Beautiful Creatures (39 page)

I remembered the dreams, remembered pulling Lena through the mud. I wondered if this was the place where I lost her.

Macon spoke. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing. It was like they were turned inward, to wherever Lena was. “Lena. Listen
to me. She can’t hold you.”

She. I stared into Lena’s empty eyes.

Sarafine.

“You’re strong, Lena; break through. She knows I can’t help you here. She was waiting for you in the shadows. You have to
do this yourself.”

Marian appeared with a glass of water. Macon poured it onto Lena’s face, into her mouth, but she didn’t move.

I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I grabbed her mouth and kissed her, hard. The water dribbled out of our mouths, like I was giving mouth-to-mouth to a drowning
victim.

Wake up, L. You can’t leave me now. Not like this. I need you more than she does.

Lena’s eyelids fluttered.

Ethan. I’m tired.

She sputtered back to life, choking, spitting water across her jacket. I smiled in spite of everything, and she smiled back
at me. If this was what the dreams were about, we had changed the way they ended. This time, I had held on. But in the back
of my mind, I think I knew. This wasn’t the moment when she slipped out of my arms. It was only the beginning.

Even if that was true, I had saved her this time.

I reached down to pull her into my arms. I wanted to feel the familiar current between us. Before I could wrap my arms around
her, she jerked up and out of my arms. “Uncle Macon!”

Macon stood across the room, propped against the crypt wall, barely able to support his own weight. He leaned his head back
against the stone. He was sweating, breathing heavily, and his face was chalk white.

Lena ran and clung to him, a child worried for her father. “You shouldn’t have done that. She could have killed you.” Whatever
he was doing when he was Traveling, whatever that meant, the effort had cost him.

So this was Sarafine. This thing, whoever She was, was Lena’s mother.

If this was a trip to the library, I didn’t know if I was ready for what might happen in the next few months.

Or as of tomorrow morning, 74 days.

Lena sat, still dripping wet, wrapped in a blanket. She looked about five years old. I glanced at the old oaken door behind
her, wondering if I could ever find my way out alone. Unlikely. We’d gone about thirty paces down one of the aisles, and then
disappeared down a stairwell, through a series of small doors, into a cozy study that was apparently some sort of reading
room. The passageway had seemed endless, with a door every few feet like some sort of underground hotel.

The moment Macon sat down, a silver tea service appeared in the center of the table, with exactly five cups and a platter
of sweet breads. Maybe Kitchen was here, too.

I looked around. I had no idea where I was, but I knew one thing. I was somewhere in Gatlin, yet somewhere further away from
Gatlin than I’d ever been.

Either way, I was out of my league.

I tried to find a comfortable spot in an upholstered chair that looked like it could have belonged to Henry VIII. Actually,
there was no way of knowing that it hadn’t. The tapestry on the wall also looked as if had come from an old castle, or Ravenwood.
It was woven into the shape of a constellation, midnight blue and silver thread. Every time I looked at it, the moon appeared
in a different stage.

Macon, Marian, and Amma sat across the table. Saying Lena and I were in trouble was putting the best possible spin on it.
Macon was furious, his teacup rattling in front of him. Amma was beyond that. “What makes you think you can take it upon yourself
to decide when my boy is ready for the Underground? Lila would skin you herself, if she was here. You’ve got some nerve, Marian
Ashcroft.”

Marian’s hands were shaking as she lifted her teacup.

“Your boy? What about my niece? Since I believe she was the one who was attacked.” Macon and Amma, having ripped us to shreds,
were starting in on each other. I didn’t dare look at Lena.

“You’ve been trouble since the day you were born, Macon.” Amma turned to Lena. “But I can’t believe you would drag my boy
into this, Lena Duchannes.”

Lena lost it. “Of course I dragged him into this. I do bad things. When are you going to understand that? And it’s only going
to get worse!”

The tea set flew off the table and into the air, where it froze. Macon looked at it, without so much as blinking. A challenge.
The entire set righted itself and landed gently back on the table. Lena looked at Macon as if there were no one else in the
room. “I’m going to go Dark, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? I’m going to end up just like my—” She couldn’t say it.

The blanket fell from her shoulders, and she took my hand. “You have to get away from me, Ethan. Before it’s too late.”

Macon looked at her, irritated. “You’re not going to go Dark. Don’t be so gullible. She only wants you to think that.” The
way he said
She
reminded me of the way he said
Gatlin
.

Marian put her teacup down on the table. “Teenagers—everything is so apocalyptic.”

Amma shook her head. “Some things are meant to be and some take some doin’. This one isn’t done just yet.”

I could feel Lena’s hand shaking in mine. “They’re right, L. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She yanked her hand away. “Everything’s going to be okay? My mother, a Cataclyst, is trying to kill me. A vision from a hundred
years ago just clarified that my whole family has been cursed since the Civil War. My sixteenth birthday is in two months,
and that’s the best you can do?”

