Beautiful Creatures

Lena looked at me. Hers said no.

  She grabbed me by the hand, and I could feel the heat, burning. She was on fire, as angry as I’d ever seen her. I couldn’t believe every window in the house hadn’t blown out.

  “You know why she’s hunting me, don’t you?”

  “It’s—”

  “Let me guess, complicated?” The two of them stared at each other. Lena’s hair was curling. Macon was twisting his silver ring.

  Boo was backing away on his belly. Smart dog. I wished I could crawl out of the room, too. The last of the bulbs blew, and we were standing in the dark.

  “You have to tell me everything you know about my powers.” Those were her terms.

  Macon sighed, and the darkness began to dissipate. “Lena. It’s not as if I don’t want to tell you. After your little demonstration, it’s clear that I don’t even know what you’re capable of. No one does. I suspect, not even you.” She wasn’t completely convinced, but she was listening. “That’s what it means to be a Natural. It’s part of the gift.”

  She began to relax. The battle was over, and she had won it, for now. “Then what am I going to do?”

  Macon looked distressingly like my father when he came into my room when I was in fifth grade to explain the birds and the bees. “Coming into your powers can be a very confusing time. Perhaps there is a book on the subject. If you like, we can go see Marian.”

  Yeah, right. Choices and Changes. A Modern Girl’s Guide to Casting. My Mom Wants to Kill Me: A Self-Help Book for Teens.

  It was going to be a long few weeks.

  11.28

  Domus Lunae Libri

  Today? But it’s not a holiday.” When I opened the front door, Marian was the last person I had expected to see, standing on my doorstep in her coat. Now I was sitting with Lena on the cold bench seat of Marian’s old turquoise truck, on our way to the Caster Library.

  “A promise is a promise. It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. It may not seem like a holiday, but it is a bank holiday, and that’s all we need.” Marian was right. Amma had probably been in the line at the mall with a handful of coupons since before dawn; it was dark out now, and she still wasn’t back. “The Gatlin County Library is closed, so the Caster Library is open.”

  “Same hours?” I asked Marian, as she turned onto Main.

  She nodded. “Nine to six.” Then, winking, “Nine p.m. to six a.m. Not all my clientele can venture out in the daylight.”

  “That hardly seems fair,” complained Lena. “The Mortals get so much more time, and they don’t even read around here.”

  Marian shrugged. “Like I said, I do get paid by Gatlin County. Take it up with them. But think how much longer you’ll have until your Lunae Libri are due back.”

  I looked blank.

  “Lunae Libri. Roughly translated, Books of the Moon. You might call them Caster Scrolls.”

  I didn’t care what you called them. I couldn’t wait to see what the books in the Caster Library would tell us, or one book in particular. Because we were short on two things: answers and time.

  When we piled out of the truck, I couldn’t believe where we were. Marian’s truck was parked at the curb, not ten feet from the Gatlin Historical Society, or, as my mom and Marian liked to say, the Gatlin Hysterical Society. The Historical Society was also the DAR headquarters. Marian had pulled her truck forward enough to avoid the puddle of light spilling down to the pavement from the lamppost.

  Boo Radley was sitting on the sidewalk, as if he had known.

  “Here? The Lunae whatever is at the DAR headquarters?”

  “Domus Lunae Libri. The House of The Book of Moons. Lunae Libri, for short. And no, just the Gatlin entrance.” I burst out laughing. “You have your mother’s appreciation for irony.” We walked up to the deserted building. We couldn’t have picked a better night.

  “But it’s not a joke. The Historical Society is the oldest building in the County, next to Ravenwood itself. Nothing else survived the Great Burning,” Marian added.

  “But the DAR and the Casters? How could they have anything in common?” Lena was dumbfounded.

  “I expect you’ll find they have quite a bit more in common than you think.” Marian hurried toward the old stone building, drawing out her familiar key ring. “I, for example, am a member of both societies.” I looked at Marian in disbelief. “I’m neutral. I thought I made myself perfectly clear. I’m not like you. You’re like Lila, you get too involved….” I could finish that sentence for myself. And look what happened to her.

