Eighteen Moons, eighteen spheres,
From the world beyond the years,
One Unchosen, death or birth,
A Broken Day awaits the Earth…
After
Siren’s Tears
Ridley stood in her room at Ravenwood, the room that used to belong to Macon. But nothing remained the same except the four walls, a ceiling, and a floor, and possibly the paneled bedroom door.
Which she shut, with a heavy click, and bolted. She turned to face her room, her back against the door. Macon had decided to take another room at Ravenwood, though he spent most of his time in his study in the Tunnels. So this room belonged to Ridley now, and she was careful to keep the trapdoor leading down into the Tunnels locked under thick pink shag carpeting. The walls were covered with spray painted graffiti, black and neon pink mostly, with shots of electric green, yellow, and orange. They weren’t words, exactly—more like shapes, slashes, emotions. Anger, bottled in a can of cheap spray paint from the Wal-Mart in Summerville. Lena had offered to do it for her, but Ridley insisted on doing it herself, Mortal-style. The reeking fumes made her head ache, and the splattering paint made a huge mess of everything. It was exactly what she wanted and exactly how she felt.
She’d made a mess of everything.
No words. Ridley hated words. Mostly, they were lies. Her two-week incarceration in Lena’s room had been enough to make her hate poetry for a lifetime.
Mybeatingheartbleedingneedsyou—
Whatever.
Ridley shuddered. There was no accounting for taste in the family gene pool. She pushed herself away from the door and walked over to the wardrobe. With the slightest touch, she opened the white wooden doors, revealing a lifetime’s careful collection of clothing, the hallmark of a Siren.
Which, she reminded herself, she wasn’t.
She dragged a pink footstool to the shelves and climbed up on it, her pink platform shoes slipping back and forth over her pink striped knee socks. It had been a Harajuku kind of a day, not often seen around Gatlin. The looks she got at the Dar-ee Keen were priceless. At least it had passed the afternoon.
One afternoon. Out of how many?
She felt along the top of the shelf until she found it, a shoe box from Paris. She smiled and pulled it down. Purple velvet four-inch peep-toes, if she remembered. Of course she remembered. She’d had some damn fine times in those shoes.
She dumped the contents of the box onto her black and white bedspread. There it was, half-shrouded in silk, still covered with crumbling dirt.
Ridley slumped down on the floor next to her bed, resting her arms on the edge. She wasn’t stupid. She just wanted to look, as she had every night for the past two weeks. She wanted to feel the power of something magical, a power she would never have again.
Ridley wasn’t a bad girl. Not really. Besides, even if she was, what did it matter? She was powerless to do anything about it. She’d been tossed aside like last year’s mascara.
Her cell phone rang, and she picked it up from her nightstand. A picture of Link popped up on the screen. She clicked it off and tossed it into the endless pink shag.
Not now, Hot Rod.
She had another Incubus on her mind.
John Breed.
Ridley settled back into place, tilting her head to the side as she watched the sphere begin to glow a subtle shade of pink.
“What am I going to do with you?” She smiled because, for once, it was her decision to make, and because she had yet to make it.
three
The light grew brighter and brighter until the room was bathed in a wash of rose-colored light, which made almost everything else disappear like thin pencil lines that had been only partly rubbed out.
two
Ridley closed her eyes—a little girl blowing out a birthday candle, to make a wish—
one
She opened her eyes.
It was decided.
BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS—Deleted Scene
roses are red, roses are red
i picked one for you but it ended up dead
love is grave, one grave, two
love is deep, i dug it for you
now ask me again should I love you
roses are red and so is blood
cry me a river and watch the flood
roses are red, roses are red
the roses are gone
that’s what they said
That was the card I got from Lena on our first Valentine’s Day together. The paper heart was torn and black, the writing in jagged silver ink. I could picture her sitting with her notebook, trying to write something on the heart. Knowing Lena and her indescribable powers, the paper had probably turned black in her hands. I turned it over and noticed there was writing on the back.
my brokenblack heart belongs to you. L
Amma had found it on the front porch this morning tucked inside The Stars and Stripes, Gatlin’s only newspaper. I wasn’t expecting it, but to be honest, I didn’t know what to expect anymore. It had been only three days since Lena’s sixteenth birthday, her Sixteenth Moon. The day we had feared would be the worst had surpassed the worst. Macon had died, and there was no way to glue all those broken pieces back together. Not without Macon. He was the glue.
Happy birthday.
The world was still upside down, those pieces still scattered around us. I knew from experience it would stay like that for a long, long time. My mom had died over a year ago, and up was still down. Maybe it always would be for my dad, who was in Columbia now, at Blue Horizons. After Amma found out about the nonexistent book my dad had been pretending to write for months, and the “incident” on the balcony (which is how she referred to my dad’s Ridley-induced suicide attempt), she had called my Aunt Caroline. My aunt had driven my dad out to Blue Horizons that same day. Only she called it a spa. The kind of spa you sent your crazy relatives to if they needed what folks in Gatlin called “individual attention,” or what everyone outside of the South called therapy.
