Beautiful Creatures

  “You have ta teach ’em ta gather nuts. You bury nuts in the yard and you let the squirrels practice findin’ ’em.”

  I could see where this was going. Which led to the part of the day that had me in the backyard burying mixed cocktail nuts for baby squirrels. I wondered how many of these little holes I’d have to dig before the Sisters would be satisfied.

  A half hour into my digging, I started finding things. A thimble, a silver spoon, and an amethyst ring that didn’t look particularly valuable, but gave me a good excuse to stop hiding peanuts in the backyard. When I came back into the house, Aunt Prue was wearing her extra thick reading glasses, laboring over a pile of yellowed papers. “What are you reading?”

  “I’m just lookin’ up some things for your friend Link’s mamma. The DAR needs some notes on Gatlin’s hist’ry for the Southern Heritage Tour.” She shuffled through one of the piles. “But it’s hard ta find much about the hist’ry a Gatlin that doesn’t include the Ravenwoods.” Which was the last name the DAR wanted to hear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, without them, I reckon Gatlin wouldn’t be here at all. So it’s hard ta write a town hist’ry and leave ’em outta it.”

  “Were they really the first ones here?” I had heard Marian say it, but it was hard to believe.

  Aunt Mercy lifted one of the papers out of the pile and held it so close to her face she must have been seeing double. Aunt Prue snatched it back. “Give me that. I’ve got myself a system goin’.”

  “Well, if you don’t want any help.” Aunt Mercy turned back to me. “The Ravenwoods were the first in these parts, all right. Got themselves a land grant from the King a Scotland, sometime around 1800.”

  “1781. I’ve got the paper right here.” Aunt Prue waved a yellow sheet in the air. “They were farmers, and it turned out Gatlin County had the most fertile soil in all a South Carolina. Cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo—it all grew here, which was peculiar on account a those crops don’t usually grow in the same place. Once folks figured out you could grow just ’bout anything here, the Ravenwoods had themselves a town.”

  “Whether they liked it or not,” Aunt Grace added, looking up from her cross-stitch.

  It was ironic; without the Ravenwoods Gatlin might not even exist. The folks that shunned Macon Ravenwood and his family had them to thank for the fact they even had a town at all. I wondered how Mrs. Lincoln would feel about that. I bet she already knew, and it had something to do with why they all hated Macon Ravenwood so much.

  I stared down at my hand, covered in that inexplicably fertile soil. I was still holding the junk I’d unearthed in the backyard.

  “Aunt Prue, does this belong to one of you?” I rinsed the ring off in the sink and held it up.

  “Why, that’s the ring my second husband Wallace Pritchard gave me for our first, and only, weddin’ anniversary.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He was a cheap, cheap man. Where in the world did you find it?”

  “Buried in the backyard. I also found a spoon and a thimble.”

  “Mercy, look what Ethan found, your Tennessee Collector’s spoon. I told you I didn’t take it!” Aunt Prue hollered.

  “Let me see that.” Mercy put her glasses on to inspect the spoon. “Well, I’ll be. I finally have all eleven states.”

  “There are more than eleven states, Aunt Mercy.”

  “I only collect the states a the Confed’racy.” Aunt Grace and Aunt Prue nodded in agreement.

  “Speakin’ a buryin’ things, can you believe that Eunice Honey-cutt made ’em bury her with her recipe book? She didn’t want anyone in church ta get her hands on her cobbler recipe.” Aunt Mercy shook her head.

  “She was a spiteful thing, just like her sister.” Aunt Grace was prying open a Whitman’s Sampler with the Tennessee Collector’s spoon.

  “And that recipe wasn’t any good, anyhow,” said Aunt Mercy.

  Aunt Grace turned the lid over on the Whitman’s Sampler so she could read the names of the candies inside. “Mercy, which one is the butter cream?”

  “When I die, I want ta be buried with my fur stole and my Bible,” Aunt Prue said.

  “You aren’t goin’ ta get extra points with the Good Lord for that, Prudence Jane.”

  “I’m not tryin’ ta get points, I just want ta have somethin’ ta read durin’ the wait. But if there were points bein’ handed out, Grace Ann, I’d have more than you.”

