Beautiful Creatures

Ethan, say something. Change the subject.

  Too late. She’s going to break into the “Star Spangled Banner” any second now.

  Marian split a biscuit and filled it with ham. “Miss Statham is right. The Civil War turned this country against itself, oftentimes brother against brother. It was a tragic chapter in American history. Over half a million men died, although more of them died from sickness than battle.”

  “A tragic chapter, that’s what it was.” Aunt Prue nodded.

  “Now don’t get all worked up, Prudence Jane.” Aunt Grace patted her sister’s arm.

  Aunt Prue swatted her hand away. “Don’t tell me when I’m worked up. I’m just tryin’ ta make sure they know the pig’s head from its tail. I’m the only one doin’ any teachin’. That school should be payin’ me.”

  I should have warned you not to get them started.

  Now you tell me.

  Lena shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect. I’ve just never known anyone who was so knowledgeable about the War.”

  Nice one. If by knowledgeable you mean obsessed.

  “Now don’t you feel bad, sweetheart. Prudence Jane just gets her britches in a twist every now and again.” Aunt Grace elbowed Aunt Prue.

  That’s why we put whiskey in her tea.

  “It’s all that peanut brittle Carlton brought by.” Aunt Prue looked at Lena apologetically. “I have a hard time with too much sugar.”

  A hard time staying away from it.

  My dad coughed and absentmindedly pushed his mashed potatoes around his plate. Lena saw an opportunity to change the subject. “So Ethan says you’re a writer, Mr. Wate. What kind of books do you write?”

  My dad looked up at her, but didn’t say anything. He probably didn’t even realize Lena was talking to him.

  “Mitchell’s workin’ on a new book. It’s a big one. Maybe the most important one he’s ever written. And Mitchell’s written a mess a books. How many is it now, Mitchell?” Amma asked, like she was talking to a child. She knew how many books my dad had published.

  “Thirteen,” he mumbled.

  Lena wasn’t discouraged by my dad’s frightening social skills, even though I was. I looked at him, hair uncombed, black circles under his eyes. When had it gotten this bad?

  Lena pressed on. “What’s your book about?”

  My dad came back to life, animated for the first time this evening. “It’s a love story. It’s really been a journey, this book. The great American novel. Some might say The Sound and the Fury of my career, but I can’t really talk about the plot. Not really. Not at this point. Not when I’m so close… to…” He was rambling. Then he just stopped talking, like someone had flipped a switch in his back. He stared at my mom’s empty chair as he drifted away.

  Amma looked anxious. Aunt Caroline tried to distract everyone from what was quickly becoming the most embarrassing night of my life. “Lena, where did you say you moved here from?”

  But I couldn’t hear her answer. I couldn’t hear anything. Instead, all I could see was everything moving in slow motion. Blurring, expanding and contracting, like the way heat waves look as they move through the air.

  Then—

  The room was frozen, except it wasn’t. I was frozen. My father was frozen. His eyes were narrow, his lips rounded to form sounds that hadn’t had a chance to escape his lips. Still staring at the plateful of mashed potatoes, untouched. The Sisters, Aunt Caroline, and Marian were like statues. Even the air was perfectly still. The pendulum of the grandfather clock had stopped in mid-swing.

  Ethan? Are you all right?

  I tried to answer her, but I couldn’t. When Ridley had me in her death grip, I had been sure I was going to freeze to death. Now I was frozen, except I wasn’t cold and I wasn’t dead.

  “Did I do this?” Lena asked aloud.

  Only Amma could answer. “Cast a Time Bind? You? About as likely as this turkey hatchin’ a gator.” She snorted. “No, you didn’t do this, child. This is bigger than you. The Greats figured it was time we had ourselves a talk, woman to woman. Nobody can hear us now.”

  Except me. I can hear you.

  But the words didn’t come out. I could hear them talking, but I couldn’t make a sound.

