Beautiful Creatures (23 page)

And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Lena. She was perfectly still, her hair whipping in the wind around her.
What was happening?

I felt my legs buckle. Just as I lost consciousness, I felt the wind, a surge of power that literally ripped my arm out of
Ridley’s hand, as she was sucked out of the room, toward the front door. I collapsed to the floor, as I heard Lena’s voice,
or thought I did.

“Get the hell away from my boyfriend, witch.”

Boyfriend.

Was that what I was?

I tried to smile. Instead, I blacked out.

10.09

W
hen I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I tried to focus on the first few things that came into view. Words. Phrases handwritten
in what looked like carefully scripted Sharpie, right on the ceiling over the bed.

moments bleed together, no span to time

There were hundreds of others, too, written everywhere, parts of sentences, parts of verses, random collections of words.
On one closet door was scrawled
fate decides
. On the other, it said
until challenged by the fated
. Up and down the door I could see the words
desperate / relentless / condemned / empowered
. The mirror said open your eyes; the windowpanes said and see.

Even the pale white lampshade was scribbled with the words
illuminatethedarknessilluminatethedarkness
over and over again, in an endlessly repeating pattern.

Lena’s poetry. I was finally getting to read some of it. Even if you ignored the distinctive ink, this room didn’t look like
the rest of the house. It was small and cozy, tucked up under the eaves. A ceiling fan swirled slowly above my head, cutting
through the phrases. There were stacks of spiral notebooks on every surface, and a stack of books on the nightstand. Poetry
books. Plath, Eliot, Bukowski, Frost, Cummings—at least I recognized the names.

I was lying in a small white iron bed, my legs spilling over the edge. This was Lena’s room, and I was lying in her bed. Lena
was curled in a chair at the foot of the bed, her head resting on the arm.

I sat up, groggy. “Hey. What happened?”

I was pretty sure I had passed out, but I was fuzzy on the details. The last thing I remembered was the freezing cold moving
up my body, my throat closing up, and Lena’s voice. I thought she had said something about me being her boyfriend, but since
I was about to pass out at the time and nothing had really happened between us, that was doubtful. Wishful thinking, I guessed.

“Ethan!” She jumped out of the chair and onto the bed next to me, although she seemed careful not to touch me. “Are you okay?
Ridley wouldn’t let go of you, and I didn’t know what to do. You looked like you were in so much pain, and I just reacted.”

“You mean that tornado in the middle of your dining room?”

She looked away, miserable. “That’s what happens. I feel things, I get angry or scared and then… things just happen.”

I reached over and put my hand over hers, feeling the warmth move up my arm. “Things like windows breaking?”

She looked back at me, and I curled my hand around hers until I was holding it in mine. A random crack in the old plaster
in the corner behind her seemed to grow, until it curled its way across the ceiling, circled the frosted chandelier, and swirled
its way back down. It looked like a heart. A giant, looping, girly heart had just appeared in the cracking plaster of her
bedroom ceiling.

“Lena.”

“Yeah?”

“Is your ceiling about to fall in on our heads?”

She turned and looked at the crack. When she saw it, she bit her lip, and her cheeks turned pink. “I don’t think so. It’s
just a crack in the plaster.”

“Were you trying to do that?”

“No.” A creeping pink spread across her nose and cheeks. She looked away.

I wanted to ask her what it was she’d been thinking, but I didn’t want to embarrass her. I just hoped it had something to
do with me, with her hand nestled in mine. With the word I thought I heard her say, the moment before I blacked out.

I looked dubiously at the crack. A lot was riding on that crack in the plaster.

“Can you undo them? These things that just… happen?”

Lena sighed, relieved to talk about something else. “Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I can’t control
it and I can’t fix it, not even after. I don’t think I could have put the glass back into that window at school. I don’t think
I could have stopped the storm from coming, the day we met.”

“I don’t think that one was your fault. You can’t blame yourself for every storm that rolls through Gatlin County. Hurricane
season isn’t even over yet.”

She flipped over onto her stomach and looked me right in the eye. She didn’t let go, and neither did I. My whole body was
buzzing with the warmth of her touch. “Didn’t you see what happened tonight?”

“Maybe sometimes a hurricane is just a hurricane, Lena.”

“As long as I’m around, I am hurricane season in Gatlin County.” She tried to pull her hand away, but that only made me hold
on more tightly.

“That’s funny. You seem more like a girl to me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. I’m a whole storm system, out of control. Most Casters can control their gifts by the time they’re my
age, but half the time it feels more like mine control me.” She pointed to her own reflection in the mirror on the wall. The
Sharpie writing scribbled itself across the reflection as we watched. Who is this girl? “I’m still trying to figure it all
out, but sometimes it seems like I never will.”

“Do all Casters have the same powers, gifts, whatever?”

“No. We can all do simple things like move objects, but each Caster also has more specific abilities related to their gifts.”

Right about now, I wished there was some kind of class I could take so I’d be able to follow these conversations, Caster 101,
I don’t know, because I was always sort of lost. The only person I knew who had any special abilities was Amma. Reading futures
and warding off evil spirits had to count for something, right? And for all I knew, maybe Amma could move objects with her
mind; she could sure get my butt moving with just a look. “What about Aunt Del? What can she do?”

