Beautiful Redemption

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For our fathers, Robert Marin and Burton Stohl, who taught us to believe we could do anything, and our husbands, Alex Garcia and Lewis Peterson, who made us do the one thing we never thought we could.

Death is the beginning of Immortality.

—MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE

LENA

Beginning Again

Other people had flying dreams. I had falling nightmares. I couldn’t talk about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it either.

About him.

Ethan falling.

Ethan’s shoe dropping to the ground, seconds before.

It must have come off when he fell.

I wondered if he knew.

If he’d known.

I saw that muddy black sneaker dropping from the top of the water tower every time I closed my eyes. Sometimes I hoped it was a dream. I hoped I’d wake up, and he’d be waiting out in the driveway, in front of Ravenwood, to take me to school.

Wake up, sleepyhead. I’m almost there. That’s what he would’ve Kelted.

I’d hear Link’s bad music coming through the open window, before I even saw Ethan behind the wheel.

That’s how I imagined it.

I’d had nightmares about him a thousand times before. Before I knew him, or at least knew he was going to be Ethan. But this wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in any nightmare.

It shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t how his life was supposed to be. And it couldn’t be how my life was supposed to be.

That muddy black sneaker wasn’t supposed to drop.

Life without Ethan was something worse than a nightmare.

It was real.

So real that I refused to believe it.

February 2nd

Nightmares end.

That’s how you know they’re nightmares. This—Ethan—everything—it isn’t ending, has no sign of ending.

I felt—I feel—like I’m stuck.

Like it’s my life that shattered when he—when everything else ended.

It broke into a thousand tiny pieces.

When he hit the ground.

I couldn’t stand to look at my journal anymore. I couldn’t write poetry; it hurt to even read it.

It was all too true.

The most important person in my life died jumping off the Summerville water tower. I knew why he did it. Knowing why didn’t make me feel any better.

Knowing he did it for me only made me feel worse.

Sometimes I didn’t think the world was worth it.

Saving.

Sometimes I didn’t think I was worth it either.

Ethan thought he was doing the right thing. He knew it was crazy. And he didn’t want to go, but he had to anyway.

Ethan was like that.

Even if he was dead.

He saved the world, but he shattered mine.

What now?

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER 1

Home

A blur of blue sky over my head.

Cloudless.

Perfect.

Just like the sky in real life, only a little more blue and a little less sun in my eyes.

I guess the sky in real life isn’t actually perfect. Maybe that’s what makes it so perfect.

Made it.

I squeezed my eyes shut again.

I was stalling.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to see whatever was out there to see. Of course the sky looked better—Heaven being what it was and all.

Not to assume that’s where I was. I’d been a decent guy, as far as I could tell. But I had seen enough to know that everything I thought about everything had pretty much been wrong so far.

I had an open mind, at least by Gatlin’s standards. I mean, I’d heard all the theories. I had sat through more than my share of Sunday school classes. And after my mom’s accident, Marian told me about a Buddhism class she took at Duke taught by a guy named Buddha Bob, who said paradise was a teardrop inside a teardrop inside a teardrop, or something like that. The year before that, my mom tried to get me to read Dante’s Inferno, which Link told me was about an office building that caught fire, but actually turned out to be about a guy’s voyage into the nine circles of Hell. I only remember the part my mom told me about monsters or devils trapped in a pit of ice. I think it was the ninth circle of Hell, but there were so many circles down there that after a while they all sort of ran together.

After what I’d learned about underworlds and otherworlds and sideways worlds, and whatever else came in the whole triple-layer cake of universes that was the Caster world, that first glimpse of blue sky was fine by me. I was relieved to see there was something that looked like a cheesy Hallmark card waiting for me. I wasn’t expecting pearly gates or naked cherub babies. But the blue sky, that was a nice touch.

I opened my eyes again. Still blue.

Carolina blue.

A fat bee buzzed over my head, climbing high into the sky—until he banged into it, just as he had a thousand times before.

Because it wasn’t the sky.

It was the ceiling.

And this wasn’t Heaven.

I was lying in my old mahogany bed in my even older bedroom at Wate’s Landing.

I was home.

Which was impossible.

I blinked.

Still home.

Had it been a dream? I desperately hoped so. Maybe it was, just like it had been every single morning for the first six months after my mom died.

Please let it have been a dream.

I reached down and searched the dust under my bed frame. I felt the familiar pile of books and pulled one out.

The Odyssey. One of my favorite graphic novels, though I was pretty sure Mad Comix had taken a few liberties with the version Homer wrote.

I hesitated, then pulled out another. On the Road. The first sight of the Kerouac was undeniable proof, and I rolled to one side until I could see the pale square on my wall where, until a few days ago—was that all it had been?—the tattered map had hung, with the green marker lines circling all the places from my favorite books I wanted to visit.

It was my room, all right.

The old clock on the table next to my bed didn’t seem to be working anymore, but everything else looked about the same. It must be a warm day, for January. The light that came flooding in from the window was almost unnatural—sort of like I was in one of Link’s bad storyboards for a Holy Rollers music video. But aside from the movie lighting, my room was exactly the way I’d left it. Just like the books under my bed, the shoe boxes holding my whole life story were still there lining my walls. Everything that was supposed to be there was there, at least as far as I was concerned.

Except Lena.

ll? You there?

I couldn’t feel her. I couldn’t feel anything.

I looked at my hands. They seemed all right. No bruises. I looked at my plain white T-shirt. No blood.

No holes in my jeans or my body.

I went to my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror above my sink. There I was. Same old Ethan Wate.

I was still staring at my reflection when I heard a sound from downstairs.

“Amma?”

My heart felt like it was pounding, which was pretty funny, since when I woke up, I wasn’t even sure it was beating. Either way, I could hear the familiar sounds of my house, coming from down in the kitchen. Floorboards creaked as someone moved back and forth in front of the cupboards and the burners and the old kitchen table. Same old footsteps, going about the same old business as usual in the morning.

If it was morning.

The smell of our old frying pan on the burner came wafting up from downstairs.

“Amma? That’s not bacon, is it?”

The voice was clear and calm. “Sweetheart, I think you know what I’m cooking. There’s only one thing I know how to cook. If you can call it that.”

That voice.

It was so familiar.

“Ethan? How much longer are you going to make me wait to give you a hug? Been down here a long time, darling.” I couldn’t understand the words. I couldn’t hear anything except the voice. I’d heard it before, not that long ago, but never like this. As loud and clear and full of life as if she was downstairs.

Which she was.

The words were like music. They chased all the misery and confusion away.

“Mom? Mom!”

I raced down the stairs, three at a time, before she could answer.

CHAPTER 2

Fried Green Tomatoes

There she was, standing in the kitchen in her bare feet, her hair the same as I remembered—half up, half down. A crisp white button-down shirt—what my dad used to call her “uniform”—was still covered with paint or ink from her last project. Her jeans were rolled at her ankles like always, whether or not it was in style. My mom never cared about stuff like that. She was holding our old, black iron frying pan filled with green tomatoes in one hand and a book in the other.

She had probably been cooking while she read, without looking up. Humming some part of a song she didn’t even realize she was humming and probably couldn’t hear.

That was my mom. She seemed exactly the same.

Maybe I was the only one who had changed.

I took a step closer, and she turned toward me, dropping the book. “There you are, my sweet boy.” I felt my heart turning inside out. Nobody else called me that; they wouldn’t want to and I wouldn’t let them. Just my mom. Then her arms caught me, and the world folded around us as I buried my face in her hug. I breathed in the warm smell and the warm feeling and the warm everything that was my mom to me.

“Mom. You’re back.”

“One of us is.” She sighed.

That’s when it hit me. She was standing in my kitchen, and I was standing in my kitchen, which meant one of two things: Either she had come back to life, or…

I hadn’t.

Her eyes filled with something—tears, love, sympathy—and before I knew it, her arms were around me again.

My mom always understood everything.

“I know, sweet boy. I know.”

My face found its old hiding place in the crook of her shoulder.

She kissed the top of my head. “What happened to you? It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” She pulled back so she could see me. “None of it was supposed to end this way.”

“I know.”

“Then again, it’s not like there’s a right way to end a person’s life, is there?” She pinched my chin, smiling down into my eyes.

I had memorized it. The smile, her face. Everything. It was all I had left during the time she was gone.

I’d always known she was alive somewhere, in some way. She had saved Macon and sent me the songs that shepherded me through every strange chapter of my life with the Casters. She’d been there the whole time, just like she had when she was alive.

It was only one moment, but I wanted to keep it that way as long as I could.

I don’t know how we got to the kitchen table. I don’t remember anything except the solid warmth of her arms. But there I sat, in my regular chair, as if the past few years had never even happened. There were books everywhere—and from the looks of it, my mom was partway through most of them, as usual. A sock, probably fresh from the laundry, was stuck in The Divine Comedy . A napkin poked halfway out of The Iliad, and on top of that a fork marked her place in a volume of Greek mythology. The kitchen table was full of her beloved books, one pile of paperbacks higher than the next. I felt like I was back in the library with Marian.

The tomatoes sizzled in the pan, and I breathed in the scent of my mother—yellowing paper and burnt oil, new tomatoes and old cardboard, all laced through with cayenne pepper.

No wonder libraries made me so hungry.

My mom slid a blue and white china platter onto the table between us. Dragonware. I smiled because it had been her favorite. She dropped hot tomatoes onto a paper towel, sprinkling pepper across the plate.

“There you go. Dig in.”

I tucked my fork into the nearest slice. “You know, I haven’t eaten one of these since you—since the accident.” The tomato was so hot it burned my tongue.

I looked at my mom. “Are we—is this—?”

She returned the look blankly.

I tried again. “You know. Heaven?”

She laughed, pouring sweet tea into two tall glasses—tea being the only other thing my mom knew how to make.

“No, not Heaven, EW. Not exactly.”

I must have looked worried, like I thought we had somehow ended up in the other place. But that couldn’t be right either, because—as cheesy as it sounded—being with my mom again was Heaven, whether or not the universe thought of it that way. Then again, the universe and I hadn’t agreed on much lately.

My mom pressed her hand against my cheek and smiled as she shook her head. “No, this isn’t any kind of final resting place, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then why are we here?”

“I’m not sure. You don’t get a user’s manual when you check in.” She took my hand. “I always knew I was here because of you—some unfinished business, something I needed to teach you or tell you or show you. That’s why I sent you the songs.”

“The Shadowing Songs.”

“Exactly. You kept me plenty busy. And now that you’re here, I feel like we were never apart.” Her face clouded over. “I always hoped I would get to see you again. But I hoped I would be waiting a lot longer. I’m so sorry. I know it must be terrible for you right now, leaving Amma and your father. And Lena.” I nodded. “It sucks.”

“I know. I felt the same way,” she said.

“About Macon?” The words came tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Her cheeks went red. “I guess I deserved that. But not everything that happens in a mother’s life is something she needs to discuss with her seventeen-year-old son.”

“Sorry.”

She squeezed my hand. “You were the person I didn’t want to leave, most of all. And you were the person I worried about leaving, most of all. You and your father.

“Your father, thankfully, is in the exceptional care of the Ravenwoods. Lena and Macon have him under some powerful Casts, and Amma’s spinning stories of her own. Mitchell has no idea what’s happened to you.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Amma tells him you’re in Savannah with your aunt, and he believes it.” Her smile wavered, and she looked past me into the shadows. I knew she must be worried about my dad, despite whatever Casts he was under. My sudden departure from Gatlin was probably hurting her as much as it was me—standing by and watching it all happen, without being able to do anything about it.

“But it’s not a long-term solution, Ethan. Right now everyone is just doing the best that they can. That’s usually how it is.”

“I remember.” I’d been through it once before.

We both knew when.

She didn’t say anything after that, just picked up a fork of her own. We ate together in silence for the rest of the afternoon, or for a moment. I couldn’t tell which was which anymore, and I wasn’t sure it mattered.

We sat out on the back porch picking shiny-wet cherries out of the colander and watching the stars come out. The sky had faded to a darkish blue, and the stars appeared in crazy bright clusters. I saw stars from the Caster sky and the Mortal sky. The split moon hung between the North Star and the Southern Star. I didn’t know how it was possible to see two skies at once, two sets of constellations, but it was. I could see everything now, like I was two different people at the same time. Finally, an end to the whole Fractured Soul thing. I guess one of the perks of dying was having both halves of my soul back together.

Yeah, right.

Everything had come together now that it was over, or maybe because it was over. I guess life was like that sometimes. It all looked so simple, so easy from here. So unbelievably bright.

Why was this the only solution? Why did it have to end like this?

I leaned my head against my mom’s shoulder. “Mom?”

“Sweetheart.”

“I need to talk to Lena.” There it was. I’d finally said it. The one thing that had kept me from being able to exhale all day. The thing that had made me feel like I couldn’t sit down, like I couldn’t stay. Like I had to get up and go somewhere, even if I had nowhere to go.

As Amma used to say, the good thing about the truth is it’s true, and there’s no arguing with the truth. You may not like it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. That’s all I had to hold on to right about now.

“You can’t talk to her.” My mom frowned. “At least, it’s not easy.”

“I need to tell her I’m okay. I know her. She’s waiting for a sign from me. Just like I was waiting for a sign from you.”

“There’s no Carlton Eaton to run your letter over to her, Ethan. You can’t send a letter from this world, and you can’t get to hers. And even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to write one. You don’t know how many times I wished it was possible.”

There had to be a way. “I know. If it was, I would’ve heard from you more.” She looked up toward the stars. Her eyes shone with reflected light as she spoke.

“Every day, my sweet boy. Every single day.”

“But you found a way to talk to me. You used the books in the study, and the songs. And I saw you that night I was at the cemetery. And in my room, remember?”

“The songs were the Greats’ idea. I suppose because I had been singing to you since you were a baby. But everyone’s different. I don’t think you can send anything like a Shadowing Song to Lena.”