  Buried with her recipe book…

  What if The Book of Moons was buried somewhere? What if someone didn’t want anyone to find it, so they hid it? Maybe the person who understood its power better than anyone else. Genevieve.

  Lena, I think I know where the Book is.

  For a second, there was only silence, and then Lena’s thoughts found her way to mine.

  What are you talking about?

  The Book of Moons. I think it’s with Genevieve.

  Genevieve is dead.

  I know.

  What are you saying, Ethan?

  I think you know what I’m saying.

  Harlon James limped up to the table, looking pitiful. His leg was still wrapped in bandages. Aunt Mercy started feeding him the dark chocolates out of the box.

  “Mercy, don’t feed that dog chocolate! You’ll kill him. I saw it on the Oprah show. Chocolate, or was it onion dip?”

  “Ethan, you want me ta save you the toffees?” Aunt Mercy asked. “Ethan?”

  I wasn’t listening anymore. I was thinking about how to dig up a grave.

  12.07

  Grave Digging

  It was Lena’s idea. Today was Aunt Del’s birthday, and at the last minute, Lena decided to throw a family party at Ravenwood. It was also Lena who invited Amma, knowing full well nothing short of divine intervention could get Amma to set foot through the door of Ravenwood Manor. Whatever it was about Macon, Amma reacted only slightly better to his presence than she did to the locket. And she preferred to keep Macon just as far away.

  Boo Radley had shown up in the afternoon with a scroll in his mouth, lettered in careful calligraphy. Amma wouldn’t touch the thing, even if it was an invitation, and almost didn’t let me go. Good thing she didn’t see me get into the hearse with my mom’s old garden shovel. That would have raised a flag or two.

  I was glad to get out of my house, for any reason, even if the reason involved grave robbing. After Thanksgiving, my father had shut himself in the study, and since Macon and Amma caught us at the Lunae Libri, all I was getting from Amma was stinkeye.

  Lena and I weren’t allowed to go back to the Lunae Libri, either, at least, not for the next sixty-eight days. Macon and Amma didn’t seem to want us digging up any more information they hadn’t planned on telling us in the first place.

  “After the eleventh a February, you can do what you like,” Amma had harrumphed. “Until then, you can do what every-one else your age does. Listen to music. Watch the television. Just keep your nose away from those books.”

  My mom would have laughed, the idea that I wasn’t allowed to read a book. Things had obviously gotten pretty bad around here.

  It’s worse here, Ethan. Boo even sleeps at the foot of my bed now.

  That doesn’t sound so bad to me.

  He waits for me outside the bathroom door.

  That’s just Macon being Macon.

  It’s like house arrest.

  It was, and we both knew it.

  We had to find The Book of Moons, and it had to be with Genevieve. It was more than possible Genevieve had been buried at Greenbrier. There were some weathered headstones in the clearing just outside the garden. You could see them from the stone where we usually sat, which had turned out to be a hearthstone. Our spot, that’s how I thought of it, even if I had never said it out loud. Genevieve had to be buried out there, unless she’d moved away after the War, but nobody ever left Gatlin.

  I always thought I’d be the first.

  But now that I had gotten out of the house, how was I going to find
a lost Casting book that may or may not save Lena’s life, that may or may not be buried in the grave of a cursed ancestral Caster, that may or may not be next door to Macon Ravenwood’s house? Without her uncle seeing me, stopping me, or killing me first?

  The rest was up to Lena.

  “What sort of history project requires visiting a graveyard at night?” Aunt Del asked, tripping over a bramble of vines. “Oh my!”

  “Mamma, be careful.” Reece looped her arm through her mother’s, helping her negotiate the overgrowth. Aunt Del had a hard enough time walking around without bumping into anything in the daylight, but in the dark it was asking too much.

  “We have to make a rubbing from one of our ancestors’ tombstones. We’re studying genealogy.” Well, that was sort of true.

  “Why Genevieve?” Reece asked, looking suspicious.

