Beautiful Creatures

  Another door.

  The four of us sitting around the half-dug hole, and below the dirt, farther down where we can’t see without Del’s help, the pine box. The Book rests against it. Then farther down, into the casket, Genevieve’s body, lying there in the darkness. Her eyes closed, her skin pale porcelain, as if she was still breathing, perfectly preserved in a way no corpse could ever be. Her long, fiery hair cascading onto her shoulders.

  The view spirals back up, out of the ground. Back up to the four of us, sitting around the half-dug hole, holding hands. Up to the headstone and Genevieve’s faded figure, staring down at us.

  Reece screamed. The last door slammed shut.

  I tried to open my eyes, but I was dizzy. Del had been right, I felt like I was going to be sick. I tried to get my bearings, but my eyes wouldn’t focus. I felt Reece drop my hand, backing away from me, trying to get far away from Genevieve and her terrifying golden gaze.

  Are you okay?

  I think so.

  Lena’s head was between her knees.

  “Is everyone all right?” Aunt Del asked, her voice even and unshaken. Aunt Del didn’t seem so confused or clumsy anymore. If I had to see all that every time I looked at something, I’d pass out, or go crazy.

  “I can’t believe that’s what you see,” I said, looking at Del, my eyes finally beginning to refocus.

  “The gift of Palimpsestry is a great honor, and a greater burden.”

  “The Book, it’s down there,” I said.

  “That it is, but it appears it belongs to this woman,” Del said, gesturing toward Genevieve’s apparition, “who the two of you don’t seem particularly surprised to see.”

  “We saw her before,” Lena admitted.

  “Well, then, she chose to reveal herself to you. Seeing the dead is not one of the gifts of a Caster, even a Natural, and certainly not within the realm of Mortal talents. One can only see the dead if the dead so will it.”

  I was scared. Not standing on the steps of Ravenwood scared, or having Ridley freeze the life out of me scared. This was something else. It was closer to the fear I felt when I awoke from the dreams, and the thought of losing Lena. It was a paralyzing fear. The kind you feel when you realize the powerful ghost of a cursed Dark Caster is staring down at you, in the middle of the night, watching you dig up her grave to steal a book from on top of her coffin. What was I thinking? What were we doing coming out here, digging up a grave under a full moon?

  You were trying to right a wrong. There was a voice in my head, but it wasn’t Lena’s.

  I turned to Lena. She was pale. Reece and Aunt Del were both staring at what was left of Genevieve. They could hear her, too. I looked up at the glowing golden eyes as she continued to fade in and out. She seemed to sense what we were here for.

  Take it.

  I looked at Genevieve, unsure. She closed her eyes and nodded ever so slightly.

  “She wants us to take the Book,” Lena said. I guessed I wasn’t losing my mind.

  “How do we know we can trust her?” She was a Dark Caster after all. With the same golden eyes as Ridley.

  Lena looked back at me, with a glint of excitement. “We don’t.”

  There was only one thing to do.

  Dig.

  The Book looked exactly as it had in the vision, cracked black leather, embossed with a tiny crescent moon. It smelled like desperation and it felt heavy, not just physically, but psychically. This was a Dark book; I knew it just from the seconds I managed to hold it, before it singed the skin off my fingertips. It felt like the Book was stealing a little bit of my breath each time I inhaled.

  I reached my arm out of the hole, holding it above my head. Lena took it from my hand and I climbed back out. I wanted to get out of there, as quickly as possible. It wasn’t lost on me that I was standing on Genevieve’s casket.

  Aunt Del gasped. “Great Mother, I never thought I would see it. The Book of Moons. Be careful. That book is as old as time, maybe older. Macon will never believe we—”

  “He’s never going to know.” Lena brushed the dirt from the cover gently.

  “Okay now, you’ve seriously lost it. If you think for one minute we’re not goin’ to tell Uncle Macon—” Reece crossed her arms like an irritated babysitter.

  Lena held the Book up higher, right in front of Reece’s face. “About what?” Lena was staring at Reece the same way Reece had stared into Ridley’s eyes at the Gathering, intently, with purpose. Reece’s expression changed—she looked confused, almost disoriented. She stared at the Book, but it was like she couldn’t see it.