  Marian froze, but the words hung in the air. There was nothing she could say or do to take them back. I felt numb, but I didn’t say anything. Lena reached for my hand, and I could feel her pulling me out of myself.

  Ethan. Are you okay?

  Marian looked at her watch again. “It’s five to nine. Technically, I shouldn’t let you in yet. But I need to be downstairs by nine, in case we have any other visitors this evening. Follow me.”

  We made our way into the dark yard behind the building. She fumbled through her keys until she drew out what I had always thought was a keychain, because it didn’t look like a key at all. It was an iron ring, with one hinged side. With an expert hand, Marian twisted the hinge until it snapped back upon itself, turning the circle into a crescent. A Caster moon.

  She pushed the key into what appeared to be an iron grating, in the foundation at the back of the building. She twisted the key, and the grating slid open. Behind the grating was a dark stone staircase leading down into even more darkness, the basement beneath the basement of the DAR. As she snapped the key one more rotation to the left, a row of torches lit themselves along the sides of the wall. Now the stairwell was fully illuminated with flickering light, and I could even see a glimpse of the words domus lunae libri etched into the stone archway of the entrance below. Marian snapped the key once more, and the stairs disappeared, replaced by the iron grating once again.

  “That’s it? We aren’t going to go in?” Lena sounded annoyed.

  Marian stuck her hand through the grating. It was an illusion. “I can’t Cast, as you know, but something had to be done. Strays kept wandering in at night. Macon had Larkin rig it for me, and he stops by to keep it intact, every now and then.”

  Marian looked at us, suddenly somber. “All right, then. If you’re sure this is what you want to do, I can’t stop you. Nor can I guide you in any way, once you’re downstairs. I can’t prevent you from taking a book, or take one back from you before the Lunae Libri opens itself again.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you understand, Ethan? This isn’t a game. There are powerful books down there—Binding books, Caster scrolls, Dark and Light talismans, objects of power. Things no Mortal has ever seen, except me, and my predecessors. Many of the books are charmed, others are jinxed. You have to be careful. Touch nothing. Let Lena handle the books for you.”

  Lena’s hair was waving. She was already feeling the magic of this place. I nodded, wary. What I was feeling was less magical, my stomach churning like I was the one who drank too much peppermint schnapps. I wondered how often Mrs. Lincoln and her cronies had paced back and forth on the floor above us, oblivious to what was below them.

  “No matter what you find, remember we have to be out before sunrise. Nine to six. Those are the library hours, and the entrance can only be made to open during that time. The sun will rise precisely at six; it always does, on a Library Day. If you aren’t up the stairs by sunrise, you will be trapped until the next Library Day, and I have no way of knowing how well a Mortal could survive that experience. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

  Lena nodded, taking my hand. “Can we go in now? I can’t wait.”

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Your Uncle Macon and Amma would kill me if they knew.” Marian checked her watch. “After you.”

  “Marian? Have you—did my mother ever see this?” I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t think about anything else.

  Marian looked
at me, her eyes strangely sparkling. “Your mother was the person who gave me the job.”

  And with that, she disappeared in front of us through the illusionary grating, and down into the Lunae Libri below. Boo Radley barked, but it was too late to turn back now.

  The steps were cold and mossy, the air dank. Wet things, scurrying things, burrowing things—it wasn’t hard to imagine them making themselves comfortable down here.

  I tried not to think about Marian’s last words. I couldn’t imagine my mother coming down these stairs. I couldn’t imagine her knowing anything about this world I’d just stumbled onto, more like, this world that had stumbled onto me. But she had, and I couldn’t stop wondering how. Had she stumbled onto it too, or had someone invited her in? Somehow, it made it all seem more real, that my mother and I shared this secret, even if she wasn’t here to share it with me.

