Beautiful Darkness

  “It’s Latin. It means ‘Keeper of Knowledge.’ Marian suggested it. It’s fitting, don’t you think?” If he only knew.

  I forced a smile. “Yeah. It sounds like her.”

  My dad put his arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, the way he used to after my Little League team lost a game. “I really miss her. I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

  I couldn’t say anything. My breath was caught in my throat, my chest so tight I thought I was going to pass out. My mom was dead. I would never see her again, no matter how many pages she flipped open in her books or how many messages she sent me.

  “I know this has been really hard for you, Ethan. I wanted to say I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you this year the way I should’ve been. I just—”

  “Dad.” I could feel my eyes watering, but I didn’t want to cry. I wouldn’t give the town casserole factory that kind of satisfaction. So I cut him off. “It’s okay.”

  He gave my shoulder one last squeeze. “I’ll give you some time alone with her. I’m going to take a walk.”

  I kept staring at the headstone, with the tiny Celtic symbol of Awen etched into the stone. It was a symbol I knew, one my mother had always loved. Three lines representing rays of light, converging at the top.

  I heard Marian’s voice behind me. “Awen. It’s a Gaelic word that means ‘poetic inspiration’ or ‘spiritual illumination.’ Two things your mother respected.” I thought about the symbols in the lintel at Ravenwood, the symbols on The Book of Moons, and the one on the door of Exile. Symbols meant something. In some cases, more than words. My mom had known that. I wondered if it was the reason she became a Keeper, or if she learned it from the Keepers before her. There was so much about her I would never know.

  “Ethan, I’m sorry. Would you like to be alone?”

  I let Marian hug me. “No. I don’t really feel like she’s here. You know what I mean?”

  “I do.” She kissed my forehead and smiled, pulling a green tomato out of her pocket. She balanced it on the top of the tombstone.

  I leaned back and smiled. “Now if you were a real friend, you would have fried it.”

  Marian put her arm around me. She was in her best dress, like everyone else, but her best dress was somehow better. It was soft and yellow, the color of butter, with a loose bow near the neck. The skirt folded into about a thousand crinkly pleats, like a dress from an old-fashioned movie. It looked like something Lena would have worn.

  “Lila knows I would do no such thing.” She squeezed me tighter. “I really only came out here to see you.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Marian. It’s been a rough couple of days.”

  “Olivia told me. A Caster bar, an Incubus, and a Vex, all in the same night. I’m afraid Amma will never let you visit me again.” She didn’t mention the trouble I imagined Liv was in today.

  “There’s something else.” Lena. I couldn’t bring myself to say her name.

  Marian pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I heard, and I’m sorry. But I brought you something.” She opened her bag and took out a small wooden box with a worn design carved into its surface. “As I said, I really came here to see you and give you this.” She held out the box. “It was your mother’s, one of her most valuable possessions. It’s older than the rest of her collection. I think she would want you to have it.”

  I took it. The box was heavier than it looked.

  “Be careful. It’s delicate.”

  I lifted the lid gently, expecting to find another one of my mother’s treasured Civil War relics—a scrap of a flag, a bullet, a piece of lace. Something marked by history and time. But when I opened the box, it was something else, marked by a different kind of history and time. I knew what it was, the second I saw it.

  The Arclight, from the visions.

  The Arclight Macon Ravenwood gave to the girl he loved.

  Lila Jane Evers.

  I had seen it stitched on an old pillow once that belonged to my mom when she was little. Jane. My Aunt Caroline said only my grandmother called her that, but my grandmother died before I was born, so I’d never heard it myself. Aunt Caroline was wrong. My grandmother wasn’t the only one who had called her Jane.

  Which meant—

  My mom was the girl in the visions.

  And Macon Ravenwood was the love of my mother’s life.

  6.17

  The Arclight

  My mom and Macon Ravenwood. I dropped the Arclight as if it had stung me. The box fell, and the ball rolled harmlessly across the grass, like a child’s toy instead of some kind of supernatural prison.

