Beautiful Creatures (53 page)

T
here was something in the air. Usually, when you heard that, there wasn’t really something in the air. But the closer it got
to Lena’s birthday, the more I had to wonder. When we came back from winter break, the halls had been tagged with spray paint,
covering the lockers and walls. Only it wasn’t the usual graffiti; the words didn’t even look like English. You wouldn’t have
thought they were words at all, unless you had seen
The Book of Moons
.

A week later, every window in our English classroom was busted out. Again, it could have been the wind, except there wasn’t
even a breeze. How could the wind target a single classroom, anyway?

Now that I wasn’t playing basketball, I had to take P.E. for the rest of the year, by far the worst class at Jackson. After
an hour of timed sprints and rope burn from climbing a knotted rope to the gym ceiling, I got back to my locker to find the
door open and my papers scattered all over the hall. My backpack was gone. Though Link found it a few hours later, dumped
in a trashcan outside the gym, I had learned my lesson. Jackson High was no place for
The Book of Moons
.

From then on, we kept the Book in my closet. I waited for Amma to discover it, to say something, to cover my room with salt,
but she never did. I had pored over the old leather book, with and without Lena, using my mom’s battered Latin dictionary,
for the past six weeks. Amma’s oven mitts helped me keep the burns to a minimum. There were hundreds of Casts, and only a
few of them were in English. The rest were written in languages I couldn’t read, and the Caster language we couldn’t hope
to decipher. As we grew more familiar with the pages, Lena grew more restless.

“Claim yourself. That doesn’t even mean anything.”

“Of course it does.”

“None of the chapters say anything about it. It’s not in any description of the Claiming in the Book.”

“We just have to keep looking. It’s not like we’re going to read it in the Cliff Notes.”
The Book of Moons
had to have the answer, if we could just find it. We couldn’t think about anything else, except the fact that a month from
now we could lose it all.

At night, we stayed up late talking, from our respective beds, because even now, every night seemed closer to the night that
could be our last.

What are you thinking, L?

Do you really want to know?

I always want to know.

Did I? I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green line connecting all the places I had read about. There they
were, all the cities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker and pins. In six months, a lot had changed.
There was no thin green line that could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.

But now, her voice was small, and I had to strain to hear her.

There’s a part of me that wishes we’d never met.

You’re kidding, right?

She didn’t answer. Not right away.

It just makes everything so much harder. I thought I had a lot to lose before, but now I have you.

I know what you mean.

I knocked the shade off the lamp next to my bed and stared straight into the bulb. If I stared right at it, the brightness
would sting my eyes and keep me from crying.

And I could lose you.

That’s not gonna happen, L.

She was quiet. My eyes were temporarily blinded by swirls and streaks of light. I couldn’t even see the blue of my bedroom
ceiling, though I was staring right at it.

Promise?

I promise.

It was a promise she knew I might not be able to keep. But I made it anyway because I was going to find a way to make it true.

I burned my hand as I tried to turn out the light.

2.04

L
ena’s birthday was in a week.

Seven days.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

Ten thousand and eight seconds.

Claim yourself.

Lena and I were exhausted, but we ditched school anyway to spend the day with
The Book of Moons
. I had become an expert at Amma’s signature, and Miss Hester wouldn’t dare to ask Lena for a note from Macon Ravenwood. It
was a cold, clear day, and we curled together in the freezing garden at Greenbrier, huddled under the old sleeping bag from
the Beater, trying to figure out for the thousandth time if anything in the Book could help.

I could tell Lena was starting to give up. Her ceiling was completely covered in Sharpie, wallpapered with the words she couldn’t
say and thoughts she was too scared to express.

darkfire, lightdark / dark matter, what matters? the great darkness swallows the great light, as they swallow my life / caster/girl
super/natural before/first sight seven days seven days seven days 777777777777777.

I couldn’t blame her. It did seem pretty hopeless, but I wasn’t ready to give up. I never would be. Lena slumped against the
old stone wall, crumbling like what little chance we had left. “This is impossible. There are too many Casts. We don’t even
know what we’re looking for.”

There were Casts for every conceivable purpose:
Blinding the Unfaithful, Bringing Forth Water from the Sea, Binding the Runes.