I stared at the black heart. Then I took a tiny white bear out of my backpack and looked at it. Clutching a pack of conversation hearts, the bear was just about the only thing left at Gardens of Eden last night. But Lena wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill conversation heart kind of girl.
Hug me. Be mine. Luv u. What had I been I thinking?
The more I looked at it, the more I hated that stupid bear that couldn’t let go of the glued-on box of stupid hearts. Everyone knew the candy hurt your teeth and tasted like toothpaste. I tossed the bear into an old black Converse shoe box stacked against the wall of my room, along with a cheesy card, a funny card, a serious card, and a homemade card. I had covered all the bases. The homemade card was the worst, too embarrassing to think about. It involved clip art and a poem I had tried to write myself. Something about the road being long and twisted, but we could travel it together. That I’d never be lost with her by my side. I’d have to stop making fun of Link and his crappy song lyrics.
I don’t know why I tried to write a poem. Writing was Lena’s thing, not mine. I knew how I felt, what I wanted say. But I just couldn’t say it. I didn’t know if I should. Not after Macon.
I still had time to come up with something else. For once, I was up early. Maybe I could find something Lena could add to her necklace—the one she never took off. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to go downstairs. I wasn’t ready to see Amma baking like she was planning to feed an army, and polishing the silver until you could see your reflection in it. The same way she had after my mom died.
I rubbed my eyes until my vision started to blur. My window was open, and light was streaming into my room. I almost flinched, out of habit. An open window used to mean a visit from Macon during the night—refueling by stealing my dreams and messing with my mind. Sort of like dinnertime for an Incubus.
Now an open window was just an open window.
I stared up at my old blue ceiling, which the carpenter bees believed was the sky. It seemed
wrong after everything that had happened. Part of me wanted to take a can of black spray paint and cover up all that blue. Then the carpenter bees would see my ceiling for what it was. But I knew I’d never do it. Not because it was the same blue ceiling I’d stared at my whole life, or because my mother had painted it herself.
I didn’t want things to change for those bees.
There was no chance of blue skies anytime soon. Gatlin County could expect bad weather as long as Lena was writing black valentines. So could I. But it didn’t matter. Lena was still the first girl I had ever loved, and she would probably be the last. And at sixteen, that was something too frightening to admit, even to myself—even when I knew it was true.
What was true?
Lena spoke up from the depths of my mind, as close as anyone could be—and about as far away. Kelting in our secret unspoken language, like always. I smiled to myself, or maybe to her. It was hard to tell anymore.
Nothing. I liked my card.
Yeah? It was supposed to be a love poem, but…
Her voice drifted off. She didn’t have to say it. How could she let herself feel love when all she felt was pain? How could we be happy to be together when she had lost the other person she was closest to in the world?
I know what it was, L. I have something for you, too.
You do?
I pulled the lid off the shoe box. The bear looked up at me with beady, vacant eyes. BE MINE.
I’m on my way.
Some hearts are red,
some hearts are blue.
How can some crappy Valentine say how I feel about you?
Amma’s Buttermilk Pie
Ingredients
1½ cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon flour
4 eggs
¼ pound (1 stick) butter, melted
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 unbaked 9-inch piecrust (prepared or homemade)*
Whipped cream and strawberries for garnish (optional)
*In Amma’s kitchen, the crust is homemade.
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In a mixing bowl, stir together the sugar and flour.
3. Whisk in the eggs one at a time.
4. Add the melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla. Mix well. Pour the mixture into the piecrust.
5. Bake for about 60 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and the center has set. (It should jiggle only slightly when you shake the pan.)
6. Cool and serve at room temperature, with whipped cream and strawberries if desired.
Amma’s Cola Cake
Ingredients
Cake:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
½ pound (2 sticks) butter
3 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 cup Coca-Cola
½ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1½ cups mini marshmallows
2 eggs
Icing:
¼ pound (1 stick) butter
3 tablespoons baking cocoa
6 tablespoons Coca-Cola
4 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
Directions
Cake:
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In a mixing bowl, sift together the flour and sugar. Set it aside.
3. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the cocoa and Coca-Cola, and bring to a boil. Remove from heat.
4. Pour the liquid mixture over the flour and sugar. Add the buttermilk, baking soda, vanilla, marshmallows, and eggs. Stir well.