“Even if I knew how to write one.” My songwriting skills made Link look like one of the Beatles.

“It wasn’t easy for me, and I’d been kicking around here a whole lot longer than you have. And I had help from Amma, Twyla, and Arelia.” She squinted up at the twin skies. “You have to remember, Amma and the Greats have powers that I know nothing about.”

“But you were a Keeper.” There had to be things she knew that they didn’t.

“Exactly. I was a Keeper. I did what the Far Keep asked me to do, and I didn’t do what the Far Keep didn’t want me to do. You don’t mess with them, and you don’t mess with their record of things.”

“The Caster Chronicles ?”

She picked a cherry from the bowl, examining it for spots. She took so long to answer, I was starting to think she hadn’t heard me. “What do you know about The Caster Chronicles ?”

“Before Aunt Marian’s trial, the Council of the Far Keep came to the library, and they brought the book with them.” She put the old metal colander down on the step beneath us. “Forget about The Caster Chronicles . All of that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m serious, Ethan. We’re not out of danger, you and I.”

“Danger? What are you talking about? We’re already—you know.”

She shook her head. “We’re only partway home. We’ve got to find out what’s keeping us here, and move on.”

“What if I don’t want to move on?” I wasn’t ready to give up. Not as long as Lena was waiting for me.

Once again, she didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, my mom sounded about as dark as I’d ever heard her. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

“You did,” I said.

“It wasn’t a choice. You needed me. That’s why I’m here—for you. But even I can’t change what happened.”

“Yeah? You could try.” I found myself crushing a cherry in my hand. The juice ran red between my fingers.

“There’s nothing to try, Ethan. It’s over. It’s too late.” She barely whispered, but it felt like she was shouting.

Anger welled up inside me. I hurled a cherry across the yard, then another, then the whole bowlful. “Well, Lena and Amma and Dad need me, and I’m not just going to give up. I feel like I shouldn’t be here—like this is all a huge mistake.” I looked at the empty bowl in my hands. “And it’s not cherry season. It’s winter.” I looked up at her, my eyes blurring with tears, though all I could feel was anger. “It’s supposed to be winter.” My mom put her hand on mine. “Ethan.”

I pulled away. “Don’t try to make me feel better. I missed you, Mom. I did. More than anything. But as happy as I am to see you, I want to wake up and have this not be happening. I understand why I had to do it. I get it. Fine. But I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”

“What did you think was going to happen?”

“I don’t know. Not this.” Was that the truth? Had I really thought I could get out of sacrificing my own good for the good of the world? Did I think the One-Who-Is-Two thing was a joke?

I guess it was easier to play the hero. But now that it was real—now that I had to own up to an eternity of what and who I’d lost—suddenly it didn’t seem so easy.

My mom’s eyes welled up, worse than mine. “I’m so sorry, EW. If there was a way I could change things, I would.” She sounded as miserable as I felt.

“What if there is?”

“I can’t change everything.” My mom looked down at her bare feet on the step below her. “I can’t change anything.”

“I’m not ready for some stupid cloud, and I don’t want to get my wings when some stupid bell rings.” I threw the metal bowl. It went clattering down the stairs, rolling across the back lawn. “I want to be with Lena and I want to live and I want to go to the Cineplex and eat popcorn until I’m sick and drive too fast and get a ticket and be so in love with my girlfriend that I make a total fool out of myself every day for the rest of my life.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do,” I said, louder than I’d intended. “You had a life. You fell in love—twice. And you had a family.

I’m seventeen. This can’t be the end for me. I can’t wake up tomorrow and know that I’m never going to see Lena again.

”

My mother sighed, sliding her arm around me and pulling me close.

I said it again because I didn’t know what else to say. “I can’t.”

She rubbed my head like I was a sad, scared little kid. “Of course you can see her. That’s the easy part. I can’t guarantee you can talk to her, and she won’t be able to see you, but you can see her.” I looked at her, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

“You exist. We exist here. Lena and Link and your father and Amma, they exist in Gatlin. It’s not that one plane of existence is more or less real. They’re just different planes. You’re here and Lena’s there. In her world, you’ll never be fully present. Not like you were. And in our world, she’ll never be like us. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to see her.”

“How?” At that moment, it was the only thing I wanted to know.

“It’s simple. Just go.”

“What do you mean, go?” She was making it sound easy, but I had a feeling there was more to it.

“You imagine where you want to go, and then you just go.”

It didn’t seem possible, even though I knew my mom would never lie to me. “So if I just wish myself to Ravenwood, I’ll be there?”

“Well, not from our back porch. You have to leave Wate’s Landing before you can go anywhere. I think our homes have the Otherworld equivalent of a Binding on them. When you’re at home, you’re here with me and nowhere else.” A shiver went down my spine as she said the words. “The Otherworld? Is that where we are? What it’s called?” She nodded, wiping her cherry-stained hand on her jeans.

I knew I wasn’t anywhere I’d been before. I knew it wasn’t Gatlin, and I knew it wasn’t Heaven. Still, something about the word seemed farther away than anything I’d ever known. Farther even than death. Even though I could smell the dusty concrete of our back patio and the fresh cut grass stretching beyond it. I could feel the mosquitoes biting and the wind moving and the splinters of the old wooden steps at my back. All it felt like was loneliness. It was just us now.

My mom, and me, and my backyard full of cherries. Some part of me had been waiting for this ever since her accident, and another part of me knew, maybe for the first time, it would never be enough.

“Mom?”

“Yes, sweet boy?”

“Do you think Lena still loves me, back in the Mortal realm?”

She smiled and tousled my hair. “What kind of silly question is that?” I shrugged.

“Let me ask you this. Did you love me when I was gone?”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to.

“I don’t know about you, EW, but I knew the answer to that question every day we were apart. Even when I didn’t know anything else about where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. You were my Wayward, even then.

Everything always brought me back to you. Everything.” She smoothed my hair out of my face. “You think Lena’s any different?”

She was right.

It was a stupid question.

So I smiled and took her hand and followed her inside. I had things to figure out and places to go—that much I knew.

But some things I didn’t have to figure out. Some things hadn’t changed, and some things never would.

Except me. I had changed, and I would give anything to change back.

CHAPTER 3

This Side or the Next

Go on, Ethan. See for yourself.”

I didn’t look back at my mom when I reached for the doorknob.

Even though she was telling me to go, I was still uneasy. I didn’t know what to expect. I could see the painted wood of the door, and I could feel the smooth iron of the handle, but I had no way of knowing if Cotton Bend was on the other side.

Lena. Think about Lena. About home. This is the only way.

Still.

This wasn’t Gatlin anymore. Who knew what was behind that door? It could be anything.

I stared down at the knob, remembering what the Caster Tunnels had taught me about doors and Doorwells.

And portals.

And seams.

This door might look normal enough—any Doorwell looked pretty much like the next—but that didn’t mean it was.

Like the Temporis Porta. You never knew where you were going to end up. I’d learned that the hard way.

Quit stalling, Wate.

Get on with it.

What are you, chicken? What do you have to lose now?

I closed my eyes and turned the knob. When I opened them, I wasn’t staring at my street—not even close.

I found myself on my front porch in the middle of His Garden of Perpetual Peace, Gatlin’s cemetery. Right in the middle of my mother’s plot.

The cultivated lawns stretched out in front of me, but instead of headstones and mausoleums decorated with plastic cherubs and fawns, the graveyard was full of houses. I realized I was looking at the homes of the people buried in the cemetery, if that’s even where I was. Old Agnes Pritchard’s Victorian was planted right where her plot should have been, with the same yellow shutters and crooked rosebushes that hung over the walkway. Her house wasn’t on Cotton Bend, but her little rectangle of grass in Perpetual Peace was directly across from my mom’s plot—the spot where Wate’s Landing was sitting now.

Agnes’ house looked almost exactly as it had in Gatlin, except her red front door was gone. In its place was her weathered cement headstone.

AGNES WILSON PRITCHARD BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER & GRANDMOTHER MAY SHE SLEEP WITH THE

ANGELS

The words were still etched into the stone, which fit perfectly into the painted white doorframe. It was the same at every house as far as I could see—from Darla Eaton’s restored Federal to the peeling paint of Clayton Weatherton’s place. All the doors were missing, replaced by the gravestones of the dearly departed.

I turned around slowly, hoping to see my own white door with the haint blue trim. But instead I was staring at my mother’s headstone.

LILA EVERS WATE BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER SCIENTIAE CUSTOS

Above her name, I saw the Celtic symbol of Awen—three lines converging like rays of light—carved into the stone.

Aside from being large enough to fill the doorway, the headstone was the same. Every nicked edge, every faded crack. I ran my hand over the face of it, feeling the letters beneath my fingers.

My mom’s headstone.

Because she was dead. I was dead. And I was pretty sure I had just stepped out of her grave.

That’s when I started to lose it. I mean, can you blame a guy? The situation was a little overwhelming. There’s not much you can do to prepare for something like that.

I pushed on the gravestone, pounding on it as hard as I could until I felt the stone give way, and I stepped back

inside my house—slamming the door behind me.

I stood against the door, breathing in as much air as I could. My front hall looked exactly the same as it had a moment ago.

My mom looked up at me from the front stairs. She had just opened The Divine Comedy ; I could tell by the way she was still holding her sock bookmark in one hand. It was almost like she was waiting for me.

“Ethan? Changed your mind?”

“Mom. It’s a graveyard. Out there.”

“It is.”

“And we’re—” The opposite of alive. It was just starting to sink in.

“We are.” She smiled at me because there wasn’t really anything else she could say. “You stand there as long as you need to.” She looked back down at her book and flipped a page. “Dante agrees. Take your time. It is only”—she flipped a page—“ ‘ la notte che le cose ci nasconde.’ ”

“What?”

“ ‘The night that hides things from us.’ ”

I stared at her as she continued to read. Then, seeing as there weren’t that many options, I pulled the door open and stepped out.

It took me a while to take it all in, the way it takes your eyes a while to adjust to sunlight. As it turns out, the Otherworld was just that—an “other world”—a Gatlin right in the middle of the cemetery, where the dead folks in town were having their own version of All Souls Day. Except it seemed like this one lasted a lot longer than a day.

I stepped off my porch and onto the grass just to be sure it was really there. Amma’s rosebushes were planted where they had always been, but they were blooming again, safe from the record-breaking heat that had killed them when it hit town. I wondered if they were blooming in the real Gatlin, too.

I hoped so.

If the Lilum kept her promise, they were. I believed she did. The Lilum wasn’t Light or Dark, right or wrong. She was truth and balance in their purest forms. I didn’t think she was capable of lying, or she would’ve sugarcoated the truth for me a little. Sometimes I wished she would have.

I found myself wandering across the freshly trimmed lawns, weaving between the familiar houses scattered throughout the cemetery like a tornado had lifted them right out of Gatlin and dropped them here. And not just houses

—there were people here, too.

I tried heading toward Main Street, instinctively looking for Route 9. I guess I wanted to hike to the crossroads, where I could take a left up the road to Ravenwood. But the Otherworld didn’t work that way, and every time I reached the end of the rows of graveyard plots, I found myself back where I started. The graveyard just kept going in circles. I couldn’t get out.

That’s when I realized I needed to stop thinking in terms of streets and start thinking in terms of graves and plots and crypts.

If I was going to find my way back to Gatlin, I wasn’t going to walk there. Not on any kind of Route 9. That was pretty clear.

What had my mom said? You imagine where you want to go, and then you just go. Was that really all that was standing between Lena and me? My imagination?

I closed my eyes.

ll—

“Whatcha doin’ there, boy?” Miss Winifred looked up from sweeping her porch a few houses away. She was in the pink-flowered housecoat she wore most days back when she was alive. When we were alive.

I stared. “Nothing. Ma’am.”

Her headstone was behind her, a magnolia tree etched above her name and underneath the word Sacred. There were a lot of those around here, magnolias. I guess the magnolia carvings were the red doors of the Otherworld. You were nobody without one.

Miss Winifred noticed me staring and stopped sweeping for a second. She sniffed. “Well, get on with it, then.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I could feel my face turning red. I knew I wouldn’t be able to imagine myself anywhere else with those sharp old eyes on me.

Turns out, even in the streets of the Otherworld, Gatlin was no place for the imagination.

“And stay off my lawn, Ethan. You’ll trample my begonias,” she added. That was all. As if I had wandered onto her property back home.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Winifred nodded and went back to sweeping her porch like it was just another sunny day on Old Oak Road, where her house was sitting right now back in town.

But I couldn’t let Miss Winifred stop me.

I tried the old concrete bench at the end of our row of plots. I tried the shadowy place behind the hedges along the edge of Perpetual Peace. I even tried sitting with my back up against the railing of our own plot for a while.

I was no closer to imagining my way to Gatlin than I was to imagining myself back into the grave.

Every time I closed my eyes, I got this spirit-killing, bone-crushing fear that I was dead in the ground. That I was gone and that I would never be anywhere again, except at the bottom of a water tower.

Not back home.

Not with Lena.

Finally, I gave up. There had to be another way.

If I wanted to get back to Gatlin, there was someone who just might know how.

Someone who made it her business to know everything about everyone and, for about the last hundred years, always had.

I knew where I needed to go.

I followed the path down to the oldest section of the graveyard. Some part of me was afraid I was going to see the blackened edges where the fire had burned through the roof and Aunt Prue’s bedroom. But I didn’t need to worry. When I saw it, the house was exactly the way it looked when I was a kid. The porch swing was rattling and swaying gently in the breeze, a glass of lemonade sitting on the table beside it. Just how I remembered it.