  Amma looked up at the ceiling, “Thank you, Aunt Delilah. ’Preciate the help.” She walked over to the buffet and cut a piece of pumpkin pie. She put it on a fancy china plate and laid the plate in the center of the table. “Now I’m gonna leave this piece for you and the Greats, and you be sure to remember I did.”

  “What’s going on? What did you do to them?”

  “Didn’t do anything to them. Just bought us some time, I reckon.”

  “Are you a Caster?”

  “No, I’m just a Seer. I see what needs to be seen, what no one else can see, or wants to.”

  “Did you stop time?” Casters could do that, stop time. Lena had told me. But only incredibly powerful ones.

  “I didn’t do a thing. I only asked the Greats for some assistance and Aunt Delilah obliged.”

  Lena looked confused, or frightened. “Who are the Greats?”

  “The Greats are my family from the Otherworld. They give me some help every now and again, and they’re not alone. They’ve got others with them.” Amma leaned across the table, looking Lena in the eye. “Why aren’t you wearin’ the bracelet?”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t Melchizedek give it to you? I told him you needed to wear it.”

  “He gave it to me, but I took it off.”

  “Now why would you go and do a thing like that?”

  “We figured out it was blocking the visions.”

  “It was blockin’ somethin’ all right. Until you stopped wearin’ it.”

  “What was it blocking?”

  Amma reached out and took Lena’s hand in her own, turning it over to reveal her palm. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this, child. But Melchizedek, your family, they aren’t gonna tell you, not one a them. And you need to be told. You need to be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what?”

  Amma looked at the ceiling, mumbling under her breath. “She’s comin’, child. She’s comin’ for you, and she’s a force to be reckoned with. As Dark as night.”

  “Who? Who’s coming for me?”

  “I wish they’d told you themselves. I didn’t want to be the one. But the Greats, they say somebody has to tell you before it’s too late.”

  “Tell me what? Who’s coming, Amma?”

  Amma pulled a small pouch that was dangling from a leather cord around her neck out of her shirt and clutched it, lowering her voice like she was afraid someone might hear her. “Sarafine. The Dark One.”

  “Who’s Sarafine?”

  Amma hesitated, clutching the pouch even tighter.

  “Your mamma.”

  “I don’t understand. My parents died when I was a child, and my mother’s name was Sara. I’ve seen it on my family tree.”

  “Your daddy died, that’s the truth, but your mamma’s alive as sure as I’m standin’ here. And you know the thing about family trees down South, they’re never quite as right as they claim to be.”

  The color drained from Lena’s face. I strained to reach out and take her hand, but only my finger trembled. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything but watch as she tumbled into a dark place, alone. Just like in the dreams. “And she’s Dark?”

  “She’s the Darkest Caster livin’ today.”

  “Why didn’t my uncle tell me? Or my gramma? They said she was dead. Why would they lie to me?”

  “There’s the truth and then there’s the truth. They aren’t likely the same thing. I reckon they were tryin’ to protect you. They still think they can. But the Greats, they’re not so sure. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, but Melchizedek’s a stubborn one.”

  “Why are you trying to help me? I thought—I thought you didn’t like me.”

  “Doesn’t have anything to do
with likin’ or not likin’. She’s comin’ for you, and you don’t need any distractions.” Amma raised an eyebrow. “And I don’t want anything to happen to my boy. This is bigger than you, bigger than the both a you.”

  “What’s bigger than both of us?”

  “All of it. You and Ethan just aren’t meant to be.”

  Lena looked confused. Amma was talking in riddles again. “What do you mean?”

  Amma jerked around as if someone behind her had tapped her on the shoulder. “What’d you say, Aunt Delilah?” Amma turned to Lena. “We don’t have much time left.”

  The pendulum on the clock began to move almost imperceptibly. The room began to come back to life. My dad’s eyes started to blink slowly, so that it took seconds for his lashes to brush his cheeks.

  “You put that bracelet back on. You need all the help you can get.”