  But I was the one here now, walking down the stone steps, carved and flat like the floor of an old church. Along either side of the stairs I could see rough stone boulders, the foundations of an ancient room that had existed on the site of the DAR building, long before the structure itself had been built. I looked down the stairs, but all I could see were rough outlines, shapes in the dark. It didn’t look like a library. It looked like what it probably was, what it had always been. A crypt.

  At the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows of the crypt, countless tiny domes curved overhead where the columns jutted up into the vaulted ceiling, forty or fifty in all. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that each column was different, and some of them were tilted, like crooked old oaks. Their shadows made the circular chamber seem like some kind of quiet, dark forest. It was a terrifying room to be in. There was no way of knowing how far back it went, since every direction dissolved into darkness.

  Marian inserted her key into the first column, marked with a moon. The torches along the walls lit themselves, illuminating the room with flickering light.

  “They’re beautiful,” Lena breathed. I could see her hair still twisting, and wondered how this place must feel to her, in ways I could never know.

  Alive. Powerful. Like the truth, every truth, is here, somewhere.

  “Collected from all over the world, long before my time. Istanbul.” Marian pointed to the tops of the columns, the decorated parts, the capitals. “Taken from Babylon.” She pointed to another one, with four hawk heads poking out from each side. “Egypt, the Eye of God.” She patted another, dramatically carved with a lion’s head. “Assyria.”

  I felt along the wall with my hand. Even the stones of the walls were carved. Some were cut with faces, of men, creatures, birds, staring from between the forest of columns, like predators. Other stones were carved with symbols I didn’t recognize, hieroglyphs of Casters and cultures I’d never know.

  We moved farther into the chamber, out of the crypt, which seemed to serve as some sort of lobby, and again torches burst into flame, one after another, as if they were following us. I could see that the columns curved around a stone table in the middle of the room. The stacks, or what I guessed were the stacks, radiated out from the central circle like the spokes of a wheel, and seemed to rise up almost to the ceiling, creating a frightening maze I imagined a Mortal could get lost in. In the room itself, there was nothing but the columns, and the circular stone table.

  Marian calmly picked up a torch from an iron crescent on the wall and handed it to me. She handed another to Lena, and took one for herself. “Have a look around. I have to check the mail. I may have a transfer request from another branch.”

  “For the Lunae Libri?” I hadn’t considered that there might be other Caster libraries.

  “Of course.” Marian turned back toward the stairs.

  “Wait. How do you get mail here?”

  “The same way you do. Carlton Eaton delivers it, rain or shine.” Carlton Eaton was in the know. Of course he was. That probably explained why he’d picked Amma up in the middle of the night. I wondered if he opened the Casters’ mail, too. I wondered what else I didn’t know about Gatlin, and the people in it. I didn’t have to ask.

  “There aren’t too many of us, but more than you’d think. You have to remember, Ravenwood has been here longer than this old building. This was a Caster county before it was ever a Mortal one.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re all so weird around here.” Lena poked me. I was still stuck back on Carlton Eaton.

  Who else knew what was really going on in Gatlin, in the other Gatlin, the one with magical underground libraries and girls who could control the weather or make you jump off a cliff? Who else was in the Caster loop, like Marian and Carlton Eaton? Like my mom?

  Fatty? Mrs. English? Mr. Lee?

  Definitely not Mr. Lee.

  “Don’t worry. When you need them, they’ll find you. That’s how it works, how it always has.”

  “Wait.” I grabbed Marian’s arm. “Does my dad know?”

  “No.” At least there was one person in my house who wasn’t living a double life, even if he was crazy.

  Marian issued a final piece of advice. “Now, you’d better get started. The Lunae Libri is thousands of times bigger than any library you’ve ever seen. If you get lost, immediately trace your steps backward. That’s why the stacks radiate out from this one chamber. If you only go forward or back, you have less chance of getting lost.”

  “How can you get lost, if you can only go in a straight line?”

  “Try it for yourself. You’ll see.”

  Lena interrupted, “What’s at the end of the stacks? I mean, at the end of the aisles?”