The door was carved out of good Southern blue granite; Amma had spent hours choosing it herself. “A woman as right as your aunt deserves the right marker,” Amma had said. “And anyhow, if she isn’t happy, I’ll never hear the end a it.” Both were probably true. At the top of the gravestone, a delicate angel with outstretched hands was holding a compass. I was willing to bet there wasn’t another angel in all of Perpetual Peace, or maybe any cemetery in the South, that was holding a compass. Carved angels in the Gatlin graveyard held on to every kind of flower, and some even held on to the gravestones like they were life vests. None held a compass—never a compass. But for a woman who had spent her life secretly mapping the Caster Tunnels, it was right.

Under the angel was an inscription:

PRUDENCE JANE STATHAM THE BELLE OF THE BALL

Aunt Prue had picked out the inscription herself. Her note said she wanted another “e” on Ball—making it Balle, which wasn’t even a word. According to Aunt Prue, it sounded more French that way. But my dad made the point that Aunt Prue, being a patriot, shouldn’t have minded having her last words written out in plain old Southern American English. I wasn’t so sure, but I also wasn’t about to enter into that particular conversation. It was just one part of the extensive instructions she’d left for her own funeral, along with a guest list that required a bouncer at the church.

Still, it made me smile just looking at it.

Before I even had the chance to knock, I heard the sound of dogs yipping, and the heavy front door swung open.

Aunt Prue was standing in the doorway, her hair still in pink plastic curlers, one hand on her hip. There were three Yorkshire terriers weaving around her legs—the first three Harlon Jameses.

“Well, it’s ’bout time.” Aunt Prue grabbed me by the ear quicker than I had ever seen her move when she was alive, and yanked me into the house. “You were always stubborn, Ethan. But what you did this time ain’t right. I don’t know what in the Good Lord’s Myst’ry got inta you, but I’ve got a mind ta send you out front ta get me a switch.” It was a charming custom from Aunt Prue’s day, to let a kid pick the switch you planned to whip them with. But I knew as well as Aunt Prue did that she would never hit me. If she was going to, she would have already done it years ago.

She was still twisting my ear, and I had to bend down because she was only half my height. The whole posse of Harlon Jameses were still yipping, trailing after us as she dragged me toward the kitchen. “I didn’t have a choice, Aunt Prue. Everyone I loved was going to die.”

“You don’t have ta tell me. I watched the whole thing, and I was wearin’ my good spectacles!” She sniffed. “And ta think, folks used ta say I was the mell-o-dramatic one!”

I tried not to laugh. “You need your glasses here?”

“Just used ta them, I guess. Feel nekkid without ’em now. Hadn’t figured on that.” She stopped walking and pointed a bony finger at me. “Don’t you try changin’ the subject. This time you’ve made a bigger mess than a blind housepainter.”

“Prudence Jane, why don’t you stop hollerin’ at that boy?” An old man’s voice called from the other room. “What’s done is done.”

Aunt Prue pulled me back into the hall, without loosening her grip on my ear. “Don’t you tell me what ta do, Harlon Turner!”

“Turner? Wasn’t that—” As she yanked me into the living room, I found myself face to face with not one but all five of Aunt Prue’s husbands.

Sure enough, the three younger ones—most likely her first three husbands—were eating corn nuts and playing cards, the sleeves of their white button-down shirts rolled up to the elbows. The fourth one was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper. He looked up and acknowledged me with a nod, shoving the little white bowl toward me. “Car nut?”

I shook my head.

I actually remembered Aunt Prue’s fifth husband, Harlon—the one Aunt Prue had named all her dogs after. When I was a kid, he used to carry around sour lemon hard candy in his pocket, and he’d sneak me a couple during church. I ate them, too, lint and all. There was no telling what you’d eat in church, bored out of your skull. Link once drank a whole mini-bottle of Binaca breath spray during a talk on the atonement. Then he spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening atoning for that, too.

Harlon looked exactly the way I remembered. He threw his hands up, a sure sign of surrender. “Prudence, you’re near ’bout the most ornery woman I’ve ever met in my en-tire life!”

It was true, and we all knew it. The other four husbands looked up, a mixture of sympathy and amusement on their faces.

Aunt Prue let go of my ear and turned to face her latest late husband. “Well, I don’t recollect askin’ you ta marry me, Harlon James Turner. So I reckon that makes you the most foolish man I’ve ever met in my en-tire life!” The ears of the three tiny dogs perked up at the sound of their name.

The man reading the paper stood up and patted poor old Harlon on the shoulder. “I think you ought ta let our little firecracker have some time ta herself.” He dropped his voice. “Or you may end up passin’ on a second time.” Aunt Prue seemed satisfied and marched back to the kitchen with the three Harlon Jameses and me following dutifully. When we reached the kitchen, she pointed to a chair at the table and busied herself pouring two tall glasses of sweet tea. “If I had known I’d have ta live with the five a those men, I’d have thought twice ’bout gettin’ married at all.” And here they were. I wondered why—until I figured out it was better not to. Whatever unfinished business she had with her five husbands and about as many dogs, I sure didn’t want to know.

“Drink up, son,” Harlon said.

I glanced at the tea, which looked pretty appealing even though I wasn’t the least bit thirsty. It was one thing when my mom was cutting me up a fried tomato. I hadn’t thought twice about eating anything she handed me. Now that I had passed through the graveyard to visit my dead aunt, it occurred to me that I didn’t know the rules, or anything about the way things worked over here—wherever here was. Aunt Prue noticed me staring at the glass. “You can drink it, not that you need ta. But it’s different on the other side.”

“How?” I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start.

“Can’t eat or drink over there, back in the Mortal realm, but you can move things. Just yesterday, I hid Grace’s dentures. Dropped ’em right down in the Postum jar.” It was just like Aunt Prue to find a way to drive her sisters crazy from the grave.

“Wait—you were over there? In Gatlin?” If she could go see the Sisters, then I could get back to Lena. Couldn’t I?

“Did I say that?” I knew she’d have the answer. I also knew she wouldn’t tell me a thing if she didn’t want me to know.

“Yeah, actually. You did.”

Tell me how I can find my way back to Lena.

“Well now, just for the teeniest minute. Nothin’ ta get all hopped up ’bout. Then I skee-daddled back ta the Garden here, lickety-split.”

“Aunt Prue, come on.” But she shook her head, and I gave up. My aunt was every bit as stubborn in this life as she’d been in the last. I tried a new subject. “The Garden? Are we really in His Garden of Perpetual Peace?”

“Darn tootin’. Every time they bury someone, a new house shows up on the block.” Aunt Prue sniffed again. “Can’t do a thing ta stop ’em from comin’ either, even if they ain’t your kind a folks.” I thought about the headstones instead of doors, all the cemetery plot houses. I’d always thought the layout of His Garden of Perpetual Peace was kind of like our town, what with the good plots all lined up one way and the questionable graves pushed out near the edges. Turns out the Otherworld wasn’t any different.

“Then why don’t I have one, Aunt Prue? A house, I mean.”

“Young ’uns don’t get houses a their own unless their parents outlive ’em. And after seein’ that room a yours, I don’t see as how you could keep a whole house clean anyway.” I couldn’t really argue with her on that.

“Is that why I don’t have a gravestone?”

Aunt Prue looked away. There was something she didn’t want to tell me. “Maybe you should ask your mamma ’bout that.”

“I’m asking you.”

She sighed heavily. “You aren’t buried at Perpetual Peace, Ethan Wate.”

“What?” Maybe it was too soon. I didn’t even know how much time had passed since that night on the water tower.

“I guess they haven’t buried me yet.”

Aunt Prue was wringing her hands, which was only making me more nervous.

“Aunt Prue?”

She took a sip of her sweet tea, stalling. At least it gave her hands something to do. “Amma isn’t takin’ your leavin’

well, and Lena’s no better. Don’t think I don’t keep an eye on them two. Didn’t I give Lena my good old rose necklace, so I can get a feel for her every now and again?”

The image of Lena sobbing, of Amma screaming my name right before I jumped, flashed through my mind. My chest tightened.

Aunt Prue kept on talking. “None a this was supposed ta happen. Amma knows it, and she and Lena and Macon are havin’ a heap a trouble with your passin’.”

My passing. The words sounded strange to me.

A horrible thought surfaced in my mind. “Wait. Are you saying they didn’t bury me?” Aunt Prue put her hand to her heart. “Of course they buried you! They did it straightaway. They just didn’t bury you in the Gatlin cemetery.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Didn’t even have a proper memorial, I’m ’fraid. No ushers, no sermons. No Psalms or Lamentations.”

“No Lamentations? You sure know how to hurt a guy, Aunt Prue.” I was kidding, but she only nodded, grim as the grave.

“No program. No funeral potatoes. Nothin’ so much as a supermarket biscuit. Not even a book a remembrances.

Might as well a stuck you in one a them shoe boxes in your bedroom.”

“Then, where did they bury me?” I was starting to get a bad feeling.

“Over at Greenbrier, by the old Duchannes graves. Stuck you in the mud like a possum-bitten house cat.”

“Why?” I looked at her, but Aunt Prue glanced away. She was definitely hiding something. “Aunt Prue, answer me.

Why did they bury me at Greenbrier?”

She looked right at me, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly. “Now, don’t get yerself all bowed up. It was jus’

the tiniest excuse for a service. Nothin’ ta write home ’bout.” She sniffed. “On account a none a the folks in town knowin’

you passed.”

“What are you talking about?” There was nothing folks in Gatlin came out for like a funeral.

“Amma told everyone there was an E-mergency with your aunt in Savannah, and you went on down there to help her.”

“The whole town? They’re pretending I’m still alive?” It was one thing for Amma to try to convince my grieving dad I was still around. For her to try to convince the whole town was more than crazy, even for Amma. “What about my dad?

Won’t he figure out something’s going on, when I never come home? He can’t think I’m down in Savannah forever.” Aunt Prue stood up and walked over to the counter, where a Whitman’s Sampler was already opened. She turned the lid over, inspecting the diagram that listed the type of chocolate nestled in each brown wrapper. Finally, she chose one and took a bite.

I looked at her. “Cherry Cordial?”

She shook her head, showing me. “Messenger Boy.” The rectangular chocolate boy was missing his head now. “I’ll never know why folks waste their money on fancy candy. If you ask me, these are the best durned chocolates on this side or the other.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sugared up on drugstore candy, she laid the truth on me. “The Casters put a Charm on your daddy. He doesn’t know you’re a bit dead either. Every time it looks like he might be sniffin’ ’round ta the truth, the Casters double up that Charm till he doesn’t know up from down. It ain’t natural, if ya ask me, but not much ’round Gatlin is. Whole place’s gone downright cattywampus.” She held out the half-eaten box of candy. “Now have yourself somethin’ sweet. Chocolate makes everything better. Molasses Chew?”

I was buried at Greenbrier so Lena and Amma and my friends could keep it a secret from everyone, including my father—who was under the influence of a Cast so powerful that he didn’t know his own son was gone, just like my mom said.

There wasn’t enough chocolate in the world to make this better.

CHAPTER 4

Catfish Crossin’

Getting Aunt Prue to say the one thing you wanted her to say, right when you wanted her to say it, was like thinking you could ask the sun to shine. At some point, and probably sooner than later, you had to admit you were at her mercy. I had to, anyway.

Because I was.

I couldn’t stomach one more waxy chocolate, washed down with one more glass of sweet tea, while one more little dog stared at me, to get at the one thing I needed to know. All I could do was start begging.

“I have to go to Ravenwood, Aunt Prue. You have to help me. I have to see Lena.” My aunt sniffed and tossed the box of chocolates back down on the counter. “Oh, I see, now I have ta have ta have ta? Someone died and made you the Gen’ral? Next you’ll be thinkin’ you need a statue and a green all your own.” She sniffed again.

“Aunt Prue—” I gave up. “I’m sorry.”

“I reckon you are.”

“I just need to know how to get to Ravenwood.” I knew I sounded desperate, but it didn’t matter, because I was. I hadn’t been able to walk there or imagine myself there. There had to be another way.

“You know you get more bees with honey, sugar. Crossin’ over from one side ta the next hasn’t done much ta improve your manners, Ethan Wate. Bossin’ an old woman like that.”

I was losing patience with my aunt. “I said I’m sorry. I’m kind of new at this, remember? Can you please help me?

Do you know anything about how to get from here to Ravenwood?”

“Do you know I’m bone tired a this conversation?”

“Aunt Prue!”

She clamped her teeth shut and stuck out her chin, the way Harlon James did when he got a lock on a bone.

“There has to be a way I can see her. My mom came to visit me twice. Once in a fire Amma and Twyla made in a graveyard, and once in my own room.”

“Pretty powerful stuff, crossin’ like that. Then again, your mamma’s always been stronger than most folks. Why don’tcha ask her?” She looked irritated.

“Crossing?”

“Crossin’ over. Not for the faint a heart. For most a us, you just can’t get there from here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you can’t make preserves till you learn how ta boil water, Ethan Wate. Gotta put in the time. Get used ta the water ’fore you jump in.” Not that Aunt Prue could ever bottle anything that wouldn’t burn a hole in your bread, according to Amma.

I crossed my arms, annoyed. “Why would I jump into boiling water?”

She glared at me, fanning herself with a folded piece of paper the way she had on the thousand Sundays when I drove her to church.

The rocker stopped. Bad sign.

“I mean, ma’am.” I held my breath until the rocker started to squeak again. This time I lowered my voice. “If you know something, please help me. You said you went to see Aunt Grace and Aunt Mercy. And I know I saw you when I was at your funeral.”

Aunt Prue twisted her mouth like her dentures were hurting. Or like she was trying to keep her thoughts to herself.

“You had your whole mess a split-up souls back then. You could see all sorts a things a Mortal ain’t supposed ta see. I ain’t seen Twyla since that day either, and she’s the one who crossed me over in the first place.”

“I can’t figure this out on my own.”

“ ’Course you can. You can’t just show up ’round here and ’spect ta do whatcha like, easy as bad pie in a box.

