait up! You don’t know where this tunnel ends,” John called after me.
“It’s all right,” I heard Liv say. “He knows where he’s going.”
I heard their footsteps behind me, but I only ran faster.
I started banging on the Temporis Porta as soon as I reached it. This time it didn’t open. Splinters dug into my skin, but I didn’t stop pounding on
the thick wood.
Nothing I did mattered.
I rested my face against the wood. “Aunt Marian, I’m here! I’m coming.”
Lena came up behind me.
Ethan, she can’t hear you.
I know.
John shoved me aside and touched the surface of the doors with his hand. Then he yanked it away as if the wood burned. “That’s some serious
mojo.”
Liv grabbed his hand, but there wasn’t a mark on it. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do to open those doors, unless they want to be opened.”
She was talking about the last time they opened—for me. But they weren’t opening this time.
Liv examined the side of the doors, where the carvings were clearest.
“There has to be a way.” I threw myself back against the thick, carved planks. Nothing. “We have to think of something. Who knows what they
might do to Marian.”
Liv looked away. “I can imagine. But we can’t help her if we can’t get inside. Give me a minute.” She pulled her red notebook out of her worn
leather backpack. “I’ve been trying to figure out these symbols since the first time we saw them.”
Lena shot me a look. “The first time?”
Liv didn’t look up. “Didn’t Ethan tell you? He found these doors weeks ago. They let him pass, but they left me behind. And he wouldn’t tell me
much about what he saw on the other side. But I’ve been studying the doors ever since.”
“Weeks ago?”
“I haven’t the exact date,” Liv answered.
Ethan?
I can explain. I was going to tell you the night at the Cineplex, but you were already mad because I had invited Liv to the party.
Secret doors? With your secret friend? And something secret you found behind them? Why would that make me mad?
I should’ve told you. It’s not like you’re worried about Liv.
I wasn’t getting off that easy. I tried not to look at Lena, focusing on a page of sketches in Liv’s red notebook. “That’s it.” I recognized the symbols
in her notebook.
Liv held the paper up against the symbols carved into the doors, moving it from one wooden panel to the next, as she compared them. “See the
recurring pattern in these three circles?”
“The Wheel,” I said automatically. “You said they were the Wheel of Fate.”
“Yes, but perhaps not only the Wheel of Fate. I think each circle might represent one of the Three Keepers. The Council of the Far Keep.”
“The ones who showed up in the archive?” Lena asked.
She nodded. “I’ve read everything I could find about them, which isn’t much. From what I can determine, the Three Keepers must have been the
ones who visited us.”
I thought about it. “It makes sense. The first time I went through those doors, I ended up at the Far Keep.”
“So you think these signs stand for the three of them?” John looked over at me. “Those freaks that wanted to take Liv?”
I nodded. “And Marian.” He seemed more concerned about Liv than Marian, which didn’t surprise me, but it still made me angry. Like just about
everything that came out of his mouth.
Liv ignored us both, pointing to the first circle, the one with the fewest spokes. “I think this one represents what’s happening now, the present. And
this”—she pointed to the second circle, the one crossed with more spokes—“symbolizes what has been. The past.”
“Then what’s that one?” John pointed to the last circle, the one with no spokes.
“What will never be, or what will always be.” Liv traced the drawing with her finger. “In other words, the future.”
“If each of these symbols represents one of the Keepers, then which is which?” I asked.
Lena studied the circle with the most spokes. “I think that huge guy is the past. He was carrying that empty hourglass when we saw him in the
archive.”
Liv nodded. “I agree.”
I reached out and touched the circles. They were hard and cool, different from the texture of the rest of the wooden door. I moved my hand to the
empty circle, with no spokes. “The woman from the Council, the one who looked albino. She’s what hasn’t happened yet, right? The future?
Because she’s nothing. I mean, she was practically invisible.”
Liv reached up to the circle with the fewest spokes. “Which would make the tall one the present.”
The light in the room flickered, and John looked frustrated. “This sounds like a whole lot of crap. What will be? What won’t be? What are you
talking about?”
“What will be and what will not be are equally possible and impossible,” Liv explained. “I guess you could say they are the absence of history, the
place The Caster Chronicles cannot touch. You can’t tell a story or Keep a record of what hasn’t happened yet. That’s Keeper 101.” Liv sounded
dreamy, and I wondered what she knew about The Caster Chronicles.
“The Caster what?” John shifted the light from one hand to the other.
“It’s a book,” Lena said, without taking her eyes off the doors. “The Keepers had it with them when they came to see Marian.”
“Whatever.” John looked bored. “If you’re talking about the future, how about we call it that?”
Liv nodded. “But you have to remember, we’re not just talking about the Mortal future. We’re talking about everything unknown, for Casters and
Mortals. Including the unknown realm, the place where the Demon world touches our own.”
“Demon world?” I felt the prickling of recognition. I had to tell Liv. “I know the place where the Demon world touches ours. I mean, I don’t know it,
but I know her. The Lilum. The Demon Queen.”
Liv went pale, but it was John who was the most freaked out. “What are you talking about?”
“The Lilum thing—”
“There’s no Lilum here.” Liv was shaking her head. “The very presence of the Lilum in our world would mean the total destruction of existence
itself.”
“What does that have to do with her?” I asked.
“Her? Is that who you were talking about? The she who told you about the Eighteenth Moon was the Lilum? The Demon Queen?” Liv knew from
the look on my face that she was right.
“Great,” John muttered.
Liv froze. “Where is the place, Ethan?” She closed her eyes, which made me think she knew what I was going to say.
“I don’t know for sure. But I can find it. I’m the Wayward. The Lilum said it herself.” I touched the circles again with my hands, over and over, feeling
the rough wood beneath my fingers.
The past. The present. The future that will be, and the future that will not.
The way.
The wood began to hum beneath my hands. I touched the carved circles again.
The color drained from Liv’s face. “The Lilum said that to you?”
I opened my eyes, and everything was clear. “When you look at the door, you see a door, right?”
Liv nodded.
I looked at her. “I see a path.”
It was true. Because the Temporis Porta was opening for me.
The wood turned to mist, and I slid my hand right through. Beyond it, I could see a path leading into the distance. “Come on.”
“Where are you going?” Liv grabbed my arm.
“To find Marian and Macon.” This time, I made sure to grab Liv and Lena before I stepped inside the door. Liv grabbed John’s hand.
“Hold on.” I took a breath and ducked into the mist—

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 39

Perfidia
We found ourselves nearly crushed in the center of a mob. I recognized the robes. Only I was tall enough to see over them, but it didn’t matter. I
knew where we were.
It seemed like the middle of a trial, or something like one. Liv’s pencil was moving inside the red notebook as quickly as it could, trying to keep
up with the words that were flying all around us.
“Perfidia. It’s Latin for ‘treason.’ They’re saying she’s going to be tried for treason.” Liv was pale, and I could barely hear her voice over the
clamor of the crowd surrounding us.
“I know this place.” I recognized the tall windows with the heavy gold drapes, and the wood benches. Everything was the same—the thick noise of
the crowd, the stone walls, the beamed ceiling that was so high that it seemed to go on forever. I held on to Lena’s hand, pushing my way to the
front of the hall, directly under the empty wooden balcony. Liv and John threaded their way through the robed crowd behind me.
“Where’s Marian?” Lena was panicking. “And Uncle Macon? I can’t see anything over all these people.”
“I don’t like this,” Liv said quietly. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
I felt it, too.
