Beautiful Creatures (41 page)

All I could imagine was one of those little vermin latching onto one of the Sisters’ necks and me having to drive them to
the emergency room to get the twenty shots in the stomach you have to get if you’re bitten by a rabid animal. Shots that I’m
sure at their age might kill any one of them.

I tried to reason with them, a complete waste of time. “You never know. They’re wild animals.”

“Ethan Wate, clearly you are
not
an animal lover. These babies would never hurt us.” Aunt Grace scowled at me disapprovingly. “And what would you have us
do with ’em? Their mamma is gone. They’ll die if we don’t take care of ’em.”

“I can take them over to the ASPCA.”

Aunt Mercy clutched them against her chest protectively. “The ASPCA! Those murderers. They’ll kill ’em for sure!”

“That’s enough talk about the ASPCA. Ethan, hand me that eye dropper over there.”

“What for?”

“We have ta feed them every four hours with this little dropper,” Aunt Grace explained. Aunt Prue was holding one of the squirrels
in her hand, while it sucked ferociously on the end of the dropper. “And once a day, we have ta clean their little private
parts with a Q-tip, so they’ll learn ta clean themselves.” That was a visual I didn’t need.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“We looked it up on the E-nternet.” Aunt Mercy smiled proudly.

I couldn’t imagine how my aunts knew anything about the Internet. The Sisters didn’t even own a toaster oven. “How did you
get on the Internet?”

“Thelma took us ta the library and Miss Marian helped us. They have computers over there. Did you know that?”

“And you can look up just about anything, even dirty pictures. Every now and again, the dirtiest pictures you ever saw would
pop up on the screen. Imagine!” By “dirty,” Aunt Grace probably meant naked, which I would’ve thought would keep them off
the Internet forever.

“I just want to go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea. You can’t keep them forever. They’re going to get bigger
and more aggressive.”

“Well, of course we aren’t plannin’ on lookin’ after ’em forever.” Aunt Prue was shaking her head, as if it was a ridiculous
thought. “We’re going ta let ’em go in the backyard just as soon as they can look after themselves.”

“But they won’t know how to find food. That’s why it’s a bad idea to take in wild animals. Once you let them go, they’ll starve.”
This seemed like an argument that would appeal to the Sisters and keep me out of the emergency room.

“That’s where you’re wrong. It tells all about that on the E-nternet,” Aunt Grace said. Where was this Web site about raising
wild squirrels and cleaning their private parts with Q-tips?

“You have ta teach ’em ta gather nuts. You bury nuts in the yard and you let the squirrels practice findin’ ’em.”

I could see where this was going. Which led to the part of the day that had me in the backyard burying mixed cocktail nuts
for baby squirrels. I wondered how many of these little holes I’d have to dig before the Sisters would be satisfied.

A half hour into my digging, I started finding things. A thimble, a silver spoon, and an amethyst ring that didn’t look particularly
valuable, but gave me a good excuse to stop hiding peanuts in the backyard. When I came back into the house, Aunt Prue was
wearing her extra thick reading glasses, laboring over a pile of yellowed papers. “What are you reading?”

“I’m just lookin’ up some things for your friend Link’s mamma. The DAR needs some notes on Gatlin’s hist’ry for the Southern
Heritage Tour.” She shuffled through one of the piles. “But it’s hard ta find much about the hist’ry a Gatlin that doesn’t
include the Ravenwoods.” Which was the last name the DAR wanted to hear.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, without them, I reckon Gatlin wouldn’t be here at all. So it’s hard ta write a town hist’ry and leave ’em outta it.”

“Were they really the first ones here?” I had heard Marian say it, but it was hard to believe.

Aunt Mercy lifted one of the papers out of the pile and held it so close to her face she must have been seeing double. Aunt
Prue snatched it back. “Give me that. I’ve got myself a system goin’.”

“Well, if you don’t want any help.” Aunt Mercy turned back to me. “The Ravenwoods were the first in these parts, all right.
Got themselves a land grant from the King a Scotland, sometime around 1800.”

“1781. I’ve got the paper right here.” Aunt Prue waved a yellow sheet in the air. “They were farmers, and it turned out Gatlin
County had the most fertile soil in all a South Carolina. Cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo—it all grew here, which was peculiar
on account a those crops don’t usually grow in the same place. Once folks figured out you could grow just ’bout anything here,
the Ravenwoods had themselves a town.”

“Whether they liked it or not,” Aunt Grace added, looking up from her cross-stitch.

It was ironic; without the Ravenwoods Gatlin might not even exist. The folks that shunned Macon Ravenwood and his family had
them to thank for the fact they even had a town at all. I wondered how Mrs. Lincoln would feel about that. I bet she already
knew, and it had something to do with why they all hated Macon Ravenwood so much.

I stared down at my hand, covered in that inexplicably fertile soil. I was still holding the junk I’d unearthed in the backyard.

“Aunt Prue, does this belong to one of you?” I rinsed the ring off in the sink and held it up.

