Beautiful Darkness (8 page)

I turned it over in my hands. It was heavy, almost too heavy to be a book. I wondered what it looked like. It was probably old, made of cracked leather. I untied the string and unwrapped it. I wasn't going to read it, just look at it. But when I pulled the paper away, I realized it wasn't a book. It was a black wooden box, intricately carved with strange Caster symbols.

I ran my hand over the top, wondering what he wrote about. I couldn't imagine him writing poetry like Lena. It was probably full of horticultural notes. I opened the lid carefully. I wanted to see something Macon had touched every day, something that was important to him. The lining was black satin, and the pages inside were unbound and yellowed, written in Macon's fading spidery script. I touched a page, with a single finger. The sky began to spin, and I felt myself pitching forward. The floor
rushed up to meet me, but as I hit the ground, I fell through it and found myself in a cloud of smoke —

Fires burned along the river, the only traces of the plantations that had stood there just hours ago. Greenbrier was already engulfed in flames. Ravenwood would be next. The Union soldiers must have been taking a break, drunk from their victory and the liquor they had pillaged from the wealthiest homes in Gatlin.

Abraham didn't have much time. The soldiers were coming, and he was going to have to kill them. It was the only way to save Ravenwood. The Mortals didn't stand a chance against him, even if they were soldiers. They were no match for an Incubus. And if his brother, Jonah, ever came back from the Tunnels, the soldiers would have two of them to contend with. The guns were Abraham's only concern. Even though Mortal weapons couldn't kill his kind, the bullets would weaken him, which might give the soldiers the time they needed to set fire to Ravenwood.

Abraham needed to feed, and even through the smoke, he could smell the desperation and fear of a Mortal nearby. Fear would make him strong. It provided more power and sustenance than memories or dreams.

Abraham Traveled toward the scent. But when he materialized in the woods beyond Greenbrier, he knew he was too late. The scent was faint. In the distance, he could see Genevieve Duchannes hunched over a body in the mud. Ivy, Greenbrier's cook, was standing behind Genevieve, clutching something against her chest.

The old woman saw Abraham and rushed toward him. “Mr. Ravenwood, thank the Lord.” She lowered her voice. “You have to take this. Put it somewhere safe till I can come for it.” Pulling a heavy black book from the folds of her apron, she thrust it into Abraham's hands. As soon as he touched it, Abraham could feel its power.

The book was alive, pulsating against his palms as if it had a heartbeat. He could almost hear it whispering to him, beckoning him to take it — to open it and release whatever was hiding inside. There were no words on its cover, only a single crescent moon. Abraham ran his fingers over the edges.

Ivy was still talking, mistaking Abraham's silence for hesitation. “Please, Mr. Ravenwood. I got no one else to give it to. And I can't leave it with Miss Genevieve. Not now.” Genevieve raised her head as if she could hear them through the rain and the roar of the flames.

The moment Genevieve turned toward them, Abraham understood. He could see her yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. The eyes of a Dark Caster. In that moment, he also understood what he was holding.

The Book of Moons.

He had seen the Book before, in the dreams of Genevieve's mother, Marguerite. It was a book of infinite power, a book Marguerite feared and revered in equal measure. One she hid from her husband and her daughters, and would never have allowed into the hands of a Dark Caster or an Incubus. A book that could save Ravenwood.

Ivy scooped something from inside the folds of her skirt and rubbed it across the face of the Book. The white crystals rolled down over the edges. Salt. The weapon of superstitious island women, who brought their own brand of power with them from the Sugar Islands, where their ancestors were born. They believed it warded off Demons, a belief that had always amused Abraham. “I'll come for it, soon as I can. I swear.”

“I will keep it safe. You have my word.” Abraham brushed some of the salt from the Book's cover so he could feel its heat against his skin. He turned back toward the woods. He would walk a few yards, for Ivy's benefit. It always scared the Gullah women to see him Travel, to be reminded of what he was.

