Beautiful Creatures

11.28

Domus Lunae Libri

Today? But it’s not a holiday.” When I opened the front door, Marian was the last person I had expected to see, standing on my doorstep in her coat. Now I was sitting with Lena on the cold bench seat of Marian’s old turquoise truck, on our way to the Caster Library.

“A promise is a promise. It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. It may not seem like a holiday, but it is a bank holiday, and that’s all we need.” Marian was right. Amma had probably been in the line at the mall with a handful of coupons since before dawn; it was dark out now, and she still wasn’t back. “The Gatlin County Library is closed, so the Caster Library is open.”

“Same hours?” I asked Marian, as she turned onto Main.

She nodded. “Nine to six.” Then, winking, “Nine p.m. to six a.m. Not all my clientele can venture out in the daylight.”

“That hardly seems fair,” complained Lena. “The Mortals get so much more time, and they don’t even read around here.”

Marian shrugged. “Like I said, I do get paid by Gatlin County. Take it up with them. But think how much longer you’ll have until your Lunae Libri are due back.”

I looked blank.

“Lunae Libri. Roughly translated, Books of the Moon. You might call them Caster Scrolls.”

I didn’t care what you called them. I couldn’t wait to see what the books in the Caster Library would tell us, or one book in particular. Because we were short on two things: answers and time.

When we piled out of the truck, I couldn’t believe where we were. Marian’s truck was parked at the curb, not ten feet from the Gatlin Historical Society, or, as my mom and Marian liked to say, the Gatlin Hysterical Society. The Historical Society was also the DAR headquarters. Marian had pulled her truck forward enough to avoid the puddle of light spilling down to the pavement from the lamppost.

Boo Radley was sitting on the sidewalk, as if he had known.

“Here? The Lunae whatever is at the DAR headquarters?”

“Domus Lunae Libri. The House of The Book of Moons. Lunae Libri, for short. And no, just the Gatlin entrance.” I burst out laughing. “You have your mother’s appreciation for irony.” We walked up to the deserted building. We couldn’t have picked a better night.

“But it’s not a joke. The Historical Society is the oldest building in the County, next to Ravenwood itself. Nothing else survived the Great Burning,” Marian added.

“But the DAR and the Casters? How could they have anything in common?” Lena was dumbfounded.

“I expect you’ll find they have quite a bit more in common than you think.” Marian hurried toward the old stone building, drawing out her familiar key ring. “I, for example, am a member of both societies.” I looked at Marian in disbelief. “I’m neutral. I thought I made myself perfectly clear. I’m not like you. You’re like Lila, you get too involved….” I could finish that sentence for myself. And look what happened to her.

Marian froze, but the words hung in the air. There was nothing she could say or do to take them back. I felt numb, but I didn’t say anything. Lena reached for my hand, and I could feel her pulling me out of myself.

Ethan. Are you okay?

Marian looked at her watch again. “It’s five to nine. Technically, I shouldn’t let you in yet. But I need to be downstairs by nine, in case we have any other visitors this evening. Follow me.”

We made our way into the dark yard behind the building. She fumbled through her keys until she drew out what I had always thought was a keychain, because it didn’t look like a key at all. It was an iron ring, with one hinged side. With an expert hand, Marian twisted the hinge until it snapped back upon itself, turning the circle into a crescent. A Caster moon.

She pushed the key into what appeared to be an iron grating, in the foundation at the back of the building. She twisted the key, and the grating slid open. Behind the grating was a dark stone staircase leading down into even more darkness, the basement beneath the basement of the DAR. As she snapped the key one more rotation to the left, a row of torches lit themselves along the sides of the wall. Now the stairwell was fully illuminated with flickering light, and I could even see a glimpse of the words domus lunae libri etched into the stone archway of the entrance below. Marian snapped the key once more, and the stairs disappeared, replaced by the iron grating once again.

“That’s it? We aren’t going to go in?” Lena sounded annoyed.