But nothing that said
Cast to Uncurse Your Family from a Dark Binding
, or
Cast to Undo the Act of Trying to Bring Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Genevieve’s War Hero Back to Life
, or
Cast to Avoid Going Dark at Your Claiming
. Or the one I was really looking for—
Cast to Save Your Girlfriend (Now That You Finally Have One) Before It’s Too Late.

I turned back to the Table of Contents:
OBSECRATIONES, INCANTAMINA, NECTENTES, MALEDICENTES, MALEFICIA
.

“Don’t worry, L. We’ll figure it out.” But even as I said it, I wasn’t so sure.

The longer the Book stayed on the top shelf of my closet, the more I felt like my room was becoming haunted. It was happening
to both of us, every night; the dreams, which felt more like nightmares, were getting worse. I hadn’t slept for more than
a couple of hours in days. Every time I closed my eyes, every time I fell asleep, they were there. Waiting. But even worse,
it was the same nightmare replayed again and again in a constant loop. Every night, I lost Lena over and over again, and it
was killing me.

My only strategy was to stay awake. Jacked up on sugar and caffeine from drinking Coke and Red Bull, playing video games.
Reading everything from
Heart of Darkness
to my favorite issue of
Silver Surfer
, the one where Galactus swallows the universe, over and over. But as anyone who hasn’t slept in days knows, by the third
or fourth night you’re so tired you could fall asleep standing up.

Even Galactus didn’t stand a chance.

Burning.

There was fire everywhere.

And smoke. I choked on the smoke and ash. It was pitch-black, impossible to see. And the heat was like sandpaper scraping
against my skin.

I couldn’t hear anything except the roar of the fire.

I couldn’t even hear Lena screaming, except in my head.

Let go! You have to get out!

I could feel the bones in my wrist snapping, like tiny guitar strings breaking one by one. She let go of my wrist like she
was preparing for me to release her, but I’d never let go.

Don’t do that, L! Don’t you let go!

Let me go! Please… save yourself!

I’d never let go.

But I could feel her sliding through my fingers. I tried to hold on tighter, but she was slipping….

I bolted upright in bed, coughing. It was so real, I could taste the smoke. But my room wasn’t hot; it was cold. My window
was open again. The moonlight allowed my eyes to adjust more quickly than usual to the darkness.

I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Something was moving, in the shadows.

There was someone in my room.

“Holy crap!”

He tried to get out before I noticed him, but he wasn’t fast enough. He knew I’d seen him. So he did the only thing he could
do. He turned to face me.

“Although I myself don’t consider it particularly holy, who am I to correct you after such an
ungraceful
exit?” Macon smiled his Cary Grant smile and approached the end of my bed. He was wearing a long black coat and dark slacks.
He looked like he was dressed for some kind of turn-of-the-century night on the town, instead of a modern-day breaking and
entering. “Hello, Ethan.”

“What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”

He seemed at a loss, for Macon, which just meant he didn’t have an immediate and charming explanation on the tip of his tongue.
“It’s complicated.”

“Well, uncomplicate it. Because you climbed in my window in the middle of the night, so either you’re some kind of vampire
or some kind of perv, or both. Which is it?”

“Mortals, everything is so black and white to you. I’m not a Hunter, nor a Harmer. You would be confusing me with my brother,
Hunting. Blood doesn’t interest me.” He shud-dered at the thought. “Neither blood nor flesh.” He lit a cigar, rolling it between
his fingers. Amma was going to have a fit when she smelled that tomorrow. “In fact, it all makes me a bit squeamish.”

I was losing my patience. I hadn’t slept in days and I was tired of everyone dodging my questions all the time. I wanted answers,
and I wanted them now. “I’ve had enough of your riddles. Answer the question. What are you doing in my room?”

He walked over to the cheap swivel chair next to my desk and sat down in one sweeping movement. “Let’s just say I was eavesdropping.”

I picked up the old Jackson High basketball T-shirt balled up on the floor and pulled it over my head. “Eavesdropping on what,
exactly? There’s no one here. I was sleeping.”

“No, actually you were dreaming.”

“How do you know that? Is that one of your Caster powers?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m not a Caster, not technically.”

My breath caught in my throat. Macon Ravenwood never left his house during the day; he could make himself appear out of nowhere,
watch people through the eyes of his wolf that masqueraded as a dog, and nearly squeeze the life out of a Dark Caster without
flinching. If he wasn’t a Caster, then there was only one explanation.