  Reece looked at Lena, but Lena immediately turned away. Lena had warned me not to let Reece see my face. Apparently, one look was all it took for a Sybil to know if you were lying. Lying to a Sybil was even trickier than lying to Amma.

  “She’s the one in the painting, in the hall. I just thought it would be cool to use her. It’s not like we have a big family cemetery to choose from, like most people around here.”

  The hypnotic Caster music from the party was starting to fade in the distance, replaced by the sound of dry leaves crackling under our feet. We had crossed over into Greenbrier. We were getting close. It was dark, but the full moon was so bright we didn’t even need our flashlights. I remembered what Amma had said to Macon at the graveyard. Half moon’s for workin’ White magic, full moon’s for workin’ Black. We weren’t going to be working any magic, I hoped, but it didn’t make it seem any less spooky.

  “I’m not sure Macon would want us wandering out here in the dark. Did you tell him where we were going?” Aunt Del was apprehensive. She pulled on the collar of her high-necked lace blouse.

  “I told him we were going for a walk. He just told me to stay with you.”

  “I don’t know that I’m in good enough shape for this. I have to admit, I’m a bit winded.” Aunt Del was out of breath, and the hair around her face had escaped from her always slightly off-center bun.

  Then I smelled that familiar scent. “We’re here.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  We walked toward the crumbling stone wall of the garden, where I’d found Lena crying the day after the window shattered. I ducked under the archway of vines, into the garden. It looked different at night, less like a spot for cloud gazing and more like the place a cursed Caster would be buried.

  This is it, Ethan. She’s here. I can feel it.

  Me, too.

  Where do you think her grave is?

  As we crossed over the hearthstone where I’d found the locket, I could see another stone in the clearing a few yards just beyond it. A headstone, with a hazy looking figure sitting on it.

  I heard Lena gasp, just barely loud enough for me to hear.

  Ethan, can you see her?

  Yeah.

  Genevieve. She was only partially materialized, a mix of cloudy haze and light, fading in and out as the air moved through her ghostly form, but there was no mistaking it. It was Genevieve, the woman in the painting. She had the same golden eyes and long, wavy red hair. Her hair blew gently in the wind, as if she was just a woman sitting on a bench at the bus stop, instead of an apparition sitting on a headstone in a graveyard. She was beautiful, even in her present state, and terrifying at the same time. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

  Maybe this was a mistake.

  Aunt Del stopped dead in her tracks. She saw Genevieve, too, but it was clear she didn’t think anyone else could see her. She probably thought the apparition was just the result of seeing too many times at once, the muddled images of this place in twenty different decades.

  “I think we should go back to the house. I’m not feeling very well.” Aunt Del clearly didn’t want to mess with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old ghost in a Caster graveyard.

  Lena tripped over a loose vine and stumbled. I grabbed her arm to catch her, but I wasn’t fast enough. “Are you okay?”

  She caught herself and looked up at me for a split second, but a split second was all Reece needed. She zeroed in on Lena’s eyes, looking into her face, her expression, her thoughts.

  “Mamma, they’re lyin’! They aren’t doin’ a history project at all. They’re lookin’ for somethin’.” Reece put her hand to her temple as if she was adjusting a piece of equipment. “A book!”

  Aunt Del looked confused, even more confused than she usually looked. “What sort of book would you be looking for in a graveyard?”

  Lena broke away from Reece’s gaze and her hold. “It’s a book that belonged to Genevieve.”

  I unzipped the duffel bag I’d been carrying and pulled out a shovel. I walked toward the grave slowly, trying to ignore the fact that Genevieve’s ghost was watching me the whole time. Maybe I was going to get struck by lightning or something; it wouldn’t have surprised me. But we’d come this far. I pushed the shovel into the ground, scooping out a pile of earth.

  “Oh, Great Mother! Ethan, what are you doing?” Apparently, grave digging brought Aunt Del back to the present.

  “I’m looking for the book.”

  “In there?” Aunt Del looked faint. “What sort of book would be in there?”

  “It’s a Casting book, a really old one. We don’t even know if it’s in there. It’s just a hunch,” Lena said, glancing at Genevieve, who was still perched on the tombstone only a foot away.