Marian stuck her hand through the grating. It was an illusion. “I can’t Cast, as you know, but something had to be done. Strays kept wandering in at night. Macon had Larkin rig it for me, and he stops by to keep it intact, every now and then.”

Marian looked at us, suddenly somber. “All right, then. If you’re sure this is what you want to do, I can’t stop you. Nor can I guide you in any way, once you’re downstairs. I can’t prevent you from taking a book, or take one back from you before the Lunae Libri opens itself again.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you understand, Ethan? This isn’t a game. There are powerful books down there—Binding books, Caster scrolls, Dark and Light talismans, objects of power. Things no Mortal has ever seen, except me, and my predecessors. Many of the books are charmed, others are jinxed. You have to be careful. Touch nothing. Let Lena handle the books for you.”

Lena’s hair was waving. She was already feeling the magic of this place. I nodded, wary. What I was feeling was less magical, my stomach churning like I was the one who drank too much peppermint schnapps. I wondered how often Mrs. Lincoln and her cronies had paced back and forth on the floor above us, oblivious to what was below them.

“No matter what you find, remember we have to be out before sunrise. Nine to six. Those are the library hours, and the entrance can only be made to open during that time. The sun will rise precisely at six; it always does, on a Library Day. If you aren’t up the stairs by sunrise, you will be trapped until the next Library Day, and I have no way of knowing how well a Mortal could survive that experience. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

Lena nodded, taking my hand. “Can we go in now? I can’t wait.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. Your Uncle Macon and Amma would kill me if they knew.” Marian checked her watch. “After you.”

“Marian? Have you—did my mother ever see this?” I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t think about anything else.

Marian looked at me, her eyes strangely sparkling. “Your mother was the person who gave me the job.”

And with that, she disappeared in front of us through the illusionary grating, and down into the Lunae Libri below. Boo Radley barked, but it was too late to turn back now.

The steps were cold and mossy, the air dank. Wet things, scurrying things, burrowing things—it wasn’t hard to imagine them making themselves comfortable down here.

I tried not to think about Marian’s last words. I couldn’t imagine my mother coming down these stairs. I couldn’t imagine her knowing anything about this world I’d just stumbled onto, more like, this world that had stumbled onto me. But she had, and I couldn’t stop wondering how. Had she stumbled onto it too, or had someone invited her in? Somehow, it made it all seem more real, that my mother and I shared this secret, even if she wasn’t here to share it with me.

But I was the one here now, walking down the stone steps, carved and flat like the floor of an old church. Along either side of the stairs I could see rough stone boulders, the foundations of an ancient room that had existed on the site of the DAR building, long before the structure itself had been built. I looked down the stairs, but all I could see were rough outlines, shapes in the dark. It didn’t look like a library. It looked like what it probably was, what it had always been. A crypt.

At the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows of the crypt, countless tiny domes curved overhead where the columns jutted up into the vaulted ceiling, forty or fifty in all. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that each column was different, and some of them were tilted, like crooked old oaks. Their shadows made the circular chamber seem like some kind of quiet, dark forest. It was a terrifying room to be in. There was no way of knowing how far back it went, since every direction dissolved into darkness.

Marian inserted her key into the first column, marked with a moon. The torches along the walls lit themselves, illuminating the room with flickering light.

“They’re beautiful,” Lena breathed. I could see her hair still twisting, and wondered how this place must feel to her, in ways I could never know.

Alive. Powerful. Like the truth, every truth, is here, somewhere.

“Collected from all over the world, long before my time. Istanbul.” Marian pointed to the tops of the columns, the decorated parts, the capitals. “Taken from Babylon.” She pointed to another one, with four hawk heads poking out from each side. “Egypt, the Eye of God.” She patted another, dramatically carved with a lion’s head. “Assyria.”

