A Natural. I was relieved. It didn’t sound as bad as a Siren. I didn’t think I could have handled that. “What exactly does that mean?”
“I don’t even know. It’s not really one thing. I mean, supposedly a Natural can do a lot more than other Casters.” She said it quickly, almost like she was hoping I wouldn’t hear, but I did.
More than other Casters.
More. I wasn’t sure how I felt about more. Less, I could have handled less. Less would’ve been good.
“But as you saw tonight, I don’t even know what I can do.” She picked at the quilt between us, nervous. I pulled on her hand until she was lying on the bed next to me, propped up on one elbow.
“I don’t care about any of that. I like you just the way you are.”
“Ethan, you barely know anything about me.”
The drowsy warmth was washing through my body, and to be honest, I couldn’t have cared less what she was saying. It felt so good just to be near her, holding her hand, with only the white quilt between us. “That’s not true. I know you write poetry and I know about the raven on your necklace and I know you love orange soda and your grandma and Milk Duds mixed into your popcorn.”
For a second, I thought she might smile. “That’s hardly anything.”
“It’s a start.”
She looked me right in the eye, her green eyes searching my blue ones. “You don’t even know my name.”
“Your name is Lena Duchannes.”
“Okay, well, for starters, it’s not.”
I pushed myself all the way up, and let go of her hand. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s not my name. Ridley wasn’t lying about that.” Some of the conversation from earlier started to come back to me. I remembered Ridley saying something about Lena not knowing her real name, but I didn’t think she had meant literally.
“Well, what is it then?”
“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
The Greats
It 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.
Tearing.
The wind was tearing at my body.
I held on to the tree as it pounded me, the sound of its scream piercing my ears. All around me, the winds swirled, fighting each other, their speed and force multiplying by the second. The hail rained down like Heaven itself had opened up. I had to get out of here.
But there was nowhere to go.
“Let me go, Ethan. Save yourself!”
I couldn’t see her. The wind was too strong, but I could feel her. I was holding her wrist so tightly, I was sure it would break. But I didn’t care, I wouldn’t let go. The wind changed direction, lifting me off the ground. I held the tree tighter, held her wrist tighter. But I could feel the strength of the wind ripping us apart.
Pulling me away from the tree, away from her. I felt her wrist sliding through my fingers.
I couldn’t hold on any longer.
I woke up coughing. I could still feel the windburn on my skin. As if my near-death experience at Ravenwood wasn’t enough, now the dreams were back. It was too much for one night, even for me. My bedroom door was wide open, which was weird, considering I had been locking my door at night lately. The last thing I needed was Amma planting some crazy voodoo charm on me in my sleep. I was sure I’d closed it.
I stared up at my ceiling. Sleep was not in my future. I sighed and felt around under the bed. I flipped on the old storm lamp next to my bed and pulled the bookmark out from where I’d left off in Snow Crash when I heard something. Footsteps? It was coming from the kitchen, faint, but I still heard it. Maybe my dad was taking a break from writing. Maybe this would give us a chance to talk. Maybe.
But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I knew it wasn’t him. The door to his study was shut and light was coming from the crack under the door. It had to be Amma. Just as I ducked under the kitchen doorway, I saw her scampering down the hall toward her room, to the e
xtent that Amma could scamper. I heard the screen door in the back of the house squeak shut. Someone was coming or going. After everything that had happened tonight, it was an important distinction.
I walked around to the front of the house. There was an old, beat-up pickup truck, a fifties Studebaker, idling by the curb. Amma was leaning in the window talking to the driver. She handed the driver her bag and climbed into the truck. Where was she going in the middle of the night?
I had to follow her. And following the woman who may as well have been my mother when she got into a car at night, with a strange man driving a junker, was a hard thing to do if you didn’t have a car. I had no choice. I had to take the Volvo. It was the car my mom had been driving when she had the accident; that was the first thing I thought every time I saw it.
I slid behind the wheel. It smelled of old paper and Windex, just like it always had.
Driving without the headlights on was trickier than I’d thought it would be, but I could tell the pickup was heading toward Wader’s Creek. Amma must have been going home. The truck turned off Route 9, toward the back country. When it finally slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road, I cut the engine and guided the Volvo onto the shoulder.
Amma opened the door and the interior light went on. I squinted in the darkness. I recognized the driver; it was Carlton Eaton, the postmaster. Why would Amma ask Carlton Eaton for a ride in the middle of the night? I’d never even seen them speak to each other before.
Amma said something to Carlton and shut the door. The truck pulled back onto the road without her. I got out of the car and followed her. Amma was a creature of habit. If something had gotten her so worked up that she was creeping out to the swamp in the middle of the night, I could guess it involved more than one of her usual clients.
She disappeared into the brush, along a gravel path someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make. She walked along the path in the dark, the gravel crunching under her feet. I walked in the grass beside the path to avoid that same crunching sound, which would’ve given me away for sure. I told myself it was because I wanted to see why Amma was sneaking home in the middle of the night, but mostly I was scared she would catch me following her.