We were standing in the center of the same crowded hall where I stood the first time I crossed through the Temporis Porta. But last time, it
seemed like I was somewhere in medieval Europe, in a place from an illustration in the World History textbook we never seemed to crack at
Jackson. The room was so big I’d thought it might be a ship or a cathedral. A place that transported you somewhere, whether it was across the sea
or to the paradise the Sisters were always talking about.
Now it seemed different. I didn’t know where this place was, but even in their dark robes, the people—the Casters, Mortals, Keepers, or whatever
they were—seemed like regular old people. The kind of people I knew something about. Because even though they were crowded on the glossy
wooden bench that surrounded the perimeter of the room, they could’ve been sitting in the gym at Jackson, waiting for the Disciplinary Committee
meeting to start. On the benches or the bleachers, these people were looking for the same thing. Drama.
Even worse, they were looking for blood. Someone to blame, and to punish.
It felt like the trial of the century, or a bunch of reporters waiting outside South Carolina’s Broad River Correctional Institution when someone from
death row was about to get a lethal injection. The executions were covered by every TV station and newspaper. A few people showed up to protest,
but they looked like they had been bused in for the day. Everyone else was hanging out, waiting to watch the spectacle. It wasn’t much different from
the burning of the witches in The Crucible.
The crowd rushed forward, murmuring, just as I knew they would, and I heard the banging of a gavel. “Silentium.”
Something’s happening.
Lena grabbed my arm.
Liv pointed across the room. “I saw Macon. He’s over there.”
John looked around. “I don’t see Marian.”
Maybe she’s not here, Ethan.
She’s here.
She had to be, because I knew what was about to happen. I forced myself to look up to the balcony.
Look—
I pointed up at Marian, once again hooded and robed, once again tied at the wrists with a golden rope. She was standing on the balcony, high
above the room, just as she had been the last time. The tall Keeper who had come to the archive was next to her.
The people around us were still whispering. I looked at Liv, who interpreted. “He’s the Council Keeper. He’s going to—” Liv’s eyes welled up. “It’s
not a trial, Ethan. It’s a sentencing.”
I heard the Latin, but this time I didn’t try to understand. I knew what it meant before the Council Keeper repeated the words in English.
Marian would be found guilty of treason.
I listened without listening, my eyes locked on Marian’s face. “The Council of the Far Keep, which answers only to the Order of Things, to no man,
creature, or power, Dark or Light, finds Marian of the Western Keep guilty of Treason.”
I remembered the first time I heard those words.
“These are the Consequences of her inaction. The Consequences shall be paid. The Keeper, though Mortal, will return to the Dark Fire from
which all power comes.”
I might as well have been the one sentenced to death. Pain gutted my whole body. I watched as Marian’s hood was pulled from her shaved head.
I stared into her eyes, surrounded by dark rings as if she had been hurt. I couldn’t tell if it was physical pain or mental or even Mortal. I imagined it
was something worse.
I was the only one prepared for it. Liv broke down sobbing. Lena stumbled against me, and I held her up by the arm. Only John stood there,
unfazed, his hands jammed into his pockets.
The Council Keeper’s voice echoed through the room again. “The Order is broken. Until the New Order comes forth, the Old Law must be upheld,
and the Consequences paid.”
“All this courtroom drama. If I didn’t know you better, Angelus, I would think you were vying for a spot on cable television.” Macon’s voice carried
over the crowd, but I couldn’t see him.
“Your Mortal levity defiles this sacred space, Macon Ravenwood.”
“My Mortal levity, Angelus, is something you cannot understand. And I warned you, Angelus, that I would not stand for this.”
The Council Keeper shouted over the crowd. “You have no power here.”
“You have no business finding a Mortal guilty of treason against the Order.”
“The Keeper is of both worlds. The Keeper knew the price. The Keeper chose to allow the destruction of the Order,” he answered.
“The Keeper is a Mortal. Her name is Marian Ashcroft. She has already been sentenced to death, like every Mortal. In forty or fifty years, she will
face that sentence. It is the Mortal way.”
“This is not your matter to speak of.” The Council Keeper’s voice was rising, and the spectators were getting restless.
“Angelus, she is weak. She has no powers, no way to protect herself. You cannot punish a wet child for the rain.”
“I do not understand.”
“ ‘The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.’ ” Macon was quoting Harper Lee. I never knew any of Marian’s
quotes, but I remembered that one from reading To Kill a Mockingbird in English class last year. And from my mom.
John’s head was bent toward Liv’s, and they were whispering about something. When he noticed me watching them, he stopped. “This is crap,”
he said.
For once I agreed with him. “But we can’t stop it.”
“Why not?”
There was no way he would understand. “I know how it ends. They’ve found her guilty of treason. She’s going to be sent back to the Dark Fire, or
whatever happens after that. There’s nothing we can do,” I said miserably. “I was here before.”
“Yeah? I wasn’t.” John stepped forward, clapping dramatically. The whole room went dead silent. He squeezed Lena’s shoulder as he passed.
“Well, doesn’t this suck?” John shoved his way to the front of the hall, where Macon was standing. I could finally see him. John held up his hand, like
he was waiting for Macon to give him a high-five. “Nice try, old man.”
Macon was surprised but held up his hand. His cuff was pulled down a little too far, as though his shirt was too long.
What’s going on, L?
I have no idea.
Lena’s hair started to curl. I smelled a faint trace of smoke in the air.
L, what are you doing?
I think you mean what is he doing?
John wove slowly toward the Council Keeper, who was holding Marian on the balcony. “I’m starting to think you’re not really listening to this fine
former Incubus brother of mine.” He jumped up onto the pew, shoving a robed man out of his way.
“You’re out of line, spawn of Abraham. And do not think The Caster Chronicles have been kind to you, Breedling.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ve been kind. Since when are people kind to me? I’m a jerk. On the other hand, you’re kind of a jerk, too.” John jumped up
above the pew, barely catching the bottom of the wooden balcony. His black boots swung back and forth in the air.
The massive gold drapes behind us exploded into flames.
John kicked a bald, tattooed man in the head. I recognized the tattoo. It was the mark of a Dark Caster.
Now John had climbed up onto the wooden balcony, above us all. He put one arm around Marian, the other around the Council Keeper. “Angelus,
that’s your name, right? Man, who came up with that one? Here’s the thing. My friend Lena over there, she’s a Natural.” There was a murmuring
around us, and I saw the crowd part around Lena as they backed a few feet away.
“Why don’t you show them?” Lena smiled at him, and the drapes closest to the altar caught fire. The whole room was beginning to fill with smoke.
“And Macon Ravenwood, he’s—messed up. Okay, I don’t really know what he is. It’s a long story. There’s this ball, and this fire, and some bad,
bad Casters…. But you’ve probably read all about that, haven’t you?” John snapped. “In your little Caster spy book.”
Between Marian and Angelus, I didn’t know who looked more surprised.
“Anyway, back to Macon. Powerful guy. He likes to do this trick—come on, don’t be shy.” Macon closed his eyes, and a green glow flared above
him. The crowd tried to rush back toward the walls, but there was too much smoke.
“Which leaves me. I’m not a Natural.” John nodded in Macon’s direction. “I’m not whatever he is either.” John grinned. “But the thing about me is,
I’ve touched both of them. So now I can do whatever they can do. It’s kinda my thing. Bet you don’t have a Caster like that in your little book, do
you?” As the Keeper tried to pull away, John yanked him even closer. “So, Angelus. Let’s go for a spin and see what a strange guy like you can do.”