I felt along the wall with my hand. Even the stones of the walls were carved. Some were cut with faces, of men, creatures, birds, staring from between the forest of columns, like predators. Other stones were carved with symbols I didn’t recognize, hieroglyphs of Casters and cultures I’d never know.

We moved farther into the chamber, out of the crypt, which seemed to serve as some sort of lobby, and again torches burst into flame, one after another, as if they were following us. I could see that the columns curved around a stone table in the middle of the room. The stacks, or what I guessed were the stacks, radiated out from the central circle like the spokes of a wheel, and seemed to rise up almost to the ceiling, creating a frightening maze I imagined a Mortal could get lost in. In the room itself, there was nothing but the columns, and the circular stone table.

Marian calmly picked up a torch from an iron crescent on the wall and handed it to me. She handed another to Lena, and took one for herself. “Have a look around. I have to check the mail. I may have a transfer request from another branch.”

“For the Lunae Libri?” I hadn’t considered that there might be other Caster libraries.

“Of course.” Marian turned back toward the stairs.

“Wait. How do you get mail here?”

“The same way you do. Carlton Eaton delivers it, rain or shine.” Carlton Eaton was in the know. Of course he was. That probably explained why he’d picked Amma up in the middle of the night. I wondered if he opened the Casters’ mail, too. I wondered what else I didn’t know about Gatlin, and the people in it. I didn’t have to ask.

“There aren’t too many of us, but more than you’d think. You have to remember, Ravenwood has been here longer than this old building. This was a Caster county before it was ever a Mortal one.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re all so weird around here.” Lena poked me. I was still stuck back on Carlton Eaton.

Who else knew what was really going on in Gatlin, in the other Gatlin, the one with magical underground libraries and girls who could control the weather or make you jump off a cliff? Who else was in the Caster loop, like Marian and Carlton Eaton? Like my mom?

Fatty? Mrs. English? Mr. Lee?

Definitely not Mr. Lee.

“Don’t worry. When you need them, they’ll find you. That’s how it works, how it always has.”

“Wait.” I grabbed Marian’s arm. “Does my dad know?”

“No.” At least there was one person in my house who wasn’t living a double life, even if he was crazy.

Marian issued a final piece of advice. “Now, you’d better get started. The Lunae Libri is thousands of times bigger than any library you’ve ever seen. If you get lost, immediately trace your steps backward. That’s why the stacks radiate out from this one chamber. If you only go forward or back, you have less chance of getting lost.”

“How can you get lost, if you can only go in a straight line?”

“Try it for yourself. You’ll see.”

Lena interrupted, “What’s at the end of the stacks? I mean, at the end of the aisles?”

Marian looked at her oddly. “Nobody knows. No one has ever made it far enough to find out. Some of the aisles turn into tunnels. Parts of the Lunae Libri are still uncharted. There are many things down here even I’ve never seen. One day, perhaps.”

“What are you talking about? Everything ends somewhere. There can’t be rows and rows of books tunneling under the whole town. What, do you come up for tea at Mrs. Lincoln’s house? Make a left turn and drop a book off to Aunt Del in the next town? Tunnel to the right for a chat with Amma?” I was skeptical.

Marian smiled at me, amused. “How do you think Macon gets his books? How do you think the DAR never sees any visitors going in or out? Gatlin is Gatlin. Folks like it fine the way it is, the way they think it is. Mortals only see what they want to see. There’s been a thriving Caster community in and around this county since before the Civil War. That’s hundreds of years, Ethan, and that’s not going to change suddenly. Not just because you know about it.”

“I can’t believe Uncle Macon never told me about this place. Think of all the Casters that have come through here.” Lena held up her torch, pulling a bound volume from the shelf. The book was ornately bound, heavy in her hands, and sent a cloud of gray dust exploding out in every direction. I started to cough.

“Casting, A Briefe Historie.” She drew out another. “We’re in the C’s, I guess.” This one was a leather box that opened on top to reveal the standing scroll inside. Lena pulled out the scroll. Even the dust looked older, and grayer. “Castyng to Creyate & Confounde. That’s an old one.”

