Beautiful Creatures

“It’s just a thing in my family. The women keep the family name even after they’re married. It’s always been that way.”

Marian turned the page, and looked at Lena. “It’s often the case in bloodlines where the women are considered particularly powerful.”

I wanted to change the subject. I didn’t want to dig too deep into the powerful women in Lena’s family with Marian, especially considering Lena was definitely one of them. “Why were you and Mom tracing the Duchannes tree? What was the project?”

Marian stirred her tea. “Sugar?”

She looked away as I spooned it into my cup. “We were actually mostly interested in this locket.” She pointed to another photograph of Genevieve. In this one, she was wearing the locket.

“One story in particular. It was a simple story, really, a love story.” She smiled sadly. “Your mother was a great romantic, Ethan.”

I locked eyes with Lena. We both knew what Marian was about to say.

“Interestingly enough for you two, this love story involves both a Wate and a Duchannes. A Confederate soldier, and a beautiful mistress of Greenbrier.”

The locket visions. The burning of Greenbrier. My mom’s last book was about everything we had seen happen between Genevieve and Ethan, Lena’s great-great-great-great-grandmother and my great-great-great-great-uncle.

My mom was working on that book when she died. My head was reeling. Gatlin was like that. Nothing here ever happened only once.

Lena looked pale. She leaned over and touched my hand, where it rested on the dusty table. Instantly, I felt the familiar prick of electricity.

“Here. This is the letter that got us started on the whole project.” Marian lay out two parchment sheets on the next oak table. Secretly, I was glad she didn’t disturb my mom’s worktable. I thought of it as a fitting memorial, more like her than the carnations everyone had laid on her casket. Even the DAR, they were there for the funeral, laying those carnations down like crazy, though my mom would have hated it. The whole town, the Baptists, the Methodists, even the Pentecostals, turned out for a death, a birth, or a wedding.

“You can read it, just don’t touch it. It’s one of the oldest things in Gatlin.”

Lena bent over the letter, holding her hair back to keep it from brushing the old parchment. “They’re desperately in love, but they’re too different.” She scanned the letter. “‘A Species Apart,’ he calls them. Her family is trying to keep them apart, and he’s gone to enlist, even though he doesn’t believe in the war, in the hope that fighting for the South will win him the approval of her family.”

Marian closed her eyes, reciting:

“I might as well be a monkey as a man, for all the good it does me at Greenbrier. Though merely Mortal, my heart breaks with such pain at the thought of spending the rest of my life without you, Genevieve.”

It was like poetry, like something I imagined Lena would write.

Marian opened her eyes again. “As if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

“It’s all so sad,” said Lena, looking at me.

“They were in love. There was a war. I hate to tell you, but it ends badly, or so it seems.” Marian finished her tea.

“What about this locket?” I pointed at the photo, almost afraid to ask.

“Supposedly, Ethan gave it to Genevieve, as a troth of secret engagement. We’ll never know what happened to it. Nobody ever saw it again, after the night Ethan died. Genevieve’s father forced her to marry someone else, but legend has it, she kept the locket and it was buried with her. It was said to be a powerful talisman, the broken bond of a broken heart.”

I shivered. The powerful talisman wasn’t buried with Genevieve; it was in my pocket, and a Dark talisman according to Macon and Amma. I could feel it throbbing, as if it had been baking in hot coals.

Ethan, don’t.

We have to. She can help us. My mom would have helped us.

I shoved one hand in my pocket, pushing past the handkerchief to touch the battered cameo, and took Marian’s hand, hoping this was one of those times the locket would work. Her cup of tea crashed to the floor. The room started to swirl.

“Ethan!” Marian shouted.

Lena took Marian’s hand. The light in the room was dissolving into night. “Don’t worry. We’ll be with you the whole time.” Lena’s voice sounded far away, and I heard the sound of distant gunfire.

In moments, the library filled with rain—

The rain battered down upon them. The winds kicked up, beginning to quell the flames, even though it was too late.

Genevieve stared at what was left of the great house. She had lost everything today. Mamma. Evangeline. She couldn’t lose Ethan, too.

Ivy ran through the mud toward her, using her skirt to carry the things Genevieve had asked for.

“I’m too late, Lord in Heaven, I’m too late,” Ivy cried. She looked around nervously. “Come, Miss Genevieve, there’s nothin’ more we can do here.”

But Ivy was wrong. There was one thing.

“It’s not too late. It’s not too late.” Genevieve kept repeating the words.

“You’re talkin’ crazy, child.”

She looked at Ivy, desperate. “I need the book.”

Ivy backed away, shaking her head. “No. You can’t mess with that book. You don’t know what you doin’.”

Genevieve grabbed the old woman by the shoulders. “Ivy, it’s the only way. You have to give it to me.”

“You don’t know what you askin’. You don’t know nothin’ about that book—”

“Give it to me or I’ll find it myself.”