The Keeper was furious and backed away, holding up his hand, fingers pointed at John. John imitated him, exactly.
There was a flash of light, like lightning—
We were all standing back on the other side of the Temporis Porta.
Even Marian.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 37

Tears and Rain
After what happened in the parking lot, Macon and Liv took John back down into the Tunnels, where he would be safe under the veil of
Concealment Casts and Bindings. We hoped. There was no doubt Hunting would tell Abraham everything, but Liv wasn’t sure if he was strong
enough. I didn’t ask if she meant strong enough to make it back to Abraham, or to survive at all.
Later that night, Lena and I sat together on the steps of her uneven porch, my body pressed into hers. I tried to memorize the way it fit perfectly
with mine. I buried my face in her hair. It still smelled like lemons and rosemary. One thing hadn’t changed.
I tilted her chin up and pressed my mouth against hers. I wasn’t kissing her as much as I was feeling her lips against mine. I could have lost her
tonight.
She leaned her head against my chest.
But you didn’t.
I know.
I let my mind drift, but all I could think about was what it had felt like without her last summer, when I thought I’d lost her. The dull ache that never
went away. The emptiness. It was the same way Link must have felt when Ridley walked away. I’d never forget the look on his face. He was so
broken. And Ridley, with those haunting yellow eyes.
I felt Lena’s mind churning even harder than mine.
Stop it, L.
Stop what.
Thinking about Ridley.
I can’t. She reminds me of Sara—of my mom. And look how she turned out.
Ridley’s not Sarafine.
Not yet.
I slid the corsage off her thin wrist. There it was. Her mother’s bracelet. My hand brushed against the metal, and the second it did, I knew
everything that belonged to Sarafine was tainted. The porch started to spin—
It was getting harder and harder to keep track of the days. Sarafine felt as though she was in a constant fog, confused and detached from
her everyday life. Emotions seemed beyond her grasp, floating on the periphery of her mind as if they belonged to someone else. The only
place she felt grounded was in the Tunnels. There was a connection to the Caster world and the elements that had created the power
running through her veins. It gave her comfort, allowed her to breathe.
Sometimes she spent hours down there, sitting in the small study Abraham had created for her. It was usually peaceful, until Hunting
arrived. Her half brother believed Abraham was wasting his time with her, and he didn’t attempt to hide it.
“Here again?” Sarafine could hear the contempt in Hunting’s voice.
“I’m just reading.” She tried to avoid confrontations with Hunting. He was vicious and cruel, yet there was always a thread of truth in his
words. Truth she tried desperately to ignore.
Hunting leaned against the door, a cigarette hanging between his lips. “I’ll never understand why Grand-father Abraham wastes his time
with you. Do you have any idea how many Casters would kill to have him as a teacher?” Hunting shook his head.
She was tired of being bullied. “Why am I a waste?”
“You’re a Dark Caster pretending to be Light. A Cataclyst. If that isn’t a waste, I don’t know what is.”
The words stung, but Sarafine tried to hide it. “I’m not pretending.”
Hunting laughed, baring his canines. “Really? Have you told your Light Caster husband about your secret meetings down here? I wonder
how long it would take him to turn on you.”
“That’s none of your business.”
Hunting dropped his cigarette into an empty soda can on the desk. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Sarafine felt her chest tighten, and for a second everything went black.
The desk caught fire just as Hunting pulled his hand away.
There was no warning. One minute she was angry at Hunting; the next, the desk was going up in smoke.
Hunting coughed. “Now, that’s more like it.”
Sarafine scrambled to put out the fire with an old blanket. Predictably, Hunting didn’t help. He disappeared into Abraham’s private study
down the hall. Sarafine stared at her hands, covered in black ash. Her face was probably filthy, too. She couldn’t go home to John like this.
She wandered down the hall toward the small bathroom. But as soon as she came within a few feet of Abraham’s door, she heard voices.
“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with that kid.” Hunting’s voice was bitter. “Who cares if he can go out in the daylight? He’s barely old
enough to walk, and Silas will probably kill him before he can be useful.” He was talking about the boy Abraham told her about when they
first met. The one who was a little older than Lena.
“Silas will control his temper and do what I tell him,” Abraham snapped. “Have some vision, boy. That child will be the next generation.
An Incubus with all of our strengths and none of our weaknesses.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You think I picked his parents by accident?” Abraham didn’t like being questioned. “I knew exactly what I was doing.”
For a moment there was silence. Then Abraham spoke again. “It won’t be long before the Casters are out of the way. I’ll see it in my
lifetime. I promise you that.”
Sarafine shivered. A part of her wanted to run for the door and never look back. But she couldn’t. She had to stay for Lena.
She had to stop the voices.
When Sarafine got home, John was in the living room.
“Shh. The baby’s asleep.” He kissed her on the cheek as she sat down next to him on the couch. “Where have you been?”
For a second she considered lying, telling him she was at the library or walking in the park. But Hunting’s words mocked her. “I wonder
how long it would take him to turn on you.” He was wrong about John.
“I was in the Tunnels.”
“What?” John sounded as if he thought he had misunderstood her.
“I met one of my relatives, and he told me things about the curse. Things I didn’t know. The second Natural born into the Duchannes
family can Claim herself. Lena can choose.” It all came tumbling out, so many things she had longed to share with him.
John was shaking his head. “Wait a minute. What relative?”
There was no stopping now. “Abraham Ravenwood.”
John stood up, towering above her. “Abraham Ravenwood, the Blood Incubus? He’s dead.”
Sarafine jumped up. “No. He’s alive, and he can help us save Lena.”
John was studying her face as if he didn’t recognize it. “Help us? Have you lost your mind? He’s a blood-drinking Demon! How do you
even know if anything he told you is true?”
“Why would he lie? He has nothing to gain from telling me that Lena has a choice.”
John grabbed her by the shoulders. “Why would he lie? How about because he’s a Blood Incubus? He’s worse than a Dark Caster.”
Sarafine cringed beneath his fingers. It didn’t matter if John called her Izabel; her eyes were still golden yellow, and her skin ice-cold. She
was one of them.
“He can help Lena.” He’s helping me, too. That’s what she wished she could tell him.
John was so angry he didn’t notice how her face had crumbled. “You don’t know that. He could be lying. We don’t even know if Lena’s a
Natural.”
Sarafine felt something rising inside her, like the crest of a wave. She didn’t recognize it for what it was. Rage. But the voices did. He
doesn’t trust you. He thinks you’re one of them.
She tried to push the thoughts away and focus on John. “When she cries, it rains. That isn’t proof enough for you?”
John let go of her shoulders and ran his hands through his hair. “Izabel, this guy is a monster. I don’t know what he wants with you, but he’s
playing on your fears. You can’t speak to him again.”
Panic welled up inside her. She knew Abraham was telling the truth about Lena. John hadn’t seen the prophecy. But there was something
else. If she couldn’t see Abraham, she couldn’t control the voices.
John was staring at her. “Izabel! Promise me.”
She had to make him understand. “But, John—”
He cut her off. “I don’t know if you are losing your judgment or losing control, but if you go anywhere near Abraham Ravenwood, I’ll leave.
And I’ll take Lena with me.”
“What did you say?” He couldn’t mean it.
“If what he says is true, and Lena has a choice, she will choose Light. I will never allow any Darkness into her life. I know you’ve been
struggling. You disappear all day, and when you’re here, you look distracted and confused.”