  “Ethan? What is it?” It was obvious Marian had no idea I recognized the Arclight. I had never mentioned it when I told her about the visions. I hadn’t thought much about it. It was another little detail about the Caster world I didn’t understand.

  But this one little detail mattered.

  If this was the Arclight from the vision, then my mother had loved Macon the way I loved Lena. The way my father had loved her.

  I needed to know if Marian knew where my mother had gotten it, or who had given it to her. “Did you know?”

  She bent down and picked up the sphere, its dark surface gleaming in the sunlight. She slid it back into the box. “Did I know what? Ethan, you aren’t making any sense.”

  The questions were coming faster than my mind could process them. How did my mother meet Macon Ravenwood? How long were they together? Who else knew? And the biggest one…

  What about my dad?

  “Did you know my mom was in love with Macon Ravenwood?”

  Marian’s face crumbled, which told me everything. She had only meant to give away a gift from my mom, not my mother’s deepest secret. “Who told you that?”

  “You did. When you handed me the Arclight Macon gave to the girl he loved. My mother.”

  Marian’s eyes filled with tears, but they didn’t fall. “The visions. They were about Macon and your mother.” She was figuring it out, piecing it together.

  I remembered the night when I first met Macon. Lila Evers, he had said. Lila Evers Wate, I had corrected.

  Macon had mentioned my mother’s work, but claimed he didn’t know her. Another lie. My head was spinning.

  “So you knew.” It wasn’t a question. I shook my head, wishing I could shake everything I’d just learned back out again. “Does my dad know?”

  “No. And you can’t tell him, Ethan. He wouldn’t understand.” Her voice was desperate.

  “He wouldn’t understand? I don’t understand!” More than a few people stopped gossiping and looked over at us.

  “I’m so sorry. I never thought it would be a story I would have to tell. It was your mother’s story, not mine.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, my mom is dead. She’s not exactly taking questions.” My voice was harsh and unforgiving, which pretty much summed up how I felt.

  Marian looked down at my mother’s headstone. “You’re right. You need to know.”

  “I want the truth.”

  “That’s what I intend to give you.” Her voice was shaking. “If you know about the Arclight, I assume you know why Macon gave it to your mother.”

  “So she could protect herself from him.” I’d felt sorry for Macon before. Now I felt sick. My mom was Juliet in some kind of twisted play where Romeo was an Incubus, even if it was Macon.

  “That’s right. Macon and Lila struggled with the same reality as you and Lena. It has been hard to watch you these past few months without drawing certain… comparisons. I can’t think how difficult it must have been for Macon.”

  “Please. Stop.”

  “Ethan, I understand this is hard for you, but it doesn’t change what happened. I’m a Keeper, and these are the facts. Your mother was a Mortal. Macon was an Incubus. They couldn’t be together, not after Macon changed and became the Dark creature he was born to be. Macon didn’t trust himself. He was afraid he might hurt your mother, so he gave her the Arclight.”

  “Facts.
Lies. Whatever.” I was so tired of it all.

  “Fact. He loved her more than his own life.” Why was Marian defending him?

  “Fact. Not killing the love of your life doesn’t make you a hero.” I was furious.

  “It nearly killed him, Ethan.”

  “Yeah? Well, look around. My mom’s dead. They both are. So Macon’s plan didn’t really help much, did it?”

  Marian took a deep breath. I knew the look, and a lecture was coming. She pulled me by the arm, and we walked away from the graveyard, away from everyone above and below the ground. “They met at Duke. They were both studying American history. They fell in love, like any two people.”

  “You mean, like any unsuspecting undergraduate and an evolving Demon. If we’re sticking to the facts.”

  “‘In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.’ Your mother used to say that.”

  I wasn’t interested in philosophical ideas about the nature of the Caster world. “When did he give her the Arclight?”