  Time snapped back into place—

  I blinked a few times, glancing around the room. My father was still staring at his potatoes. Aunt Mercy was still wrapping a biscuit in her napkin. I lifted my hands in front of my face, wiggling my fingers. “What the hell was that?”

  “Ethan Wate!” Aunt Grace gasped.

  Amma was splitting her biscuits and filling them with ham. She looked up at me, caught off guard. It was obvious she hadn’t intended for me to hear their little girl talk. She gave me the Look. Meaning, you keep your mouth shut, Ethan Wate.

  “Don’t you use that kinda language at my table. You’re not too old for me to wash your mouth out with a bar a soap. What do you think it is? Ham and biscuits. Turkey and stuffing. Now I been cookin’ all day, I expect you to eat.”

  I looked over at Lena. The smile was gone. She was staring at her plate.

  Lena Beana. Come back to me. I won’t let anything happen to you. You’ll be okay.

  But she was too far away.

  Lena didn’t say a word the whole way home. When we got to Ravenwood, she yanked open the car door, slammed it behind her, and took off toward the house without a word.

  I almost didn’t follow her in. My head was reeling. I couldn’t imagine what Lena was feeling. It was bad enough to lose your mother, but even I couldn’t guess what it would feel like to find out your mother wanted you dead.

  My mother was lost to me, but I wasn’t lost. She had anchored me, to Amma, my father, Link, Gatlin, before she left. I felt her in the streets, my house, the library, even the pantry. Lena had never had that. She was cut loose and coming unmoored, Amma would say, like the poor man’s ferries on the swamp.

  I wanted to be her anchor. But right now, I didn’t think anyone could.

  Lena stalked past Boo, who was sitting on the front veranda not even panting, even though he had dutifully run behind our car the whole way home. He had also sat in my front yard all through dinner. He seemed to like the sweet potatoes and little marshmallows, which I had chucked out the front door when Amma went into the kitchen for more gravy.

  I could hear her shouting from inside the house. I sighed, got out of the car, and sat down on the porch steps next to the dog. My head was already pounding, a sugar low. “Uncle Macon! Uncle Macon! Wake up! The sun’s down, I know you’re not asleep in there!”

  I could hear Lena yelling from inside my head, too.

  The sun’s down, I know you’re not asleep!

  I was waiting for the day Lena was going to spring it on me and tell me the truth about Macon, like she’d told me the truth about herself. Whatever he was, he didn’t seem like an ordinary Caster, if there even was such a thing. The way he slept all day and just appeared and disappeared wherever he felt like it, you didn’t need to be a genius to see where that was going. Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there today.

  Boo stared at me. I reached out my hand to pet him, and he twisted his head away, as if to say, we’re good. Please don’t touch me, boy. When we heard things start to break inside, Boo and I got up and followed the noise. Lena was banging on one of the doors upstairs.

  The house had reverted to what I suspected was Macon’s preferred state, dilapidated antebellum finery. I was secretly relieved not to be standing in a castle. I wished I could stop time and go back three hours. To be honest, I would have been perfectly happy if Lena’s house had transformed into a doublewide trailer, and we were all sitting in front of a bowl of leftover stuffing, like the rest of Gatlin.

  “My mother? My own mother?”

  The door flung open. Macon stood there in the doorway, a disheveled mess. He was in rumpled linen pajamas, only what it really was, I hate to say, was more of a nightdress. His eyes were redder than usual and his skin whiter, his hair tousled. He looked like he had been run over by a Mack truck.

  In his own way, he wasn’t all that different from my dad, a fine mess. Maybe a finer mess. Except the nightdress; my dad wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress.

  “My mother is Sarafine? That thing that tried to kill me on Halloween? How could you keep this from me?”

  Macon shook his head and rubbed his hand over his hair, annoyed. “Amarie.” I would’ve paid anything to see Macon and Amma square off in a fight. My money would be on Amma, all the way.