Was it true? Could he see it on her face?
John was still talking. “But it’s my job to protect Lena. Even if it’s from you.”
He loved Lena more than he loved her.
He was ready to walk away and take her daughter.
And one day, Lena would Claim herself. John would be sure she turned her back on Sarafine.
Something clicked within her, two chambers locking into place. The rage wasn’t cresting anymore. It was crashing down on her, drowning
her beneath it. And she could hear the voice.
Burn.
The drapes ignited, sending fire racing up the walls behind John. Smoke started to fill the room, black and dark, a living, breathing
shadow. The sound was so loud as the flames ate away at the wall and spread to the floor. The fire created a perfect circle around John,
following an invisible path only she could see.
“Izabel! Stop!” John screamed, his voice twisted by the roaring of the fire.
What had she done?
“How could you do this to me? I stood by you, even after you Turned!”
After you Turned.
He believed she was Dark.
He always had.
She looked at him through the cloud of smoke quickly filling the room. Sarafine watched the flames with remove. She wasn’t standing in
her house, about to watch her husband burn to death. He didn’t look like the man she loved. Or even a man she could love.
He’s a traitor. The voice was perfectly clear now, and there was only one. Sarafine recognized it right away.
Because it was her own.
Before she walked away from the house and the smoke, her life and memories that were already fading, she remembered something
John used to say to her. She looked into his green eyes with her gold ones.
“I’ll love you until the day after forever.”
Lena fell to her knees on the step beneath me, sobbing.
I wrapped my arms around her, but I didn’t say a word. She had just watched her mother kill her father and leave her for dead.
There was nothing left to say.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 36

A Light in the Dark
I could see lights flashing through the upper windows of the gym all the way from the parking lot. The party was already in high gear.
Lena pulled me by the arm. “Come on! We can’t miss this!”
I heard the unmistakable howl of Link’s vocals and froze. The Holy Rollers were in there performing, just like Lena said they would be.
I felt a moment of panic. The Eighteenth Moon was almost here, and we were about to walk into a dance at Jackson. It seemed stupid, but then
so did staying home and worrying about the end of the world when there was nothing we could do to stop it. Maybe the stupidest part was thinking I
could keep it from happening.
So I did the only logical thing, which was keep my mouth shut and tighten my arm around the prettiest girl in the parking lot. “All right, L. Come
clean. What did you do?”
“I wanted him to have one good night without Ridley.” Lena slid her arm through mine. “And I wanted it for you.” She looked over her shoulder to
where John’s low voice and Liv’s laughter floated up behind us. “For everyone, I guess.”
The weirdest part was that I understood why she did it. We had all been stuck since the summer, as if it never really ended. Amma couldn’t read
cards or talk to the Greats. Marian wasn’t allowed to do her job. Liv wasn’t training to be a Keeper. Macon barely came up from the Tunnels. Link
was still trying to figure out how to be an Incubus and get over Ridley. And John had been stuck for real, in the Arclight. Even the heat stuck around,
like the endless summer from hell.
Everything in Gatlin was stuck.
What Lena did tonight wasn’t going to change any of that, but maybe we could leave the summer behind us. Maybe it would end one of these
days, taking the heat and the bugs and the bad memories with it.
Maybe we could feel normal again. Our version of normal, at least. Even if the clock was still ticking and the Eighteenth Moon was getting closer.
We can do more than feel normal, Ethan. We can be normal.
Lena smiled at me, and I pulled her even closer as we walked into the gym.
The inside of the gym had been transformed, and the theme seemed to be—Link. The Holy Rollers were onstage, lit by spotlights the Dance
Committee could never afford to rent. And Link was in the center of it all, his ruffled shirt unbuttoned and drenched with sweat. He was alternating
between playing the drums and singing, sliding along the stage with the mic stand in his hand. Every time he moved near the edge, a group of
freshmen girls screamed.
And for the second time in my life, the Holy Rollers sounded like a real band—without a cherry lollipop in sight.
“What did you do?” I shouted to Lena over the music.
“Consider it a Don’t-Let-the-Dance-Suck Cast.”
“So, I guess the whole thing was Link’s idea in the first place.” I smiled, and she nodded at me.
“Exactly.”
On the way to the dance floor, we walked past a cardboard backdrop. There was a stool, but the photographer was nowhere in sight. The whole
thing looked a little suspicious. “Where’s the photographer, L?”
“His wife went into labor.” Lena wouldn’t look at me.
“Lena.”
“Really. You can ask anyone. Well, don’t ask her. She’s a little busy right now.”
We passed Liv and John, who were sitting at a table near the dance floor. “I’ve only seen this on TV,” Liv said, taking it all in.
“An American high school dance?” John smiled. “It’s my first, too.” John reached out to tug on a length of her blond hair. “Let’s dance, Olivia.”
An hour later, I had to admit Lena was right. We were all having a good time, and it didn’t feel like summer anymore. It felt like a regular high school
dance, where you wait for the slow songs to get close to your girlfriend. Savannah was holding court in her puffy cotton candy dress, and she even
danced with Earl Petty—once. The only exception was the return of Link as a rock god. But tonight even that didn’t seem so impossible.
Fatty was busting the rest of the Holy Rollers for smoking in front of the gym while the Dance Committee’s pre-approved playlist blasted through
the speakers. But there wasn’t much Fatty could do, since they were all around twenty-five and confirmed dirtbags. That was obvious when the lead
guitarist whispered something in Emily Asher’s ear that actually left her speechless for the first time in her life.
I went to find Link, who was hanging out in the hallway by the lockers. The hallway was dark, except for one blinking fluorescent panel on the
ceiling, which made it a good place to hide from Savannah. I figured I’d tell him how great he was onstage, because there was nothing you could
say to Link that would make him happier than that. But I didn’t get to tell him.
He was wiping the sweat off his face when I saw her turn the corner.
Ridley.
So much for Link being happy.
I ducked into the doorway of the bio lab before they saw me. Maybe Ridley was going to tell him where she’d been all this time. She would
definitely lie to Lena and me when we asked her.
“Hey there, Hot Rod.” She was sucking on a cherry lollipop, wearing lots of black and showing lots of skin. Something was off, but I couldn’t put
my finger on it.
“Where the hell have you been?” Link threw his sweaty shirt onto the floor.
“Around.”
“Everyone’s been worried about you. Even after the stunt you pulled.” Everyone meaning him.
Ridley laughed. “Yeah, I bet.”
“So, where—” For a second, he didn’t say anything. “Why are you wearin’ sunglasses, Rid?”
I pushed myself flatter against the wall and looked around the corner. Ridley was wearing black sunglasses, the kind she used to wear all the
time.
“Take them off.” He was almost shouting. If the music wasn’t so loud, someone would’ve heard him.
Ridley leaned up against the locker next to Link. “Don’t be mad, Shrinky Dink. I was never cut out to be a Mortal. We both knew that.”
Link pulled her sunglasses off, and I could see her yellow eyes from where I was standing. The eyes of a Dark Caster.
“What did you do?” Link sounded defeated.
She shrugged. “You know, I begged forgiveness and all that. I think everyone knew I’d been punished enough. Being a Mortal was torture.”
Link was staring at the linoleum. I knew that look. It was the same one he had whenever his mom started on one of her tirades, threatening moral
damnation if he didn’t bring his grades up or stop reading books she was trying to ban. It was the look that said: Nothing I do is going to make any
difference.
