Beautiful Darkness

  “Ethan!” Lena was scared, I could tell that much.

  Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing.

  Like you said. At least I’m finally doing something.

  Do something else. Get out of here!

  “You can’t talk to her like that. Why don’t you leave before you get hurt.” What had I missed? Lena had walked away from me barely an hour ago, and now John Breed was defending her like she was already his girlfriend?

  “Yeah? You should be careful who you push around, Caster Boy.”

  “Caster Boy?” He took a step closer to me, curling his hands into fists. Big fists. “Don’t call me that.”

  “What should I call you? Dirtbag?” I wanted him to hit me.

  He lunged at me, but I threw the first punch. I’m stupid that way. I released all the frustration and anger I’d been holding inside the second my soft human fist made contact with his steel supernatural jaw. It was like hitting cement.

  John blinked, his green eyes turning as black as coal. He hadn’t felt a thing. “I’m not a Caster.”

  I had been in my share of fights, but none of them could have prepared me for what it felt like to be hit by John Breed. I remembered watching Macon and his brother Hunting fighting, their incredible strength and speed. John barely moved, and my back hit the ground. I thought I was going to pass out.

  “Ethan! John, stop!” Lena was screaming, black makeup running down her face.

  I heard John slam Link into the dirt. To his credit, Link got up faster than I did. Only he was back down again faster, too. I picked myself up off the ground. I wasn’t that banged up, but I was going to have a hard time hiding the bruises from Amma.

  “That’s enough, John.” Ridley tried to sound cool, but her voice had an edge and she looked scared—as scared as Ridley could look. She grabbed John’s arm. “Let’s go. We’ve got somewhere to be.”

  Link looked her right in the eye, which took some effort, considering he was lying in the dirt. “Don’t do me any favors, Rid. I can take care of myself.”

  “I can see that. You’re a real Golden Glove.” Link winced at the dig, or maybe it was the pain.

  Either way, he wasn’t used to being the one on the ground in a fight. He pushed himself to his feet and held up his fists, ready to go again. “They’re the fists a fury, Baby, and they’re just gettin’ started.”

  Ridley stepped between John and Link. “No. They’re finished.”

  Link dropped his hands, kicking the dust. “Yeah, well, I could take him if he wasn’t a—what the hell are you, man?”

  I didn’t give John a chance to answer, because I was pretty sure I already knew. “He’s some kind of Incubus.” I looked at Lena. She was still crying, her arms hugging her waist, but I didn’t try to talk to her. I wasn’t even sure who she was anymore.

  “You think I’m an Incubus? A Demon Soldier?” John laughed.

  Ridley rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a show-off. No one calls Incubuses Demon Soldiers anymore.”

  John cracked his knuckles. “I’m old school.”

  Link looked confused. “I thought all you vampire dudes had to stay inside durin’ the day.”

  “And I thought all you hillbillies drove Trans Ams with Confederate flags painted on the hoods.” John laughed, but it wasn’t funny. Ridley stayed between them.

  “What does it matter to you, Shrinky Dink? John’s not really a rules kinda guy. He’s sort of… unique. I like to think of him as the best of both worlds.” I had no idea what Ridley was talking about. But whatever John Breed was, she wasn’t saying.

  “Yeah? I like to think about him as crawlin’ back to his own world and stayin’ outta ours.” Link talked tough, but when John looked at him, all the color drained out of Link’s face.

  Ridley turned to John. “Let’s go.” They turned back to the Tunnel of Love, the cars still making the loop under the old wooden arch painted to look like some bridge in Venice. Lena hesitated.

  “Lena, don’t go with them.”

  She stood there for a second, like she was thinking about running back into my arms. But something was stopping her. John whispered to her, and she climbed into the plastic gondola. I looked at the only girl I’d ever loved. Black hair and golden eyes, instead of green.

  I couldn’t pretend the gold didn’t mean anything, not anymore.

  I watched the car disappear, leaving Link and me behind. As banged up and bruised as the day we had taken on Emory and his brother on the playground in fifth grade.

