Beautiful Darkness

  “Come on, now. Aren’t you comin’?” Lucille didn’t budge.

  “Yep. He’s got that effect on women,” I said to Liv as Lucille stretched out in front of the house.

  “She’ll come around,” Link said. “They always do.”

  That’s when Lucille took off running down the street, in the opposite direction from the way we went.

  It was the middle of the night and pitch-dark by the time we found ourselves heading out of town. It felt like we had been walking for hours. The main road was always busy during the day. Now it was deserted. Which made sense, considering where it had led us. “You sure about this?”

  “Not at all. It’s only an approximation based on the available data.” Liv had been checking her little telescope about every five blocks. There was no doubting the data.

  “I love it when she talks nerdy.” Link pulled on her braid and Liv batted him away.

  I stared at the tall stone columns flanking the entrance to Savannah’s famed Bonaventure Cemetery, on the outskirts of town. It was one of the most famous cemeteries in the South, and one of the most well protected. Which was a problem, since it had closed at dusk.

  “Dude, this is a joke, right? Are you guys sure this is where we’re supposed to be?” Link didn’t look too happy about wandering around the cemetery at night, especially with a guard at the entrance and a patrol car that passed by the front gates every so often.

  Liv looked up at a statue of a woman clinging to a cross. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Link pulled out his garden shears. “I don’t think these babies will do the job.”

  “Not through the gates.” I pointed at the wall on the other side of the trees. “Over them.”

  Liv managed to step on every part of my face, kick me in the neck, and wrench her sneakers deep into my shoulder blade before I shoved all six pounds of her over the gate. She lost her balance at the top and landed with a thump.

  “I’m fine. No worries,” Liv called from the other side of the wall.

  Link and I looked at each other, and he bent down. “You first. I’ll climb up the hard way.”

  I stepped on his back, grabbing onto the wall. He pushed himself up until he was standing. “Yeah? How are you gonna do that?”

  “Gotta look for a tree that’s close enough to the wall. Has to be one somewhere around here. Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

  I was at the top. I clung to the wall with both hands.

  “I didn’t ditch school all these years for nothin’.”

  I smiled, and let myself fall.

  Five minutes and seven trees later, the Arclight led us deeper into the cemetery, past the crumbling Confederate headstones and the statues guarding the homes of those who had been forgotten. There was a tight cluster of moss-covered oaks, whose crossed branches created an arch over the path, barely wide enough to squeeze through. The Arclight was flashing and pulsing.

  “We’re here. This is it, right?” I looked over Liv’s shoulder at the selenometer.

  Link looked around. “Where? I don’t see anything.” I pointed to space between the trees. “Seriously?”

  Liv looked nervous, too. She didn’t want to climb through brambles of Spanish moss in a dark graveyard. “I can’t get a reading now. It’s going crazy.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is it, I’m sure.”

  “You think Lena and Ridley and John are back there?” Link looked like he was planning to go back and wait for us out front, or maybe at a rib joint.

  “I don’t know.” I pushed the moss aside and stepped through.

  On the other side, the trees were even more ominous, hanging over our heads and creating a sky of their own. There was a clearing ahead of us, with a huge statue of a beseeching angel in the center of the graves. The graves were bordered in stone, outlining the breadth of each plot. You could almost see the coffins buried in the earth beneath them.

  “Ethan, look.” Liv pointed past the statue. I could see silhouettes framed by a tiny slice of moonlight. They were moving.

  We had company.

  Link shook his head. “This can’t be good.”

  For a second, I couldn’t move. What if it was Lena and John? What were they doing in a graveyard at night, alone? I followed the path, flanked by even more statues—kneeling angels staring into the heavens, or the ones looking down at us as they wept.

  I had no idea what to expect, but when the two figures came into view, they were the last two people I expected to see.

  Amma and Arelia, Macon’s mother. The last time I’d seen her was at Macon’s funeral. They were sitting between the graves. I was a dead man. I should have known Amma would find me.