  “What is there to tell, Reece?”

  Reece squeezed her eyes shut, as if she was trying to shake off a bad dream. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it abruptly. A hint of a smile twitched across Lena’s face, as she turned slowly toward her aunt. “Aunt Del?”

  Aunt Del looked as confused as Reece, which was how she looked most of the time, anyway, but something was different. And she didn’t answer Lena, either.

  Lena turned slightly and dropped the Book on top of my bag. As she did, I saw green sparks in her eyes, and the curling motion of her hair as it caught the moonlight, the Casting breeze. It was almost as if I could see the magic churning around her in the darkness. I didn’t understand what was happening, but the three of them seemed to be locked in a dark, wordless conversation I couldn’t hear or understand.

  Then it was over, and the moonlight became moonlight again, and the night faded back into night. I looked behind Reece, at Genevieve’s headstone. Genevieve was gone, as if she had never been there at all.

  Reece shifted her weight, and her usual sanctimonious expression returned. “If you think for a minute I’m not goin’ to tell Uncle Macon you dragged us out to a graveyard for no good reason, because of some stupid school project you didn’t even end up doin’—” What the hell was she talking about? But Reece was dead serious. She didn’t remember what had just happened, any more than I understood it.

  What did you just do?

  Uncle Macon and I have been practicing.

  Lena zipped up my duffel bag, with the Book inside. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just this place is really creepy at night. Let’s get out of here.”

  Reece turned back toward Ravenwood, dragging Aunt Del behind her. “You’re such a baby.”

  Lena winked at me.

  Practicing what? Mind control?

  Little things. Teletossing Pebbles. Interior Illusions. Time Binds, but those are hard.

  That was easy?

  I Shifted the Book out of their minds. I guess you could say I erased it. They won’t remember it, because in their reality, it never happened.

  I knew we needed the Book. I knew why Lena did it. But somehow it felt like a line had been crossed, and now I didn’t know where we stood, or if she could ever cross back over to where I was. Where she used to be.

  Reece and Aunt Del were already back in the garden. I didn’t need to be a Sybil to tell Reece wanted to get the hell out of there. Lena started to follow them, but something stopped me.

  L, wait.

  I walked back over to the hole and reached into my pocket. I opened the handkerchief with the familiar initials, and lifted the locket up by its chain. Nothing. No visions, and something told me there weren’t going to be any more. The locket had led us here, showed us what we needed to see.

  I held the locket over the grave. It seemed only right, a fair trade. I was about to drop it when I heard Genevieve’s voice again, softer this time.

  No. It doesn’t belong with me.

  I looked back at the headstone. Genevieve was there again, what was left of her breaking into nothingness each time the wind blew through her. She didn’t look as terrifying.

  She looked broken. The way you would look if you lost the only person you ever loved.

  I understood.

  12.08

  Waist Deep

  There was only so much trouble you could get into before the th
reat of more trouble wasn’t even a threat anymore. At some point, you’d waded so far in you had no choice but to paddle through the middle, if you had any chance of making it to the other side. It was classic Link logic, but I was starting to see the genius in it. Maybe you can’t really understand it yourself until you’re waist deep in it.

  By the next day, that’s where we were, Lena and me. Waist deep. It started with forging a note with one of Amma’s #2 pencils, then cutting school to read a stolen book we weren’t supposed to have in the first place, and ended with a pack of lies about an extra-credit “project” we were working on together. I was pretty sure Amma was going to catch on about two seconds after I said the words extra credit, but she had been on the phone with my Aunt Caroline discussing my dad’s “condition.”

  I felt guilty about all the lying, not to mention the stealing, forging, and mind erasing, but we didn’t have time for school; we had too much actual studying to do.

  Because we had The Book of Moons. It was real. I could hold it in my hands—

  “Ouch!” It burned my hand, like I had touched a hot stove. The Book dropped to the floor of Lena’s bedroom. Boo Radley barked from somewhere in the house. I could hear his paws click their way up the stairs, toward us.