That’s all part a crossin’. It’s like fishin’. Why would I just hand you the catfish when I should be teachin’ you how ta fish?”

I put my head in my hands. At that particular moment, I would have been plenty fine with bad pie in a box. “And where can a guy learn to catch a catfish around here?”

There was no answer.

I looked up to see Aunt Prue dozing in her rocking chair, the folded paper she’d been fanning herself with resting in her lap. There was no waking Aunt Prue from one of her naps. Not before, and probably not now.

I sighed, gently taking the makeshift fan out of her hand. It unfolded partway, revealing the edge of a drawing. It looked like one of her maps, only half-drawn, more of a doodle than anything else. Aunt Prue couldn’t sit still long without starting to sketch out her whereabouts, even in the Otherworld.

Then I realized it wasn’t a map of His Garden of Perpetual Peace—or if it was, the graveyard world was bigger than I thought.

This wasn’t just any map.

It was a map of the Lunae Libri.

“How can there be a Lunae Libri in the Otherworld? It’s not a grave, right? Nobody died there?” My mom didn’t look up from her copy of Dante. She hadn’t looked up when I swung open the front door either. She couldn’t hear a word anyone said when she was lost in those pages. Reading was her own version of Traveling.

I stuck my hand between her face and the yellowed pages, wiggling my fingers. “Mom.”

“What?” My mom looked as startled as a person could look when you hadn’t actually snuck up on them.

“Let me save you some time. I saw the movie. The office building catches fire.” I closed the book and held out Aunt Prue’s folded paper. My mom took it, smoothing it out in her hands.

“I knew Dante was ahead of his time.” She smiled, turning over the paper.

“Why was Aunt Prue drawing this?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. She just kept staring at the paper.

“If you’re going to start asking yourself why your aunt does anything, you’ll be busy for the rest of eternity.”

“Why did she need a map?” I asked.

“What your aunt needs is to find someone else to talk to besides you.” That was all she said. Then she gave up, standing and slipping her arm around my shoulders. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

I followed my mom right down the street that wasn’t a street, until we came to a plot that wasn’t just a plot, and a familiar grave that wasn’t even a grave. I stopped walking as soon as I saw where we were.

My mom laid her hand on Macon’s gravestone, a wistful smile creeping across her face. She pushed on the stone, and it swung open. Ravenwood’s front hall stood there, ghostly and deserted, as if nothing had changed except that Lena’s family had gone to Barbados or something.

“So?” I couldn’t bring myself to step inside. What use was Ravenwood without Lena or her family? It almost made me feel worse to be here in her home and still so far away.

My mom sighed. “So. You’re the one who wanted to go to the Lunae Libri.”

“You mean the secret stairway into the Tunnels? Will it lead into the Lunae Libri?”

“Well, I don’t mean the Gatlin County Library.” My mom smiled.

I pushed past her into the hallway and took off running. By the time she caught up to me, I had made it all the way to Macon’s old room. I flipped up the carpet and yanked open the trapdoor.

There they were.

The invisible stairs leading down into the Caster darkness.

And beyond, the Caster Library.

CHAPTER 5

Another Lunae Libri

Darkness, it turns out, is about as dark as usual no matter what world you’re in. The invisible steps beneath the trapdoor—the same ones I’d stumbled and climbed and half-fallen my way down so many times before—were every bit as invisible as they’d ever been.

And the Lunae Libri?

Nothing had changed about the moss-covered, rocky passageways that led us there. The long rows of ancient books, scrolls, and parchments were hauntingly familiar. Torches still threw unsteady flickering shadows across the stacks.

The Caster Library looked the same as always, even though now I was far, far away from every living Caster.

Especially the one I loved most.

I grabbed a torch from the wall, waving it in front of me. “It’s all so real.” My mom nodded. “It’s exactly as I remember it.” She touched my shoulder. “A good memory. I loved this place.”

“Me too.” This was the only place that had offered me any hope when Lena and I faced the hopeless situation of her Sixteenth Moon. I looked back at my mom, half-hidden in the shadows.

“You never told me, Mom. I didn’t know anything about you being a Keeper. I didn’t know anything about this whole side of your life.”

“I know. And I’m so sorry. But you’re here now, and I can show you everything.” She took my hand. “Finally.” We made our way into the darkness of the stacks, with only the torch between us. “Now, I’m no reference librarian, but I know my way around these stacks. On to the scrolls.” She looked at me sideways. “I hope you never touched any of these. Not without gloves.”

“Yeah. I got that down, the first time I burned all my skin off.” I grinned. It was strange to be here with my mom, but now that I was, I could tell the Lunae Libri had been every bit hers, as much as it was Marian’s.

She grinned back. “I guess that’s not a problem anymore.”

I shrugged. “Guess not.”

She pointed to the nearest shelf, her eyes bright. It was good to see my mom back in her natural habitat.

She reached for a scroll. “C, as in crossing.”

After what seemed like hours, we had made zero headway.

I groaned. “Can’t you just tell me how to do this? Why do I have to look it up for myself?” We were surrounded by piles of scrolls, stacked all around us on the stone table at the very center of the Lunae Libri.

Even my mom seemed frustrated. “I already told you. I just imagine where I want to go, and I’m there. If that doesn’t work for you, then I don’t know how to help you. Your soul isn’t the same as mine, especially not since it was fractured.

You need help, and that’s what books are for.”

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t what books are for—visitations from the dead.” I glared at her. “At least, that’s not what Mrs. English would say.”

“You never know. Books are around for lots of reasons. As is Mrs. English.” She yanked another stack of scrolls into her lap. “Here. What about this one?” She pulled open a dusty scroll, smoothing it with her hands. “It’s not a Cast. It’s more like a meditation. To help your mind focus, as if you were a monk.”

“I’m not a monk. And I’m not any good at meditating.”

“Clearly. But it wouldn’t hurt you to try. Come on, focus. Listen.”

She leaned over the parchment scroll, reading aloud. I read along over her shoulder.

“In death, lie.

In living, cry.

Carry me home

to remember

to be remembered.”

The words hovered in the air, like a strange silvery bubble. I reached out to touch them, but they faded out of sight as quickly as they had appeared.

I looked at my mom. “Did you see that?”

My mom nodded. “Casts are different in this world.”

“Why isn’t it working?”

“Try it in the original Latin. Here. Read it for yourself.” She held the paper closer to the torch, and I leaned toward the light.

My voice shook as I said the words.

“Mortuus, iace.

Vivus, fle.

Ducite me domum

ut meminissem

ut in memoria tenear.”

I closed my eyes, but all I could think about was how far I was from Lena. How her curling black hair twisted in the Caster breeze. How the green and the gold flecks lit her eyes, as bright and dark as she was.

How I’d probably never see her again.

“Oh, come on, EW.”

I opened my eyes. “It’s no use.”

“Concentrate.”

“I’m concentrating.”

“You’re not,” she said. “Don’t think about where you are now. Don’t think about what you’ve lost—not the water tower or anything that came after it. Keep your head in the game.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if you were, you wouldn’t be standing here. You would be halfway home, with one foot back in Gatlin.” Would I? It was hard to imagine.

“Close your eyes.”

I closed them obediently.

“Repeat what I say,” she whispered.

In the silence, I heard her words inside my mind, like she was speaking aloud to me.

We were Kelting, my mother and I. In death, from the grave, in a faraway world. It seemed familiar between us, something from long ago, something we had lost.

Carry me home.

Carry me home, I said.

Ducite me domum.

Ducite me domum, I said.

To remember.

Ut meminissem, I said.

And be remembered.

Ut in memoria tenear , I said.

You remember, my son.

I remember , I said.

You will remember.

I will always remember , I said.

I am the one, I said.

You will—

I will—

Remember…

CHAPTER 6

Silver Button

I opened my eyes.

I was standing in the front hallway of Lena’s house. It worked. I had crossed. I was back in Gatlin, in the world of the living. I was overwhelmed with relief; it was still here.

Gatlin remained. Which meant Lena remained. Which meant everything I’d lost—everything I’d done—hadn’t been for nothing.

I leaned against the wall behind me. The room stopped spinning, and I lifted my head and looked around at the old plaster walls.

The familiar flying staircase. The shining lacquered floors.

Ravenwood.

The real Ravenwood. Mortal, solid, and heavy beneath my feet. I was back.

Lena.

I closed my eyes and fought away the prickling tears.

I’m here, ll. I did it.

I don’t know how long I stood frozen in place, waiting for a response, like I thought she was going to come running around the corner and into my arms.

She didn’t.

She didn’t even feel me Kelting.

I drew in a deep breath. The enormity of it all was still hitting me.

Ravenwood looked different than the last time I was here. It wasn’t really a surprise—Ravenwood was always changing—but even so, I could tell from the black sheets hanging over all the mirrors and windows that this time things had changed for the worse.

It wasn’t just the sheets. It was the way the snow fell from the ceiling, even though I was inside. The cold white drifts piled in the doorways and filled the fireplace, swirling into the air like ash. I looked up to see the ceiling crowded with storm clouds that wound all the way up the stairwell to the second floor. It was pretty cold even for a ghost, and I couldn’t stop shivering.

Ravenwood always had a story, and that story was Lena’s. She controlled the way the house looked with her every mood. And if Ravenwood looked like this…

Come on, ll. Where are you?

I couldn’t help but listen for her to answer, even though all I heard was silence.

I made my way through the slick ice of the front hall until I reached the familiar sweep of the grand front stairwell.

Then I climbed the white steps, one at a time, all the way to the top.

When I turned to look down, there were no footprints at all.

“ll? You in there?”

Come on. I know you can feel me here.

But she didn’t say anything, and as I slipped through the cracked doorway into her bedroom, it was almost a relief to see she wasn’t inside. I even checked the ceiling, where I had once found her lying along the plaster.

Lena’s bedroom had changed again, like it always did. This time the viola wasn’t playing by itself, and there wasn’t writing everywhere, and the walls weren’t glass. It didn’t look like a prison, the plaster wasn’t cracked, and the bed wasn’t broken.

Everything was gone. Her bags were packed and neatly stacked in the center of the room. The walls and the ceiling were completely plain, like an ordinary room.

It looked like Lena was leaving.

I got out of there before I could think what that would mean for me. Before I tried to figure out how I would visit her in Barbados, or wherever she was going.

It was almost as hard to think about as leaving her the first time around.

I found my way out through the massive dining room where I had sat on so many other strange days and nights. A thick layer of frost covered the table, leaving a dark, wet rectangle on the carpet immediately below. I slipped through an open door and escaped out to the back veranda, the one that faced the sloping green hill leading to the river—where it wasn’t snowing at all, just overcast and gloomy. It was a relief to be back outside, and I followed the path behind the house until I came to the lemon trees and the crumbling stone wall that told me I was at Greenbrier.

I knew what I was looking for the second I saw it.

My grave.

There it was, among the bare branches of the lemon trees, a mound of fresh soil lined with stones and covered with a sprinkling of snow.

It didn’t have a headstone, only a plain old cross made of wood. The new dirt hill looked like something less than a final resting place, which actually made me feel better, rather than worse, about the whole thing.

The clouds overhead shifted, and a glimmer from the grave caught my eye. Someone had left a charm from Lena’s necklace on the top of the wooden cross. The sight of it made my stomach flip over.

It was the silver button that had fallen off her sweater the night we first met in the rain on Route 9. It had gotten caught in the cracked vinyl of the Beater’s front seat. In a way, it felt like we had come full circle now, from the first time I saw her to the last, at least in this world.

Full circle. The beginning and the end. Maybe I really had picked a hole in the sky and unraveled the universe.

Maybe there was no kind of slipknot or half hitch or taut-line that could ever keep it all from coming undone. Something connected my first glimpse of the button to this one, even though it was just the same old button. Some small bit of universe had stretched from Lena to me to Macon to Amma to my dad and my mom—and even Marian and my Aunt Prue—back to me again. I guess Liv and John Breed were in there somewhere, and maybe Link and Ridley. Maybe all of Gatlin was.

Did it matter?

When I saw Lena for the very first time at school, how could I possibly have known where this was all headed?

And if I had, would I have changed a single thing? I doubted it.

I picked up the silver button carefully. The second my fingers touched it they moved more slowly, as if I had plunged my hand to the bottom of the lake. I felt the weight of the worthless tin like it was a pile of bricks.

I put it back on the cross, but it rolled off the edge, falling onto the mounded dirt of the grave. I was too tired to try to move it again. If someone else was here, would they have seen the button move? Or did it only seem like that to me?

Either way, that button was hard to look at. I hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to visit my own grave. And I wasn’t ready to rest, in peace or not.

I wasn’t ready for any of this.

I’d never really thought past the whole dying-for-the-sake-of-the-world part of things. When you’re alive, you don’t dwell on how you’re going to spend your time once you’re dead. You just figure you’re gone, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself.

Or you think you’re not really going to die. You’re going to be the first person in the history of the world who doesn’t have to. Maybe that’s some kind of lie our brains tell us to keep us from going crazy while we’re alive.

But nothing’s that simple.

Not when you were standing where I was.

And nobody’s any different from anyone else, not when you come right down to it.

These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.

I sat down next to my headstone and flopped back on the hard soil and grass. I plucked a single blade poking through the scattering of snow. At least it was coming in green. No dead, brown grass and lubbers now.

Thank the Sweet Redeemer, as Amma liked to say.

You’re welcome. That’s what I’d like to say.

I looked at the grave next to me and touched the fresh, cold soil with my hand, letting it fall through my fingers. Not a bit dry either. Things really had changed around Gatlin.

I was brought up a good Southern boy, and I knew better than to disturb or disrespect any grave in town. I had walked circles around graveyards, trailing my mom carefully to avoid accidentally putting a stray foot on someone’s sacred plot.