“Who’s ‘everyone,’ Rid? Sarafine? Abraham?” He was shaking his head. “Did you go to them after everything they did to you? After they tried to
kill us? The way you let John Breed outta the Arclight after what he did to me?”
She stepped in front of him, resting her hands on his chest. “I had to let him out. He gave me power.” Her voice was rising, the sarcastic tone
gone. “Don’t you understand? It was the only way I could feel like myself again.”
Link grabbed her wrists and pushed her away. “I’m glad you feel like yourself. Guess I never really knew who you were. I’m the idiot.” He started
walking back toward the double doors that led into the gym.
“I did it for us!” Ridley actually looked hurt. “If you can’t see that, then you really are an idiot.”
Link turned around. “For us? Why would you do this to yourself for us?”
“Don’t you get it? We can be together now. We’re the same. I’m not some stupid Mortal girl you’ll get sick of in six months.”
“You think I cared about that?”
She laughed. “You would’ve, trust me. I was nothing.”
“You were something to me.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if the answer to this mess was written on the worn squares.
Ridley closed the distance between them. “Come with me. Tonight. I can’t stay here, but I came back for you.”
As I watched her, I saw Sarafine—the one from the visions. The one who was trying to fight her nature, the Darkness taking hold within her.
Maybe Lena’s family was wrong.
Maybe there was still Light in the Dark.
Link leaned his head against hers, their foreheads touching for a second. “I can’t. Not after what they did to my friends, and to you. I can’t be one
of them, Rid. I’m not like you—and I don’t want to be.”
She was stunned. You could see it in her eyes, even if they were yellow.
“Rid?”
“Take a good look, Hot Rod. This is the last time you’re ever gonna see me.” She was walking backward, still looking at him.
Then she turned and ran.
A cherry lollipop rolled across the floor.
Link’s voice was so quiet I barely heard him as his hand closed around it.
“Bad or not, you’ll always be my girl.”
After seeing Ridley, Link didn’t care about being a rock god. He was in bad shape, and he wasn’t the only one. Lena had barely said a word since I
told her about Ridley. The dance was over for us.
The parking lot was deserted. No one left a Jackson dance this early. The hearse was parked at the far end of the lot, under the broken
streetlight. Link was behind us, and Liv and John were walking in front, holding hands. I listened to our shoes against the asphalt as we walked.
That’s how I knew John had stopped walking.
“No. Not now,” he whispered.
I followed his eyes, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see anything. “What is it?”
“What’s up, man?” Link stepped up next to me, his eyes focused on the hearse. I knew he could see in the dark, like John. “Please tell me that
isn’t who I think it is.”
John didn’t move. “It’s Hunting and his Blood Pack.”
Liv tried to find them in the darkness, but it was impossible until Hunting stepped into the pale glow of another streetlight.
She pushed John. “Go! Get back in the Tunnels.” Liv wanted him to rip, dematerialize before Hunting had the chance to do the same.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave you. I won’t.”
“You can rip us out of here.” Liv reached for his hand.
“I can’t take all of you at once.”
“Then go!”
It didn’t matter what Liv said. There was no time.
Hunting leaned against the streetlight, a cigarette burning between his fingers. Two more Incubuses stepped into view. “So, this is where you’ve
been hiding out. High school. I never would’ve guessed. You never were that smart.”
John pushed Liv behind him. “How did you find me?”
Hunting laughed. “We can always find you, kid. You’ve got your own personal LoJack. Which makes me wonder how you managed to hide out
this long. Wherever you were, you should’ve stayed there.”
Hunting started walking toward us, his lackeys right behind him.
Lena squeezed my hand.
Oh my God. He was safe in the Tunnels. This is all my fault.
It’s Abraham’s fault.
John stood his ground. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Hunting.”
Hunting flicked his cigarette into the darkness. “It’s almost a shame I have to take you back. You’ve got a lot more fight in you when Abraham isn’t
messing with your head. Does it feel any different to think for yourself?”
I flashed on John wandering like a zombie through the cave at the Great Barrier. He swore he didn’t remember what happened that night. Was it
possible Abraham was controlling him then?
John froze. “What are you talking about?”
“Guess you haven’t been doing much thinking after all. Oh, well. You won’t miss it, then.” Hunting lowered his voice. “You know what I won’t miss?
Watching you twitch all the time, like someone’s poking you with a cattle prod.”
John’s hands started to shake. “Shut up!”
I remembered the way John’s body used to jerk all the time. The way his muscles had seemed to seize involuntarily—the way it had gotten worse
when he was with Abraham the night of Lena’s Seventeenth Moon. I hadn’t seen it happen once since we found him in Ridley’s room.
Hunting laughed. “Come over here and make me. Or we can skip the part where I beat some sense into you before I take you back.”
Link stepped up next to John. “So, tell me how it works. Is this like a regular fight, or do I need to use some kinda Jedi mind tricks I don’t know
about?”
I was stunned. Link was clearly trying to even the odds. John looked as surprised as the rest of us. “I got this one. But thanks.”
“What are you—” Link never had a chance to finish.
John threw his hands out in front of him, the way Lena did when she was using her powers to tear up the ground or bring on torrential rain.
Or hurricane-force winds.
John was using Lena’s powers—the ones he absorbed the last time he touched her.
The wind picked up so fast that it knocked Hunting off his feet. The other two Incubuses were thrown backward, skidding across the parking lot at
a speed that would result in serious asphalt burn. But Hunting ripped before the full force of the wind caught him.
He started to materialize a few feet away, but the wind pulled him back again.
“He’s still coming!” Liv screamed. She was right.
Lena pushed past me.
I have to help John. He can’t do it alone.
She threw her own hands forward, her palms facing Hunting. Lena’s powers were stronger than ever. And as unpredictable.
Rain poured from the sky as the clouds broke open.
No! Not now!
The rain hammered down on us—and the wind, which was dying down fast.
Hunting was dry, the rain running off his jacket in rivulets. “Nice trick, kid. It’s a shame Sarafine’s daughter destroyed the Order. If her powers
weren’t so screwed up, you might’ve been able to save your ass.”
I heard a dog barking and caught a glimpse of Boo Radley running around the side of one of the cars.
Macon was behind him, rain running down his face. “As luck would have it, mine seem to be developing in quite an interesting manner.”
Hunting was as shocked to see Macon as the rest of us, but he did a good job hiding it. He lit another cigarette, despite the rain. “You mean after
I killed you? It’ll be a pleasure to do it again.”
The members of Hunting’s pack had picked themselves up and crossed the parking lot the old-fashioned way. Now they were standing behind
Hunting.
Macon closed his eyes.
Everything went quiet and still. Too still. The way it feels right before something horrible is going to happen. I wasn’t the only one who sensed it.
Hunting vanished, ripping through the shiny black sky—
As he materialized, inches from Macon, a pulsating green light enveloped us. The light hummed with power.
It was coming from Macon.
Hunting froze in the eerie green glow, his hand outstretched, canines bared.
“What is that?” Link was shielding his eyes.
“It’s light,” Liv said, transfixed.
“How can he create light?” I asked.
Liv shook her head. “I have no idea.”
The light grew brighter, and Hunting dropped to the ground, thrashing on the glowing concrete. An agonizing sound tore through him, like his
vocal cords were shredding. The other two Incubuses were writhing on the ground, too, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Hunting.
The color started to leach out of him, beginning at the top of his head and moving down over his face. It was like watching a sheet being pulled off
someone, slowly. But this sheet was a black mist, and as it moved down, his neck—and his hair, his skin, his empty black eyes—became almost
translucent. It was happening to other members of his Blood Pack, too.