  “Eventually, Macon told Lila what he was and what he would become—that a future between the two of them was impossible.” Marian spoke slowly and carefully. I wondered if it was as hard to say as it was to hear, and I felt sorry for both of us.

  “It broke her heart, and his. He gave her the Arclight, which thankfully she never had to use. He left the university and came back home to Gatlin.”

  She waited for me to say something cruel. I tried to come up with something, but in spite of everything, I was curious. “What happened after Macon came back? Did they see each other again?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  I gave her an incredulous look. “Sadly?”

  Marian shook her head at me. “It was sad, Ethan. It was the saddest I’d ever seen your mother. I was so worried, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought she was going to die from a broken heart, from how broken every part of her was.”

  We had been walking the loop that circled Perpetual Peace. Now we were surrounded by trees and out of sight from most of Gatlin.

  “But.” I had to know the end, even if it hurt to hear.

  “But your mother followed Macon to Gatlin, through the Tunnels. She couldn’t bear to be away from him, and she swore to find a way they could be together. A way Casters and Mortals could spend their lives together. She was obsessed with the idea.”

  I understood. I didn’t like it, but I understood.

  “The answer to that question did not lie in the Mortal world but in the Caster world. So your mother found a way to become part of it, even if she couldn’t be with Macon.”

  We started walking again. “You’re talking about her job as a Keeper, right?”

  Marian nodded. “Lila found a calling that allowed her to study the Caster world and its laws, its Light and its Darkness. A way to look for the answer.”

  “How did she get the job?” I didn’t think there was a Caster Yellow Pages, but since Carlton Eaton delivered our Yellow Pages aboveground and the Caster mail below, who knew?

  “At the time, there was no Keeper in Gatlin.” Marian paused, uncomfortable. “But a powerful Caster requested one, since the Lunae Libri resides here and, at one time, The Book of Moons.”

  Now it all made sense.

  “Macon. He asked for her, didn’t he? He couldn’t stay away, after all that.”

  Marian wiped her face with a handkerchief. “No. It was Arelia Valentin, Macon’s mother.”

  “Why would Macon’s mother want my mom to be a Keeper? Even if she felt sorry for her son, she knew they couldn’t be together.”

  “Arelia is a powerful Diviner, capable of seeing fragments of the future.”

  “Like a Caster version of Amma?”

  Marian wiped her face. “I guess you could think of it that way. Arelia recognized something in your mother, her ability to find the truth—to see what is hidden. I think she was hoping your mother would find the answer, a way Casters and Mortals could be together. Light Casters have always hoped for that possibility. Genevieve wasn’t the first Caster to fall in love with a Mortal.” Marian looked off into the distance, where families were beginning to lay out their picnics on the sloping grass. “Or maybe she did it for her son.”

  Marian stopped walking. We had made another circle and were standing at Macon’s grave. I could see the angel weeping in the distance. Only the grave looked nothing like it had at his funeral. Where there had only been dirt, now there was a wild garden shaded by two impossibly tall lemon trees, flanking either side of the headstone. In the shade, a bed of spreading jasmine and tangles of rosemary grew over his grave. I wondered if anyone had visited him today to notice.

  I pressed my hands against my temples, trying to keep my head from exploding. Marian laid her hand gently on my back. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but it doesn’t change anything. Your mother loved you.”

  I shrugged Marian’s hand away. “Yeah, she just didn’t love my dad.”

  Marian jerked my arm, forcing me to face her. My mother may have been my mom, but she was also Marian’s best friend, and I wasn’t going to get away with questioning her integrity in front of Marian. Not today, or any day. “Don’t you say that, EW. Your mother loved your father.”

  “But she didn’t move to Gatlin for my dad. She moved here for Macon.”

