Beautiful Darkness

  I knew I should close the notebook, but I couldn’t. Reading her words was almost like hearing her thoughts again. I hadn’t known them in such a long time, and I wanted to so badly. I turned each page, looking for the days that haunted me.

  Like the day of the fair—

  mortal hearts and mortal fears / something they can share i untie him like a sparrow

  Freedom—that’s what sparrows meant to a Caster.

  All along I thought she was trying to be free from me, but really she was trying to set me free. As if loving her was a cage I couldn’t escape.

  I closed the notebook. It hurt too much to read it, especially when Lena was so far away, in all the ways that mattered.

  A few feet away, Ridley was still staring blankly into the Mortal stars. For the first time, we saw the same sky.

  Liv was wedged between two roots, with me on one side and Link on the other. After I found out the truth about what happened on Lena’s birthday, I guess I expected my feelings for Liv to disappear. But even now I found myself wondering. If things were different, if I had never met Lena, if I had never met Liv…

  I spent the next few hours watching Liv. When she slept, she looked peaceful, beautiful. Not Lena’s kind of beautiful, something different. She looked content—like a sunny day, a cold glass of milk, an unopened book before you cracked the binding. There was nothing tortured about her. She looked the way I wanted to feel.

  Mortal. Hopeful. Alive.

  When I finally drifted off, I felt that way, just for a minute.…

  Lena was shaking me. “Wake up, Sleepyhead. We have to talk.” I smiled and pulled her into my arms. I tried to kiss her, but she laughed and ducked away. “This isn’t that kind of a dream.”

  I sat up and looked around. We were in Macon’s bed in the Tunnels. “All my dreams are that kind of dream, L. I’m almost seventeen.”

  “This is my dream, not yours. And I’ve only been sixteen for four months.”

  “Won’t Macon be mad if we’re here?”

  “Macon’s dead, don’t you remember? You must really be asleep.” She was right. I had forgotten everything, and now it all came crashing back. Macon was gone. The trade.

  And Lena had left me, only she hadn’t. She was here.

  “So this is a dream?” I was trying to keep my stomach from twisting with loss, the guilt of everything I’d done, everything I owed her.

  Lena nodded.

  “Am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?”

  “Does it ever make a difference, when it comes to us?” She was avoiding the question.

  I tried again. “When I wake up, will you be gone?”

  “Yes. But I had to see you. This was the only way for us to really talk.” She was wearing a white T-shirt, one of my oldest, softest ones. She looked tousled and beautiful, in the way I loved best, when she thought she looked the worst.

  I put my hands around her waist and pulled her close. “L, I saw my mom. She told me about Macon. I think she loved him.”

  “They loved each other. I’ve seen the visions, too.” So our connection was still there. I felt a wave of relief.

  “They were like us, Lena.”

  “And they couldn’t be together. Like us.”

  It was a dream, I was sure of it. Because we could speak these terrible truths with a strange remove, as if they were happening to other people. She rested her head on my chest, picking mud off my shirt with her fingers. How had my shirt gotten so muddy? I tried to remember but couldn’t.

  “What are we going to do, L?”

  “I don’t know, Ethan. I’m scared.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You,” she whispered.

  “So why is it so hard?”

  “We’re all wrong. Everything’s all wrong when I’m with you.”

  “Does this feel wrong?” I held her tighter.

  “No. But how I feel doesn’t matter anymore.” I felt her sigh against my chest.

  “Who told you that?”

  “No one had to tell me.” I stared into her eyes. They were still gold.

  “You can’t go to the Great Barrier. You have to come back.”

  “I can’t stop now. I have to see how it ends.”

  I played with a strand of her curling black hair. “Why didn’t you have to see how it ended with us?”

  She smiled and touched my face. “Because now I know how it ends with you.”

  “How does it end?”

