Beautiful Creatures (43 page)

Lena held the Book up higher, right in front of Reece’s face. “About what?” Lena was staring at Reece the same way Reece had
stared into Ridley’s eyes at the Gathering, intently, with purpose. Reece’s expression changed—she looked confused, almost
disoriented. She stared at the Book, but it was like she couldn’t see it.

“What is there to tell, Reece?”

Reece squeezed her eyes shut, as if she was trying to shake off a bad dream. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut
it abruptly. A hint of a smile twitched across Lena’s face, as she turned slowly toward her aunt. “Aunt Del?”

Aunt Del looked as confused as Reece, which was how she looked most of the time, anyway, but something was different. And
she didn’t answer Lena, either.

Lena turned slightly and dropped the Book on top of my bag. As she did, I saw green sparks in her eyes, and the curling motion
of her hair as it caught the moonlight, the Casting breeze. It was almost as if I could see the magic churning around her
in the darkness. I didn’t understand what was happening, but the three of them seemed to be locked in a dark, wordless conversation
I couldn’t hear or understand.

Then it was over, and the moonlight became moonlight again, and the night faded back into night. I looked behind Reece, at
Genevieve’s headstone. Genevieve was gone, as if she had never been there at all.

Reece shifted her weight, and her usual sanctimonious expression returned. “If you think for a minute I’m not goin’ to tell
Uncle Macon you dragged us out to a graveyard for no good reason, because of some stupid school project you didn’t even end
up doin’—” What the hell was she talking about? But Reece was dead serious. She didn’t remember what had just happened, any
more than I understood it.

What did you just do?

Uncle Macon and I have been practicing.

Lena zipped up my duffel bag, with the Book inside. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just this place is really creepy at night. Let’s
get out of here.”

Reece turned back toward Ravenwood, dragging Aunt Del behind her. “You’re such a baby.”

Lena winked at me.

Practicing what? Mind control?

Little things. Teletossing Pebbles. Interior Illusions. Time Binds, but those are hard.

That was easy?

I Shifted the Book out of their minds. I guess you could say I erased it. They won’t remember it, because in their reality,
it never happened.

I knew we needed the Book. I knew why Lena did it. But somehow it felt like a line had been crossed, and now I didn’t know
where we stood, or if she could ever cross back over to where I was. Where she used to be.

Reece and Aunt Del were already back in the garden. I didn’t need to be a Sybil to tell Reece wanted to get the hell out of
there. Lena started to follow them, but something stopped me.

L, wait.

I walked back over to the hole and reached into my pocket. I opened the handkerchief with the familiar initials, and lifted
the locket up by its chain. Nothing. No visions, and something told me there weren’t going to be any more. The locket had
led us here, showed us what we needed to see.

I held the locket over the grave. It seemed only right, a fair trade. I was about to drop it when I heard Genevieve’s voice
again, softer this time.

No. It doesn’t belong with me.

I looked back at the headstone. Genevieve was there again, what was left of her breaking into nothingness each time the wind
blew through her. She didn’t look as terrifying.

She looked broken. The way you would look if you lost the only person you ever loved.

I understood.

12.08

T
here was only so much trouble you could get into before the threat of more trouble wasn’t even a threat anymore. At some point,
you’d waded so far in you had no choice but to paddle through the middle, if you had any chance of making it to the other
side. It was classic Link logic, but I was starting to see the genius in it. Maybe you can’t really understand it yourself
until you’re waist deep in it.

By the next day, that’s where we were, Lena and me. Waist deep. It started with forging a note with one of Amma’s #2 pencils,
then cutting school to read a stolen book we weren’t supposed to have in the first place, and ended with a pack of lies about
an extra-credit “project” we were working on together. I was pretty sure Amma was going to catch on about two seconds after
I said the words extra credit, but she had been on the phone with my Aunt Caroline discussing my dad’s “condition.”

I felt guilty about all the lying, not to mention the stealing, forging, and mind erasing, but we didn’t have time for school;
we had too much actual studying to do.

Because we had
The Book of Moons
. It was real. I could hold it in my hands—

“Ouch!” It burned my hand, like I had touched a hot stove. The Book dropped to the floor of Lena’s bedroom. Boo Radley barked
from somewhere in the house. I could hear his paws click their way up the stairs, toward us.

“Door.” Lena spoke without looking up from an old Latin dictionary. Her bedroom door slammed shut, just as Boo reached the
landing. He protested with a resentful bark. “Stay out of my room, Boo. We’re not doing anything. I’m about to start practicing.”

I stared at the door, surprised. Another lesson from Macon, I guessed. Lena didn’t even react, as if she’d done it a thousand
times. It was like the stunt she had pulled on Reece and Aunt Del last night. I was starting to think the closer we got to
her birthday, the more the Caster was coming out in the girl.

I was trying not to notice. But the more I tried, the more I noticed.

She looked over at me, rubbing my hands on my jeans. They still hurt. “What part about ‘you can’t touch it if you’re not a
Caster’ are you not getting?”

“Right. That part.”

She opened a battered black case and pulled out her viola. “It’s almost five. I’ve got to start practicing or Uncle Macon
will know when he gets up. He always knows.”