  “Your parents met at Duke when we were working on our dissertation. As the Keeper, your mother was living in the Tunnels underneath Gatlin, traveling between the Lunae Libri and the university to work with me. She wasn’t living in the town, in the world of the DAR and Mrs. Lincoln. So she did move to Gatlin for your father. She moved out of the darkness and into the light, and believe me, it was a big move for your mom. Your father saved her from herself when none of us could. Not me. Not Macon.”

  I stared at the lemon trees shading Macon’s grave, and past them, to my mom’s gravesite. I thought about my dad kneeling there. I thought of Macon, braving the Garden of Perpetual Peace, if only so he could rest one tree over from my mom.

  “She moved into a town where no one accepted her, because your father wouldn’t leave, and she loved him.” Marian held my chin between her thumb and her fingers. “She just didn’t love him first.”

  I took a deep breath. At least my whole life wasn’t a total lie. She loved my dad, even if she loved Macon Ravenwood, too. I took the Arclight from Marian’s hand. I wanted to hold it, to have a piece of both of them. “She never found the answer, the way Mortals and Casters can be together.”

  “I don’t know if there is a way.” Marian put her arm around me, and I leaned my head on her shoulder. “You’re the one who might be a Wayward, EW. You tell me.”

  For the first time since I saw Lena standing in the rain, almost a year ago, I didn’t know. Like my mom, I hadn’t found any answers. All I had found was trouble. Was that what she found, too?

  I looked at the box in Marian’s hands. “Is that why my mom died? Trying to find the answer?”

  Marian took my hand and pressed the box into it, wrapping my fingers around it with hers. “I’ve told you what I know. Draw your own conclusions, but I can’t interfere. Those are the rules. In the great Order of Things, I don’t matter. Keepers never do.”

  “That’s not true.” Marian mattered to me, but I couldn’t say it. My mom mattered. That part I didn’t have to say.

  Marian smiled as she lifted her hand, leaving the box in mine. “I’m not complaining. I chose this path, Ethan. Not everyone gets to choose their place in the Order of Things.”

  “You mean not Lena? Or not me?”

  “You matter, whether you like it or not, and so does Lena. That’s not a choice.” She pushed the hair out of my eyes, the way my mom used to. “The truth is the truth. ‘Rarely pure and never simple,’ as Oscar Wilde would say.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “‘All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.’ ”

  “More Oscar Wilde?”

  “Gali
leo, the father of modern astronomy. Another man who rejected his place in the Order of Things—the idea that the sun didn’t revolve around the Earth. He knew, perhaps better than anyone, that we don’t get to choose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it.”

  I took the box, because deep down I knew what she was saying, even if I didn’t know anything about Galileo and knew even less about Oscar Wilde. I was part of all this, whether I wanted to be or not. I couldn’t run from it, any more than I could stop the visions.

  Now I had to decide what to do about it.

  6.17

  Jump

  When I crawled into bed that night, I was dreading my dreams. They say you dream about the last thing you were thinking about before you fell asleep, but the more I tried to not think about Macon and my mom, the more I thought about them. Exhausted from all that thinking about not thinking, it was only a matter of time before I sunk through the mattress into the blackness, and my bed became a boat.…

  The willows were waving over my head.

  I could feel myself rocking back and forth. The sky was blue, cloudless, surreal. I turned my head and looked to the side. Splintery wood, painted a peeling shade of blue that looked a lot like the ceiling in my bedroom. I was in a dinghy or a rowboat, floating along the river.

  I sat up and the boat rocked. A small white hand fell to the side, dragging a slender finger through the water. I stared at the ripples disturbing the reflection of the perfect sky, otherwise cool and calm as glass.

  Lena was lying across from me at the end of the boat. She wore a white dress, the kind you saw in old movies, where everything is shot in black and white. Lace and ribbon and tiny pearl buttons. She was holding a black parasol, and her hair, her nails, even her lips, were black. She lay curled on her side, slumped against the dinghy, her hand dragging along behind us as we floated.

  “Lena?”

  She didn’t open her eyes, but she smiled. “I’m cold, Ethan.”