It was Link who didn’t know better than to lie on top of the graves and pretend to sleep where the dead were resting.

He wanted to practice—that’s what he said. A dry run. “I want to see what the view is like from down there. You wouldn’t want a guy to head out for the rest a his life without knowin’ where it was all takin’ him in the end, would you?” But when it came to graves, it was a different thing to worry about disrespecting your own.

That’s when a familiar voice caught in the wind, surprising me with how close it was. “You get used to it, you know.” I followed the voice a few graves over, and there she was, red hair blowing wild. Genevieve Duchannes. Lena’s ancestor, the first Caster who had used The Book of Moons to try to bring back someone she loved—the original Ethan Wate. He was my great-great-great-great-uncle, and it hadn’t worked out any better for him than it had for me.

Genevieve failed, and Lena’s family was cursed.

The last time I saw Genevieve, I was digging up her grave with Lena, looking for The Book of Moons .

“Is that—Genevieve? Ma’am?” I sat up.

She nodded, curling and uncurling a loose strand of hair with her hand. “I thought you might be coming around. I wasn’t sure when. There’s been a lot of talk.” She smiled. “Though your kind tends to stay in Perpetual Peace. Casters, we go where we like. Most of us stay in the Tunnels. I feel better here.” Talk? I bet there was, though it was hard to imagine a town full of ghostly Sheers doing the talking. More like my Aunt Prue, probably.

Her smile faded. “But you’re just a boy. It’s worse, isn’t it? That you’re so young.” I nodded in Genevieve’s direction. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, you’re here now, and that’s what matters. I suppose I owe you, Ethan Lawson Wate.”

“You don’t owe me anything, ma’am.”

“I hope to repay the debt one day. Returning my locket meant the world to me, but I don’t think you’ll see much gratitude from Ethan Carter Wate, wherever he may be. He always was a bit stubborn that way.”

“What happened to him? If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am.” I’d always wondered about Ethan Carter Wate

—after he came back to life for only a second. I mean, he was the beginning of all of this, everything that had happened to Lena and me. The other end of the thread we pulled, the one that had unraveled the entire universe.

Didn’t I have a right to know how his story ended? It couldn’t have been much worse than mine, could it?

“I don’t really know. They took him away to the Far Keep. We couldn’t be together, but I’m sure you know that. I learned it myself, the hard way,” she said, her voice sad and far away.

Her words caught in my mind, snagging on others I’d tried to push off until now. The Far Keep. The Keepers of The Caster Chronicles—the same ones my mom refused to talk about. Genevieve didn’t look like she wanted to elaborate either.

Why didn’t anyone want to talk about the Far Keep? What were The Caster Chronicles really about?

I looked from Genevieve to the lemon trees. Here we were, at the site of the first big fire. It was the place where her family’s land had burned, and where Lena tried to face off against Sarafine for the first time.

Funny how history repeated itself around here.

Funnier still how I was about the last person in Gatlin to figure that out.

But I had learned a few things the hard way myself. “It wasn’t your fault. The Book of Moons sort of plays tricks on people. I don’t think it was ever meant for Light Casters. I think it wanted to turn you—” She shot me a look, and I stopped talking. “Sorry, ma’am.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. For the first hundred years or so, I felt that way. Like that book had stolen something from me. Like I’d been duped…” Her voice trailed off.

She was right. She had gotten the short stick.

“But good or bad, I made my own choices. They’re all I have now. It’s my cross to bear, and I’ll be the one to bear it.

”

“But you did it out of love.” So did Lena and Amma.

“I know. That’s what helps me bear it. I just wish my Ethan didn’t have to bear it, too. The Far Keep is a cruel place.” She looked down at her grave. “What’s done is done. There’s no cheating death any more than you can cheat The Book of Moons . Someone always has to pay the price.” She smiled sadly. “I guess you know that, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I guess I do.”

I knew it better than anyone.

A twig snapped. Then a voice called out, even louder.

“Stop following me, Link.”

Genevieve Duchannes disappeared at the sound of the words. I didn’t know how she did it, but I was so startled that I felt myself start slipping away, too.

I clung to the voice—because it was familiar, and I would’ve recognized it anywhere. And because it sounded like home, chaos and all.

It was the voice that anchored me in the Mortal realm now, the same way it had kept my heart bound to Gatlin when I had been alive.

ll.

I froze. I couldn’t move, even though she couldn’t see me.

“You tryin’ to give me the slip?” Link was stomping around behind Lena, trying to catch up with her as she made her way through the lemon trees. Lena shook her head like she was trying to shake Link.

Lena.

She pushed through the brush, and I caught a glimpse of gold and green eyes. That was it; I couldn’t help myself.

“Lena!” I shouted as loud as I could, my voice ringing across the white sky.

I took off running across the stubbly frozen ground, through the weeds and all the way down the rocky path. I flung myself into her arms… and went flying to the ground behind her.

“I’m not just trying. I’m giving you the slip.” Lena’s voice floated over me.

I had almost forgotten. I wasn’t really here, not in a way she could feel. I lay back on the ground, trying to catch my breath. Then I propped myself up on my elbows, because Lena was really there, and I didn’t want to miss a second of it.

The way she moved, the tilt of her head, and the soft lilt of her voice—she was perfect, full of life and beauty and everything I couldn’t have anymore.

Everything that didn’t belong to me.

I’m here. Right here. Can you feel me, ll?

“I wanted to check on him. I haven’t been out here all day. I don’t want him to be lonely, or bored, or mad. Whatever he’s feeling.” Lena knelt next to my grave, next to me, grabbing at handfuls of cold grass.

I’m not lonely. But I miss you.

Link rubbed his hand through his hair. “You just went to check on his house. Then you checked on the water tower and your bedroom, and now you’re checkin’ on his grave. Maybe you should find somethin’ to do other than checkin’ on Ethan.”

“Maybe you should find something to do other than bothering me, Link.”

“I promised Ethan I’d look after you.”

“You don’t understand,” she said.

Link looked as annoyed as Lena seemed frustrated. “What are you talkin’ about? You think I don’t understand? He was my best friend since kindergarten.”

“Don’t say it like that. He’s still your best friend.”

“Lena.” Link wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Don’t Lena me. Out of everyone, I thought you would understand how things work around here.” Her face was pale, and her mouth looked funny, like she was about to smile or cry, only she couldn’t decide which.

Lena, it’ll be okay. I’m right here.

But even as I thought about it, I knew nobody could fix this. The truth was, the moment I stepped off that water tower everything changed, and nothing was going to change back.

Not anytime soon.

I never knew how bad it would feel from this side. At least for me. Because I could see it all, but I couldn’t do a thing to change it.

I reached for her hand, sliding my fingers around hers. My hands slipped right through, but if I really concentrated, I could still feel them, heavy and solid.

For the very first time, nothing shocked me. No burning. It wasn’t like sticking my fingers in an electrical outlet.

I guess being dead will do that for you.

“Lena, help me out here. I don’t speak chick—you know that—and Rid isn’t here to translate.”

“Chick ?” Lena shot him a withering look.

“Aw, come on. I barely speak English, unless we’re talkin’ about the Lowcountry kind.”

“I thought you went looking for Ridley,” Lena said.

“I did, all through the Tunnels. Everywhere Macon sent me and a few places he’d never let me go. Holy hell—I haven’t found anyone who’s seen her.”

Lena sat down and straightened the line of rocks around my grave. “I need her to come back. Ridley knows how it all works. She’ll help me figure out what to do.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Link sat down next to her, and next to me.

Just like old times, when the three of us would sit together on the bleachers at Jackson High. They just didn’t know it.

“He’s not dead. Just like Uncle Macon wasn’t dead. Ethan will come back—you’ll see. He’s probably trying to find me right now.”

I squeezed her hand. She was right about that, at least.

“Don’t you think you’d be able to tell, if he was?” Link sounded a little doubtful. “If he was here, don’t you think he’d give us a shout-out or somethin’ like that?”

I tried her hand again, but it was no use.

Will you two pay attention?

Lena shook her head, oblivious. “It’s not like that. I’m not saying he’s sitting here next to us or something.” But I was. Sitting next to them or something.

Guys? I’m right here?

Even though I was Kelting, I felt like I was shouting.

“Yeah? How do you know where he is or isn’t? If you’re so sure and all?” Link’s Sunday school background wasn’t helping him out here. He was probably busy imagining houses made of clouds, and cherubs with wings.

“Uncle Macon said that new spirits don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. They barely know how they died or what happened to them in real life. It’s upsetting, suddenly finding yourself in the Otherworld. Ethan might not even know who he is yet, or who I am.”

I knew who she was. How could I forget something like that?

“Yeah? Well, say you’re right. If that’s the case, you have nothin’ to worry about. Liv told me that she’d find him. She has that watch a hers all tweaked up, like some kind a Ethan Wate–ometer.” Lena sighed. “I wish it was that simple.” She reached for the wooden cross. “This thing’s crooked again.” Link looked frustrated. “Yeah? Well, there’s no merit badge for grave diggin’. Not in Gatlin’s pack meetin’s.”

“I’m talking about the cross, not the grave.”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t let us get a stone,” Link said.

“He doesn’t need a gravestone when he’s not—”

Then her hand froze, because she noticed. The silver button wasn’t where she’d left it.

Of course it wasn’t. It was where I dropped it.

“Link, look!”

“It’s a cross. Or two sticks, dependin’ on how you look at it.” Link squinted. He was starting to tune out; I could tell by the glazed look in his eyes, the one I’d seen on every school day.

“Not that.” Lena pointed. “The button.”

“Yep. It’s a button, all right. Any way you slice it.” Link was staring at Lena like she was suddenly the dense one. It was probably a terrifying thought.

“It’s my button. And that’s not where I put it.”

Link shrugged. “So?”

“Don’t you get it?” Lena sounded hopeful.

“Not usually.”

“Ethan’s been here. He moved it.”

Hallelujah, ll. It’s about time. We were making some progress here.

I held my arms out to her, and she threw her arms around Link and hugged him tight. Figures.

She pulled back from Link, excited.

“Hey now.” Link looked embarrassed. “It could have been the wind. It could have been—I don’t know—wildlife or somethin’.”

“It wasn’t.” I knew the mood she was in. There was nothing anyone could say to change her mind, no matter how irrational it seemed.

“Seem pretty sure a that.”

“I am.” Lena’s cheeks were pink, and her eyes were bright. She opened her notebook, unclipping the Sharpie from her charm necklace with one hand. I smiled to myself, because I’d given her that Sharpie at the top of the Summerville water tower, not so long ago.

I winced at the thought now.

Lena scribbled something and ripped out the page of her notebook. She used a rock to hold the note on top of the cross.

The paper fluttered in the cool breeze but remained where she’d left it.

She wiped a stray tear and smiled.

The paper had only one word on it, but we both knew what it meant. It was a reference to one of the first conversations we’d ever had, when she told me what it said on the poet Bukowski’s grave. Only two words: Don’t try.

But the torn piece of paper on my grave was christened with only one word, in all caps. Still damp and still smelling like Sharpie.

Sharpie and lemons and rosemary.

All the things that were Lena.

TRY.

I will, ll.

I promise.

CHAPTER 7

Crosswords

As I watched Link and Lena disappear toward Ravenwood, I knew there was one more place I needed to go, one person I had to see before I went back. She owned Wate’s Landing more than any Wate ever would. She haunted that place even in full flesh and blood.

Part of me was dreading it, imagining how torn up she must be. But I needed to see her, all the same.

Bad things had happened.

I couldn’t change that, no matter how much I wanted to.

Everything felt wrong, and even seeing Lena didn’t make it feel right.

As Aunt Prue would say, things had gone cattywampus.

Whether in this realm or any other, Amma was always the one person who could set me straight.

I sat on the curb across the street, waiting for the sun to go down. I couldn’t get myself to move. I didn’t want to. I wanted to watch the sun dip behind the house, behind the clotheslines and the old trees and the hedge. I wanted to watch the sunlight fade and the lights in the house go on. I watched for the familiar glow in my dad’s study, but it was still dark. He must be teaching at the university, as if nothing had happened. That was probably good, better even. I wondered if he was still working on his book about the Eighteenth Moon, unless restoring the Order had brought an end to that, too.

There was a light in the kitchen bay window, though.

Amma.

A second light flickered through the small square window next to it. The Sisters were watching one of their shows.

Then, in the dwindling light, I noticed something strange. There were no bottles on our old crepe myrtle. The one where Amma hung empty, cracked glass bottles to trap any evil spirits that happened to float our way and to keep them from getting in our house.

Where could the bottles have gone? Why wouldn’t she need them now?

I stood up and walked a little closer. I could see through the kitchen window to where Amma sat at our old wooden table, probably doing a crossword. I could imagine the #2 pencils scratching, could almost hear them.

I crossed the lawn and stood in the driveway, just outside the window. For once I figured it was a good thing no one could see me, because peeping in windows at night in Gatlin is what made even decent folks want to get out their shotguns. Then again, there were lots of things that made folks around here want to get out their shotguns.

Amma looked up and out into the darkness, like a deer in the headlights. I could have sworn she saw me. Then real headlights flashed behind me, and I realized it wasn’t me Amma was looking at.

It was my dad, driving my mom’s old Volvo. Pulling right through me and into the driveway. As if I wasn’t there.

Which, in a whole lot of ways, I wasn’t.

I stood in front of the house that I had spent so many summers repainting, and reached out to touch the brushstrokes next to the door. My hand slipped partway through the wall.

It disappeared inside, kind of like when I shoved it through the Charmed door of the Lunae Libri, the one that only looked like a regular old grating.

I pulled my hand out and stared at it.

Looked fine to me.

I stepped closer, into the side wall of the house, and found myself trapped. It kind of burned, like walking into a lit fireplace. I guess slipping my hand through was one thing, but getting my body into the house was another.

