Beautiful Creatures (24 page)

“I don’t know.”

“Is that some kind of Caster thing?”

“Not really. Most Casters know their real names, but my family’s different. In my family, we don’t learn our birth names until
we turn sixteen. Until then, we have other names. Ridley’s was Julia. Reece’s was Annabel. Mine is Lena.”

“So who’s Lena Duchannes?”

“I’m a Duchannes, that much I know. But Lena, that’s just a name my gramma started calling me, because she thought I was skinny
as a string bean. Lena Beana.”

I didn’t say anything for a second. I was trying to take it all in. “Okay, so you don’t know your first name. You’ll know
in a couple of months.”

“It’s not that simple. I don’t know anything about myself. That’s why I’m so crazy all the time. I don’t know my name and
I don’t know what happened to my parents.”

“They died in an accident, right?”

“That’s what they told me, but nobody really talks about it. I can’t find any record of the accident, and I’ve never seen
their graves or anything. How do I even know it’s true?”

“Who’s going to lie about something as creepy as that?”

“Have you met my family?”

“Right.”

“And that monster downstairs, that—witch, who almost killed you? Believe it or not, she used to be my best friend. Ridley
and I grew up together living with my gramma. We moved around so much we shared the same suitcase.”

“That’s why you guys don’t have much of an accent. Most people would never believe you had lived in the South.”

“What’s your excuse?”

“Professor parents, and a jar full of quarters every time I dropped a G.” I rolled my eyes. “So Ridley didn’t live with Aunt
Del?”

“No. Aunt Del just visits on the holidays. In my family, you don’t live with your parents. It’s too dangerous.” I stopped
myself from asking my next fifty questions while Lena raced on, as if she’d been waiting to tell this story for about a hundred
years. “Ridley and I were like sisters. We slept in the same room and we were home-schooled together. When we moved to Virginia,
we convinced my gramma to let us to go to a regular school. We wanted to make friends, be normal. The only time we ever spoke
to Mortals was when Gramma took us on one of her outings to museums, the opera, or lunch at Olde Pink House.”

“So what happened when you went to school?”

“It was a disaster. Our clothes were wrong, we didn’t have a TV, we turned in all our homework. We were total losers.”

“But you got to hang out with Mortals.”

She wouldn’t look at me. “I’ve never had a Mortal friend until I met you.”

“Really?”

“I only had Ridley. Things were just as bad for her, but she didn’t care. She was too busy making sure no one bothered me.”

I had a hard time imagining Ridley protecting anyone.

People change, Ethan.

Not that much. Not even Casters.

Especially Casters. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.

She pulled her hand away from me. “Ridley started acting strange, and then the same guys who had ignored her started following
her everywhere, waiting for her after school, fighting over who would walk her home.”

“Yeah, well. Some girls are just like that.”

“Ridley isn’t some girl. I told you, she’s a Siren. She could make people do things, things they wouldn’t normally want to
do. And those boys were jumping off the cliff, one by one.” She twisted her necklace around her fingers and kept talking.
“The night before Ridley’s sixteenth birthday, I followed her to the train station. She was scared out of her mind. She said
she could tell she was going Dark, and she had to get away before she hurt someone she loved. Before she hurt me. I’m the
only person Ridley ever really loved. She disappeared that night, and I never saw her again until today. I think after what
you saw tonight, it’s pretty obvious she went Dark.”

“Wait a second, what are you talking about? What do you mean going Dark?”

Lena took a deep breath and hesitated, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell me the answer.

“You have to tell me, Lena.”

“In my family, when you turn sixteen, you’re Claimed. Your fate is chosen for you, and you become Light, like Aunt Del and
Reece, or you become Dark, like Ridley. Dark or Light, Black or White. There’s no gray in my family. We can’t choose, and
we can’t undo it once we’re Claimed.”

“What do you mean, you can’t choose?”

“We can’t decide if we want to be Light or Dark, good or evil, like Mortals and other Casters can. In my family, there’s no
free will. It’s decided for us, on our sixteenth birthday.”

I tried to understand what she was saying, but it was too crazy. I’d lived with Amma long enough to know there was White and
Black magic, but it was hard to believe that Lena had no choice about which one she was.

Who she was.

She was still talking. “That’s why we can’t live with our parents.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“It didn’t used to be that way. But when my gramma’s sister, Althea, went Dark, their mother couldn’t send Althea away. Back
then, if a Caster went Dark, they were supposed to leave their home and their family, for obvious reasons. Althea’s mother
thought she could help her fight it, but she couldn’t, and terrible things started happening in the town where they lived.”

“What kind of things?”

“Althea was an Evo. They’re incredibly powerful. They can influence people like Ridley can, but they can also Evolve, morph
into other people, into anyone. Once she Turned, unexplained accidents started happening in town. People were injured and
eventually a girl drowned. That’s when Althea’s mother finally sent her away.”

I thought we had problems in Gatlin. I couldn’t imagine a more powerful version of Ridley hanging around, full-time. “So now
none of you can live with your parents?”

