Beautiful Creatures (38 page)

“I can’t believe Uncle Macon never told me about this place. Think of all the Casters that have come through here.” Lena held
up her torch, pulling a bound volume from the shelf. The book was ornately bound, heavy in her hands, and sent a cloud of
gray dust exploding out in every direction. I started to cough.

“Casting, A Briefe Historie.”
She drew out another. “We’re in the C’s, I guess.” This one was a leather box that opened on top to reveal the standing scroll
inside. Lena pulled out the scroll. Even the dust looked older, and grayer. “
Castyng to Creyate & Confounde.
That’s an old one.”

“Careful. More than a few hundred years. Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press until 1455.” Marian took the scroll out
of her hand gingerly, as if she was handling a newborn baby.

Lena pulled out another book, bound in gray leather. “
Casting the Confederacy
. Were there Casters in the War?”

Marian nodded. “Both sides, the Blue and the Gray. It was one of the great divisions in the Caster Community, I’m afraid.
Just as it was for us Mortals.”

Lena looked up at Marian, shoving the dusty book back on the shelf. “The Casters in our family, we’re still in a war, aren’t
we?”

Marian looked at her sadly. “A House Divided, that’s what President Lincoln called it. And yes, Lena, I’m afraid you are.”
She touched Lena’s cheek. “Which is why you’re here, if you recall. To find what you need, to make sense of something senseless.
Now, you’d better get started.”

“There are so many books, Marian. Can’t you just point us in the right direction?”

“Don’t look at me. Like I said, I don’t have the answers, just the books. Get going. We’re on the lunar clock down here, and
you may lose track of time. Things aren’t exactly as they seem when you’re down below.”

I looked from Lena to Marian. I was afraid to let either one of them out of my sight. The
Lunae Libri
was more intimidating than I had imagined. Less like a library, and more like, well, catacombs. And
The Book of Moons
could be anywhere.

Lena and I faced the endless stacks, but neither one of us took even a single step.

“How are we going to find it? There must be a million books in here.”

“I have no idea. Maybe…” I knew what she was thinking.

“Should we try the locket?”

“Do you have it?” I nodded, and pulled the warm lump out of my jeans pocket. I handed Lena the torch.

“We need to see what happens. There has to be something else.” I unwrapped the locket and placed it on the round stone table
in the center of the room. I saw a familiar look in Marian’s eyes, the look she and my mother shared when they dug up a particularly
good find. “Do you want to see this?”

“More than you know.” Marian slowly took my hand, and I took Lena’s. I reached over, with my fingers intertwined with Lena’s,
and touched the locket.

A blinding flash forced my eyes shut.

And then I could see the smoke and smell the fire, and we were gone—

Genevieve lifted the Book so she could read the words through the rain. She knew speaking the words would defy the Natural
Laws. She could almost hear her mother’s voice willing her to stop—to think about the choice she was making.

But Genevieve couldn’t stop. She couldn’t lose Ethan.

She began to chant.

“
CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, TUTELA TUA EST.

VITA VITAE MEAE, CORRIPIENS TUAM, CORRIPIENS MEAM.

CORPUS CORPORIS MEI, MEDULLA MENSQUE
,

ANIMA ANIMAE MEAE, ANIMAM NOSTRAM CONECTE.

CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, LUNA MEA, AESTUS MEUS.

CRUOR PECTORIS MEI. FATUM MEUM, MEA SALUS.”

“Stop, child, ’fore it’s too late!” Ivy’s voice was frantic.

The rain poured down and lightning sliced through the smoke. Genevieve held her breath and waited. Nothing. She must have
done it wrong. She squinted to read the words more clearly in the dark. She screamed them into the darkness, in the language
she knew best.

“BLOOD OF MY HEART, PROTECTION IS THINE.

LIFE OF MY LIFE, TAKING YOURS, TAKING MINE.

BODY OF MY BODY, MARROW AND MIND,

SOUL OF MY SOUL, TO OUR SPIRIT BIND.

BLOOD OF MY HEART, MY TIDES, MY MOON.

BLOOD OF MY HEART. MY SALVATION, MY DOOM.”