“She’s a Palimpsest. She reads time.”

“Reads time?”

“Like, you and I walk into a room and see the present. Aunt Del sees different points in the past and the present, all at
once. She can walk into a room and see it as it is today and as it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago, at
the same time. Kind of like when we touch the locket. That’s why she’s always so confused. She never knows exactly when or
even where she is.”

I thought about how I felt after one of the visions, and what it would be like to feel that way all of the time. “No kidding.
How about Ridley?”

“Ridley’s a Siren. Her gift is the Power of Persuasion. She can put any idea into anyone’s head, get them to tell her anything,
do anything. If she used her power on you, and she told you to jump off a cliff—you’d jump.” I remembered how it felt in the
car with her, like I would’ve told her almost anything.

“I wouldn’t jump.”

“You would. You’d have to. A Mortal man is no match for a Siren.”

“I wouldn’t.” I looked at her. Her hair was blowing in the breeze around her face, except there wasn’t an open window in the
room. I searched her eyes for some kind of sign that maybe she was feeling the same way I was. “You can’t jump off a cliff
when you’ve already fallen off a bigger one.”

I heard the words coming out of my mouth, and I wanted to take them back as soon as I said them. They had sounded a lot better
in my head. She looked back at me, trying to see if I was serious. I was, but I couldn’t say that. Instead, I changed the
subject. “So what’s Reece’s superpower?”

“She’s a Sybil, she reads faces. She can see what you’ve seen, who you’ve seen, what you’ve done, just by looking into your
eyes. She can open up your face and literally read it, like a book.” Lena was still studying my face.

“Yeah, who was that? That other woman Ridley turned into for a second, when Reece was staring at her? Did you see that?”

Lena nodded. “Macon wouldn’t tell me, but it had to be someone Dark. Someone powerful.”

I kept asking. I had to know. It was like finding out I’d just had dinner with a bunch of aliens. “What can Larkin do? Charm
snakes?”

“Larkin’s an Illusionist. It’s like a Shifter. But Uncle Barclay’s the only Shifter in the family.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Larkin can Spellcast, or make anything look like anything he wants, for a spell—people, things, places. He creates illusions,
but they’re not real. Uncle Barclay can Shiftcast, which means he can actually change any object into another object, for
as long as he wants.”

“So your cousin changes how things seem, and your uncle changes how they are?”

“Yeah. Mostly, Gramma says their powers are too close. It happens sometimes with parents and their children. They’re too much
alike, so they’re always fighting.” I knew what she was thinking, that she would never know that for herself. Her face clouded
over, and I made a stupid attempt to lighten the mood.

“Ryan? What’s her power? Dog fashion designer?”

“Too soon to tell. She’s only ten.”

“And Macon?”

“He’s just… Uncle Macon. There’s nothing Uncle Macon can’t do, or wouldn’t do for me. I spent a lot of time with him growing
up.” She looked away, avoiding the question. She was holding something back, but with Lena, it was impossible to know what.
“He’s like my father, or how I imagine my father.” She didn’t have to say anything else. I knew what it was like to lose someone.
I wondered if it was worse to never have them at all.

“What about you? What’s your gift?”

As if she had just one. As if I hadn’t seen them in action since the first day of school. As if I hadn’t been trying to get
up the nerve to ask her this question since the night she sat on my porch in her purple pajamas.

She paused for a minute, collecting her thoughts, or deciding if she was going to tell me; it was impossible to know which.
Then she looked at me, with her endless green eyes. “I’m a Natural. At least Uncle Macon and Aunt Del think I am.”

A Natural. I was relieved. It didn’t sound as bad as a Siren. I didn’t think I could have handled that. “What exactly does
that mean?”

“I don’t even know. It’s not really one thing. I mean, supposedly a Natural can do a lot more than other Casters.” She said
it quickly, almost like she was hoping I wouldn’t hear, but I did.

More than other Casters.

More. I wasn’t sure how I felt about more. Less, I could have handled less. Less would’ve been good.

“But as you saw tonight, I don’t even know what I can do.” She picked at the quilt between us, nervous. I pulled on her hand
until she was lying on the bed next to me, propped up on one elbow.

“I don’t care about any of that. I like you just the way you are.”

“Ethan, you barely know anything about me.”

The drowsy warmth was washing through my body, and to be honest, I couldn’t have cared less what she was saying. It felt so
good just to be near her, holding her hand, with only the white quilt between us. “That’s not true. I know you write poetry
and I know about the raven on your necklace and I know you love orange soda and your grandma and Milk Duds mixed into your
popcorn.”

For a second, I thought she might smile. “That’s hardly anything.”

“It’s a start.”

She looked me right in the eye, her green eyes searching my blue ones. “You don’t even know my name.”

“Your name is Lena Duchannes.”

“Okay, well, for starters, it’s not.”

I pushed myself all the way up, and let go of her hand. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not my name. Ridley wasn’t lying about that.” Some of the conversation from earlier started to come back to me. I remembered
Ridley saying something about Lena not knowing her real name, but I didn’t think she had meant literally.

“Well, what is it then?”