I went around to the front door. Nothing. I couldn’t even kick a foot partway through. I tried the window above the kitchen table, and the one over the sink. I tried the back windows and the side windows and even the cat door that Amma had installed for Lucille.

No luck.

Then I figured out what was going on, because I went back to the kitchen window and saw what Amma was doing.

It wasn’t the New York Times crossword puzzle, or even The Stars and Stripes one. She had a needle, not a pencil, in one hand, and a square of cloth instead of paper in the other. She was doing something I’d seen her do a thousand times, and it wasn’t going to improve anyone’s vocabulary or keep anyone’s mind New York City sharp.

It had to do with keeping people’s souls safe—Gatlin County safe.

Because Amma was sewing a little bundle of ingredients into one of her infamous charm bags, the kind I had found in my drawers and beneath my mattress and sometimes even in my own pockets. Considering that I couldn’t step foot in the house, she must have been sewing them nonstop since I jumped off the water tower.

As usual, she was using her charms to protect Wate’s Landing, and there was no getting past any one of them.

The salt snaking its way across the windowsill was even thicker than usual. For the first time, there was no doubt that her crazy protections kept our house haint-free. For the first time, I noticed the strange glow of the salt, as if whatever powered it leaked into the air around the windowsills.

Great.

I was rattling the screen out back, when I caught a glimpse of the stairwell leading down to Amma’s canning pantry.

I thought about the secret door at the back of that little room of storage shelves, the one that had probably been used for the Underground Railroad. I tried to remember where the tunnel came out—the one where we’d found the Temporis Porta, the magical door that opened into the Far Keep. Then I remembered the tunnel’s trapdoor opening to the field across Route 9. It had gotten me out of the house before; maybe it could get me in this time.

I closed my eyes and thought about that spot, as hard as I could. It didn’t work before, when I’d tried to imagine myself somewhere. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try again. My mom said that’s how it worked for her. Maybe all I had to do was picture myself somewhere hard enough, and I’d find my way there. Kind of like the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz—only without the actual slippers.

I thought about the fairgrounds.

I thought about the cigarette butts and the old weeds and the hard dirt with the imprints of long-gone carnival booths and trailer hitches.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. Still nothing.

I wasn’t sure how your average Sheer did it. Which left me ten kinds of stuck. I almost gave up and walked, figuring if I could make it out to Route 9, I could hitch a ride on the back of an unsuspecting pickup truck.

Just when it seemed impossible, I thought about Amma. I thought about wanting to get inside my house so badly I could taste it, like a whole plate of Amma’s pot roast. I thought about how much I missed her, how I wanted to hug her, take a good scolding, and untie her apron strings, like I had my entire life.

The minute those thoughts formed clearly in my mind, my feet started to buzz. I looked down, but I couldn’t see them. I felt like a seltzer tablet someone had dropped into a glass of water, like everything around me was starting to bubble and fizz.

Then I was gone.

I found myself standing in the tunnel, right across from the Temporis Porta. The ancient door looked as forbidding to me in death as it had in life, and I was happy to leave it behind as I made my way through the tunnel and toward Wate’s Landing. I knew where I was going, even in the dark.

I ran the whole way home.

I kept running until I shoved my way through the pantry door, up the stairs, and into the kitchen. Once I got past the problem of the salt and the charms, the walls didn’t seem like a big deal—or feel like much of one either.

It was like walking in front of one of the Sisters’ endless slide shows, where you step in front of the projector during the hundredth photo of the cruise ship, and suddenly you look down and the ship is cruising right over you. That’s what a wall felt like. Just a projection, as unreal as a photograph from someone else’s trip to the Bahamas.

Amma didn’t look up as I approached. The floorboards didn’t squeak for the first time ever, and I thought about all the times I would’ve appreciated that—when I was trying to sneak out of that kitchen or my house, out from beneath Amma’s watchful eye. It required a miracle, and even then it usually didn’t work.

I could have used a few Sheer skills back when I was alive. Now I would give anything for someone to know I was actually here. Funny how things work out like that. Like they say, I guess you really do have to be careful what you wish for.

Then I stopped in my tracks. Actually, the smells coming from the oven stopped me.

Because the kitchen smelled like Heaven, or the way Heaven should smell—since I was thinking about it a lot more these days. The two greatest smells on earth. Pulled pork with Carolina Gold, that was one of them. I’d know Amma’s famous golden mustard barbeque sauce anywhere, not to mention the slow-cooked pork that gave up and fell to pieces at the first touch of a fork.

The other smell was chocolate. Not just chocolate, but the densest, darkest chocolate around, which meant the inside of Amma’s Tunnel of Fudge cake, my favorite of all her desserts. The one she never made for any contest or fair or family in need—just for me, on my birthday or when I got a good report card or had a rotten day.

It was my cake, like lemon meringue was Uncle Abner’s pie.

I sank into the nearest chair at the kitchen table, my head in my hands. The cake wasn’t for me to eat. It was for her to give, an offering. Something to take out to Greenbrier and leave on my grave.

The thought of that Tunnel of Fudge cake laid out on the fresh dirt by the little wooden cross made me want to throw up.

I was worse than dead.

I was one of the Greats, but a whole lot less great.

The egg timer went off, and Amma pushed back her chair, spearing the charm bag with her needle one last time and letting it drop to the table.

“Don’t want your cake to dry out now, do we, Ethan Wate?” Amma yanked open the oven door, and a blast of heat and chocolate shot out. She stuck her quilted mitts in so far I worried she was going to catch fire herself. Then she yanked out the cake with a sigh, almost hurling it onto the burner.

“Best let it cool a bit. Don’t want my boy burnin’ his mouth.”

Lucille smelled the food and came wandering into the kitchen. She leaped onto the table, just like always, getting the best vantage point possible.

When she saw me sitting there, she let out a horrible howl. Her eyes caught me in a fixed glare, as if I’d done something deeply and personally offensive.

Come on, Lucille. You and me, we go way back.

Amma looked at Lucille. “What’s that, old girl? You got somethin’ to say?” Lucille yowled again. She was ratting me out to Amma. At first I thought she was just trying to be difficult. Then I realized she was doing me a favor.

Amma was listening. More than listening—she was scowling and looking around the room. “Who’s there?” I looked back at Lucille and smiled, reaching out to scratch her on the top of her head. She twitched beneath my hand.

Amma swept the kitchen with her eagle eye. “Don’t you be comin’ in my house. Don’t need you spirits comin’

around. There’s nothin’ here left to take. Just a lot a broken-down old ladies and broken hearts.” She reached slowly toward the jar sitting on the counter and took hold of the One-Eyed Menace.

There it was. Her death-defying, all-powerful wooden spoon of justice. The hole in the middle looked even more like an all-seeing eye tonight. And I had no doubt it could see, maybe as well as Amma. In this state—wherever I was—I could see plain as day that the thing was strangely powerful. Like the salt, it practically glowed, leaving a trail of light where she waved it in the air. I guess things of power came in all shapes and sizes. And when it came to the One-Eyed Menace, I’d be the last one to doubt anything it could do.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Lucille shot me another look, hissing. Now she was getting bratty. I wanted to hiss right back at her.

Stupid cat. This is still my house, Lucille Ball.

Amma looked my way, as if she was seeing straight into my eyes. It was eerie, how close she came to knowing right where I was. She raised the spoon high above the both of us.

“Now you listen. I don’t take kindly to you stickin’ your nose inta my kitchen, uninvited. You either get outta my house, or you make yourself known, you hear? I won’t have you intrudin’ on this family. Been through nearabout enough already.”

I didn’t have much time. The smell from Amma’s charm bag was making me kind of sick, to tell the truth, and I didn’t have a whole lot of experience at haunting—if this even qualified. I was completely out of my league.

I stared at the Tunnel of Fudge cake. I didn’t want to eat it, but I knew I had to do something with it. Something to make Amma understand—just like Lena and the silver button.

The more I thought about that cake, the more I knew what I had to do.

I took a step toward Amma and her cake, ducking around the defensive spoon—and stuck my hand into the fudge, as far as I could. It wasn’t easy—it felt like I was trying to grab a handful of cement minutes before it hardened into actual pavement.

But I did it anyway.

I scooped out a big piece of chocolate cake, letting it topple off the side and slide onto the burner. I might as well have taken a bite out of it—that’s pretty much what the gaping hole in the side of the cake looked like.

One giant ghostly bite.

“No.” Amma stared, wide-eyed, holding the spoon in one hand and her apron in the other. “Ethan Wate, is that you?” I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. She must have felt something, though, because she lowered the spoon and dropped into the chair across from me, letting the tears flow like a baby in the cry room at church.

Between the tears I heard it.

Just a whisper, but I heard it as clearly as if she had shouted my name.

“My boy.”

Her hands were shaking as she held on to the edge of the old table. Amma might be one of the greatest Seers in the Lowcountry, but she was still a Mortal.

I had become something else.

I moved my hand over hers, and I could have sworn she slipped her fingers between mine. She rocked in her chair a little, the way she did when she was singing a hymn she loved or was just about to finish a particularly hard crossword.

“I miss you, Ethan Wate. More than you know. Can’t bear to do my puzzles. Can’t recall how to cook a roast.” She wiped her hand across her eyes, leaving it on her forehead like she had a headache.

I miss you, too, Amma.

“Don’t go too far from home, not just yet. You hear me? I’ve a few things to tell you, one a these days.” I won’t.

Lucille licked her paw and rolled it over her ears. She hopped down from the table and howled one last time. She started to walk out of the kitchen, stopping only to look back at me. I could hear what she was saying, as clearly as if she was speaking to me.

Well? Come on, already. You’re wasting my time, boy.

I turned and gave Amma a hug, reaching my long arms all the way around her tiny frame, as I had so many times before.

Lucille stopped and cocked her head, waiting. So I did what I’d always done when it came to that cat. I got up from the table and followed.

CHAPTER 8

Broken Bottles

Lucille scratched at the door to Amma’s room, and it slid open. I slipped through the crack in the door right after the cat.

Amma’s room looked better and worse than it did the last time I saw it, the night I jumped off the water tower. That night, the jars of salt, river stones, and graveyard dirt—the ingredients in so many of Amma’s charms—were missing from their places on the shelves, along with at least two dozen other bottles. Her “recipe” books had been scattered across the floor, without so much as a single charm or doll in sight.

The room had been a reflection of Amma’s state of mind—lost and desperate, in a way that hurt to remember.

Today it looked completely different, but as far as I could tell, the room was still full of what she was feeling on the inside, the things she didn’t want anyone to see. The doors and windows were laden with charms, but if Amma’s old charms were as good as they come, these were even better—stones intricately arranged around the bed, bundles of hawthorn tied around the windows, strands of beads decorated with tiny silver saints and symbols looped around the bedposts.

She was working hard to keep something out.

The jars were still crowded together the way I remembered them, but the shelves weren’t bare anymore. They were lined with cracked brown, green, and blue glass bottles. I recognized them immediately.

They were from the bottle tree in our front yard.

Amma must have taken them down. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of evil spirits anymore. Or maybe she just didn’t want to catch the wrong one.

The bottles were empty, but each one was stopped up with a cork. I touched a small bluish-green one with a long crack down one side. Slowly, and with about as much ease as if I was pushing the Beater all the way up the hill to Ravenwood on a summer day, I edged the cork out from the rim of the bottle, and the room began to fade….

The sun was hot, swamp mist rising like ghosts over the water. But the little girl with the neat braids knew better. Ghosts were made of more than steam and mist. They were as real as she was, waiting for her ancient grandmamma or her aunties to call them up. And they were just like the living.

Some were friendly, like the girls who played hopscotch and cat’s cradle with her. And others were nasty, like the old man who paced around the graveyard in Wader’s Creek whenever there was thunder.

Either way, the spirits could be helpful or ornery, depending on their mood and what you had to offer. It was always a good idea to bring a gift. Her great-great-great-grandmamma had taught her that.

The house was just up the hill from the creek, like a weatherworn blue lighthouse, leading both the dead and the living back home. There was always a candle in the window after dark, wind chimes above the door, and a pecan pie on the rocker in case someone came calling. And someone always came calling.

Folks came from miles and miles to see Sulla the Prophet. That’s what they called her great-great-great-grandmamma, on account of how many of her readings came to pass. Sometimes they even slept on the little patch of grass in front of the house, waiting for the chance to see her.

But to the girl, Sulla was just the woman who told her stories and taught her to tat lace and make a butter piecrust. The woman with a sparrow that would fly in the window and sit right on her shoulder, like it was a branch on an old oak.

When she reached the front door, the girl stopped and smoothed her dress before she went in.

“Grandmamma?”

“I’m in here, Amarie.” Her voice was smooth and thick—“Heaven and honey,” the men in town called it.

The house was only two rooms and a small cooking space. The main room was where Sulla worked, reading tarot cards and tea leaves, making charms and roots for healing. There were glass canning jars all over, full of everything from witch hazel and chamomile to crows’ feathers and graveyard dirt. On the bottom shelf was one jar Amarie was allowed to open. It was full of buttery caramels, wrapped in thick wax-coated paper. The doctor who lived in Moncks Corner brought them whenever he came by for ointments and a reading.

“Amarie, you come on over here now.” Sulla was fanning a deck of cards out on the table. They

weren’t the tarot cards the ladies from Gatlin and Summerville liked her to read. These were the cards Grandmamma saved for special readings. “You know what these are?” Amarie nodded. “Cards a Providence.”

“That’s right.” Sulla smiled, her thin braids falling over her shoulder. Each one was tied with a colored string—a wish someone who visited her was hoping would come true. “Do you know why they’re different from tarot cards?”

Amarie shook her head. She knew the pictures were different—the knife stained with blood. The twin figures facing each other with palms touching.

“Cards a Providence tell the truth—the future even I don’t want to see some days. Dependin’ on whose future I’m readin’.”