  “Like this.” She bent over and kissed me, and her hair fell around my face like rain. I pulled up the covers, and she climbed beneath them, folding into my arms. As we kissed, I felt the heat of her touch. We tumbled in the bed. I was on top of her, then she was on top of me. The heat intensified to the point where I couldn’t breathe. I thought my skin was on fire, and when I broke away from her kiss, it was.

  We were both on fire, surrounded by flames that rose higher than we could see, and the bed wasn’t a bed at all but a stone slab. It was burning all around us, the yellow flames of Sarafine’s fire.

  Lena screamed and clung to me. I looked down from where we were, on top of the massive pyramid of splintered trees. There was a strange circle chiseled into the stone we were lying on, some kind of Dark Caster symbol.

  “Lena, wake up! This isn’t you. You didn’t kill Macon. You’re not going Dark. It was the Book. Amma told me everything.”

  The pyre had been for us, not Sarafine. I could hear her laughing—or was it Lena? I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. “L, listen to me! You don’t have to do this—”

  Lena was screaming. She couldn’t stop screaming.

  By the time I woke up, the flames had consumed us both.

  “Ethan? Wake up. We have to get going.”

  I sat up, breathing hard and dripping with sweat. I held out my hands. Nothing. Not a burn, not so much as a scratch. It was a nightmare. I looked around. Liv and Link were already up. I rubbed my face with my hands. My heart was still pounding, as if the dream was real and I had almost died. I wondered again if it was my dream or Lena’s. I wondered if that was really how it ended for us. Fire and death, just as Sarafine would want it.

  Ridley was sitting on a rock, sucking on a lollipop, which was sort of pathetic. During the night, she seemed to have moved from a state of shock to one of denial. She was acting as if nothing happened. No one really knew what to say. She was like one of those war vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who come home and think they’re still on the battlefield.

  She was staring at Link, tossing her hair and looking at him expectantly. “Why don’t you come on over here, Hot Rod?”

  Link limped over to my backpack and pulled out a bottle of water. “I’ll pass.”

  Ridley pushed her shades on top of her head and stared at him even more intently, which made it clear her powers were gone. In the light of day, Ridley’s eyes were as blue as Liv’s.

  “I said come over here.” Ridley inched her short skirt farther up her bruised thigh. I felt sorry for her. She wasn’t a Siren anymore, just a girl who looked like one.

  “Why?” Link wasn’t catching on.

  Ridley’s tongue was bright red as she gave her lollipop one last lick. “Don’t you want to kiss me?” For a second, I thought Link might play along, but that would only delay the inevitable.

  “No, thanks.” He turned away, and it was obvious he felt guilty.

  Ridley’s lip quivered. “Maybe it’s temporary, and my powers will come back.” She was trying to convince herself more than anyone.

  Someone had to tell her. The sooner she faced reality, the sooner she would be able to move on. If she could. “I think they’re really gone, Ridley.”

  She whipped around to face me, her voice shaky. “You don’t know that. Just because you went out with a Caster doesn’t mean you know anything.”

  “I know Dark Casters have yellow eyes.”

  I heard the breath catch in her throat. She grabbed the bottom of her filthy
tank top and yanked it up. Her skin was still smooth and golden, but the tattoo that had encircled her navel was gone. She ran her hands across her stomach, and then crumbled.

  “It’s true. She really took my powers.” Ridley opened her fingers, letting the lollipop fall into the dirt. She didn’t make a sound, but the tears ran down her face in two silver lines.

  Link walked over and held out his hand to pull her up. “That’s not true. You’re still pretty bad. I mean, hot. For a Mortal.”

  Ridley jumped to her feet, hysterical. “You think this is funny? That losing my powers is like losing one of your stupid basketball games? They’re who I am, you idiot! Without them I’m nothing.” Black streaks ran down her cheeks. She was shaking.

  Link picked up her lollipop out of the dirt. He opened the water bottle and doused it. “Give it some time, Rid. You’ll develop charms all your own. You’ll see.” He handed it back to her. Ridley stared back at him blankly.