  “Come on. Let’s get outta here.” Link was already walking away. It was dark now, and the lights from the Ferris Wheel flashed as it turned. “Why’d you think he was an Incubus?” Link was taking comfort in the fact he had gotten his ass kicked by a Demon, not some regular guy.

  “His eyes went black, and it felt like I was hit by a two-by-four.”

  “Yeah, but he was walkin’ around durin’ the day. And he’s got those green eyes, like Lena’s…” He stopped, but I knew what he was about to say.

  “Used to be? I know. It doesn’t make sense.” Nothing about tonight did. I couldn’t shake the way Lena had looked at me. For a second, I was sure she wasn’t going to follow them. I was thinking about Lena, but Link was still talking about John.

  “And what was all that crap about the best a both worlds? What worlds? Creep and creepier?”

  “I don’t know. I was sure he was an Incubus.”

  Link rotated his shoulder, assessing the damage. “Whatever he is, that dude’s got some serious superpowers. I wonder what else he can do.”

  We turned the corner, near the exit of the Tunnel of Love. I stopped walking. The best of both worlds. What if John could do a lot more than rip like an Incubus and beat the two of us to a pulp? He had green eyes. What if he was some kind of Caster, with his own version of Ridley’s Power of Persuasion? I didn’t think Ridley could influence Lena by herself, but what if John was helping her?

  It would explain why Lena was acting so crazy—why she’d looked like she wanted to come with me, until John whispered in her ear. How long had he been whispering to her?

  Link hit my arm with the back of his hand. “Hey. You know what’s weird?”

  “What?”

  “They haven’t come out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed to the exit of the Tunnel of Love. “They didn’t get off the ride.” Link was right. There was no way they could have come out before we turned the corner. We watched as the gondolas kept coming out empty.

  “Then where are they?”

  Link shook his head, all tapped out of insight for now. “I don’t know. Maybe the three of them are doin’ somethin’ kinky in there.” We both winced. “Let’s check it out. There’s no one around.” Link was already halfway to the exit.

  He was right. The cars kept coming out empty. Link hopped over the gate around the ride and ducked into the tunnel. Inside, there was a little space on either side of the track, but it was tricky to walk by the moving cars without getting hit.

  One of the cars caught Link in the shin. “There’s no one in here. Where could they have gone?”

  “They couldn’t have disappeared.” I remembered the way John Breed ripped out of Macon’s funeral. Maybe he could, but Ridley and Lena couldn’t Travel.

  Link ran his hands along the walls. “You think there’s some kinda secret Caster door in here, or somethin’?”

  The only Caster doors I knew about led to the Tunnels, the underground labyrinth of passageways that slept quietly under Gatlin and the rest of the Mortal world. It was a world within a world, so different from ours that it altered both time and distance. But, as far as I knew, all the entrances to the Tunnels were inside buildings—Ravenwood, the Lunae Libri, the crypt at Greenbrier. A few sheets of painted plywood didn’t qualify as a building, and there was nothing under the Tunnel of Love except dirt. “A door leading where? This thing is sitting in the middle of the fair. They just set it up a couple of days ago
.”

  Link inched his way back out of the tunnel. “Where else could they have gone?”

  If John and Ridley were using their powers to control Lena, I had to find out. It wouldn’t explain away the last few months or her golden eyes, but maybe it would explain what she was doing with John. “I’ve gotta get down there.”

  Link had already pulled the keys out of his back pocket. “How’d I know you were gonna say that?”

  He followed me to the Beater, the gravel crunching under his sneakers as he jogged to keep up. He yanked the rusty door open and slid behind the wheel. “Where are we goin’? Or am I better off—” He was still talking when I heard it, the tiny words tugging at the bottom of my heart.

  Good-bye, Ethan.

  They were gone, the voice and the girl. Like a soap bubble, or cotton candy, or the last silvery sliver of a dream.

  6.15

  Unmistakable

  The Beater skidded to a stop in front of the Historical Society, the front tires halfway up the curb, the engine dying out on the empty street.