“Everyone decided it would be too hard for parents to turn their backs on their children if they went Dark. So ever since
then, children live with other family members until they’re Claimed.”

“Then why does Ryan live with her parents?”

“Ryan is… Ryan. She’s a special case.” She shrugged. “At least, that’s what Uncle Macon says every time I ask.”

It all sounded so surreal, the idea that everyone in her family possessed supernatural powers. They looked like me, like everyone
else in Gatlin, well, maybe not everyone, but they were completely different. Weren’t they? Even Ridley, hanging out in front
of the Stop & Steal—none of the guys had suspected she was anything other than an incredibly hot girl, who was obviously pretty
confused if she was looking for me. How did it work? How did you get to be a Caster instead of just some ordinary kid?

“Were your parents gifted?” I hated to bring up her parents. I knew what it was like to talk about your dead parent, but at
this point I had to know.

“Yes. Everyone in my family is.”

“What were their gifts? Were they anything like yours?”

“I don’t know. Gramma’s never said anything. I told you, it’s like they never existed. Which just makes me think, you know.”

“What?”

“Maybe they were Dark, and I’m going to go Dark, too.”

“You’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“How can I have the same dreams you have? How do I know when I walk into a room whether or not you’ve been there?”

Ethan.

It’s true.

I touched her cheek, and said quietly, “I don’t know how I know. I just do.”

“I know you believe that, but you can’t know. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me.”

“That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.” It was like everything else tonight; I hadn’t meant to say it, at least
not out loud, but I was glad I did.

“What?”

“All that destiny garbage. Nobody can decide what happens to you. Nobody but you.”

“Not if you’re a Duchannes, Ethan. Other Casters, they can choose, but not us, not my family. When we’re Claimed at sixteen,
we become Light or Dark. There is no free will.”

I lifted her chin with my hand. “So you’re a Natural. What’s wrong with that?”

I looked into her eyes, and I knew I was going to kiss her, and I knew there was nothing to worry about, as long as we stayed
together. And I believed, for that one second, we always would.

I stopped thinking about the Jackson basketball playbook and finally let her see how I felt, what was in my mind. What I was
about to do, and how long it had taken me to get up the nerve to do it.

Oh.

Her eyes widened, bigger and greener, if that was even possible.

Ethan—I don’t know
—

I leaned down and kissed her mouth. It tasted salty, like her tears. This time, not warmth, but electricity, shot from my
mouth to my toes. I could feel tingling in my fingertips. It was like shoving a pen into an electrical outlet, which Link
had dared me to do when I was eight years old. She closed her eyes and pulled me in to her, and for a minute, everything was
perfect. She kissed me, her lips smiling beneath mine, and I knew she had been waiting for me, maybe just as long as I had
been waiting for her. But then, as quickly as she had opened herself up to me, she shut me out. Or more accurately, pushed
me back.

Ethan, we can’t do this.

Why? I thought we felt the same way about each other.

Or maybe we didn’t. Maybe she didn’t.

I was staring at her, from the end of her outstretched hands that were still resting on my chest. She could probably feel
how fast my heart was beating.

It’s not that….

She started to turn away, and I was sure she was about to run away like she had the day we found the locket at Greenbrier,
like the night she left me standing on my porch. I put my hand on her wrist, and instantly felt the heat. “Then what is it?”

She stared back at me, and I tried to hear her thoughts, but I had nothing. “I know you think I have a choice about what’s
going to happen to me, but I don’t. And what Ridley did tonight, that was nothing. She could’ve killed you, and maybe she
would have if I hadn’t stopped her.” She took a deep breath, her eyes glistening. “That’s what I could turn into—a monster—whether
you believe it or not.”

I slid my arms back around her neck, ignoring her. But she went on. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”

“I don’t care.” I kissed her cheek.

She climbed off the bed, sliding her arm out of my hand.

“You don’t get it.” She held up her hand. 122. One hundred and twenty-two more days, smeared in blue ink, as if that was all
we had.

“I get it. You’re scared. But we’ll figure something out. We’re supposed to be together.”

“We’re not. You’re a Mortal. You can’t understand. I don’t want to see you get hurt, and that’s what will happen if you get
too close to me.”

“Too late.”

I’d heard every word she had said, but I only knew one thing.

I was all in.

10.09

I
t had made sense when a beautiful girl was saying it. Now that I was back home, alone, and in my own bed, I was finally losing
it. Even Link wouldn’t believe any of this. I tried to think about how the conversation would go—the girl I like, whose real
name I don’t know, is a witch—-excuse me, a Caster, from a whole family of Casters, and in five months she’s going to find
out essentially if she’s good or evil. And she can cause hurricanes indoors and break the glass out of windows. And I can
see into the past when I touch the crazy locket Amma and Macon Ravenwood, who isn’t actually a shut-in at all, want me to
bury. A locket that materialized on the neck of a woman in a painting at Ravenwood, which by the way, is not a haunted mansion,
but a perfectly restored house that changes completely every time I go there, to see a girl who burns me and shocks me and
shatters me with a single touch.

And I kissed her. And she kissed me back.

It was too unbelievable, even for me. I rolled over.