Black smoke was billowing up behind them, the fire still spitting as it swallowed up what was left of the house.

Ivy relented, picking up her tattered skirts and leading Genevieve out past what used to be her mother’s lemon grove. Genevieve had never been past that point. There was nothing out there but cotton fields, or at least that’s what she had always been told. And she had never had a reason to be in those fields, except on the rare occasions when she and Evangeline played a game of hide-and-seek.

But Ivy’s path was purposeful. She knew exactly where she was going. In the distance, Genevieve could still hear the sound of gunshots and the piercing cries of her neighbors, as they watched their own homes burn.

Ivy stopped near a bramble of wild vines, rose-mary, and jasmine, snaking their way up the side of an old stone wall. There was a small archway, hidden beneath the overgrowth. Ivy ducked down and walked under the arch. Genevieve followed. The arch must have been attached to a wall because the area was enclosed. A perfect circle—its walls obscured by years of wild vines.

“What is this place?”

“A place your mamma didn’t want you to know nothin’ about, or you’d know what it was.”

In the distance, Genevieve could see tiny stones jutting from the tall grass. Of course. The family cemetery. Genevieve remembered being out there, once, when she was very young, when her great-grandmother had died. She remembered the funeral was at night, and her mother had stood in the tall grass, in the moonlight, whispering words in a language Genevieve and her sister hadn’t recognized. “What are we doin’ out here?”

“You said you wanted that book. Didn’t ya?”

“It’s out here?”

Ivy stopped and looked at Genevieve, confused. “Where else would it be?”

Farther back, there was another structure being strangled by wild vines. A crypt. Ivy stopped at the door. “You sure ya want to—”

“We don’t have time for this!” Genevieve reached for the handle, but there wasn’t one. “How does it open?”

The old woman stood on her toes, reaching high above the door. There, illuminated by the distant light of the fires, Genevieve could see a small piece of smooth stone above the door, with a crescent moon carved into it. Ivy put her hand over the small moon and pushed. The stone door began to move, opening with the sound of stone scraping stone. Ivy reached for something on the other side of the doorway. A candle.

The candlelight illuminated the small room. It couldn’t have been bigger than a few feet wide all around. But there were old wooden shelves on every side, piled high with tiny vials and bottles, filled with plant blossoms, powders, and murky liquids. In the center of the room, there was a weathered stone table, with an old wooden box lying on it. The box was modest by any standard, the only adornment a tiny crescent moon carved on its lid. The same carving from the stone above the door.

“I’m not touchin’ it,” Ivy said quietly, as if she thought the box itself could hear her.

“Ivy, it’s just a book.”

“No such thing as just a book, ’specially in your family.”

Genevieve lifted the lid gently. The book’s jacket was cracked black leather, now more gray than black. There was no title, just the same crescent moon embossed on the front. Genevieve lifted the book tentatively from the box. She knew Ivy was superstitious. Although she had mocked the old woman, she also knew that Ivy was wise. She read cards and tea leaves, and Genevieve’s mother consulted Ivy and her tea leaves for almost everything, the best day to plant her vegetables to avoid a freeze, the right herbs to cure a cold.

The book was warm. As if it were alive, breathing.

“Why doesn’t it have a name?” Genevieve asked.

“Just ’cause a book don’t have a title, don’t mean it don’t have a name. That right there is The Book a Moons.”

There was no more time to lose. She followed the flames through the darkness. Back to what was left of Greenbrier, and Ethan.

She flipped through the pages. There were hundreds of Casts. How would she find the right one? Then she saw it. It was in Latin, a language she knew well; her mother had brought a special tutor in from up North to make sure she and Evangeline learned it. The most important language as far as her family was concerned.

The Binding Spell. To Bind Death To Life.

Genevieve rested the Book on the ground next to Ethan, her finger under the first verse of the incantation.

Ivy grabbed her wrist and held it tight. “This isn’t any night for this. Half moon’s for workin’ White magic, full moon’s for workin’ Black. No moon is somethin’ else altogether.”

Genevieve jerked her arm from the old woman’s grip. “I don’t have a choice. This is the only night we have.”

“Miss Genevieve, you need to understand. Those words are more than a Cast. They’re a bargain. You can’t use The Book a Moons, without givin’ somethin’ in return.”

“I don’t care about the price. We’re talkin’ about Ethan’s life. I’ve lost everyone else.”

“That boy don’t have no more life. It’s been shot right out of ’im. What you tryin’ to do is unnatural. And there can’t be no right in that.”

Genevieve knew Ivy was right. Her mother had warned her and Evangeline often enough about respecting the Natural Laws. She was crossing a line none of the Casters in her family would ever have dared.

But they were all gone now. She was the only one left.

And she had to try.

“No!” Lena let go of our hands, breaking the circle. “She went Dark, don’t you get it? Genevieve, she was using Dark magic.”