She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, when she saw Ethan’s eyelids struggling to open.

“Ethan!” For a split second, their eyes met.

Ethan fought for breath, clearly trying to speak. Genevieve pressed her ear closer to his lips and she could feel his warm
breath on her cheek.

“I never believed your daddy when he said it was impossible for a Caster and a Mortal to be together. We would have found
a way. I love you, Genevieve.” He pressed something into her hand. A locket.

And as suddenly as his eyes opened, they closed again, his chest failing to rise and fall.

Before Genevieve could react, a jolt of electricity surged through her body. She could feel the blood pulsing through her
veins. She must have been struck by lightning. The waves of pain crashed down on her.

Genevieve tried to hold on.

Then everything went black.

“Sweet God in Heaven, don’t take her, too.”

Genevieve recognized Ivy’s voice. Where was she? The smell brought her back. Burnt lemons. She tried to speak, but her throat
felt like she had swallowed sand. Her eyes fluttered.

“Oh Lord, thank you!” Ivy was staring down at her, kneeling beside her in the dirt.

Genevieve coughed and reached for Ivy, trying to pull her closer.

“Ethan, is he…” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, child. He’s gone.”

Genevieve struggled to open her eyes. Ivy jumped back, as if she’d seen the Devil himself.

“Lord have mercy!”

“What? What’s wrong, Ivy?”

The old woman struggled to make sense of what she saw. “Your eyes, child. They’re… they’ve changed.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“They ain’t green no more. They’re yellow, as yellow as the sun.”

Genevieve didn’t care what color her eyes were. She didn’t care about anything now that she’d lost Ethan. She started to sob.

The rain picked up, turning the ground under them to mud.

“You’ve got to get up, Miss Genevieve. We have to commune with the Ones in the Otherworld.” Ivy tried to pull her to her feet.

“Ivy, you’re not makin’ sense.”

“Your eyes—I warned you. I told you about that moon, no moon. We have to find out what it means. We have to consult the Spirits.”

“If there’s something wrong with my eyes, I’m sure it was because I was struck by lightnin’.”

“What did you see?” Ivy looked panicked.

“Ivy, what’s goin’ on? Why are you actin’ so strange?”

“You weren’t struck by lightnin’. It was somethin’ else.”

Ivy ran back toward the burning cotton fields. Genevieve called after her, trying to get up, but she was still reeling. She
leaned her head back in the thick mud, rain falling steadily on her face. Rain mixed with the tears of defeat. She drifted
in and out of the moment, in and out of consciousness. She heard Ivy’s voice, faint, in the distance, calling her name. When
her eyes focused again, the old woman was next to her, her skirt gathered in her hands.

Ivy was carrying something in the folds of her skirt, and she dumped it out on the wet ground next to Genevieve. Tiny vials
of powder and bottles of what looked like sand and dirt knocked against each other.

“What are you doin’?”

“Makin’ an offerin’. To the Spirits. They’re the only ones who can tell us what this means.”

“Ivy, calm down. You’re talkin’ gibberish.”

The old woman pulled something from the pocket of her housedress. It was a shard of mirror. She thrust it in front of Genevieve.

It was dark, but there was no mistaking it. Genevieve’s eyes were blazing. They had turned from deep green to a fiery gold,
and they didn’t look like her eyes in another unmistakable way. In the center, where a round black pupil should have been,
there were almond-shaped slits, like the pupils of a cat. Genevieve threw the mirror to the ground and turned to Ivy.

But the old woman wasn’t paying attention. She had already mixed the powders and the earth and she was sifting them from hand
to hand, whispering in the old Gullah language of her ancestors.

“Ivy, what are you
—
”

“Shh,” the old woman hissed, “I’m listenin’ to the Spirits. They know what you’ve done. They’re gonna tell us what this means.”

“From the earth a her bones and the blood a my blood.” Ivy pricked her finger with the edge of the broken mirror and smeared
the tiny drops of blood into the earth she was sifting. “Lemme hear what ya hear. See what ya see. Know what ya know.”

Ivy stood up, arms open to the heavens. The rain poured down upon her, the dirt running down her dress in streaks. She began
to speak again in the strange language and then
—

“It can’t be. She didn’t know no better,” she wailed at the dark sky above.