  Macon stepped across his doorway, pulling the door shut behind him. I caught a glimpse of his bedroom. It looked like something out of Phantom of the Opera, with wrought iron candelabras standing taller than I was and a black four-poster bed draped with gray and black velvet. The windows were draped with the same material, hanging sullenly over the black plantation shutters. Even the walls were upholstered in fraying black and gray fabric that was probably a hundred years old. The room was pitch dark, dark as night. The effect was chilling.

  Darkness, real darkness, was something more than just a lack of light.

  As Macon stepped through the doorway, he emerged into the hall perfectly dressed, not a hair out of place on his head, not a wrinkle in his slacks or crisp white shirt. Even the smooth buckskin shoes were without a scuff. He looked nothing like he had a moment before, and all he’d done was step through his own bedroom door.

  I looked at Lena. She hadn’t even noticed, and I felt cold, remembering for a moment how different her life must have always been than mine. “My mother’s alive?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

  “You mean, the part about how my own mother wants to kill me? When were you going to tell me, Uncle Macon? When I was already Claimed?”

  “Please don’t start this again. You’re not going Dark.” Macon sighed.

  “I can’t imagine how you can think otherwise. Since I am the daughter of, and I quote, ‘the Darkest Caster living today’.”

  “I understand you’re upset. This is a lot to take in, and I should have told you myself. But you have to believe I was trying to protect you.”

  Lena was more than just angry now. “Protect me! You let me believe that Halloween was just some random attack, but it was my mother! My mother is alive, and she was trying to kill me, and you didn’t think I should know about it?”

  “We don’t know that she’s trying to kill you.”

  Picture frames started to bang against the walls. The bulbs in the fixtures lining the hallway shorted out one by one, down the length of the hallway. The sound of rain pelted the shutters.

  “Haven’t we had enough bad weather in the last few weeks?”

  “What else have you been lying about? What am I going to find out next? That my father is alive, too?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He said it like it was a tragedy, something too sad to talk about. It was the same tone people used when they talked about my mother’s death.

  “You have to help me.” Her voice was cracking.

  “I will do everything in my power to help you, Lena. I always have.”

  “That’s not true,” she spat back at him. “You haven’t told me about my powers. You haven’t taught me how to protect myself.”

  “I don’t know the scope of your powers. You’re a Natural. When you need t
o do something, you’ll do it. In your own way, in your own time.”

  “My own mother wants to kill me. I don’t have any time.”

  “As I said before, we don’t know that she’s trying to kill you.”

  “Then how do you explain Halloween?”

  “There are other possibilities. Del and I are trying to work that out.” Macon turned away from her, as if he was going to go back into his room. “You need to calm down. We can talk about this later.”

  Lena turned toward a vase, sitting on the credenza at the end of the hall. As if pulled by a string, the vase followed her eyes to the wall next to Macon’s bedroom door, flying across the room and smashing against the plaster. It was far enough from Macon to be sure it wouldn’t have hit him, but close enough to make a point. It wasn’t an accident.

  It wasn’t one of those times Lena had lost control and things just happened. She had done this on purpose. She was in control.

  Macon spun around so fast I didn’t even see him move, but he was standing in front of Lena. He was as shocked as I was, and he had come to the same realization; it was no accident. And the look on her face told me she was just as surprised. He looked hurt, as hurt as Macon Ravenwood was capable of looking. “As I said, when you need to do something, you’ll do it.”

  Macon turned to me. “It will be even more dangerous, I’m afraid, in the coming weeks. Things have changed. Don’t leave her alone. When she is here, I can protect her, but my mother was right. It seems you can also protect her, perhaps better than I can.”

  “Hello? I can hear you!” Lena had recovered from her display of power and the look on Macon’s face. I knew she’d torture herself over it later, but right now she was too angry to see that. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room.”

  A lightbulb exploded behind him, and he didn’t even flinch.

  “Are you listening to yourself? I need to know! I’m the one being hunted. I’m the one she wants, and I don’t even know why.”

  They stared at each other, a Ravenwood and a Duchannes, two branches of the same twisted Caster tree. I wondered if this would be a good time for me to go.

  Macon looked at me. His face said yes.