“Put it away, Mr. Ravenwood. Whatever you do, don't open it. That book brings nothin’ but misery to anyone who messes with it. Don't listen to it when it calls you. I'll come for it.” But Ivy's warning had come too late.

Abraham was already listening.

When I came to, I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at my ceiling. It was painted sky blue, like all the ceilings in our house, to fool the carpenter bees that nested there.

I sat up, dizzy. The box was beside me, the lid shut. I opened it, and the pages were inside. This time I didn't touch them.

None of this made sense. Why was I having visions again?
Why was I seeing Abraham Ravenwood, a man who folks in town had been suspicious of for generations because Ravenwood was the only plantation to survive the Great Burning? Not that I believed much of anything the folks in town had to say.

But when Genevieve's locket triggered the visions, there had been a reason. Something Lena and I needed to figure out. What did Abraham Ravenwood have to do with us? The common thread was
The Book of Moons.
It was in the locket visions and in this one. But the Book was gone. The last time anyone had seen it was the night of Lena's birthday, when it was lying on the table in the crypt, surrounded by fire. Like so many things, it was nothing but ashes now.

5.17

W
hen I went to school the next day, I sat alone with Link and his four sloppy joes at the lunch table. While I ate my pizza, all I could think about was what Link said about Lena. He was right. She had changed, a little bit at a time, until I almost couldn't remember how things used to be. If I had anyone to talk to about it, I knew they would say to give her time. I also knew that was just something people said when there was nothing left to say and nothing you could do.

Lena wasn't coming out of it. She wasn't coming back to herself or to me. If anything, she was drifting farther away from me than anyone else. More and more, I couldn't reach her, not on the inside, not with Kelting or kissing or any of the other complicated or uncomplicated ways we used to touch. Now when I took her hand, all I could feel was the chill.

And when Emily Asher looked at me from across the
lunchroom, there wasn't anything left but pity in her eyes. Once again, I was someone to feel sorry for. I wasn't
Ethan Wate Whose Mamma Died Just Last Year
. Now I was
Ethan Wate Whose Girlfriend Went Psycho When Her Uncle Died.
People knew there were
complications
, and they knew they hadn't seen Lena in school with me.

Even if they didn't like Lena, the miserable love to watch someone else's misery. I had just about cornered the market on miserable. I was worse than miserable, lower than a flattened sloppy joe left behind on a lunchroom tray. I was alone.

One morning about a week later, I kept hearing a strange sound, like a grating or a record scratching or a page tearing, in the back of my mind. I was in history class, and we were talking about the Reconstruction, which was the even more boring time after the Civil War when the United States had to put itself back together. In a Gatlin classroom, this chapter was even more embarrassing than it was depressing — a reminder South Carolina had been a slave state and that we had been on the wrong side of right. We all knew it, but our ancestors had left us with a permanent F on the nation's moral report card. Cuts that run that deep leave scars, no matter what you try to do to heal them. Mr. Lee was still droning on, punctuating each sentence with a dramatic sigh.

I was trying not to listen, when I smelled something burning, maybe an overheating engine or a lighter. I looked around the room. It wasn't coming from Mr. Lee, the most frequent source of any horrible smell in my history class. No one else seemed to notice it.

The noise grew louder, into a confusing blur of crashing — ripping, talking, yelling.
Lena.

L?

No answer. Above the noise, I heard Lena mumbling lines of poetry, and not the kind you send someone for Valentine's Day.

Not waving but drowning …

I recognized the poem, and it wasn't good. Lena reading Stevie Smith was only one step up from the darkest Sylvia Plath and
The Bell Jar
kind of day. It was Lena's red flag, like Link listening to the Dead Kennedys or Amma chopping vegetables for spring rolls with her cleaver.

Hang on, L. I'm coming.

Something had changed, and before it could change back, I grabbed my books and took off running. I was out of the room before Mr. Lee's next sigh.