  “Door.” Lena spoke without looking up from an old Latin dictionary. Her bedroom door slammed shut, just as Boo reached the landing. He protested with a resentful bark. “Stay out of my room, Boo. We’re not doing anything. I’m about to start practicing.”

  I stared at the door, surprised. Another lesson from Macon, I guessed. Lena didn’t even react, as if she’d done it a thousand times. It was like the stunt she had pulled on Reece and Aunt Del last night. I was starting to think the closer we got to her birthday, the more the Caster was coming out in the girl.

  I was trying not to notice. But the more I tried, the more I noticed.

  She looked over at me, rubbing my hands on my jeans. They still hurt. “What part about ‘you can’t touch it if you’re not a Caster’ are you not getting?”

  “Right. That part.”

  She opened a battered black case and pulled out her viola. “It’s almost five. I’ve got to start practicing or Uncle Macon will know when he gets up. He always knows.”

  “What? Now?” She smiled and sat on a chair in the corner of her room. Adjusting the instrument with her chin, she picked up a long bow and set it to the strings. For a moment she didn’t move, and closed her eyes like we were at a philharmonic, instead of sitting in her bedroom. And then she began to play. The music crawled up from her hands and out into the room, moving through the air like another one of her undiscovered powers. The sheer white curtains hanging at her window began to stir, and I heard the song—

  Sixteen moons, sixteen years,

  The Claiming Moon, the hour nears,

  In these pages Darkness clears,

  Powers Bind what fire sears…

  As I watched, Lena slid herself out of the chair and carefully placed her viola back where she had been sitting. She wasn’t playing it anymore, but the music was still pouring out of it. She leaned the bow against the chair, and sat down next to me on the floor.

  Shh.

  That’s practicing?

  “Uncle M doesn’t seem to know the difference. And look—” She pointed over to the door, where I could see a shadow, and hear a rhythmic thump. Boo’s tail. “He likes it, and I like to have him in front of my door. Think of it as a sort of an anti-adult alarm system.” She had a point.

  Lena knelt by the Book and picked it up easily in her hands. When she opened the pages again, we saw the same thing we had been staring at all day. Hundreds of Casts, careful lists written in English, Latin, Gaelic, and other languages I didn’t recognize, one composed of strange curling letters I had never seen before. The thin brown pages were fragile, almost translucent. The parchment was covered with dark brown ink, in an ancient and delicate script. At least I hoped it was ink.

  She tapped her finger on the strange writing and handed me the Latin dictionary. “It’s not Latin. See for yourself.”

  “I think its Gaelic. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” I pointed to the curling script.

  “No. Maybe it’s some kind of old Caster language.”

  “Too bad we don’t have a Caster dictionary.”

  “We do, I mean, my uncle should. He has hundreds of Caster books, down in his library. It’s no Lunae Libri, but it probably has what we’re looking for.”

  “How long do we have before he’s up?”

  “Not long enough.”

  I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt down over my palm and used the material to handle the Book, as if I was using one of Amma’s oven mitts. I flipped through the thin pages; they bent noisily under my touch as if they were made of dry leaves, instead of paper. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”

  Lena shook her head. “In my family, before your Claiming you aren’t really allowed to know anything.” She pretended to pore over the pages. “In case you go Dark, I guess.” I knew enough to let it drop.

  Page after page, there was nothing we could even begin to comprehend. There were pictures, some frightening, some beautiful. Creatures, symbols, animals—even the human-looking faces somehow managed to look anything but human in The Book of Moons. As far as I was concerned, it was like an encyclopedia from another planet.

  Lena pulled the Book into her lap. “There’s so much I don’t know, and it’s all so—”

  “Trippy?”

  I leaned against her bed, looking at the ceiling. There were words everywhere, new words, and numbers. I could see the countdown, the numbers scribbled against the walls of her room as if it was a jail cell.