“What’s happening to them?” I don’t know if I was expecting an answer, but it was John who had one.
“They’re losing their power. Their Darkness.” I could tell from the panicked look on John’s face that he’d never seen this firsthand. “That’s what
happens to Incubuses when they’re exposed to daylight.” I looked at John. It wasn’t affecting him.
“He’s really creating light,” Liv whispered.
John said something else, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I was staring at the other two Incubuses, who were translucent now. The Darkness had
seeped out of them much faster. I watched as their bodies stiffened, like statues, their eyes fixed and lifeless. But that wasn’t the most disturbing
part.
The black mist—the Dark power that had drained out of their bodies—was seeping into the ground.
“Where is it going?” Lena asked.
“The Underground.” John took a step back, as if he didn’t want to get too close to what he could’ve been. “Energy can’t be destroyed. It just
changes form.”
I froze. The words replayed themselves in my mind.
It just changes form.
I thought about Twyla and the Greats and Aunt Prue. My mom and Macon.
I remembered the green glow of the Arclight.
The same light that was washing over us now. Had something happened to Macon within its walls? Had my mother changed him somehow?
Remade the man she had loved and lost?
“What will it become?” Liv sounded frightened. John was actually telling her something she didn’t know.
The color had drained from Hunting’s body, all the way down to his hands. Macon hadn’t moved, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, like he was in the
middle of a terrible nightmare.
John didn’t answer for a second. When finally he did, I wished he hadn’t. “Vexes.”
“Macon would never want to do that.” Liv was as shocked as I was.
John took her hand. “I know. But he doesn’t get to decide the way the universe operates, Liv. None of us do.”
“Oh my God.” Lena was pointing at the two Incubuses, now completely void of color. The air around them seemed to shift, but then I realized what
was really happening. They were disintegrating. But they didn’t turn to ash, the way zombies and vampires in the movies do. The tiny pieces of them
vanished, as if they had never been at all.
I heard Macon inhale sharply. This was draining him, too. I watched him fight to hold on long enough to finish off Hunting, but the light began to
dim, until the black night swallowed up the parking lot again.
Hunting’s body dropped to the ground. He was moaning, dragging himself across the asphalt. His face and torso were still rigid and completely
translucent.
Macon dropped to his knees, and Lena knelt down next to him. “How did you do that?”
Macon didn’t reply right away. When his breath sounded regular again, he answered. “I’m not entirely sure myself. But it seems I can channel my
Light energy. Create light, for lack of a better explanation.”
John wandered over, shaking his head. “And I thought I was different. You give new meaning to Light Caster, Mr. Ravenwood.”
Macon looked at John, the hybrid who could stand in the sunlight. “In Light there is Darkness, and in Darkness there is Light.”
I heard the rip as Hunting disappeared, his body marked by the Light.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 35

Slush Ball
When Link pulled up in front of my house, Savannah was already in the front seat of the Beater. He got out and met me at the curb, like he had
something to tell me. He was wearing a tacky ruffled tux shirt that made him look like he was in a mariachi band, and tux pants with his high-top
Vans.
“Nice threads.”
“Thought Savannah would hate it. Thought she wouldn’t get in the car. I swear, I tried everything.” Normally, he would’ve been gloating. Tonight, he
sounded miserable.
Rid’s really gotten to him, L.
Just get him up here to the house. I have a plan.
“I thought you were meeting Savannah at the dance. Isn’t she supposed to be there with Emily and the rest of the Dance Committee?” I lowered
my voice, but I didn’t have to. I could hear a Holy Rollers demo track blasting from the stereo, as if Link had been trying to drown Savannah out.
“I tried that. She wanted to take pictures.” He shuddered. “Her mom and my mom. It was a nightmare.” He broke into his standard impression of
his mother. “Smile! Wesley, your hair is stickin’ up. Stand up straight. Take the picture!”
I could only imagine. Mrs. Lincoln was fierce with a camera, and there was no way she was going to watch her son take Savannah Snow to the
winter formal without documenting it for future generations. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Snow were too much to take when you put them together in the
same room. Especially when the room was Link’s living room, where there wasn’t a place to sit or look or even lean your hand against that wasn’t
shrink-wrapped in plastic.
“Bet you five bucks Savannah doesn’t set foot in Ravenwood.”
Link finally cracked a smile. “That’s what I’m hopin’.”
From the backseat of the Beater, Savannah looked like she was sitting in a big puddle of pink whipped cream. She tried to talk to me a few times,
but it was impossible to hear anything over the music. When we turned at the fork in the road that led to Ravenwood, she started to squirm.
Link turned off the radio. “You sure you’re okay with this, Savannah? You know folks say Ravenwood’s been haunted ever since the War.” He
said it like he was telling a ghost story.
Savannah lifted her chin. “I’m not afraid. People say lots a things. Doesn’t mean they’re true.”
“Yeah?”
“You should hear what they say about you and your friends.” She turned back to look at me. “No offense.”
Link blasted the radio, trying to drown her out, as Ravenwood’s gates creaked open. “This church picnic ain’t no picnic. / You’re my fried
chicken. / Holy finger-lickin’…”
Savannah yelled at him over the music. “Are you callin’ me a piece a fried chicken?”
“Nah. Not you, Slush Queen. Never.” He closed his eyes and pounded out the drums on the dashboard of the Beater. As I got out of the car, I felt
sorrier for Link than ever.
Link started to open his door, but Savannah didn’t move. The idea of setting foot inside Ravenwood must not have sounded so good after all.
The door opened before I knocked. I saw a swirl of fabric—green, with a gold shine to it, so it looked like both colors at the same time. Lena
pulled the door wide, and the fabric floated off her shoulders, hanging down toward her waist almost like bits of wing.
Do you remember?
I remember. You look beautiful.
I did remember. Lena was the butterfly tonight, like the moon on the night of her Seventeenth Moon. What had looked like magic then still looked
like magic now.
Her eyes sparkled.
One green, one gold. One Who Was Two.
A chill swept over me, out of place on the warm December night. Lena didn’t notice, and I forced myself to ignore it. “You look—wow.”
She twirled around, smiling. “You like it? I wanted to do something different. Come out of my cocoon a little.”
You were never in a cocoon, L.
Her smile widened, and I said it again out loud. “You look… like you. Perfect.”
She pushed a curl back to show me her earlobe—a tiny gold butterfly, with one gold wing and one green. “Uncle Macon had them made. And
this.” She pointed to a tiny butterfly that rested in the hollow of her neck, attached to a delicate gold chain.
I wished she was wearing her charm necklace, too. The only times I’d ever seen her without it didn’t end well. And I never wanted anything about
Lena to change.
She smiled.
I know. I’ll put it on my charm necklace after tonight.
I leaned in and kissed her. Then I held up the small white box I was holding. Amma had made her a corsage by hand, like she did last year.
Lena opened the box. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe there’s a flower still blooming anywhere near here.” But there it was, a single golden blossom,
nestled between looping green leaves. If you looked at them right, they were their own version of wings, almost as if Amma had known.
Maybe there were still some things she could see coming.
I slid the corsage onto Lena’s wrist, but it snagged. As I tugged on it, I noticed she was wearing the thin silver bracelet from Sarafine’s box. But I
didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to ruin the night before it even started.
Link honked the horn and cranked up the music even louder.
“We’d better go. Link’s crashing and burning out there. At least, he wishes he was crashing and burning.”