“Ivy, what is it?”

Ivy was shaking, hugging herself, and moaning, “It can’t be. It can’t be.”

Genevieve grabbed Ivy by her shoulders. “What? What is it? What’s wrong with me?”

“I told you not to mess with that book. I told you it was the wrong kinda night for Castin’, but it’s too late now, child.
There’s no way to take it back.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“You’re cursed now, Miss Genevieve. You been Claimed. You’ve Turned, and there’s nothin’ we can do to stop it. A bargain.
You can’t get nothin’ from
The Book a Moons
without givin’ somethin’ in return.”

“What? What did I give?”

“Your fate, child. Your fate and the fate a every other Duchannes child that’s born after you.”

Genevieve didn’t understand. But she understood enough to know that what she had done couldn’t be undone. “What do you mean?”

“On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it’s been promised. What you bargained. The blood of a
Duchannes child, and that child will go Dark.”

“Every Duchannes child?”

Ivy bowed her head. Genevieve wasn’t the only one who was defeated on this night. “Not every one.”

Genevieve looked hopeful. “Which ones? How will we know which ones?”

“The Book will choose. On the Sixteenth Moon, the child’s sixteenth birthday.”

“It didn’t work.” Lena’s voice sounded strangled, far away. All I could see was smoke, and all I could hear was her voice.
We weren’t in the library, and we weren’t in the vision. We were somewhere in between, and it was awful.

“Lena!”

And then, for a moment, I saw her face in the smoke. Her eyes were huge and dark—only now, the green looked almost black.
Her voice was now more like a whisper. “Two seconds. He was alive for two seconds, and then she lost him.”

She closed her eyes and disappeared.

“L! Where are you?”

“Ethan. The locket.” I could hear Marian, as if from a great distance.

I could feel the hardness of the locket in my hands. I understood.

I dropped it.

I opened my eyes, coughing from the smoke still in my lungs. The room was swirling, blurry.

“What the hell are you children doing here?”

I fixed my eyes on the locket and the room came back into focus. It lay on the stone floor, looking small and harmless. Marian
dropped my hand.

Macon Ravenwood stood in the middle of the crypt, his overcoat twisting around him. Amma was standing next to him, her good
coat buttoned on the wrong buttons, clutching her pocketbook. I don’t know who was angrier.

“I’m sorry, Macon. You know the rules. They asked for help, and I am Bound to give it.” Marian looked stricken.

Amma was all over Marian, like she had doused our house in gasoline. “The way I see it, you’re Bound to take care a Lila’s
boy, and Macon’s niece. And I don’t see how what you’re doin’ does either.”

I waited for Macon to lay into Marian, too, but he didn’t say a word. Then I realized why. He was shaking Lena. She had collapsed
across the stone table in the center of the room. Her arms were spread wide, her face down against the rough stone. She didn’t
look conscious.

“Lena!” I pulled her into my arms, ignoring Macon, who was already next to her. Her eyes were still black, staring up at me.

“She’s not dead. She’s drifting. I believe I can reach her.” Macon was working quietly. I could see him twisting his ring.
His eyes were strangely alight.

“Lena! Come back!” I pulled her limp body into my arms, leaning her against my chest.

Macon was mumbling. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could see Lena’s hair begin to stir in the now familiar, supernatural
wind I’d come to think of as a Casting breeze.

“Not here, Macon. Your Casting won’t work here.” Marian was tearing through the pages of a dusty book, her voice unsteady.

“He’s not Castin’, Marian. He’s Travelin’. Even a Caster can’t do that. Where she’s gone, only Macon’s kind can go. Under.”
Amma was trying to be reassuring, but she wasn’t very convincing.

I felt the cold settling over Lena’s empty body and knew Amma was right. Wherever Lena was, it wasn’t in my arms. She was
far away. I could feel it myself, and I was just a Mortal.

“I told you, Macon. This is a neutral place. There is no Binding you can work in a room of earth.” Marian was pacing, clutching
the book as if it made her feel like she was helping in some way. But there were no answers inside. She had said it herself.
Casting couldn’t help us here.