Beautiful Chaos

The Far Keep

And then Link and I bolted like Amma was chasing us with the One-Eyed Menace. I was so scared she would know we’d followed her, I didn’t get out of bed until morning.” I left out the part where I woke up on the floor, the same way I always did after one of the dreams.

By the time I finished telling Marian the story, her tea was cold. “What about Amma?”

“I heard the screen door close as the sun was coming up. By the time I came downstairs, she was making breakfast as if nothing happened. Same old cheese grits, same old eggs.” Except neither one tasted right anymore.

We were in the archive in the Gatlin County Library. It was Marian’s private sanctuary, one she had shared with my mom. It was also the place where Marian looked for answers to questions that most folks in Gatlin didn’t even know to ask, which was why I was here. Marian Ashcroft had been my mom’s best friend, but she had always felt more like my aunt than my real one. Which I guess was the other reason I was here.

Amma was the closest thing I had left to a mother. I wasn’t ready to assume the worst of her, and I didn’t want anyone else to either. But still, I didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the idea of her running around with a guy who was on the wrong side of everything Amma believed in. I had to tell someone.

Marian stirred her tea, distracted. “You’re absolutely sure of what you heard?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t really the kind of conversation you forget.” I’d been trying to wipe the image of Amma and the bokor out of my mind ever since I saw them. “I’ve watched Amma freak out before when she didn’t like what the cards were telling her. When she knew Sam Turley was going to drive off the bridge at Wader’s Creek, she locked herself in her room and didn’t say a word for a week. This was different.”

“A Seer never tries to change the cards. Especially not the great-great-great-granddaughter of Sulla the Prophet.” Marian stared into her teacup, thinking. “Why would she try now?”

“I don’t know. The bokor said he could do it, but it would cost her. Amma said she’d pay the price. No matter what. It didn’t make any sense, but it has something to do with the Casters.”

“If he was a bokor, that’s not idle talk. They use voodoo to hurt and destroy rather than enlighten and heal.”

I nodded. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was actually scared for Amma. Which made about as much sense as a kitten being scared for a tiger. “I know you can’t interfere in the Caster world, but the bokor’s a Mortal.”

“Which is why you came to me.” Marian sighed. “I can do some research, but the one question I won’t be able to answer is the only one that matters. What would send Amma to a person who opposes everything she believes in?” Marian held out a plate of cookies, which meant she didn’t have the answer.

“HobNobs?” I winced. They weren’t just any cookies—Liv’s suitcase had been full of them when she arrived in South Carolina at the beginning of the summer.

Marian must have noticed, because she sighed and put the plate down. “Have you talked to Olivia about what happened?”

“I don’t know. Not about—well, no.” I sighed. “Which really sucks, because Liv is… you know, Liv.”

“I miss her, too.”

“Then why didn’t you let her keep working with you?” After Liv broke the rules and helped free Macon from the Arclight, she had disappeared from the Gatlin County Library. Her training as a Keeper had ended, and I’d expected her to go back to the U.K. Instead, she started spending her days in the Tunnels with Macon.

“I couldn’t. It would be improper. Or, if you prefer, forbidden. Until everything is sorted out, we aren’t to see each other. Not officially.”

“You mean she’s not staying with you?”

Marian sighed. “She’s moved into the Tunnels for now. She may be happier there. Macon’s seen to it that she has a study of her own.” I couldn’t picture Liv spending so much time in the darkness of the Tunnels, when all she reminded me of was sunshine.

Marian turned in her seat, pulled a folded letter from her desk, and handed me the paper. It was heavy in my hands, and I realized the weight came from a thick waxen seal at the bottom of the page. Not the kind of letter you get in the mail.

“What’s this?”

“Go on. Read it.”

“ ‘The Council of the Far Keep finds, in the grave matter of Marian Ashcroft of the Lunae Libri…’ ”—I started skimming—“ ‘… suspension of responsibilities, with regard to the Western Keep… trial date forthcoming.’ ” I looked up from the paper in disbelief. “You were fired?”

“I prefer suspended.”

“And there’s a trial?”

She set her teacup on the table between us and closed her eyes. “Yes. At least, that’s what they are choosing to call it. Don’t think Mortals have a monopoly on hypocrisy. The Caster world is not exactly a democracy, as you might have noticed. The whole free will bit gets a little sidelined in the interest of the rule of law.”

“But you had nothing to do with that. Lena broke the Order.”

“Well, I appreciate your version of events, but you’ve lived in Gatlin long enough to know how versions have a way of changing. Nevertheless, I expect you’ll have your day on the stand.” The lines on Marian’s face had a habit of deepening from lines into shadows when she was really worried. Like now.