  There was another woman sitting in the dirt with them. I didn’t recognize her. She was a little older than Arelia, with the same golden skin. Her hair was woven in hundreds of tiny braids, and she was wearing twenty or thirty strands of beads—some gemstones and colored glass, others tiny birds and animals. She had at least ten holes winding around each ear, and long earrings hung from each hole.

  The three of them were sitting cross-legged in a circle, headstones dotting the dirt around them. Their hands were joined in the center of the circle. Amma had her back to us, but I had no doubt she knew I was there.

  “It took you long enough. We’ve been waitin’, and you know how I hate to wait.” Amma’s voice was no more agitated than usual, which didn’t make any sense, since I had disappeared without even a note.

  “Amma, I’m really sorry—”

  She waved her hand as if she was swatting a fly. “No time for that now.” Amma shook the bone in her hand—a graveyard bone, I was willing to bet.

  I looked at Amma. “Did you bring us here?”

  “Can’t say I did. Somethin’ else brought you, somethin’ stronger than me. I just knew you were comin’.”

  “How?”

  Amma gave me some of her best stinkeye. “How does a bird know to fly south? How does a catfish know how to swim? I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Ethan Wate. They don’t call me a Seer for nothin’.”

  “I foresaw your arrival, too.” Arelia was stating a fact, but it annoyed Amma just the same. I could tell by the look on her face.

  Amma raised her chin. “After I mentioned it.” Amma was used to being the only Seer in Gatlin, and she didn’t like being trumped, even if it was by a Diviner with supernatural gifts.

  The other woman, the one I didn’t know, turned to Amma. “We bes’ get started, Amarie. They’re waitin’.”

  “Come sit down here.” Amma motioned to us. “Twyla’s ready.” Twyla. I recognized the name.

  Arelia answered the question before I asked. “This is my sister, Twyla. She’s come a long way to be with us here tonight.” I remembered. Lena had mentioned her Great-Aunt Twyla, the one who had never left New Orleans. Until now.

  “ ’At’s right. Now you come on sit by me, cher. Don’t be ’fraid. It’s only a Circle a Sight.” Twyla patted the space next to her. Amma was sitting on Twyla’s other side, giving me the Look. Liv stepped back, looking pretty freaked out, even if she was training to be a Keeper. Link stayed right behind her. Amma had that effect on people, and from the looks of things, Twyla and Arelia did, too.

  “My sister is a powerful Necromancer.” Arelia’s voice was proud.

  Link made a face and whispered to Liv. “She gets with dead people? That’s the kinda thing a person should keep to themselves.”

  Liv rolled her eyes. “Not a necrophiliac, stupid. A Necromancer, a Caster capable of calling and communicating with the dead.”

  Arelia nodded. “That’s right, and we need help from someone who’s already left this world.”

  I knew right away who she was talking about, or at least I hoped I did. “Amma, are we trying to call Macon?”

  Sadness passed across her face. “I wish I could say we were, but wherever Melchizedek’s gone, we can’t go.”

  “It’s time.” Twyla pulled something out
of her pocket and looked at Amma and Arelia. You could feel the shift in their demeanor. The three of them were all business now, even if it was the business of waking the dead.

  Arelia opened her hands in front of her lips and spoke softly into them. “My power is your power, sisters.” She tossed tiny stones into the center of the circle.

  “Moonstones,” Liv whispered.

  Amma pulled out a sack of chicken bones. I would know that smell anywhere. It was the smell of my kitchen back home. “My power’s your power, sisters.”

  Amma tossed the bones into the circle with the moonstones. Twyla opened her own hand, revealing a tiny carving in the shape of a bird. She spoke the words that gave it power.

  “One unto this world, one unto da next.

  Open the door to da one who’s annexed.”

  She started to chant, loud and feverish, the unfamiliar words rippling through the air. Her eyes rolled back in her head, but her eyelids remained open. Arelia began to chant as well, shaking long strands of tasseled beads.