  Without looking away, she hurled the lollipop as far as she could.

  6.20

  Common Thread

  I had barely slept. Link’s arm was swollen and purple. None of us were in any shape to trek through the muddy forest, but we didn’t have a choice.

  “You guys okay? We should go.”

  Link touched his arm and winced. “I’ve felt better. Like, I don’t know, every other day a my life.”

  The gash on Liv’s face was already beginning to scab over. “I’ve felt worse, but that’s a long story, which involves Wembley Stadium, a bad trip on the tube, and far too many döner kebabs.”

  I picked up my backpack, caked with mud. “Where’s Lucille?”

  Link looked around. “Who knows? That cat’s always disappearin’. Now I know why your aunts kept her on a leash.”

  I whistled into the trees, but there was no sign of her. “Lucille! She was here when we got up.”

  “Don’t worry, man. She’ll find us. Cats have that sixth sense, you know?”

  “She was probably tired of following us around, since we never get anywhere,” Ridley said. “That cat’s a whole lot smarter than we are.”

  I lost track of their conversation after that. I was too busy listening to the one in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lena and what she’d done for me. Why had it taken me so long to see what was right in front of me?

  I knew Lena had been punishing herself all this time. The self-imposed isolation, the morbid pictures of headstones taped to her walls, the Dark symbols in her notebook and all over her body, wearing her dead uncle’s clothes, even hanging out with Ridley and John—it was never about me. It was about Macon.

  But I never realized I was an accomplice. Lena had a constant reminder of the crime she was trying herself for, over and over again. A constant reminder of what she lost.

  Me.

  She had to look at me every day and hold my hand and kiss me. No wonder she was so hot and cold, kissing me one minute and running away from me the next. I thought about the song lyrics, written over and over again on her walls.

  Running to stand still.

  She couldn’t get away, and I wouldn’t let her. In my last dream, I told her I knew about the trade. I wondered if she had the dream, too—if she knew I shared her secret burden. That she didn’t have to carry it alone anymore.

  I’m so sorry, L.

  I listened for her voice in the corners of my mind, the faintest possibility she was listening. I didn’t hear a sound, but I saw something, fleeting images in my peripheral vision. Snapshots rushing past me like cars in the fast lane on the interstate…

  I was running, jumping, moving so fast I couldn’t focus. Not until my vision adjusted as it had twice before, and I could make out the shapes of trees, leaves, and branches rushing by. At first, all I could hear were the leaves crunching beneath me, the sound of the air as I moved through it. Then I heard voices.

  “We have to go back.” It was Lena. I followed the sound into the trees.

  “We can’t. You know that.”

  Sunlight broke easily through the leaves. All I could see were boots—Lena’s thrashed ones and John’s heavy black ones. They were standing a few feet away.

  Then I saw their faces. Lena’s expression was stubborn. I knew that look. “Sarafine found them. They could be dead!”

  John walked closer and winced, the same way he had when I saw them in the bedroom. It was an involuntary reflex, a reaction to some kind of pain. He looked down into her golden eyes. “Don’t you mean Ethan?”

  She avoided his gaze. “I mean all of them. Aren’t you at least a little worried about Ridley? She disappeared. You don’t think those two things could be connected?”

  “What two things?”

  Lena’s shoulders tensed. “My cousin disappearing and Sarafine showing up out of nowhere?”

  He reached out and took her hand, lacing his fingers between hers the way I used to. “She’s always been somewhere, Lena. Your mother is probably the most powerful Dark Caster in the world. Why would she want to hurt Ridley, one of her own?”

  “I don’t know.” Lena was shaking her head, her resolve weakening. “It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “Even though we’re not together, I don’t want to see him get hurt. He tried to protect me.”

  “From what?”

  From myself.

  I heard the words, even though she didn’t speak them. “From a lot of things. It was different then.”