“But you weren’t involved.” It was our longest running battle. From the moment I learned Marian was a Keeper—like my mother before her—I knew the one rule that mattered. Whatever was happening, Marian stayed out of it. She was an observer, responsible for keeping the records of the Caster world and marking the place that world intersected with the Mortal one.

Marian kept the history; she didn’t make it.

That was the rule. Whether her heart would allow her to follow it was a different story. Liv had learned the hard way that she couldn’t follow the rule, and now she could never be a Keeper. I was pretty sure my mom had felt the same way.

I picked up the letter again. I touched the thick black wax seal—the same as the seal of the state of South Carolina. A Caster moon over a palmetto tree. As I touched the crescent moon, I heard the familiar melody and stopped to listen. I closed my eyes.

Eighteen Moons, eighteen Sheers,

Feeding off your deepest fears,

Vexed to find as Darkness nears,

Secret eyes and hidden ears…

“Ethan?” I opened my eyes to see Marian looming over me.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s never nothing. Not with you, EW.” She smiled a little sadly at me.

“I heard the song.” I was still tapping my fingers against the sides of my jeans, the melody stuck in my head.

“Your Shadowing Song?”

I nodded.

“And?”

I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn’t see how I was going to get out of it, and I couldn’t manage to make up another version in the space of three seconds. “Nothing good. The usual. A Sheer, a Vex, secrets and darkness.”

I tried not to feel anything, not the lurching in my stomach or the chill spreading through my body while I said it. My mom was trying to tell me something. And if she was sending the song, it meant it was something important. And dangerous.

“Ethan. This is serious.”

“Everything’s serious, Aunt Marian. It’s hard to figure out what I’m supposed to do.”

“Talk to me.”

“I will, but right now I don’t even know what to tell you.” I stood up to leave. I shouldn’t have said anything. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, and the more Marian pushed, the faster I wanted to get away. “I’d better get going.”

She followed me to the door of the archive. “Don’t be gone so long this time, Ethan. I’ve missed you.”

I smiled and hugged her, looking over her shoulder into the Gatlin County Library—and almost jumped out of my skin.

“What happened?”

Marian looked as surprised as I did. The library was a catastrophic, floor-to-ceiling disaster. It looked like a tornado had struck while we were in the archive. Stacks were leveled, and books were thrown open everywhere, along the tabletops, the checkout counter, even the floor. I’d only seen something like this once before, last Christmas, when every book in the library opened to a quote that had to do with Lena and me.

“This is worse than last time,” Marian said quietly. We were thinking the same thing. It was a message meant for me. Just as it had been then.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well. There we go. Are you feeling Vexed yet?” Marian reached for a book sitting on top of the card catalog. “Because I certainly am.”

“I’m starting to.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “Wish I knew the Cast for reshelving books without actually having to pick them all up.”

Marian bent and handed me the first. “Emily Dickinson.”

I opened it as slowly as a person can open a book, and found a random page.

“ ‘Much Madness is divinest Sense…’ ”

“Madness. Great.” What did it mean? And, more important, what did it mean for me? I looked at Marian. “What do you think?”

“I think the Disorder of Things has finally reached my stacks. Go on.” She opened another book and handed it to me. “Leonardo da Vinci.”

Great. Another famous crazy person. I handed it back to her. “You do it.”

“ ‘While I thought that I was learning how to live, I’ve been learning how to die.’ ” She closed the book softly.

“Madness and now death. Things are looking up.”

She put one hand around my neck and let the book slide from her other. I’m here with you. That’s what her hands said. My hands didn’t say anything except that I was terrified, which I was pretty sure she could tell from how hard they were shaking. “We’ll take turns. One reads while the other cleans.”

“I call cleaning.”

Marian gave me a look, handing me another book. “You’re calling the shots in my library now?”

“No, ma’am. That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly.” I looked down at the title. “Oh, come on.” Edgar Allan Poe. He was so dark he’d make the other two look cheerful in comparison. “Whatever he has to say, I don’t want to know.”

“Open it.”

“ ‘Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before…’ ”

I snapped the book shut. “I get it. I’m losing it. I’m going crazy. This whole town is cracked. The universe is one big nuthouse.”

“You know what Leonard Cohen says about cracks, Ethan?”

“No, I don’t. But I get the feeling I could open a few more books in this library and tell you.”

“ ‘There is a crack in everything.’ ”

“That’s helpful.”

“It is, actually.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “ ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ ”

She was pretty much exactly right—or at least the Leonard Cohen guy was. I felt happy and sad at the same time, and I didn’t know what to say. So I dropped to my knees on the carpet and started stacking books.

“Better get going on this mess.”

Marian understood. “Never thought I’d hear you say that, EW.” She was right. The universe really must be cracked, and me right along with it.

I hoped somehow the light was finding a way in.