  Amma grabbed my chin so she could look me in the eye. “I know this isn’t goin’ to be easy, but there are things you need to know.”

  The air in the center of the Circle of Sight began to swirl and churn, creating a thin white mist. Twyla, Arelia, and Amma continued to chant, their voices reaching a crescendo. The mist seemed to act on their command, gaining speed and density, swirling upward like a growing tornado.

  Without warning, Twyla inhaled sharply, as if she was taking her last breath. The mist seemed to follow, disappearing into her mouth. For a minute, I thought she was going to drop dead. She sat there, her back so straight you would’ve thought she was tied to a rack, eyes rolled back in her head, mouth still open.

  Link retreated to a safe distance while Liv scrambled forward to help, reaching for Twyla. But Amma grabbed her arm in midair. “Wait.”

  Twyla exhaled. The white mist raced from her lips, rising over the circle. Taking form. The mist swirled upward, creating a body as it moved. The bare feet, peeking out beneath a white dress, the torso filling the dress as if inflating a balloon. It was a Sheer, rising from the haze. I watched as the mist snaked upward, creating a torso, a delicate neck, and finally a face.

  It was—

  My mother.

  Staring back at me with the same luminous, ethereal quality unique to Sheers. But beyond the translucence, she looked exactly like my mother. Her eyelids fluttered, and she looked at me. The Sheer didn’t just look like my mother. It was my mother.

  She spoke, and her voice was as soft and melodic as I remembered. “Ethan, sweetheart, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I stared at her, speechless. In every dream I’d had of her since the day she died, every photograph, every memory—she was never as real as this.

  “There is so much I need to tell you, so much I can’t say. I’ve tried to show you the way, send you the songs.…”

  She sent me the songs. The songs only Lena and I could hear. I spoke, but my voice sounded far away, as if it wasn’t my own. Seventeen Moons—the Shadowing Song. “It was you, this whole time.”

  She smiled. “Yes. You needed me. But now he needs you, and you need him, too.”

  “Who? Are you talking about Dad?” But I knew she wasn’t talking about my father. She was talking about the other man who meant so much to both of us.

  Macon.

  She didn’t know he was gone.

  “Are you talking about Macon?” I saw a spark of recognition in her eyes. I had to tell her. If something had happened to Lena, I would want someone to tell me. No matter how much everything changed. “Macon’s gone, Mom. He died a few months ago. He can’t help me.”

  I watched her shimmer in the moonlight. She was as beautiful as the last time I saw her, when she hugged me on the rainy porch before I left for school. “Listen to me, Ethan. He’ll always be with you. Only you can redeem him.” Her image began to fade.

  I reached out, desperate to touch her, but my hand only slipped through the air. “Mom?”

  “The Claiming Moon has been called.” She was disappearing, vanishing into the night. “If Darkness prevails, the Seventeenth Moon will be the last.” I almost couldn’t see her anymore. The mist was swirling slowly again, above the circle. “Hurry, Ethan. You don’t have much time, but you can do this. I have faith.” She smiled and I tried to memorize her expression, because I knew she was slipping away.

  “What if I’m too late?”

  I could hear her distant voice. “I tried to keep you safe. I should have known I couldn’t. You were always special.”

  I stared at the white haze, churning like my stomach.

  “My sweet summer boy. I’ll be thinking of you. I love—”

  The words dwindled into nothing. My mom had been here. For a few minutes, I had seen her smile and heard her voice. Now she was gone.

  I had lost her all over again.

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  6.19

  Scars

  There’s somethin’ I’ve got to tell you.” Amma wrung her hands nervously. “It’s about the night a the Sixteenth Moon, Lena’s birthday.” It took a second to realize she was talking to me. I was still staring into the center of the circle, where my mother had been a moment before.

  This time, my mom wasn’t sending me messages in books or the verses of a song. I had seen her.

  “Tell da boy.”

  “Hush, Twyla.” Arelia put her hand on her sister’s arm.