“What? Now?” She smiled and sat on a chair in the corner of her room. Adjusting the instrument with her chin, she picked up
a long bow and set it to the strings. For a moment she didn’t move, and closed her eyes like we were at a philharmonic, instead
of sitting in her bedroom. And then she began to play. The music crawled up from her hands and out into the room, moving through
the air like another one of her undiscovered powers. The sheer white curtains hanging at her window began to stir, and I heard
the song—

Sixteen moons, sixteen years,

The Claiming Moon, the hour nears,

In these pages Darkness clears,

Powers Bind what fire sears…

As I watched, Lena slid herself out of the chair and carefully placed her viola back where she had been sitting. She wasn’t
playing it anymore, but the music was still pouring out of it. She leaned the bow against the chair, and sat down next to
me on the floor.

Shh.

That’s practicing?

“Uncle M doesn’t seem to know the difference. And look—” She pointed over to the door, where I could see a shadow, and hear
a rhythmic thump. Boo’s tail. “He likes it, and I like to have him in front of my door. Think of it as a sort of an anti-adult
alarm system.” She had a point.

Lena knelt by the Book and picked it up easily in her hands. When she opened the pages again, we saw the same thing we had
been staring at all day. Hundreds of Casts, careful lists written in English, Latin, Gaelic, and other languages I didn’t
recognize, one composed of strange curling letters I had never seen before. The thin brown pages were fragile, almost translucent.
The parchment was covered with dark brown ink, in an ancient and delicate script. At least I hoped it was ink.

She tapped her finger on the strange writing and handed me the Latin dictionary. “It’s not Latin. See for yourself.”

“I think its Gaelic. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” I pointed to the curling script.

“No. Maybe it’s some kind of old Caster language.”

“Too bad we don’t have a Caster dictionary.”

“We do, I mean, my uncle should. He has hundreds of Caster books, down in his library. It’s no
Lunae Libri
, but it probably has what we’re looking for.”

“How long do we have before he’s up?”

“Not long enough.”

I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt down over my palm and used the material to handle the Book, as if I was using one of
Amma’s oven mitts. I flipped through the thin pages; they bent noisily under my touch as if they were made of dry leaves,
instead of paper. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”

Lena shook her head. “In my family, before your Claiming you aren’t really allowed to know anything.” She pretended to pore
over the pages. “In case you go Dark, I guess.” I knew enough to let it drop.

Page after page, there was nothing we could even begin to comprehend. There were pictures, some frightening, some beautiful.
Creatures, symbols, animals—even the human-looking faces somehow managed to look anything but human in
The Book of Moons
. As far as I was concerned, it was like an encyclopedia from another planet.

Lena pulled the Book into her lap. “There’s so much I don’t know, and it’s all so—”

“Trippy?”

I leaned against her bed, looking at the ceiling. There were words everywhere, new words, and numbers. I could see the countdown,
the numbers scribbled against the walls of her room as if it was a jail cell.

100, 78, 50…

How much longer would we be able to sit around like this? Lena’s birthday was getting closer, and her powers were already
growing. What if she was right, and she grew into something unrecognizable, something so Dark she wouldn’t even know or care
about me? I stared at the viola in the corner until I just didn’t want to see it anymore. I closed my eyes and listened to
the Caster melody. And then I heard Lena’s voice—

“…
UNTIL THE DARKENING BRINGES THE TYME OF CLAYMING, AT THE SIXTEENTHE MOONE, WHEN THE PERSON OF POWERE HAS THE FREEDOME OF WILLE
& AGENCIE TO CASTE THE ETERNAL CHOICE, IN THE END OF DAYE, OR THE LASTE MOMENT OF THE LAST OURE, UNDER THE CLAYMING MOONE…”

We looked at each other.

“How did you just—” I looked over her shoulder.

She turned the page. “It’s English. These pages are written in English. Someone started to translate it, here in the back.
See how the ink is a different color?” She was right.

Even the pages in English must have been hundreds of years old. The page was written in another elegant script, but it wasn’t
the same writing, and it wasn’t written in the same brownish ink, or whatever it was.

“Flip to the back.”

She held up the Book, reading,

“
THE CLAYMING, ONCE BOUND, CANNOT BE UNBOUND. THE CHOICE, ONCE CAST, CANNOT BE RECAST. A PERSON OF POWERE FALLES INTO THE GREAT
DARKENING OR THE GREAT LIGHT, FOR ALL TYME. IF TYME PASSES & THE LASTE OURE OF THE SIXTEENTHE MOONE FLEES UNBOUND, THE ORDER
OF THINGS IS UNDONE. THIS MUST NOT BE. THE BOOKE WILLE BINDE THAT WHICHE IS UNBOUND, FOR ALL TYME.”

“So there’s really no getting around this Claiming thing?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

I stared at the words that didn’t bring me any closer to understanding. “But what happens, exactly, during the Claiming? Does
this Claiming Moon send down some kind of Caster beam, or something?”

She scanned the page. “It doesn’t exactly say. All I know is it takes place under the moon, at midnight—
‘IN THE MIDST OF THE
GREAT DARKNESSE & UNDERE THE GREAT LIGHT, FROM WHICHE WE CAME.’
But it can happen anywhere. It’s nothing you can really see,
it just happens. No Caster beam involved.”

“But what happens exactly?” I wanted to know everything, and it still felt like she was holding something back. She kept her
eyes on the page.

“For most Casters, it’s a conscious thing, just like it says here. The Person of Power, the Caster, Casts the Eternal Choice.
They choose if they want to Claim themselves Light or Dark. That’s what the free will and agency is all about, like Mortals
choose to be good or bad, except Casters make the Choice for all time. They choose the life they want to lead, the way they
will interact with the magical universe, and one another. It’s a covenant they make with the natural world, the Order of Things.
I know that sounds crazy.”