“Careful. More than a few hundred years. Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press until 1455.” Marian took the scroll out of her hand gingerly, as if she was handling a newborn baby.

Lena pulled out another book, bound in gray leather. “Casting the Confederacy. Were there Casters in the War?”

Marian nodded. “Both sides, the Blue and the Gray. It was one of the great divisions in the Caster Community, I’m afraid. Just as it was for us Mortals.”

Lena looked up at Marian, shoving the dusty book back on the shelf. “The Casters in our family, we’re still in a war, aren’t we?”

Marian looked at her sadly. “A House Divided, that’s what President Lincoln called it. And yes, Lena, I’m afraid you are.” She touched Lena’s cheek. “Which is why you’re here, if you recall. To find what you need, to make sense of something senseless. Now, you’d better get started.”

“There are so many books, Marian. Can’t you just point us in the right direction?”

“Don’t look at me. Like I said, I don’t have the answers, just the books. Get going. We’re on the lunar clock down here, and you may lose track of time. Things aren’t exactly as they seem when you’re down below.”

I looked from Lena to Marian. I was afraid to let either one of them out of my sight. The Lunae Libri was more intimidating than I had imagined. Less like a library, and more like, well, catacombs. And The Book of Moons could be anywhere.

Lena and I faced the endless stacks, but neither one of us took even a single step.

“How are we going to find it? There must be a million books in here.”

“I have no idea. Maybe…” I knew what she was thinking.

“Should we try the locket?”

“Do you have it?” I nodded, and pulled the warm lump out of my jeans pocket. I handed Lena the torch.

“We need to see what happens. There has to be something else.” I unwrapped the locket and placed it on the round stone table in the center of the room. I saw a familiar look in Marian’s eyes, the look she and my mother shared when they dug up a particularly good find. “Do you want to see this?”

“More than you know.” Marian slowly took my hand, and I took Lena’s. I reached over, with my fingers intertwined with Lena’s, and touched the locket.

A blinding flash forced my eyes shut.

And then I could see the smoke and smell the fire, and we were gone—

Genevieve lifted the Book so she could read the words through the rain. She knew speaking the words would defy the Natural Laws. She could almost hear her mother’s voice willing her to stop—to think about the choice she was making.

But Genevieve couldn’t stop. She couldn’t lose Ethan.

She began to chant.

“CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, TUTELA TUA EST.

VITA VITAE MEAE, CORRIPIENS TUAM, CORRIPIENS MEAM.

CORPUS CORPORIS MEI, MEDULLA MENSQUE,

ANIMA ANIMAE MEAE, ANIMAM NOSTRAM CONECTE.

CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, LUNA MEA, AESTUS MEUS.

CRUOR PECTORIS MEI. FATUM MEUM, MEA SALUS.”

“Stop, child, ’fore it’s too late!” Ivy’s voice was frantic.

The rain poured down and lightning sliced through the smoke. Genevieve held her breath and waited. Nothing. She must have done it wrong. She squinted to read the words more clearly in the dark. She screamed them into the darkness, in the language she knew best.

“BLOOD OF MY HEART, PROTECTION IS THINE.

LIFE OF MY LIFE, TAKING YOURS, TAKING MINE.

BODY OF MY BODY, MARROW AND MIND,

SOUL OF MY SOUL, TO OUR SPIRIT BIND.

BLOOD OF MY HEART, MY TIDES, MY MOON.

BLOOD OF MY HEART. MY SALVATION, MY DOOM.”

She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, when she saw Ethan’s eyelids struggling to open.

“Ethan!” For a split second, their eyes met.

Ethan fought for breath, clearly trying to speak. Genevieve pressed her ear closer to his lips and she could feel his warm breath on her cheek.

“I never believed your daddy when he said it was impossible for a Caster and a Mortal to be together. We would have found a way. I love you, Genevieve.” He pressed something into her hand. A locket.