  “Can you take it down a notch? Someone’s gonna hear us.” Not that Link ever drove any differently. Still, we were parked only a few feet from the building that served as the DAR headquarters. I noticed the roof had finally been rebuilt—it had blown off in Hurricane Lena, a few days before her birthday. Though Jackson High had been hit by the same storm, I guess those repairs could wait. We had our priorities around here.

  Almost everyone in South Carolina was related to a Confederate, so joining the Sisters of the Confederacy was easy. But to join the DAR, you needed a bloodline going back to someone who fought in the war for American independence. The problem was the proof. Unless you were an actual signer of the Declaration of Independence, you had to establish a paper trail a mile long. Even then you had to be invited, which required sucking up to Link’s mom and signing whatever petition she happened to be passing around. Maybe it was a bigger deal down here than up North, like we needed to prove we had all fought for the same side in a war once. The Mortal part of our town was just as confusing as the Caster one.

  Tonight the building looked empty.

  “It’s not like there’s anyone around to hear us. Until the Demolition Derby ends, everyone we know is at the fairgrounds.” Link was right. Gatlin may as well have been a ghost town. Most folks were still at the fair, or at home on the phone reporting the details of a certain Southern Crusty bake-off that would go down in history for decades to come. I was pretty sure Mrs. Lincoln wouldn’t have let any of the DAR members miss watching her try to beat Amma out of first place in Pies. Although, right about now, I bet Link’s mom was wishing she had stuck to pickled okra this year.

  “Not everyone.” I was out of ideas and explanations, but I knew where we could get some of both.

  “You sure this is a good idea? What if Marian’s not here?” Link was jumpy. The sight of Ridley hanging out with some kind of mutant Incubus wasn’t bringing out the best in him. Not that he had anything to worry about. It was pretty clear who John Breed was after, and it wasn’t Ridley.

  I checked my cell. It was almost eleven. “It’s a bank holiday in Gatlin. You know what that means. Marian should be in the Lunae Libri by now.” That’s how it worked around here. Marian was the Gatlin County Head Librarian from nine in the morning until six at night every weekday. But on bank holidays, she was the Head Caster Librarian from nine at night until six in the morning. The Gatlin Library was closed, which meant the Caster Library was open. And the Lunae Libri had a door leading into the Tunnels.

  I slammed the door of the Beater as Link pulled a Maglite out of his glove box. “I know, I know. The Gatlin Library’s closed and the Caster Library’s open all night long, on account a most a Marian’s clients don’t come around durin’ the day.” Link waved the flashlight across the building in front of us. A brass placard read DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. “Still, if my mom or Mrs. Asher or Mrs. Snow found out what was in the basement a their buildin’…” He was holding the heavy metal flashlight like he was brandishing a weapon.

  “You planning to take someone out with that thing?”

  Link shrugged. “Never know what we’re gonna find down there.”

  I knew what he was thinking. Neither one of us had been back to the Lunae Libri since Lena’s birthday. Our last visit had been more about danger than dictionaries.

  Danger and death. We did something wrong that night, and some of it had happened right here. If I had gotten to Ravenwood earlier, if I had found The Book of Moons, if I could have helped Lena fight Sarafine—if we had done one thing differently, would Macon be alive right now?

  We made our way around to the back of the old red brick building, in the moonlight. Link shined his flashlight on the grating near the ground, and I crouched down next to it. “Ready, man?”

  The light was shaking in his hand. “Whenever you are.”

  I reached through the familiar grating built into the back of the building. My hand disappeared, as always, into the illusionary entrance of the Lunae Libri. Nothing much in Gatlin was what it first appeared to be—at least not where Casters were concerned.

  “I’m surprised that spell still works.” Link watched as I pulled my hand back out of the grate, as good as new.

  “Lena told me it’s not a hard one. Some kind of hiding spell Larkin Cast.”

  “Ever wonder if it could be a trap?” The flashlight was shaking so badly, the light was barely shining on the grating.