  I tried not to look at Genevieve. It was disturbing the way her body faded in and out, and she stared at us with those creepy golden cat eyes, vacant and lifeless like they were made of glass.

  The ground wasn’t that hard, especially considering it was December. Within a few minutes, I had already dug a foot deep. Aunt Del was pacing back and forth, looking worried. Every once in a while, she’d look around to be sure none of us were watching, then she’d glance over at Genevieve. At least I wasn’t the only one freaked out about her.

  “We should go back. This is disgustin’,” Reece said, trying to make eye contact with me.

  “Don’t be such a Girl Scout,” Lena said, kneeling over the hole.

  Does Reece see her?

  I don’t think so. Just don’t make eye contact with her.

  What if Reece reads Aunt Del’s face?

  She can’t. No one can. Aunt Del sees too much at once. No one but a Palimpsest can process all that information and make any sense of it.

  “Mamma, are you really going to let them dig up a grave?”

  “For star’s sake, this is ridiculous. Let’s stop this foolishness right now and go back to the party.”

  “We can’t. We have to know if the book is down there.” Lena turned to Aunt Del. “You could show us.”

  What are you talking about?

  She can show us what’s down there. She can project what she sees.

  “I don’t know. Macon wouldn’t like it.” Aunt Del was biting her lip uneasily.

  “Do you think he’d prefer we dig up a grave?” Lena countered.

  “All right, all right. Get out of that hole, Ethan.”

  I stepped out of the hole, wiping the dirt on my pants. I looked over at Genevieve. She had a peculiar look on her face, almost as if she was interested to see what was about to happen, or maybe she was just about to vaporize us.

  “Everyone, have a seat. This might make you dizzy. If you feel queasy, put your head between your knees,” Aunt Del instructed, like some kind of supernatural flight attendant. “The first time is always the hardest.” Aunt Del reached out so we could take her hands.

  “I can’t believe you are participatin’ in this, Mamma.”

  Aunt Del took the clip out of her bun, letting her hair spill down around her shoulders. “Don’t be such a Girl Scout, Reece.”

  Reece rolled her eyes and took my hand. I glanced up at Genevieve
. She looked right at me, right into me, and held a finger to her lips as if to say, “Shh.”

  The air began to dissolve around us. Then we were spinning like one of those rides where they strap you against the wall and the whole thing spins so fast you think you’re going to puke.

  Then flashes—

  One after the next, opening and closing like doors. One after another, second after second.

  Two girls in white petticoats running in the grass, holding hands, laughing. Yellow ribbons tied in their hair.

  Another door opened.

  A young woman with caramel-colored skin, hanging clothes on a wash line, humming quietly, the breeze lifting the sheets into the wind. The woman turns toward a grand white Federal-style house and calls out, “Genevieve! Evangeline!”

  And another.

  A young girl moving across the clearing at dusk. She looks back to see if anyone is following her, red hair swinging behind her. Genevieve. She runs into the arms of a tall, lanky boy—a boy who could’ve been me. He leans down and kisses her. “I love you, Genevieve. And one day I’m goin’ to marry you. I don’t care what your family says. It can’t be impossible.” She touches his lips, gently.

  “Shh. We don’t have much time.”

  The door closes and another opens.

  Rain, smoke, and the crackling sound of fire, eating, breathing. Genevieve stands in the darkness; black smoke and tears streak her face. There’s a black leather-bound book in her hand. It has no title, just a crescent moon embossed on the cover. She looks at the woman, the same woman who was hanging laundry on the clothesline. Ivy. “Why doesn’t it have a name?” The old woman’s eyes are filled with fear. “Just ’cause a book don’t have a title, don’t mean it don’t have a name. That right there is The Book a Moons.”

  The door slams shut.

  Ivy, older and sadder, standing over a freshly dug grave, a pine box resting deep in the hole. “Though I walk through the valley a the shadow a death, I fear no evil.” There is something in her hand. The Book, black leather with the crescent moon on the cover. “Take this with ya, Miss Genevieve. So it can’t cause nobody else any harm.” She tosses the Book into the hole with the casket.