And as suddenly as his eyes opened, they closed again, his chest failing to rise and fall.

Before Genevieve could react, a jolt of electricity surged through her body. She could feel the blood pulsing through her veins. She must have been struck by lightning. The waves of pain crashed down on her.

Genevieve tried to hold on.

Then everything went black.

“Sweet God in Heaven, don’t take her, too.”

Genevieve recognized Ivy’s voice. Where was she? The smell brought her back. Burnt lemons. She tried to speak, but her throat felt like she had swallowed sand. Her eyes fluttered.

“Oh Lord, thank you!” Ivy was staring down at her, kneeling beside her in the dirt.

Genevieve coughed and reached for Ivy, trying to pull her closer.

“Ethan, is he…” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, child. He’s gone.”

Genevieve struggled to open her eyes. Ivy jumped back, as if she’d seen the Devil himself.

“Lord have mercy!”

“What? What’s wrong, Ivy?”

The old woman struggled to make sense of what she saw. “Your eyes, child. They’re… they’ve changed.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“They ain’t green no more. They’re yellow, as yellow as the sun.”

Genevieve didn’t care what color her eyes were. She didn’t care about anything now that she’d lost Ethan. She started to sob.

The rain picked up, turning the ground under them to mud.

“You’ve got to get up, Miss Genevieve. We have to commune with the Ones in the Otherworld.” Ivy tried to pull her to her feet.

“Ivy, you’re not makin’ sense.”

“Your eyes—I warned you. I told you about that moon, no moon. We have to find out what it means. We have to consult the Spirits.”

“If there’s something wrong with my eyes, I’m sure it was because I was struck by lightnin’.”

“What did you see?” Ivy looked panicked.

“Ivy, what’s goin’ on? Why are you actin’ so strange?”

“You weren’t struck by lightnin’. It was somethin’ else.”

Ivy ran back toward the burning cotton fields. Genevieve called after her, trying to get up, but she was still reeling. She leaned her head back in the thick mud, rain falling steadily on her face. Rain mixed with the tears of defeat. She drifted in and out of the moment, in and out of consciousness. She heard Ivy’s voice, faint, in the distance, calling her name. When her eyes focused again, the old woman was next to her, her skirt gathered in her hands.

Ivy was carrying something in the folds of her skirt, and she dumped it out on the wet ground next to Genevieve. Tiny vials of powder and bottles of what looked like sand and dirt knocked against each other.

“What are you doin’?”

“Makin’ an offerin’. To the Spirits. They’re the only ones who can tell us what this means.”

“Ivy, calm down. You’re talkin’ gibberish.”

The old woman pulled something from the pocket of her housedress. It was a shard of mirror. She thrust it in front of Genevieve.

It was dark, but there was no mistaking it. Genevieve’s eyes were blazing. They had turned from deep green to a fiery gold, and they didn’t look like her eyes in another unmistakable way. In the center, where a round black pupil should have been, there were almond-shaped slits, like the pupils of a cat. Genevieve threw the mirror to the ground and turned to Ivy.

But the old woman wasn’t paying attention. She had already mixed the powders and the earth and she was sifting them from hand to hand, whispering in the old Gullah language of her ancestors.

“Ivy, what are you—”

“Shh,” the old woman hissed, “I’m listenin’ to the Spirits. They know what you’ve done. They’re gonna tell us what this means.”

“From the earth a her bones and the blood a my blood.” Ivy pricked her finger with the edge of the broken mirror and smeared the tiny drops of blood into the earth she was sifting. “Lemme hear what ya hear. See what ya see. Know what ya know.”

Ivy stood up, arms open to the heavens. The rain poured down upon her, the dirt running down her dress in streaks. She began to speak again in the strange language and then—

“It can’t be. She didn’t know no better,” she wailed at the dark sky above.

“Ivy, what is it?”

Ivy was shaking, hugging herself, and moaning, “It can’t be. It can’t be.”