I grabbed her hands. She tried to pull away from me. Usually all I could feel from Lena was a sunny sort of warmth, but this time she felt more like a tornado. “Lena, she’s not you. He’s not me. This all happened more than a hundred years ago.”

She was hysterical. “She is me, that’s why the locket wants me to see this. It’s warning me to stay away from you. So I don’t hurt you after I go Dark.”

Marian opened her eyes, which were bigger than I’d ever seen them. Her short hair, normally neat and perfectly in place, was wild and windblown. She looked exhausted, but exhilarated. I knew that look. It was like my mom was haunting her, especially around the eyes. “You are not Claimed, Lena. You’re neither good nor bad. This is just what it feels like to be fifteen and a half, in the Duchannes family. I’ve known a lot of Casters in my day and a whole lot of Duchannes, both Dark and Light.”

Lena looked at Marian, stunned.

Marian tried to catch her breath. “You are not going Dark. You’re as melodramatic as Macon. Now calm down.”

How did she know about Lena’s birthday? How did she know about Casters?

“You two have Genevieve’s locket. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We don’t know what to do. Everyone tells us something different.”

“Let me see it.”

I reached into my pocket. Lena put her hand on my arm, and I hesitated. Marian was my mom’s closest friend, and she was like family. I knew I shouldn’t question her motives, but then I had just followed Amma into the swamp to meet Macon Ravenwood, and I would never have seen that coming. “How do we know we can trust you?” I asked, feeling sick even asking the question.

“‘The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.’”

“Elton John?”

“Close. Ernest Hemingway. In his own way, sort of the rock star of his time.”

I smiled, but Lena was not so willing to have her doubts charmed away. “Why should we trust you when everyone else has been hiding things from us?”

Marian grew serious. “Precisely because I’m not Amma, and I’m not Uncle Macon. I’m not your Gramma or your Aunt Delphine. I’m Mortal. I’m neutral. Between Black magic and White magic, Light and Dark, there has to be something in between—something to resist the pull—and that something is me.”

Lena backed away from her. It was inconceivable, to both of us. How did Marian know so much about Lena’s family?

“What are you?” In Lena’s family, that was a loaded question.

“I’m the Gatlin County Head Librarian, same as I’ve been since I moved here, same as I always will be. I’m not a Caster. I just keep the records. I just keep the books.” Marian smoothed her hair. “I’m the Keeper, just one in a long line of Mortals entrusted with the history and the secrets of a world we can never entirely be a part of. There must always be one, and now that one is me.”

“Aunt Marian? What are you talking about?” I was lost.

“Let’s just say, there are libraries, and then there are libraries. I serve all the good citizens of Gatlin, whether they are Casters or Mortals. Which works out just fine since the other branch is more of a night job, really.”

“You mean—?”

“The Gatlin County Caster Library. I am, of course, the Caster Librarian. The Head Caster Librarian.”

I stared at Marian as if I was seeing her for the first time. She looked back at me with the same brown eyes, the same knowing smile. She looked the same, but somehow she was completely different. I had always wondered why Marian stayed in Gatlin all these years. I thought it was because of my mom. Now I realized there was another reason.

I didn’t know what I was feeling, but whatever it was, Lena was feeling the opposite. “Then you can help us. We have to find out what happened to Ethan and Genevieve, and what it has to do with Ethan and me, and we have to find out before my birthday.” Lena looked at her expectantly. “The Caster Library must have records. Maybe The Book of Moons is there. Do you think it could have the answers?”

Marian looked away. “Maybe, maybe not. I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m so sorry.”

“What are you talking about?” She wasn’t making sense. I’d never seen Marian refuse help to anyone, especially me.

“I can’t get involved, even if I want to. It’s part of the job description. I don’t write the books, or the rules, I just keep them. I can’t interfere.”

“Is this job more important than helping us?” I stepped in front of her, so she had to look me in the eye when she answered. “More important than me?”

“It’s not that simple, Ethan. There’s a balance between the Mortal world and the Caster world, between Light and Dark. The Keeper is part of that balance, part of the Order of Things. If I defy the laws by which I’m Bound, that balance is jeopardized.” She looked back at me, her voice shaky. “I can’t interfere, even if it kills me. Even if it hurts the people I love.”

I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but I knew Marian loved me, like she had loved my mom. If she couldn’t help us, there had to be a reason. “Fine. You can’t help us. Just take me to this Caster Library, and I’ll figure it out myself.”

“You’re not a Caster, Ethan. This isn’t your decision to make.”

Lena stepped next to me, and took my hand. “It’s mine. And I want to go.”

Marian nodded. “All right, I’ll take you, the next time it’s open. The Caster Library doesn’t operate on the same schedule as the Gatlin County Library. It’s a bit more irregular.”

Of course it was.