The little girl was confused. Didn’t tarot cards show a true future if a powerful reader was interpreting the spread? “I thought all cards show the truth if you know how to make sense a them.” The sparrow flew in from the open window and perched on the old woman’s shoulder. “There’s the truth you can face and the truth you can’t. You come over here and sit down, and I’ll show you what I mean.” Sulla shuffled the cards, the Angry Queen disappearing into the deck behind the Black Crow.

Amarie walked around to the other side of the table and sat down on the crooked stool where so many folks waited to see their fate.

Sulla flicked her wrist, fanning the cards out in one swift motion. Her necklaces tangled together at her throat—silver charms etched with images Amarie didn’t recognize, hand-painted wooden beads strung between bits of rock, colored crystals that caught the light when Sulla moved. And Amarie’s favorite—a smooth black stone threaded through a piece of cord that rested on the hollow of Sulla’s neck.

Grandmamma Sulla called it “the eye.”

“Now pay attention, Little One,” Sulla instructed. “One day you’ll be doin’ this on your own, and I’ll be whisperin’ to you from the wind.”

Amarie liked the sound of that.

She smiled and pulled the first card.

The edges of the vision blurred, and the row of colored bottles came back into view. I was still touching the cracked bluish-green one and the cork that had unleashed the memory—one of Amma’s, trapped like a dangerous secret she didn’t want to escape into the world. But it wasn’t dangerous at all, except maybe to her.

I could still see Sulla showing her the Cards of Providence, the cards that would one day form the spread that showed her my death.

I pictured the faces of the cards, especially the twins, face to face. The Fractured Soul. My card.

I thought about Sulla’s smile and how small she looked compared to the giant she seemed to be as a spirit. But she wore the same intricate braids and heavy strands of beads snaking around her neck in both life and death. Except the cord with the black stone—I didn’t remember that one.

I looked down at the empty bottle, pushing back the cork and leaving it on the shelf with the others. Did all these bottles hold Amma’s memories? The ghosts that were haunting her in ways the spirits never would?

I wondered if the night of my death was in one of those bottles, shoved down deep where it couldn’t escape.

I hoped so, for Amma’s sake.

Then I heard the stairs creak.

“Amma, you in the kitchen?” It was my dad.

“I’m in here, Mitchell. Right where I always am before supper,” Amma answered. She didn’t sound normal, but I didn’t know if my dad could tell.

I followed the sound of their voices back through the hall. Lucille was sitting at the other end waiting for me, her head tilted to the side. She sat straight like that until I was inches away from her, and then she stood up and sauntered off.

Thanks, Lucille.

She’d done her job, and she was through with me. Probably had a saucer of cream and a fluffy pillow waiting for her in front of the television.

I guessed I wasn’t going to be able to spook her again.

As I rounded the corner, my dad was pouring himself a glass of sweet tea. “Did Ethan call?” Amma stiffened, her cleaver poised over an onion, but my dad didn’t seem to notice. She started chopping.

“Caroline has him busy waitin’ on her. You know how she is, classy and sassy, just like her mamma was.” My dad laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “That’s true, and she’s a terrible patient. She must be driving Ethan crazy.”

My mom and Aunt Prue weren’t kidding. My dad was under the influence of a serious Cast. He had no idea what had happened. I wondered how many of Lena’s family members it took to pull this off.

had happened. I wondered how many of Lena’s family members it took to pull this off.

Amma reached for a carrot, lopping the end off before she even got it on the cutting board. “A broken hip’s a lot worse than the flu, Mitchell.”

“I know—”

“What’s all that racket?” Aunt Mercy called from the living room. “We’re tryin’ ta watch Jeopardy! ”

“Mitchell, get on in here. Mercy’s no good at the music questions.” It was Aunt Grace.

“You’re the one who thinks Elvis Presley is still alive,” Aunt Mercy shot back.

“I most certainly do. He can dance himself a mean jive,” Aunt Grace shouted, catching every third word at best.

“Mitchell, hurry on up. I need a witness. And bring some cake with you.” My dad reached for the Tunnel of Fudge cake on the counter, still warm from the oven. When he disappeared down the hall, Amma stopped chopping and rubbed the worn gold charm of her necklace. She looked sad and broken, cracked like the bottles lined up on the shelves in her bedroom.

“Be sure and let me know if Ethan calls tomorrow,” my dad shouted from the living room.

Amma stared out the window for a long time before she spoke, barely loud enough for me to hear. “He won’t.”

CHAPTER 9

The Stars and Stripes

Leaving Amma behind was like stepping away from a fire on the coldest night of winter. She felt like home, safe and familiar. Like every scolding and every supper I’d ever had, everything that had been me. The closer I was to her, the warmer I felt—but in the end, it made the cold feel that much colder when I walked away.

Was it worth it? Feeling better for a minute or two, knowing that the cold would still be out there waiting?

I wasn’t sure, but for me it wasn’t a choice. I couldn’t stay away from Amma or Lena—and deep down, I didn’t think either one of them wanted me to.

Still, there was a silver lining, even if it was a little tarnished. If Lucille could see me, that was something. I guess it was true what people said about cats seeing spirits. I just never figured I would be the one to prove it.

And then there was Amma. She hadn’t exactly seen me, but she’d known I was there. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I had been able to show her, just like I’d been able to show Lena I was at my grave.

It was exhausting, taking a chunk out of a cake or moving a button a few inches. But it had gotten the message across.

In a way, I was still here in Gatlin, where I belonged. Everything had changed, and I didn’t have the answers for how to fix that. But I hadn’t gone anywhere, not really.

I was here.

I existed.

If only I could find a way to say what I really wanted to say. There was just so much I could do with a Tunnel of Fudge cake and an old cat and a random charm on Lena’s necklace.

To tell you the truth, I was feeling downright woebegone. As in, stuck in the doldrums without a map, Ethan Wate.

W. O. E. B. E. G. O. N. E.

Nine across.

That’s when it came to me. Not so much an idea as a memory—of Amma sitting at our kitchen table, all hunched over her crossword puzzles with a bowl of Red Hots and a pile of extra-sharp #2 pencils. Those puzzles were how she kept things right, figured things out.

In that moment it all came together. The way I saw an opening on the basketball court or figured out the plot at the beginning of a movie.

I knew what I had to do, and I knew where I had to go. It was going to require a little more than scooping out a cake or pushing around a button, but not much more.

More like a few strokes of a pencil.

It was time I paid a visit to the office of The Stars and Stripes , the best and only newspaper in Gatlin County.

I had a crossword puzzle to write.

There wasn’t a single grain of salt lining any window at The Stars and Stripes office, any more than there was a single grain of truth in the paper itself. There were, however, swamp coolers in every window. More swamp coolers than I had ever seen in one building. They were all that remained of a summer so hot that the whole town had almost dried up and blown away, like dead leaves on a magnolia tree.

Still, no charms, no salt, no Bindings or Casts or even a cat. I slipped in as easy as the heat had. A guy could get used to this kind of access.

Inside the office, there wasn’t much more than a few plastic plants, a reenactment calendar that hung crookedly on the wall, and a high linoleum counter. That’s where you stood with your ten dollars when you wanted to put an ad in the paper to hawk your piano lessons or new puppies or the old plaid couch that had been sitting in your basement since 1972.

That was about it until you got behind the counter, where three little desks stood in a row. They were covered with papers—exactly the papers I was looking for. This was what The Stars and Stripes looked like before it became an actual newspaper—when it was still something closer to the town gossip.

“What are you doing in here, Ethan?”

I turned around, startled, my hands up at my sides as if I’d just been busted for breaking and entering—which, in a way, I had.

“Mom?”

She was standing behind me in the empty office, on the other side of the counter.

“Nothing.” It was all I could say. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew how to cross. After all, she was the one who’d helped me find my way back to the Mortal realm.

Still, I hadn’t expected to find her here.

“You’re not doing ‘nothing,’ unless you’ve decided to become a journalist and report on life from the Great Beyond.

Which, considering how many times I tried to get you to join the staff of The Jackson Stonewaller , doesn’t seem likely.” Yeah, okay. I had never wanted to eat my lunch in there with the school newspaper staff. Not when I could be in the lunchroom with Link and the guys from the basketball team. The things I thought were important back then seemed so stupid now.

“No, ma’am.”

“Ethan, please. Why are you here?”

“I guess I could ask you the same question.” My mom shot me a look. “I’m not looking for a job at the paper. I just want to help out on one little section.”

“That’s not a good idea.” She spread her hands on the counter in front of me.

“Why not? You were the one sending me all those Shadowing Songs. It’s practically the same thing. This is just a little more—direct.”

“What are you planning to do? Write Lena a want ad and publish it in the paper? ‘Wanted, one Caster girlfriend.

Preferably named Lena Duchannes’?”

I shrugged. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it could work.”

“You can’t. You can barely pick up a pencil in this realm. You don’t have physics working on your behalf as a Sheer. Around here, picking up a feather is harder than dragging a two-by-four down the street with your pinkie.”

“Can you do it?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

I looked at her meaningfully. “Mom, I want her to know I’m all right. I want her to know I’m here—like you wanted to let me know when you left the code in the books in the study. Now I have to find a way to tell her.” My mom walked around the counter slowly, without saying a word for a long minute. She watched as I moved across the room toward the piles of newsprint.

“Are you sure about this?” She sounded hesitant.

“Are you going to help me or not?”

She came and stood next to me, which was her way of answering. We began to read the next issue of The Stars and Stripes, laid out all over every surface. I leaned over the papers on the nearest desk. “Apparently, the Ladies Auxiliary of Gatlin County is starting a book club called the Read & Giggle.”

“Your Aunt Marian is going to be thrilled to hear that; the last time she tried to start a book club, nobody could agree on a book, and they had to disband after the first meeting.” My mom had a wicked glint in her eye. “But not until they voted to spike the lemonade with a big box of wine. Just about everyone agreed on that.” I kept going. “Well, I hope the Read & Giggle doesn’t end up the same way, but if it does, don’t worry. They’re also starting a table tennis club called the Hit & Giggle.”

“And look at that.” She pointed over my arm. “Their supper club is called the Dine & Giggle.” I stifled a laugh, pointing. “You missed the best one. They’re renaming the Gatlin Cotillion to—wait for it—the Wiggle

& Giggle.”

We went through the rest of the paper, having about as good a time as two Sheers stuck in a small-town newspaper office could ask for. It was like a scrapbook of our life together, all glued onto a whole bunch of newsprint.

The Kiwanis Club was getting ready for its annual pancake breakfast, where the pancakes were raw and liquid in the middle, the way my dad liked them best. Gardens of Eden had won Main Street Window of the Month, which it did pretty much every month, since there weren’t all that many windows on Main anymore.

It only got better as we read on. A wild hen was roosting in the Santa’s sled that Mr. Asher had put up as part of his light-up lawn display, which was awesome, because the Ashers’ holiday displays were infamous. One year Mrs. Asher even put lipstick on Emily’s Baby Cuddles Jesus because she didn’t think his mouth showed up well enough in the dark. When my mom tried to ask her about it with a straight face, Mrs. Asher said, “You can’t just expect to shout hosannas and have everyone get the message, Lila. Lord have mercy, half the folks around here don’t even know what hosanna means.” When my mom pressed her further, it was obvious Mrs. Asher didn’t either. After that, she never invited us to her house again.

The rest of it was the news you’d expect around here, the kind that never changed even when it always changed.

Animal Control had picked up a lost cat; Bud Clayton had won the Carolina Duck-Calling Contest. The Summerville Pawnshop was running a special, Big B’s Vinyl Siding and Windows was shutting down, and the Quik-Chik Leadership Scholarship competition was heating up.

Life goes on, I guess.

Then I saw the page for the crossword puzzle and slid it toward me as quickly as I could. “There.”

“You want to do the crossword puzzle?”

“I don’t want to do it. I want to write one for Amma. If she saw it, she’d tell Lena.” My mom shook her head. “Even if you could manage to get the letters the way you want them on the page, Amma won’t see it. She doesn’t take the paper anymore. Not since you—left. She hasn’t touched one of her puzzles in months.

”

I winced. How could I have forgotten? Amma had said it herself while I was standing in the kitchen at Wate’s Landing.

“What about a letter, then?”

“I’ve tried it a hundred times, but it’s nearly impossible. You can only use what’s already on the page.” She studied the paper in front of us. “Actually, it might work because you can drag the letters around on the draft. See, how they’re laying it out on the table?”

She was right. The way the puzzle worked, the letters were cut into a thousand tiles, like a Scrabble board. All I had to do was move the paper around.

If I was even strong enough to do that.

I looked at my mom, more determined than ever. “Then we’ll use the crossword, and I’ll make Lena see it.” Moving the letters into place was like digging up a rock from the Sisters’ garden, but my mom helped me. She shook her head as we stared at the page. “A crossword puzzle. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” I shrugged. “I’m just not very good at writing songs.”

In its current state, the crossword was barely half-finished, but the staff around here probably wouldn’t mind too much if I helped them along. After all, it looked like the Sunday edition, the biggest day for The Stars and Stripes —at least for the crossword. Between the three of them, they’d probably be relieved that someone else had taken it on this week. I was surprised they didn’t have Amma in here writing the puzzles for them already.

The only hard part would be getting Lena to take an interest in this puzzle at all.

Eleven across.

P. O. ll. T. E. R. G. E. I. S. T.

As in, apparition or phantasm. A spectral being. A spirit from another world. A ghost. The vaguest shadow of a person, the thing that comes to you in the night when you think no one is looking.

In other words, the thing you are, Ethan Wate.

Six down.

G. A. T. ll. I. N.

As in, parochial. Local. Insular. The place we’re stuck, whether in the Otherworld or the Mortal one.

E. T. E. R. N. A. ll.

As in, endless, without stopping, forever. The way you feel about a certain girl, whether you’re dead or alive.

ll. O. V. E.