Genevieve grabbed Ivy by her shoulders. “What? What is it? What’s wrong with me?”

“I told you not to mess with that book. I told you it was the wrong kinda night for Castin’, but it’s too late now, child. There’s no way to take it back.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“You’re cursed now, Miss Genevieve. You been Claimed. You’ve Turned, and there’s nothin’ we can do to stop it. A bargain. You can’t get nothin’ from The Book a Moons without givin’ somethin’ in return.”

“What? What did I give?”

“Your fate, child. Your fate and the fate a every other Duchannes child that’s born after you.”

Genevieve didn’t understand. But she understood enough to know that what she had done couldn’t be undone. “What do you mean?”

“On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it’s been promised. What you bargained. The blood of a Duchannes child, and that child will go Dark.”

“Every Duchannes child?”

Ivy bowed her head. Genevieve wasn’t the only one who was defeated on this night. “Not every one.”

Genevieve looked hopeful. “Which ones? How will we know which ones?”

“The Book will choose. On the Sixteenth Moon, the child’s sixteenth birthday.”

“It didn’t work.” Lena’s voice sounded strangled, far away. All I could see was smoke, and all I could hear was her voice. We weren’t in the library, and we weren’t in the vision. We were somewhere in between, and it was awful.

“Lena!”

And then, for a moment, I saw her face in the smoke. Her eyes were huge and dark—only now, the green looked almost black. Her voice was now more like a whisper. “Two seconds. He was alive for two seconds, and then she lost him.”

She closed her eyes and disappeared.

“L! Where are you?”

“Ethan. The locket.” I could hear Marian, as if from a great distance.

I could feel the hardness of the locket in my hands. I understood.

I dropped it.

I opened my eyes, coughing from the smoke still in my lungs. The room was swirling, blurry.

“What the hell are you children doing here?”

I fixed my eyes on the locket and the room came back into focus. It lay on the stone floor, looking small and harmless. Marian dropped my hand.

Macon Ravenwood stood in the middle of the crypt, his overcoat twisting around him. Amma was standing next to him, her good coat buttoned on the wrong buttons, clutching her pocketbook. I don’t know who was angrier.

“I’m sorry, Macon. You know the rules. They asked for help, and I am Bound to give it.” Marian looked stricken.

Amma was all over Marian, like she had doused our house in gasoline. “The way I see it, you’re Bound to take care a Lila’s boy, and Macon’s niece. And I don’t see how what you’re doin’ does either.”

I waited for Macon to lay into Marian, too, but he didn’t say a word. Then I realized why. He was shaking Lena. She had collapsed across the stone table in the center of the room. Her arms were spread wide, her face down against the rough stone. She didn’t look conscious.

“Lena!” I pulled her into my arms, ignoring Macon, who was already next to her. Her eyes were still black, staring up at me.

“She’s not dead. She’s drifting. I believe I can reach her.” Macon was working quietly. I could see him twisting his ring. His eyes were strangely alight.

“Lena! Come back!” I pulled her limp body into my arms, leaning her against my chest.

Macon was mumbling. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could see Lena’s hair begin to stir in the now familiar, supernatural wind I’d come to think of as a Casting breeze.

“Not here, Macon. Your Casting won’t work here.” Marian was tearing through the pages of a dusty book, her voice unsteady.

“He’s not Castin’, Marian. He’s Travelin’. Even a Caster can’t do that. Where she’s gone, only Macon’s kind can go. Under.” Amma was trying to be reassuring, but she wasn’t very convincing.

I felt the cold settling over Lena’s empty body and knew Amma was right. Wherever Lena was, it wasn’t in my arms. She was far away. I could feel it myself, and I was just a Mortal.

“I told you, Macon. This is a neutral place. There is no Binding you can work in a room of earth.” Marian was pacing, clutching the book as if it made her feel like she was helping in some way. But there were no answers inside. She had said it herself. Casting couldn’t help us here.