  100, 78, 50…

  How much longer would we be able to sit around like this? Lena’s birthday was getting closer, and her powers were already growing. What if she was right, and she grew into something unrecognizable, something so Dark she wouldn’t even know or care about me? I stared at the viola in the corner until I just didn’t want to see it anymore. I closed my eyes and listened to the Caster melody. And then I heard Lena’s voice—

  “… UNTIL THE DARKENING BRINGES THE TYME OF CLAYMING, AT THE SIXTEENTHE MOONE, WHEN THE PERSON OF POWERE HAS THE FREEDOME OF WILLE & AGENCIE TO CASTE THE ETERNAL CHOICE, IN THE END OF DAYE, OR THE LASTE MOMENT OF THE LAST OURE, UNDER THE CLAYMING MOONE…”

  We looked at each other.

  “How did you just—” I looked over her shoulder.

  She turned the page. “It’s English. These pages are written in English. Someone started to translate it, here in the back. See how the ink is a different color?” She was right.

  Even the pages in English must have been hundreds of years old. The page was written in another elegant script, but it wasn’t the same writing, and it wasn’t written in the same brownish ink, or whatever it was.

  “Flip to the back.”

  She held up the Book, reading,

  “THE CLAYMING, ONCE BOUND, CANNOT BE UNBOUND. THE CHOICE, ONCE CAST, CANNOT BE RECAST. A PERSON OF POWERE FALLES INTO THE GREAT DARKENING OR THE GREAT LIGHT, FOR ALL TYME. IF TYME PASSES & THE LASTE OURE OF THE SIXTEENTHE MOONE FLEES UNBOUND, THE ORDER OF THINGS IS UNDONE. THIS MUST NOT BE. THE BOOKE WILLE BINDE THAT WHICHE IS UNBOUND, FOR ALL TYME.”

  “So there’s really no getting around this Claiming thing?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  I stared at the words that didn’t bring me any closer to understanding. “But what happens, exactly, during the Claiming? Does this Claiming Moon send down some kind of Caster beam, or something?”

  She scanned the page. “It doesn’t exactly say. All I know is it takes place under the moon, at midnight—‘IN THE MIDST OF THE GREAT DARKNESSE & UNDERE THE GREAT LIGHT, FROM WHICHE WE CAME.’ But it can happen anywhere. It’s nothing you can really see, it just happens. No Caster beam involved.”

  “But what happens exactly?” I wanted to know everything, an
d it still felt like she was holding something back. She kept her eyes on the page.

  “For most Casters, it’s a conscious thing, just like it says here. The Person of Power, the Caster, Casts the Eternal Choice. They choose if they want to Claim themselves Light or Dark. That’s what the free will and agency is all about, like Mortals choose to be good or bad, except Casters make the Choice for all time. They choose the life they want to lead, the way they will interact with the magical universe, and one another. It’s a covenant they make with the natural world, the Order of Things. I know that sounds crazy.”

  “When you’re sixteen? How are you supposed to know who you are and who you want to be for the rest of your life by then?”

  “Yeah, well, those are the lucky ones. I don’t even get a choice.”

  I almost couldn’t bring myself to ask the next question. “So what will happen to you?”

  “Reece says you just change. It happens in a second, like a heartbeat. You feel this energy, this power moving through your body, almost like you’re coming to life for the first time.” She looked wistful. “At least, that’s what Reece said.”

  “That’s doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Reece described it as an overwhelming warmth. She said it felt like the sun was shining on her, and no one else. And at that moment, she said you just know which path has been chosen for you.” It sounded too easy, too painless, like she was leaving something out. Like the part about what it felt like when a Caster went Dark. But I didn’t want to put it out there, even if I knew we were both thinking about it.

  Just like that?

  Just like that. It doesn’t hurt or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.

  That was one of the things I was worried about, but it wasn’t the only thing.

  I’m not worried.

  Me neither.

  And this time, we made a point of staying away from what we were thinking, even to ourselves.

  The sun crept across the braided rug on Lena’s floor, the orange light turning all the colors of the braid into a hundred different kinds of gold. For a moment, Lena’s face, her eyes, her hair, everything the light touched turned to gold. She was beautiful, a hundred years and a hundred miles away, and just like the faces in the Book, somehow not quite human.