I took her hand again, gently, because she let me. “I saw the same vision you did. The Book chooses who it takes. Maybe it
won’t choose you.” I was clutching at straws, but they were all I had.

Amma looked at Marian, slamming her saucer on the table. The cup rattled against it.

“The Book?” Macon’s eyes drilled down on me.

I tried to look him in the eye, but I couldn’t do it. “The Book in the vision.”

Don’t say another word, Ethan.

We should tell them. We can’t do this alone.

“It’s nothing, Uncle M. We don’t even know what the visions mean.” Lena wasn’t going to give in, but after tonight I felt
like I had to. We had to. Everything was spiraling out of control. I felt like I was drowning and I couldn’t even save myself,
let alone Lena.

“Maybe the visions mean not everyone in your family goes Dark when they’re Claimed. What about Aunt Del? Reece? Think cute
little Ryan is going to the dark side when she can heal people?” I said, moving closer to her.

Lena shrank back into her chair. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

“But he’s not wrong, Lena.” Macon looked at her, exasperated.

“You’re not Ridley. And you’re not your mother,” I said, as convincingly as I could.

“How do you know? You’ve never even met my mother. And by the way, neither have I, except in psychic attacks that no one can
seem to prevent.”

Macon tried to sound reassuring. “We were unprepared for these sorts of attacks. I didn’t know she could Travel. I didn’t
know she shared some of my powers. It is not a gift afforded to Casters.”

“Nobody seems to know anything about my mother, or me.”

“That’s why we need the Book.” This time, I looked right at Macon as I said it.

“What is this book you keep talking about?” Macon was losing his patience.

Don’t tell him, Ethan.

We have to.

“The Book that cursed Genevieve.” Macon and Amma looked at each other. They already knew what I was going to say. “
The Book of Moons
. If that’s how the curse was Cast, something in it should tell us how to break it. Right?” The room fell silent.

Marian looked at Macon. “Macon—”

“Marian. Stay out of this. You’ve interfered more than enough already, and the sun will rise just minutes from now.” Marian
knew. She knew where to find
The Book of Moons
, and Macon wanted to make sure she kept her mouth shut.

“Aunt Marian, where’s the Book?” I looked her in the eye. “You have to help us. My mom would’ve helped us, and you’re not
supposed to take sides, right?” I wasn’t playing fair, but it was true.

Amma raised her hands, then dropped them into her lap. A rare sign of surrender. “What’s done is done. They’ve already started
pullin’ the thread, Melchizedek. That old sweater’s bound to unravel, anyhow.”

“Macon, there are
protocols
. If they ask, I’m Bound to tell them,” Marian said. Then she looked up at me. “
The Book of Moons
isn’t in the
Lunae Libri
.”

“How do you know?”

Macon stood to leave, turning to both of us. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark and angry. When he finally spoke, his voice
echoed over the chamber, over all of us. “Because that’s the book for which this archive was named. It is the most powerful
book from here to the Otherworld. It is also the book that cursed our family, for eternity. And it’s been missing for over
a hundred years.”

12.01

O
n Monday morning, Link and I drove down Route 9, stopping at the fork in the road to pick up Lena. Link liked Lena, but there
was no way he was driving up to Ravenwood Manor. It was still the Haunted Mansion to him.

If he only knew. Thanksgiving break had only been a long weekend, but it felt a lot longer, considering that Twilight Zone
of a Thanksgiving dinner, the vases flying between Macon and Lena, and our journey to the center of the earth, all without
leaving the Gatlin city limits. Unlike Link, who had spent the weekend watching football, beating up his cousins, and trying
to determine whether or not the cheese ball had onions in it this year.

But according to Link, there was trouble of another kind brewing, and this morning it sounded equally dangerous. Link’s mom
had been burning up the lines for the last twenty-four hours, whispering on the phone with the long cord and the kitchen door
closed. Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Asher had shown up after dinner, and the three of them had disappeared into the kitchen—the War
Room. When Link went in, pretending to grab a Mountain Dew, he didn’t catch much. But it was enough to figure out his mom’s
end game. “We’ll get her outta our school, one way or another.” And her little dog, too.

It wasn’t much, but if I knew Mrs. Lincoln, I knew enough to be worried. You could never underestimate the lengths women like
Mrs. Lincoln would go to protect their children and their town from the one thing they hated most—anyone different from them.
I should know. My mom had told me the stories about the first few years she’d lived here. The way she told it, she was such
a criminal even the most God-fearing church ladies got bored of reporting on her; she did the marketing on Sunday, dropped
by any church she liked or none at all, was a feminist (which Mrs. Asher sometimes confused with communist), a Democrat (which
Mrs. Lincoln pointed out practically had “demon” in the word itself), and worst of all, a vegetarian (which ruled out any
dinner invitations from Mrs. Snow). Beyond that, beyond not being a member of the right church or the DAR or the National
Rifle Association, was the fact that my mom was an outsider.