  “You were pretending to be someone you weren’t, trying to make everyone happy. Did you ever think he wasn’t protecting you but holding you back?” I could feel my heart beating faster, my muscles tensing.

  I was holding him back.

  “You know, I had a Mortal girlfriend once.”

  Lena looked shocked. “You did?”

  John nodded. “Yeah. She was sweet, and I loved her.”

  “What happened?” Lena was hanging on every word.

  “It was too hard. She didn’t understand what my life was like. That I don’t always get to do whatever I want…” He sounded like he was telling the truth.

  “Why couldn’t you do what you wanted?”

  “My childhood was what you would call strict. Straitjacket strict. Even the rules had rules.”

  Lena looked confused. “You mean about dating Mortals?”

  John winced again, cringing this time. “No, it wasn’t like that. The way I was raised was because I was different. The man who raised me was the only father I’ve ever known, and he didn’t want me to hurt anyone.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone either.”

  “You’re different. I mean, we are.”

  John grabbed Lena’s hand and pulled her next to him. “Don’t worry. We’ll find your cousin. She probably ran off with that drummer from Suffer.” He was right about the drummer, just not the one he was betting on. Suffer? Lena was hanging out with John’s kind, in places called Exile and Suffer. She thought that’s what she deserved.

  Lena didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t let go of his hand. I tried to force myself to follow them, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have control. That much was obvious from this bizarre vantage point, so close to the ground. I was always looking up at them. It didn’t make any sense. But it didn’t matter, because now I was running again, through a dark tunnel. Or was it a cave? I could smell the sea as the black walls streaked by.

  I rubbed my eyes, surprised to be walking behind Liv instead of lying on the ground. It was crazy to think I could be watching Lena in one place and following Liv through the Tunnels at the same time. How was it possible?

  The strange visions, with the off-kilter perspective and the flashing images—what was happening? Why was I able to see Lena and John? I had to figure it out.

  I looked down at my hands. I wasn’t holding anything except the Arclight. I tried to think back to the first time I saw Lena this way. It was in my bathroom, and I didn’t have the Arclight then. The only thing I’d been touching
was the sink. There had to be a common thread, but I couldn’t see it.

  Ahead, the tunnel opened up into a stone hall, where the entrances to four tunnels converged.

  Link sighed. “Which way?”

  I didn’t answer. Because when I looked down at the Arclight, I saw something else just beyond it.

  Lucille.

  Sitting in the mouth of the tunnel opposite us, expectantly. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the silver tag Aunt Prue had given me, with Lucille’s name engraved on it. I could still hear Aunt Prue’s voice.

  See you still got that cat. I was just waitin’ for the right time ta let her offa that clothesline. She knows a trick or two. You’ll see.

  In a split second, everything fell into place and I knew.

  It was Lucille.

  The images speeding past me every time I found my way to Lena and John. The ground so close, closer than it could ever be if I was standing. The strange vantage point, as if I was lying on my stomach looking up at them. It all made sense. The way Lucille kept disappearing and reappearing randomly. Only it wasn’t random.

  I tried to remember the times Lucille had vanished, ticking them off in my head one by one. The first time I saw Lena with John and Ridley, I was staring into my bathroom mirror. I didn’t remember Lucille disappearing, but I remembered she was sitting on the front porch the next morning. Which didn’t make any sense, because we never left her outside at night.

  The second time, Lucille had bolted in Forsyth Park when we got to Savannah, and she didn’t show up until after we left Bonaventure—after I had seen Lena and John when I was at Aunt Caroline’s. And this time, Link noticed Lucille was gone when we came back down into the Tunnels, but now here she was, sitting in front of us, right after I had just seen Lena.

  I wasn’t the one seeing Lena.

  Lucille was. She was tracking Lena, the same way we were following the maps or the lights or the pull of the moon. I was watching Lena through the cat’s eyes, maybe the same way Macon had watched the world through Boo’s. How was it possible? Lucille wasn’t a Caster cat any more than I was a Caster.