  Marian looked at her oddly. “Nobody knows. No one has ever made it far enough to find out. Some of the aisles turn into tunnels. Parts of the Lunae Libri are still uncharted. There are many things down here even I’ve never seen. One day, perhaps.”

  “What are you talking about? Everything ends somewhere. There can’t be rows and rows of books tunneling under the whole town. What, do you come up for tea at Mrs. Lincoln’s house? Make a left turn and drop a book off to Aunt Del in the next town? Tunnel to the right for a chat with Amma?” I was skeptical.

  Marian smiled at me, amused. “How do you think Macon gets his books? How do you think the DAR never sees any visitors going in or out? Gatlin is Gatlin. Folks like it fine the way it is, the way they think it is. Mortals only see what they want to see. There’s been a thriving Caster community in and around this county since before the Civil War. That’s hundreds of years, Ethan, and that’s not going to change suddenly. Not just because you know about it.”

  “I can’t believe Uncle Macon never told me about this place. Think of all the Casters that have come through here.” Lena held up her torch, pulling a bound volume from the shelf. The book was ornately bound, heavy in her hands, and sent a cloud of gray dust exploding out in every direction. I started to cough.

  “Casting, A Briefe Historie.” She drew out another. “We’re in the C’s, I guess.” This one was a leather box that opened on top to reveal the standing scroll inside. Lena pulled out the scroll. Even the dust looked older, and grayer. “Castyng to Creyate & Confounde. That’s an old one.”

  “Careful. More than a few hundred years. Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press until 1455.” Marian took the scroll out of her hand gingerly, as if she was handling a newborn baby.

  Lena pulled out another book, bound in gray leather. “Casting the Confederacy. Were there Casters in the War?”

  Marian nodded. “Both sides, the Blue and the Gray. It was one of the great divisions in the Caster Community, I’m afraid. Just as it was for us Mortals.”

  Lena looked up at Marian, shoving the dusty book back on the shelf. “The Casters in our family, we’re still in a war, aren’t we?”

  Marian looked at her sadly. “A House Divided, that’s what President Lincoln called it. And yes, Lena, I’m afraid you are.” She touched Lena’s cheek. “Which is why you’re here, if you recall. To find what you need, to make sense of som
ething senseless. Now, you’d better get started.”

  “There are so many books, Marian. Can’t you just point us in the right direction?”

  “Don’t look at me. Like I said, I don’t have the answers, just the books. Get going. We’re on the lunar clock down here, and you may lose track of time. Things aren’t exactly as they seem when you’re down below.”

  I looked from Lena to Marian. I was afraid to let either one of them out of my sight. The Lunae Libri was more intimidating than I had imagined. Less like a library, and more like, well, catacombs. And The Book of Moons could be anywhere.

  Lena and I faced the endless stacks, but neither one of us took even a single step.

  “How are we going to find it? There must be a million books in here.”

  “I have no idea. Maybe…” I knew what she was thinking.

  “Should we try the locket?”

  “Do you have it?” I nodded, and pulled the warm lump out of my jeans pocket. I handed Lena the torch.

  “We need to see what happens. There has to be something else.” I unwrapped the locket and placed it on the round stone table in the center of the room. I saw a familiar look in Marian’s eyes, the look she and my mother shared when they dug up a particularly good find. “Do you want to see this?”

  “More than you know.” Marian slowly took my hand, and I took Lena’s. I reached over, with my fingers intertwined with Lena’s, and touched the locket.

  A blinding flash forced my eyes shut.

  And then I could see the smoke and smell the fire, and we were gone—

  Genevieve lifted the Book so she could read the words through the rain. She knew speaking the words would defy the Natural Laws. She could almost hear her mother’s voice willing her to stop—to think about the choice she was making.

  But Genevieve couldn’t stop. She couldn’t lose Ethan.

  She began to chant.

  “CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, TUTELA TUA EST.

  VITA VITAE MEAE, CORRIPIENS TUAM, CORRIPIENS MEAM.