  “Only one way to find out.” I shut my eyes and stepped through. One minute I was standing in the overgrown bushes behind the DAR, and the next I was inside the stone stairwell leading down into the heart of the Lunae Libri. I shivered when I crossed the Charmed threshold into the library, but not because I felt anything supernatural. The shiver, the wrongness, came from not feeling anything different at all. Air was air on either side of the grate, even if it was pitch-black. I didn’t feel magical right now, not anywhere in Gatlin or beneath it. I felt bruised and angry but hopeful. I had been convinced Lena had feelings for John. But if there was a possibility I was wrong—that John and Ridley were influencing her—it was worth being on the wrong side of the grate again.

  Link stumbled through the doorway after me and dropped his flashlight. It clattered down the stairwell in front of us, and we stood in the dark, until the torches lining the steep passageway lit themselves one by one. “Sorry. That thing always throws me off.”

  “Link, if you don’t want to do this—” I couldn’t see his face in the shadows.

  It took a second before I heard his voice in the dark. “Of course I don’t wanna do this, but I gotta do it. I mean, I’m not sayin’ Rid’s the love a my life. She’s not. That would be crazy. But what if Lena was tellin’ the truth, and Rid wants to change? What if Vampire Boy is doin’ somethin’ to her, too?” I doubted Ridley was under anyone’s influence except her own. But I didn’t say anything.

  This wasn’t just about Lena and me. Ridley was still under Link’s skin, in a bad way. You don’t want to fall in love with a Siren. Falling for a Caster was rough enough.

  I followed him down into the flickering, torch-lit darkness of the world beneath our town. We left Gatlin for the Caster world, a place where anything could happen. I tried not to think back to a time when that was all I wanted.

  Whenever I stepped through the stone archway bearing the carved words DOMUS LUNAE LIBRI, I was entering another world, a parallel universe. By now, some parts of the world were familiar—the smell of the mossy stone, the musky scent of parchment dating back to the Civil War and beyond, the smoke drifting up from the torches hovering near the carved ceilings. I could smell the damp walls, hear the occasional drip of underground water making its way down to the patterns in the stone floor. But there were other parts that would never be familiar. The darkness at the edges of the stacks, the sections of the library no Mortal had ever seen. I wondered how much my mother had seen.

  We reached th
e base of the stairs.

  “What now?” Link found his flashlight and aimed it at the column next to him. A menacing stone griffin’s head snarled back. He pulled the flashlight away, and it flickered on a fanged gargoyle. “If this is a library, I’d hate to see a Caster prison.”

  I heard the sound of the flames erupting into light. “Wait for it.”

  One by one, the torches surrounding the rotunda burst into flame, and we could see the carved colonnade, with rows of fierce mythological creatures, some Caster, some Mortal, snaking around every pedestal.

  Link cringed. “This place is messed up. Just sayin’.”

  I touched a woman’s face twisted into carved agony in stone flames. Link ran his hand over another face, revealing massive rows of canines. “Check out the dog. It looks like Boo.” He looked again and realized the fangs were growing out of a man’s head. He yanked his hand away.

  There was a swirl of carved rock that appeared to be made of both stone and smoke. A face emerged from the twists and folds of the column, and it looked familiar. It was hard to tell because there was so much rock around it. The face seemed to be fighting the stone, trying to push its way out toward me. For a second, I thought I saw the lips on the face move, as if it was trying to speak.

  I backed away. “What the hell is that?”

  “What’s what?” Link stood next to me, staring at the column, which was just a column swirled with curving waves and spirals again. The face had been swallowed back into the pattern, like a head disappearing under the sea’s waves. “The ocean, maybe? Smoke from a fire? Why do you care?”

  “Forget it.” I couldn’t, even if I didn’t understand it. I knew that face in the stone. I had seen it somewhere before. This room was eerie, warning that the Caster world was a Dark place, no matter whose side you were on.

  Another torch ignited, and the stacks of old books, manuscripts, and Caster Scrolls revealed themselves. They radiated out from the rotunda in all directions, like spokes on a wheel, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. The last torch burst into flame, and I could see the curving mahogany desk where Marian should have been sitting.