  “Lies. Lies are da place where darkness grows. You tell da boy. Tell him now.”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked from Twyla to Arelia. Amma shot them a look that Twyla answered with a shake of her beaded braids.

  “Listen to me, Ethan Wate.” Amma’s voice was uneven and shaky. “You didn’t fall from the top of the crypt, at least not the way we told you.”

  “What?” She wasn’t making any sense. Why was she talking about Lena’s birthday after I had just seen the ghost of my dead mother?

  “You didn’t fall, see?” she repeated.

  “What are you talking about? Of course I fell. I woke up on the ground, flat on my back.”

  “That’s not how you got there.” Amma hesitated. “It was Lena’s mamma. Sarafine stabbed you with a knife.” Amma looked right into my eyes. “She killed you. You were dead, and we brought you back.”

  She killed you.

  I repeated the words to myself, the pieces snapping together so fast I could barely make sense of them. Instead, they made sense of me—

  the dream that wasn’t a dream, but a memory of not breathing and not feeling and not thinking and not seeing—

  the dirt and flames that carried my body away as my life flowed out—

  “Ethan! You all right?” I could hear Amma, but she was far away, as far as she was that night when I was on the ground.

  I could be in the ground now, like my mom and Macon.

  I should be.

  “Ethan?” Link was shaking me.

  My body filled with sensations I couldn’t control and didn’t want to remember. Blood in my mouth, blood roaring into my ears—

  “He’s passing out.” Liv was holding my head.

  There had been pain and noise and something else. Voices. Shapes. People.

  I had died.

  I reached under my shirt, running my hand over the scar on my stomach. The scar from where Sarafine had stabbed me with a real knife. I barely noticed it anymore, but now it would be a constant reminder of the night I died. I remembered how Lena reacted when she saw it.

  “You’re still the same person, and Lena still loves you. Her love is the reason you’re here now.” Arelia’s voice was gentle, knowing. I opened my eyes, letting the blur of shapes become people as I settled back into myself again.

  My thoughts were so jumbled. Even now, nothing was making any sense. “What do you mean, her love is the reason I’m here now?”

  Amma spoke quietly, and I had to strain to hear he
r. “Lena’s the one who brought you back. I helped her, me and your mamma.”

  The words didn’t fit together, so I tried unrolling them out again for myself. Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead, together. And together they had kept it from me until now. I rubbed the scar on my skin. It felt like the truth.

  “Since when does Lena know how to raise the dead? If she did, don’t you think she would’ve brought Macon back by now?”

  Amma looked at me. I had never seen her so scared. “She didn’t do it on her own. She used the Binding Spell from The Book a Moons. Binds death to life.”

  Lena had used The Book of Moons.

  The Book that had cursed Genevieve and Lena’s whole family for generations, Claiming all the children in Lena’s family for Light or Dark on their sixteenth birthdays. The Book Genevieve had used to bring Ethan Carter Wate back from the dead for only a second—an act she spent the rest of her life paying for.

  I couldn’t think. My mind started caving in on itself again, and I couldn’t follow my own thoughts. Genevieve. Lena. The price.

  “How could you?” I pushed myself away from them, out of their Circle of Sight. I’d seen enough.

  “I didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t let you go.” Amma looked at me, ashamed. “I couldn’t either.”

  I scrambled to my feet, shaking my head. “It’s a lie. She wouldn’t do it.” But I knew she would. They both would. It was exactly what they would have done. I knew, because I would’ve done it, too.

  It didn’t matter now.

  In my whole life, I had never been so angry with Amma, or so disappointed. “You knew the Book wouldn’t give anything without taking something in return. You told me that yourself.”

  “I know.”

  “Lena will have to pay a price for this, because of me. You both will.” My head felt like it was going to split in half, or explode.

  A renegade tear caught on Amma’s cheek. She put two fingers on her forehead and closed her eyes, Amma’s version of making the sign of the cross, a silent prayer. “She’s payin’ it right now.”