“Why, that’s the ring my second husband Wallace Pritchard gave me for our first, and only, weddin’ anniversary.” She dropped
her voice to a whisper. “He was a cheap, cheap man. Where in the world did you find it?”

“Buried in the backyard. I also found a spoon and a thimble.”

“Mercy, look what Ethan found, your Tennessee Collector’s spoon. I told you I didn’t take it!” Aunt Prue hollered.

“Let me see that.” Mercy put her glasses on to inspect the spoon. “Well, I’ll be. I finally have all eleven states.”

“There are more than eleven states, Aunt Mercy.”

“I only collect the states a the Confed’racy.” Aunt Grace and Aunt Prue nodded in agreement.

“Speakin’ a buryin’ things, can you believe that Eunice Honey-cutt made ’em bury her with her recipe book? She didn’t want
anyone in church ta get her hands on her cobbler recipe.” Aunt Mercy shook her head.

“She was a spiteful thing, just like her sister.” Aunt Grace was prying open a Whitman’s Sampler with the Tennessee Collector’s
spoon.

“And that recipe wasn’t any good, anyhow,” said Aunt Mercy.

Aunt Grace turned the lid over on the Whitman’s Sampler so she could read the names of the candies inside. “Mercy, which one
is the butter cream?”

“When I die, I want ta be buried with my fur stole and my Bible,” Aunt Prue said.

“You aren’t goin’ ta get extra points with the Good Lord for that, Prudence Jane.”

“I’m not tryin’ ta get points, I just want ta have somethin’ ta read durin’ the wait. But if there were points bein’ handed
out, Grace Ann, I’d have more than you.”

Buried with her recipe book…

What if
The Book of Moons
was buried somewhere? What if someone didn’t want anyone to find it, so they hid it? Maybe the person who understood its
power better than anyone else. Genevieve.

Lena, I think I know where the Book is.

For a second, there was only silence, and then Lena’s thoughts found her way to mine.

What are you talking about?

The Book of Moons.
I think it’s with Genevieve.

Genevieve is dead.

I know.

What are you saying, Ethan?

I think you know what I’m saying.

Harlon James limped up to the table, looking pitiful. His leg was still wrapped in bandages. Aunt Mercy started feeding him
the dark chocolates out of the box.

“Mercy, don’t feed that dog chocolate! You’ll kill him. I saw it on the Oprah show. Chocolate, or was it onion dip?”

“Ethan, you want me ta save you the toffees?” Aunt Mercy asked. “Ethan?”

I wasn’t listening anymore. I was thinking about how to dig up a grave.

12.07

I
t was Lena’s idea. Today was Aunt Del’s birthday, and at the last minute, Lena decided to throw a family party at Ravenwood.
It was also Lena who invited Amma, knowing full well nothing short of divine intervention could get Amma to set foot through
the door of Ravenwood Manor. Whatever it was about Macon, Amma reacted only slightly better to his presence than she did to
the locket. And she preferred to keep Macon just as far away.

Boo Radley had shown up in the afternoon with a scroll in his mouth, lettered in careful calligraphy. Amma wouldn’t touch
the thing, even if it was an invitation, and almost didn’t let me go. Good thing she didn’t see me get into the hearse with
my mom’s old garden shovel. That would have raised a flag or two.

I was glad to get out of my house, for any reason, even if the reason involved grave robbing. After Thanksgiving, my father
had shut himself in the study, and since Macon and Amma caught us at the
Lunae Libri
, all I was getting from Amma was stinkeye.

Lena and I weren’t allowed to go back to the
Lunae Libri
, either, at least, not for the next sixty-eight days. Macon and Amma didn’t seem to want us digging up any more information
they hadn’t planned on telling us in the first place.

“After the eleventh a February, you can do what you like,” Amma had harrumphed. “Until then, you can do what every-one else
your age does. Listen to music. Watch the television. Just keep your nose away from those books.”

My mom would have laughed, the idea that I wasn’t allowed to read a book. Things had obviously gotten pretty bad around here.

It’s worse here, Ethan. Boo even sleeps at the foot of my bed now.

That doesn’t sound so bad to me.

He waits for me outside the bathroom door.

That’s just Macon being Macon.

It’s like house arrest.

It was, and we both knew it.

We had to find
The Book of Moons
, and it had to be with Genevieve. It was more than possible Genevieve had been buried at Greenbrier. There were some weathered
headstones in the clearing just outside the garden. You could see them from the stone where we usually sat, which had turned
out to be a hearthstone. Our spot, that’s how I thought of it, even if I had never said it out loud. Genevieve had to be buried
out there, unless she’d moved away after the War, but nobody ever left Gatlin.

I always thought I’d be the first.

But now that I had gotten out of the house, how was I going to find a lost Casting book that may or may not save Lena’s life,
that may or may not be buried in the grave of a cursed ancestral Caster, that may or may not be next door to Macon Ravenwood’s
house? Without her uncle seeing me, stopping me, or killing me first?

The rest was up to Lena.

“What sort of history project requires visiting a graveyard at night?” Aunt Del asked, tripping over a bramble of vines. “Oh
my!”