Lena took a deep breath. “Wait.” She put her hand on my arm. “There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t be mad.” There was no guy in the world who didn’t know what those words meant. She was about to give me a reason to be mad.
“I won’t.” My stomach curled into a ball.
“You have to promise.” Even worse.
“I promise.” My stomach tightened, and the ball became a knot.
“I told them they could come.” She said it quickly, as if I would be less likely to hear her.
“You told who what?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. There were so many wrong answers to that question.
Lena pushed open the doors to Macon’s old study. Through the crack, I could see John and Liv standing together in front of the fireplace. “They’re
together all the time now.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was pretty sure something was going on. Then Reece saw them repairing Macon’s
broken grandfather clock, and she saw their faces.”
A clock. Like a selenometer, or a motorcycle. Things that worked the way Liv’s mind did. I shook it off. Not John Breed, not with Liv.
“Fixing a clock?” I looked at Lena. “That’s the big giveaway?”
“I told you, Reece saw them. And look at them. You don’t have to be a Sybil to figure it out.”
Liv was wearing an old-looking dress, like something she probably found in Marian’s attic. It was low across her shoulders and hung in some
complicated lacy way that only the worn leather scorpion belt interrupted. She looked like someone out of a movie you would watch in your English
class after you’d read the book. Her blond hair was loose, instead of in braids. She looked different. She looked… happy. I didn’t want to think
about it.
L? What’s going on?
Watch.
John was standing behind her, wearing what was probably one of Macon’s suits. He looked like Macon used to—dark and dangerous. He was
pinning a corsage to a lacy strap on Liv’s shoulder. She was teasing him, and I recognized the tone.
And Lena was right. Anyone who saw them together could tell something was going on.
Liv caught his hand as he fumbled. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t actually draw blood.”
He tried again. “Then hold still.”
“I am. It’s the pin that’s not.” His hand was shaking.
I cleared my throat, and they looked up. Liv turned even pinker when she saw me. John stood taller.
“Hello there.” Liv was still blushing.
“Hi.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.
“This is awkward.” John smiled as if we were friends. I turned to Lena without answering, because we weren’t.
“Even if this wasn’t the weirdest idea you’ve ever come up with—and I’m not saying it isn’t—how do you think we’re going to pull this off? Neither
one of them goes to Jackson.”
Lena held up two more tickets to the Slush Ball. “You bought two, I bought two.” She gestured to John. “Meet my date.”
Excuse me?
She looked at Liv. “And yours.”
Why are you doing this?
“We can bring whoever we want as our dates. It’s just until we get inside.”
Are you crazy, L?
No. It’s a favor for a friend.
I looked at John and Liv.
Which one is suddenly your friend?
She reached up to put her hands on my shoulders, and kissed my cheek. “You.”
“I don’t understand.”
We’re moving forward. Let things be as they are.
I looked at John and Liv.
This is your idea of moving forward?
Lena nodded.
“Hello? If you two want to actually talk out loud, we can wait in the other room.” John was watching us impatiently.
“Sorry. We’re good now.” Lena gave me a meaningful look. “Right?”
Maybe we were, but I knew someone who wouldn’t be. “Do you have any idea what Link is gonna say about this? He’s waiting in the car with
Savannah right now.”
Lena nodded at John, and I heard the ripping noise again, coming from outside. The music blasting from the Beater suddenly stopped. “Link’s
already at the dance. So I guess we go, right?” John grabbed Liv’s hand.
“You ripped Link?” I felt my shoulders stiffen. “You weren’t even touching him.”
John shrugged. “I told you, I’m not really a rules kinda guy. I can do a lot of things. Most of the time, I don’t even know how.”
“That makes me feel a lot better.”
“Relax. It was your girlfriend’s idea.”
“What’s Savannah gonna think?” I could imagine her telling this story to her mom.
“She won’t remember a thing.” Lena grabbed my hand. “Come on. We can take the hearse.” Lena picked up her keys.
I shook my head. “Going to the dance alone with Savannah is the last thing Link wanted.”
“Trust me.” Two more words no guy wants to hear from his girlfriend.
What are you up to? Help me out here.
“The band had to be there early.” She dragged me after her.
“The band? You mean the Holy Rollers?” Now I was really confused. Principal Harper wouldn’t let the Holy Rollers play at a dance any more than
—actually, there was no comparison. It would never happen.
Lena’s hair curled in the nonexistent breeze, and she tossed me the keys.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Chapter 34

Cards of Providence
When I got home, it was way past midnight. Everyone in my house was asleep—except one person. Amma’s light was on, her room glowing
between the two haint blue shutters. I wondered if she knew I was gone, and where I’d been. I almost hoped she did. It would make what I was about
to do a hundred times easier.
Amma wasn’t the kind of person you confronted. She was a confrontation all on her own. She lived by her rules, her law—the things she believed,
which to her were as sure as the sun rising. She was also the only mother I had left. And, most days, the only parent. The idea of fighting with her
made me feel hollow and sick inside.
But not as hollow as it made me feel to know I was only half of myself. Half the person I’d always been. Amma knew, and she had never said a
word.
And the words she did say were lies.
I knocked on her bedroom door before I had time to change my mind. She opened it right away, as if she’d been waiting for me. She was wearing
her white robe with the pink roses on it, the one I gave her on her birthday last year.
Amma didn’t look at me. She looked past me, as if she could see something more than the wall behind me. Maybe she could. Maybe there were
pieces of me scattered all over the place, like a broken bottle.
“Been waitin’ on you.” Her voice sounded small and tired, and she stepped out of the doorway so I could come in.
Amma’s room still looked ransacked, but one thing was different. There were cards spread out on the little round table under the window. I
walked over to the table and picked one up. The Bleeding Blade. They weren’t tarot cards. “Reading cards again? What are they saying tonight,
Amma?”
She crossed the room and started pushing the cards into a stack. “Don’t have much to say. Think I’ve seen all there is to see.”
Another card caught my eye. I held it up in front of her. “What about this one? The Fractured Soul. What does this one have to say?”
Her hands were shaking so hard that it took her three tries to grab the card from me. “You think you know somethin’, but a piece a somethin’ is
the same as nothin’. Neither one gets you much a anything.”
“You mean like a piece of my soul? Is that the same as nothing?” I said it to hurt her, to bust up her soul, so she could see how it felt.
“Where did you hear that?” Her voice was shaky. She grabbed the chain around her neck and rubbed the worn gold charm hanging from it.
“From your friend in New Orleans.”
Amma’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed the back of the chair to steady herself. I knew from her reaction that whatever she’d seen tonight, it
wasn’t me raising souls with the bokor. “Are you tellin’ me the truth, Ethan Wate? Did you go to see that devil?”
“I went because you lied to me. I didn’t have a choice.”
But Amma wasn’t listening to me. She was flipping the cards madly, pushing them around under her tiny palms. “Aunt Ivy, show me somethin’. Tell
me what this means.”
“Amma!”
She was muttering to herself, rearranging the cards over and over again. “I can’t see anything. Has to be a way. There’s always a way. Just have
to keep lookin’.”
I grabbed her shoulders, gently. “Amma. Put the cards down. Talk to me.”
She held up a card. On the front was a picture of a sparrow with a broken wing. “The Forgotten Future. Know what these cards are called? Cards
a Providence, because they tell more than just your future. They tell your fate. Know the difference?” I shook my head. I was afraid to say anything.
She was coming unhinged. “Your future can change.”