5. Pour the mixture into a greased 9 x 13-inch pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and ice while hot.
Icing:
6. Melt the butter. Stir in the cocoa and Coca-Cola. Remove from heat.
7. Add the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, and pecans. Stir well.
8. Pour icing over hot cake.
KAMI GARCIA and MARGARET STOHL came up with the concept for the world of Beautiful Creatures over lunch. Margaret had always been captivated by fantasies and wanted to write a supernatural novel, while Kami loved stories set in the South and wanted to write a book that drew upon her deep Southern roots. With nothing to write on, they scribbled their ideas for a story that combined their shared passions on a paper napkin. By the time they left, the world of Beautiful Creatures had been born. Both Kami and Margaret live in Los Angeles, California, with their families. They now write on computers instead of napkins and are excited that Beautiful Creatures is now a major motion picture. They invite you to visit them online at www.beautifulcreaturesauthors.com.
BY KAMI GARCIA & MARGARET STOHL
The #1 New York Times Bestselling Series
Beautiful Creatures
Beautiful Darkness
Beautiful Chaos
Beautiful Redemption
And Don’t Miss These New Novels from #1 New York Times Bestselling Authors
Icons
BY MARGARET STOHL
May 2013
“Epic in scale and exquisite in detail—a haunting futuristic fable of loss and love.”
—Ally Condie, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Matched trilogy
Unbreakable (The Legion: Book 1)
BY KAMI GARCIA
October 2013
“Tense and deliciously twisty, Unbreakable is a breath-stealing midnight run through some of the creepiest locales I’ve seen rendered in fiction.”
—Ransom Riggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Keep reading for exclusive sneak peeks at Beautiful Chaos, Icons and Unbreakable…
Exclusive Excerpt for Beautiful Chaos…
BEFORE
Sugar and Salt
In Gatlin, it’s funny how the good things are all tied up with the bad. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. But either way, you end up taking your sugar with your salt and your kicks with your kisses, as Amma would say.
I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere. I only know Gatlin, and this is what I know: By the time I got back to my usual seat at church with the Sisters, the only news being passed along with the collection plate was that the Bluebird Café had stopped serving up hamburger soup, peach pie season was winding down, and some hooligans had stolen the tire swing from the old oak near the General’s Green. Half the congregation was still shuffling down the carpeted aisles in what my mom used to call Red Cross shoes. With all the purple knees puffing up where the knee-highs ended, it felt like a whole sea of legs was holding its breath. At least I was.
But the Sisters still propped their hymnals open to the wrong pages with their curled knuckles, wadded up handkerchiefs buried in the spotted roses of their hands. Nothing kept them from singing the melody, loud and shrill, as they tried to drown one another out. Except Aunt Prue. She accidentally hit on a real harmony about three notes out of three hundred, but nobody minded. Some things didn’t have to change, and maybe they shouldn’t. Some things, like Aunt Prue, were meant to be off-key.
It was as if this summer had never happened, and we were safe within these walls. Like nothing but the thick, colored sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows could force its way in here. Not Abraham Ravenwood or Hunting and his Blood Pack. Not Lena’s mother Sarafine or the Devil himself. Nobody else could get past the fierce hospitality of the ushers handing out programs. And even if they did, the preacher would keep on preaching and the choir would keep on singing, because nothing short of the apocalypse could keep folks in Gatlin out of church or each other’s business.
But outside these walls, this summer had changed everything, in both the Caster and Mortal worlds, even if the folks in Gatlin didn’t know it. Lena had Claimed herself both Light and Dark and split the Seventeenth Moon. A battle between Demo
ns and Casters had ended in death on both sides and opened a crack in the Order of Things the size of the Grand Canyon. What Lena had done was the Caster equivalent of smashing the Ten Commandments. I wondered what the folks in Gatlin would think about that, if they’d ever know. I hoped they wouldn’t.
This town used to make me feel claustrophobic, and I hated it. Now it felt more like something expected, something I would miss someday. And that day was coming. No one knew that better than I did.
Sugar and salt and kicks and kisses. The girl I loved had come back to me and broken the world. That’s what actually happened this summer.
We’d seen the last of hamburger soup and peach pie and tire swings. But we’d seen the start of something, too.
The beginning of the End of Days.
9.07
Linkubus
I was standing on the top of the white water tower, with my back to the sun. My headless shadow fell across the warm painted metal, disappearing off the edge and into the sky. I could see Summerville stretching out before me, all the way to the lake, from Route 9 to Gatlin. This had been our happy place, mine and Lena’s. One of them, at least. But I wasn’t feeling happy. I felt like I was going to throw up.
My eyes were watering, but I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the light.
Come on, already. It’s time.
I clenched and unclenched my fists—staring out at the tiny houses, the tiny cars, and the tiny people—waiting for it to happen. The dread churned in my stomach, heavy and wrong. Then the familiar arms slammed into my waist, knocking the air out of me and dragging me down to the metal ladder. My jaw hit the side of the railing, and I stumbled. I lurched forward, trying to throw him off.
Who are you?
But the harder I swung, the harder he hit me. The next punch landed in my stomach, and I doubled over. That’s when I saw them.
His black Chucks. They were so old and beat-up, they could have been mine.