I remembered the dreams, remembered pulling Lena through the mud. I wondered if this was the place where I lost her.

Macon spoke. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing. It was like they were turned inward, to wherever Lena was. “Lena. Listen to me. She can’t hold you.”

She. I stared into Lena’s empty eyes.

Sarafine.

“You’re strong, Lena; break through. She knows I can’t help you here. She was waiting for you in the shadows. You have to do this yourself.”

Marian appeared with a glass of water. Macon poured it onto Lena’s face, into her mouth, but she didn’t move.

I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I grabbed her mouth and kissed her, hard. The water dribbled out of our mouths, like I was giving mouth-to-mouth to a drowning victim.

Wake up, L. You can’t leave me now. Not like this. I need you more than she does.

Lena’s eyelids fluttered.

Ethan. I’m tired.

She sputtered back to life, choking, spitting water across her jacket. I smiled in spite of everything, and she smiled back at me. If this was what the dreams were about, we had changed the way they ended. This time, I had held on. But in the back of my mind, I think I knew. This wasn’t the moment when she slipped out of my arms. It was only the beginning.

Even if that was true, I had saved her this time.

I reached down to pull her into my arms. I wanted to feel the familiar current between us. Before I could wrap my arms around her, she jerked up and out of my arms. “Uncle Macon!”

Macon stood across the room, propped against the crypt wall, barely able to support his own weight. He leaned his head back against the stone. He was sweating, breathing heavily, and his face was chalk white.

Lena ran and clung to him, a child worried for her father. “You shouldn’t have done that. She could have killed you.” Whatever he was doing when he was Traveling, whatever that meant, the effort had cost him.

So this was Sarafine. This thing, whoever She was, was Lena’s mother.

If this was a trip to the library, I didn’t know if I was ready for what might happen in the next few months.

Or as of tomorrow morning, 74 days.

Lena sat, still dripping wet, wrapped in a blanket. She looked about five years old. I glanced at the old oaken door behind her, wondering if I could ever find my way out alone. Unlikely. We’d gone about thirty paces down one of the aisles, and then disappeared down a stairwell, through a series of small doors, into a cozy study that was apparently some sort of reading room. The passageway had seemed endless, with a door every few feet like some sort of underground hotel.

The moment Macon sat down, a silver tea service appeared in the center of the table, with exactly five cups and a platter of sweet breads. Maybe Kitchen was here, too.

I looked around. I had no idea where I was, but I knew one thing. I was somewhere in Gatlin, yet somewhere further away from Gatlin than I’d ever been.

Either way, I was out of my league.

I tried to find a comfortable spot in an upholstered chair that looked like it could have belonged to Henry VIII. Actually, there was no way of knowing that it hadn’t. The tapestry on the wall also looked as if had come from an old castle, or Ravenwood. It was woven into the shape of a constellation, midnight blue and silver thread. Every time I looked at it, the moon appeared in a different stage.

Macon, Marian, and Amma sat across the table. Saying Lena and I were in trouble was putting the best possible spin on it. Macon was furious, his teacup rattling in front of him. Amma was beyond that. “What makes you think you can take it upon yourself to decide when my boy is ready for the Underground? Lila would skin you herself, if she was here. You’ve got some nerve, Marian Ashcroft.”

Marian’s hands were shaking as she lifted her teacup.

“Your boy? What about my niece? Since I believe she was the one who was attacked.” Macon and Amma, having ripped us to shreds, were starting in on each other. I didn’t dare look at Lena.

“You’ve been trouble since the day you were born, Macon.” Amma turned to Lena. “But I can’t believe you would drag my boy into this, Lena Duchannes.”

Lena lost it. “Of course I dragged him into this. I do bad things. When are you going to understand that? And it’s only going to get worse!”