I looked into her dark eyes, which were filling with tears. “Maybe you can change fate, too.”
The tears started falling, and she was shaking her head back and forth hysterically. “The Wheel a Fate crushes us all.”
I couldn’t stand to hear it again. Amma wasn’t just going dark. She was going crazy, and I was watching it happen.
She pulled away, gathered up her robe, and dropped to her knees. Her eyes were shut tight, but her chin was turned up to her blue ceiling. “Uncle
Abner, Aunt Ivy, Grandmamma Sulla, I’m in need a your intercession. Forgive me a my trespasses, as the Good Lord forgives us all.” I watched as
she waited, mumbling the words over and over. It was a good hour before she gave up, exhausted and defeated.
The Greats never came.
When I was little, my mother used to say that everything you needed to know about the South could be found in either Savannah or New Orleans.
Apparently, the same was true about my life.
Lena didn’t agree. The next morning, we were arguing about it in the back of history class. And I wasn’t winning. “A Fractured Soul isn’t two
things, L. It’s one thing split in half.”
When I said “two souls,” all Lena heard was “two” and assumed I was offering myself up as the One Who Is Two. “It could be any of us. I’m the
One Who Is Two, if anyone is. Take a look at my eyes!” I could feel her rising panic.
“I’m not saying I’m the One Who Is Two, L. I’m just a Mortal. If it took a Caster to break the Order, it’s going to take more than a Mortal to restore
it, don’t you think?” She didn’t look convinced, but deep down she had to know I was right.
For better or worse, that’s all I was—a Mortal. It was the source of the whole problem between us. The reason we could barely touch, and couldn’t
really be together. How could I save the Caster world, when I could barely live in it?
Lena lowered her voice. “Link. He’s two things, an Incubus and a Mortal.”
“Shh.” I glanced at Link, but he was oblivious, trying to carve LINK UB US into his desk with a pen. “I’m pretty sure he barely qualifies as either one.”
“John is two things, a Caster and an Incubus.”
“L.”
“Ridley. There could still be a trace of Siren inside her, even as a Mortal. Two.” Now she was reaching. “Amma is a Seer and a Mortal. Two
things.”
“It’s not Amma!” I must have been shouting, because the whole class turned around in their seats. Lena looked hurt.
“It isn’t, Mr. Wate? Because the rest of us thought it was.” Mr. Evans looked like he was ready to get out the little pink pad of detention slips.
“Sorry, sir.”
I ducked down behind my textbook and lowered my voice. “I know it sounds weird, but this is a good thing. Now I know why all that crazy stuff has
been happening, like the weird dreams and seeing the other half of myself all over the place. Now everything makes sense.”
It wasn’t completely true, and Lena wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t say anything else and neither did I. Between the heat and the bugs, Abraham
and the Vexes, John Breed and the Lilum possessing the body of our English teacher, I figured we had enough to worry about.
At least that’s what I told myself.
LE T IT S NOW ! T IME FOR A CHA NGE IN T HE
W E A T HE R! B UY Y OUR T ICK E T S NOW !
The posters were everywhere, as if the fact needed to be advertised. The winter formal was here, and this year the Dance Committee, made up of
Savannah Snow and her fan club, decided to call it the Snow Ball. Savannah insisted it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the heat
wave, which is why everyone was calling it the Slush Ball. And Lena and I were going.
She didn’t want to go, especially after what happened at the winter formal last year. When I gave her the tickets, she looked like she wanted to
set them on fire. “This is a joke, right?”
“It’s not a joke.” I was sitting across from her at the lunch table, stabbing at the ice in my soda with my straw. This wasn’t going to go well.
“Why would you possibly think I want to go to that dance?”
“To dance with me.” I gave her a pathetic look.
“I can dance with you in my bedroom.” She held out her hand. “In fact, come here. I’ll dance with you right now, in the cafeteria.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I’m not going.” Lena was digging in her heels.
“Then I’ll go with someone else,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Like Amma.”
She shook her head. “Why do you want to go so badly? And don’t say to dance with me.”
“It could be our last chance.” It would be a relief to worry about something as harmless as a disaster at the dance, instead of the destruction of the
world. I was almost disappointed Ridley wasn’t around to ruin it with style.
So in the end Lena had caved, even though she was still mad about the whole thing. I didn’t care. I was making her go. With everything going on, I
didn’t know if there would ever be another dance at Jackson.
We were sitting on the hot metal bleachers by the field, eating lunch on what should have been a cold December day. Lena and I didn’t want to run
into Mrs. English, and Link didn’t want to run into Savannah, so the bleachers had become our hideout.
“You’re still driving tomorrow, right?” I threw the crust of my sandwich at Link. Tomorrow night was the Snow Ball, and between Link and Lena,
there was only a fifty-fifty chance we’d get there at all.
“Sure. Just tryin’ to decide whether to wear my hair up or down. Can’t wait till you see my smokin’ new dress.” Link threw the crust back at me.
“Wait until you see mine.” Lena took a rubber band off her wrist, pulling her hair into a ponytail. “I think I’m wearing a raincoat and boots and
bringing an umbrella, in case anyone takes the whole Slush Ball thing literally.” She didn’t try to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
It had been like this ever since I convinced them to go. “You guys don’t have to come with me. But this may be the last dance in Gatlin—maybe
anywhere. And I’m going.”
“Stop saying that. It won’t be the last dance.” Lena was frustrated.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist.” Link punched my shoulder, a little too hard. “It’ll be awesome. Lena’s gonna fix everything.”
“I am?” Lena smiled a little. “Maybe John bit you harder than we thought.”
“Sure. Don’t you have some kinda Don’t-Let-This-Dance-Suck Cast?” Link had been depressed since Ridley took off. “Oh, wait. You don’t.
’Cause it’s gonna suck no matter what kinda Cast you’ve got.”
“Why don’t you try a Stay-Home-and-Shut-Your-Trap Cast? Since you’re the one taking Savannah Snow to the dance.” I wadded up my sandwich
wrapper.
“She asked me.”
“She asked you to her party after the game, and look how well that turned out.”
Don’t bring it up, Ethan.
Well, it’s true.
Lena raised her eyebrow.
You’ll only make him feel worse.
Trust me, Savannah’s got that down.
Link sighed. “Where do you think she is right now?”
“Who?” I said, though we both knew exactly who he was talking about.
He ignored me. “Probably makin’ trouble somewhere.”
Lena folded her lunch bag into tinier and tinier squares. “Definitely making trouble somewhere.”
The bell rang.
“It’s probably better this way.” Link stood up.
“It’s definitely better this way,” I agreed.
“Coulda been worse, I guess. It wasn’t like I was that hung up on her. Like I was in love with her or somethin’.” I wasn’t sure who he was trying to
convince, but he jammed his hands into his pockets and took off across the field before I could say anything.
“Yeah. That really would have sucked.” I squeezed Lena’s hand, letting it drop before I got light-headed.
“I feel so bad for him.” She stopped walking and slipped her hands around my waist. I pulled her close, and she rested her head against my
chest. “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
I smiled. “I know you’d go to a stupid dance for me.”
“I would. And I am.”
I kissed her forehead, letting my lips stay on her skin as long as I could.
She looked up at me. “Maybe we can make tomorrow really fun. Help Link forget about my cousin for a little while.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I have an idea. Something to fix a broken Linkubus heart.”
The tip of her ponytail began to curl, and I walked across the field wishing there was a Cast for that.

Categories: Beautiful Chaos