The tea set flew off the table and into the air, where it froze. Macon looked at it, without so much as blinking. A challenge. The entire set righted itself and landed gently back on the table. Lena looked at Macon as if there were no one else in the room. “I’m going to go Dark, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? I’m going to end up just like my—” She couldn’t say it.

The blanket fell from her shoulders, and she took my hand. “You have to get away from me, Ethan. Before it’s too late.”

Macon looked at her, irritated. “You’re not going to go Dark. Don’t be so gullible. She only wants you to think that.” The way he said She reminded me of the way he said Gatlin.

Marian put her teacup down on the table. “Teenagers—everything is so apocalyptic.”

Amma shook her head. “Some things are meant to be and some take some doin’. This one isn’t done just yet.”

I could feel Lena’s hand shaking in mine. “They’re right, L. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She yanked her hand away. “Everything’s going to be okay? My mother, a Cataclyst, is trying to kill me. A vision from a hundred years ago just clarified that my whole family has been cursed since the Civil War. My sixteenth birthday is in two months, and that’s the best you can do?”

I took her hand again, gently, because she let me. “I saw the same vision you did. The Book chooses who it takes. Maybe it won’t choose you.” I was clutching at straws, but they were all I had.

Amma looked at Marian, slamming her saucer on the table. The cup rattled against it.

“The Book?” Macon’s eyes drilled down on me.

I tried to look him in the eye, but I couldn’t do it. “The Book in the vision.”

Don’t say another word, Ethan.

We should tell them. We can’t do this alone.

“It’s nothing, Uncle M. We don’t even know what the visions mean.” Lena wasn’t going to give in, but after tonight I felt like I had to. We had to. Everything was spiraling out of control. I felt like I was drowning and I couldn’t even save myself, let alone Lena.

“Maybe the visions mean not everyone in your family goes Dark when they’re Claimed. What about Aunt Del? Reece? Think cute little Ryan is going to the dark side when she can heal people?” I said, moving closer to her.

Lena shrank back into her chair. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

“But he’s not wrong, Lena.” Macon looked at her, exasperated.

“You’re not Ridley. And you’re not your mother,” I said, as convincingly as I could.

“How do you know? You’ve never even met my mother. And by the way, neither have I, except in psychic attacks that no one can seem to prevent.”

Macon tried to sound reassuring. “We were unprepared for these sorts of attacks. I didn’t know she could Travel. I didn’t know she shared some of my powers. It is not a gift afforded to Casters.”

“Nobody seems to know anything about my mother, or me.”

“That’s why we need the Book.” This time, I looked right at Macon as I said it.

“What is this book you keep talking about?” Macon was losing his patience.

Don’t tell him, Ethan.

We have to.

“The Book that cursed Genevieve.” Macon and Amma looked at each other. They already knew what I was going to say. “The Book of Moons. If that’s how the curse was Cast, something in it should tell us how to break it. Right?” The room fell silent.

Marian looked at Macon. “Macon—”

“Marian. Stay out of this. You’ve interfered more than enough already, and the sun will rise just minutes from now.” Marian knew. She knew where to find The Book of Moons, and Macon wanted to make sure she kept her mouth shut.

“Aunt Marian, where’s the Book?” I looked her in the eye. “You have to help us. My mom would’ve helped us, and you’re not supposed to take sides, right?” I wasn’t playing fair, but it was true.

Amma raised her hands, then dropped them into her lap. A rare sign of surrender. “What’s done is done. They’ve already started pullin’ the thread, Melchizedek. That old sweater’s bound to unravel, anyhow.”

“Macon, there are protocols. If they ask, I’m Bound to tell them,” Marian said. Then she looked up at me. “The Book of Moons isn’t in the Lunae Libri.”

“How do you know?”

Macon stood to leave, turning to both of us. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark and angry. When he finally spoke, his voice echoed over the chamber, over all of us. “Because that’s the book for which this archive was named. It is the most powerful book from here to the Otherworld. It is also the book that cursed our family, for eternity. And it’s been missing for over a hundred years.”