As in, how I feel about you, Lena Duchannes.

T. R. Y.

As in, as hard as I can, every minute of every day.

As in, I got your message, ll.

Then I felt overwhelmed by the thought of how much I’d lost, of everything that stupid fall off the water tower had cost me, and I lost control and loosened my grip on Gatlin. First my eyes filled, and then the letters blurred away, drifting into nothing as the world vanished beneath my feet and I was gone.

I was crossing back. I tried to remember the words from the scroll—the ones that had brought me here—but my mind couldn’t focus on anything at all.

It was too late.

Darkness surrounded me, and I felt something like wind whipping across my face, howling in my ears. Then I heard my mother’s voice—steady as the grip of her cool hand on mine.

“Ethan, hold on. I’ve got you.”

CHAPTER 10

Snake Eyes

I felt my feet touch something solid, like I had just stepped off a train and onto the platform at the station. I saw the floorboards of our front porch, then my Chucks standing on them. We’d crossed back, leaving the living world behind us.

We were back where we belonged, with the dead.

I didn’t want to think about it like that.

“Well, it’s ’bout time, seein’ as I finished watchin’ all your mamma’s paint dry more than an hour ago.” Aunt Prue was waiting for us in the Otherworld, on the front porch of Wate’s Landing—the one in the middle of the cemetery.

I still wasn’t used to the sight of my house here instead of the mausoleums and weeping angel statues that dominated Perpetual Peace. But standing by the railing, with all three Harlon Jameses sitting at attention around her feet, Aunt Prue looked pretty dominant, too.

More like mad as a hornet.

“Ma’am,” I said, scratching my neck uncomfortably.

“Ethan Wate, I’ve been waitin’ on you. Thought you’d only be gone a minute.” The three dogs looked just as irritated.

Aunt Prue nodded at my mother. “Lila.”

“Aunt Prudence.” They regarded each other warily, which seemed strange to me. They had always gotten along when I was growing up.

I smiled at my aunt, changing the subject. “I did it, Aunt Prue. I crossed. I was… you know, on the other side.”

“You might a let a person know, so they didn’t wait on your porch for the best part a the day.” My aunt waved her handkerchief in my general direction.

“I went to Ravenwood and Greenbrier and Wate’s Landing and The Stars and Stripes .” Aunt Prue raised an eyebrow at me, as if she didn’t believe it.

“Really?”

“Well, not by myself. I mean, with my mom. She might have helped some. Ma’am.” My mom looked amused. Aunt Prue did not.

“Well, if you want a preacher’s chance in Heaven ta get yourself back there, we need ta talk.”

“Prudence,” my mom said in a strange tone. It sounded like a warning.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept talking. “You mean about crossing? Because I think I’m starting to get the hang—”

“Stop yappin’ and start listenin’, Ethan Wate. I’m not talkin’ ’bout practicin’ any crossin’. I’m talkin’ ’bout crossin’

back. For good, ta the old world.”

For a second, I thought she was teasing me. But her expression didn’t change. She was serious—at least as serious as my crazy great-aunt ever was. “What are you talking about, Aunt Prue?”

“Prudence.” My mom said it again. “Don’t do this.”

Don’t do what? Give me a chance to get back there?

Aunt Prue glared at my mother, easing herself down the stairs one orthopedic shoe at a time. I reached out to help her, but she waved me off, stubborn as ever. When she finally made it to the carpet of grass at the base of the stairs, Aunt Prue stepped in front of me. “There’s been a mistake, Ethan. A mighty big one. This wasn’t supposed ta happen.” A tremor of hope washed over me. “What?”

The color drained out of my mom’s face. “Stop.” I thought she was going to pass out. I could barely breathe.

“I won’t,” said Aunt Prue, narrowing her eyes behind her spectacles.

“I thought we decided not to tell him, Prudence.”

“You decided, Lila Jane. I’m too old not ta do as I please.”

“I’m his mother.” My mom wasn’t giving up.

“What’s going on?” I tried to wedge myself between them, but neither one of them would look my way.

Aunt Prue raised her chin. “The boy’s old enough ta decide somethin’ that big on his own, don’tcha think?”

“It’s not safe.” My mom folded her arms. “I don’t mean to be firm with you, but I’m going to have to ask you to go.” I’d never heard my mother talk to any of the Sisters like that. She might as well have declared World War III for the

Wate family. It didn’t seem to stop Aunt Prue, though.

She just laughed. “Can’t put the molasses back in the jar, Lila Jane. You know it’s the truth, and you know you got no right keepin’ it from your boy.” Aunt Prue looked me right in the eye. “I need you ta come on with me. There’s someone you need ta meet.”

My mom just looked at her. “Prudence…”

Aunt Prue gave her the kind of look that could wilt and wither a whole flower bed. “Don’t you Prudence me. You can’t stop this thing. And where we’re goin’ you can’t come, Lila Jane. You know well as I do that we both got nothin’ but the boy’s best interest at heart.”

It was a classic Sisters’ face-off, the kind where before you blinked, you were already past the point where nobody came out ahead.

A second later, my mom backed off. I would never know what happened in that silent exchange between them, and it was probably better that way.

“I’ll wait for you here, Ethan.” My mom looked at me. “But you be careful.” Aunt Prue smiled, victorious.

One of the Harlon Jameses began to growl. Then we took off down the sidewalk so fast I could barely keep up.

I followed Aunt Prue and the yipping dogs to the outer limits of Perpetual Peace—past the Snows’ perfectly restored Federal-style manor house, which was situated in exactly the same spot their massive mausoleum occupied in the cemetery of the living.

“Who died?” I asked, looking at my aunt. Seeing as there wasn’t anything on earth powerful enough to take down Savannah Snow.

“Great-great-grandpappy Snow, ’fore you were even halfway inta diapers. Been here a long time now. Oldest plot in the row.” She picked her way down the stone path that led around back, and I followed.

We headed toward an old shed behind the house, the rotted planks barely holding up the crooked roof. I could see tiny flecks of faded paint clinging to the wood where someone had scraped it clean. There was no amount of scraping that could disguise the shade that trimmed my own house in Gatlin—haint blue. The one shade of blue meant to keep the spirits away.

I guess Amma was right about the haints not caring much for the color. As I looked around, I could already see the difference. There wasn’t a graveyard neighbor in sight.

“Aunt Prue, where are we going? I’ve had enough of the Snows to last more than one lifetime.” She glowered at me. “I told you. We’re goin’ ta call on someone who knows more than me ’bout this mess.” She reached for the splintered handle of the shed. “You just be thankful I’m a Statham, and Stathams get on with all kinds a folks, or we wouldn’t have a soul ta help us sort things out.” I couldn’t look at my aunt. I was too scared I would start laughing, considering she got along with just about no kinds of folks, at least not in the Gatlin I was from.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stepped inside the shed, which didn’t look like anything more than an ordinary shed. But if I’d learned anything from Lena and my experiences in her world, it was that things aren’t always what they seem.

I followed Aunt Prue—and the Harlon Jameses—inside and closed the door behind us. The cracks in the wood let in just enough light for me to see her turn around in the shed. She reached for something in the dim light, and I realized it was another handle.

A hidden Doorwell, like the ones in the Caster Tunnels.

“Where are we going?”

Aunt Prue paused, her hand still resting on the iron pull. “Not all folks are lucky enough ta be buried in His Garden of Perpetual Peace, Ethan Wate. The Casters, I reckon they got as much right ta the Otherworld as we do, don’tcha think?”

Aunt Prue pushed the door open easily, and we stepped out onto a rocky coastline.

There was a house balancing dangerously on the edge of a cliff. The weathered wood was the same sad shade of gray as the rocks, as if it had been painstakingly carved from them. It was small and simple and hidden in plain sight, like so many things in the world I’d left behind.

I watched as the waves crashed against the face of the cliff, reaching toward the house but ultimately failing. This place had stood the test of time, defying nature in a way that seemed impossible.

“Whose house is that?” I offered Aunt Prue my arm, helping her navigate the uneven ground.

“You know what they say about curiosity and cats. May not kill ya, but it’ll get ya inta a heap a trouble around here, too. Though trouble seems ta find you even when you ain’t lookin’ for it.” She gathered her long flowered skirt in her other hand. “You’ll see soon enough.”

She wouldn’t say another word after that.

We climbed a treacherous stairway carved into the side of the cliff. Where the rock wasn’t reinforced with splintering boards, it crumbled away under my feet, and I almost lost my footing. I tried to remind myself that I wasn’t about to go plummeting to my death, seeing as I was already dead. Still, it didn’t help as much as you’d think it would. That was another thing I’d learned from the Caster world: There always seemed to be something worse around the next corner.

There was always something to be afraid of, even if you hadn’t figured out exactly what it was yet.

When we reached the house, all I could think was how much it reminded me of Ravenwood Manor, though the two buildings didn’t resemble each other in any way. Ravenwood was a Greek Revival–style mansion, and this was a single-story clapboard. But the house seemed aware of us as we approached, alive with power and magic, like Ravenwood. It was surrounded by crooked trees with slanted branches that had been beaten into submission by the wind. It looked like the kind of twisted drawing you’d find in a book meant to terrify children into having nightmares. The kind of book where kids were trapped by more than just witches and devoured by more than wolves.

I was thinking it was a good thing I no longer needed to sleep, when my aunt marched up the walk. Aunt Prue didn’t hesitate. She walked right up to the door and pounded the oxidized brass ring three times. There was writing carved around the doorframe. It was Niadic, the ancient language of Casters.

I backed up, letting all the Harlon Jameses go in front of me. They growled their tiny dog growls at the door. Before I had a chance to examine the writing more closely, the door creaked open.

An old man stood in front of us. I assumed he was a Sheer, but that wasn’t a distinction worth making here—we were all spirits of one kind or another. His head was shaved and scarred, faint lines overlapping in a vicious pattern. His white beard was cut short, his eyes covered by dark wraparound glasses.

A black sweater hung from his skinny frame, which was partially hidden behind the door. There was something frail and worn out about him, like he had escaped from a work camp, or worse.

“Prudence.” He nodded. “Is this the boy?”

“ ’Course it is.” Aunt Prue shoved me forward. “Ethan, this here is Obidias Trueblood. Go on in.” I extended my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Obidias held up his right hand, which had been hidden behind the door. “I’m sure you’ll understand if we don’t shake.” His hand was severed at the wrist, a black line marking the place where it had been cut. Above the mark, his wrist was severely scarred, as if it had been punctured over and over again.

Which it had.

Five writhing black snakes extended from his wrist to the point where his fingers would normally have reached.

They were hissing and striking at the air, curling around one another.

“Don’t worry,” Obidias said. “They won’t hurt you. It’s me they enjoy tormenting.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to run.

The Harlon Jameses growled even more loudly, and the snakes hissed back. Aunt Prue scowled at all of them.

“Puh-lease. Not you, too.”

I stared at the snake hand. Something about it was familiar. How many guys with snakes for fingers could there be? Why did I feel like I knew him?

It hit me, and I realized who Obidias was—the guy Macon had sent Link to see in the Tunnels. Last summer, right after the Seventeenth Moon. The guy who’d died right in front of Link after Hunting bit him, in his house, this house—at least the Otherworld version of it. Back then I thought Link was exaggerating, but he wasn’t.

Not even Link could have made this up.

The snake that replaced Obidias’ thumb wrapped itself around his wrist, stretching its head toward me. Its tongue flicked in and out, the little fork flying.

Aunt Prue pushed me across the threshold, and I went stumbling, only inches from the snakes. “Go on in. You aren’t afraid of a few itty-bitty little garden snakes, are you?”

Was she kidding? They looked like pit vipers.

I turned awkwardly toward Obidias. “I’m sorry, sir. It—they just caught me off guard.”

“Don’t give it another thought.” He waved off the apology with a twist of the wrist on his good hand. “It’s not something you see every day.”

Aunt Prue sniffed. “I’ve seen a stranger thing or two.” I stared at my aunt, who looked as smug as if she shook a new snake hand every day of her life.

Obidias closed the door behind us, but not before checking the horizon in every direction. “You came alone? You weren’t followed?”

Aunt Prue shook her head. “Me? Nobody can follow me.” She wasn’t kidding.

I looked back to Obidias. “Can I ask you something, sir?” I had to know for sure if he’d met Link, if he was the same guy.

“Of course.”

I cleared my throat. “I think you met a friend of mine. When you were alive, I mean. He told me about someone who looked like you.”

Obidias held out his hand. “You mean a man with five snakes for a hand? There probably aren’t many of us.” I wasn’t sure how to say the next part. “If it was my friend, he was there when you—you know. Died. I’m not sure it matters, but if it does, I’d like to know.”

Aunt Prue looked at me, confused. She didn’t know any of this. Link had never told anyone but me, as far as I knew.

Obidias was watching me, too. “Did this friend of yours happen to know Macon Ravenwood?” I nodded. “He did, sir.”

“Then I remember him well.” He smiled. “I saw him deliver my message to Macon after I passed. You can see a great deal from this side.”

“I guess so.” He was right. Because we were dead, we could see everything. And because we were dead, it didn’t matter what we could see. So the whole seeing-things-from-the-grave concept? Majorly overrated. All you ended up seeing was more than you wanted to in the first place.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the first guy who would’ve traded seeing a little less for living a little more. I didn’t say that to Edward Snakehands, though. I didn’t want to think about how much I had in common with a guy whose fingers had fangs.

“Why don’t we make ourselves more comfortable? We have a lot to talk about.” Obidias ushered us further into the living room—really the only room I could see, except for a small kitchen and a lone door at the end of the hall, which must have led to the bedroom.

It was basically one gigantic library. Shelves extended from the floor to the ceiling, a battered brass library ladder attached to the highest shelf. A polished wooden stand held a huge leather volume, like the dictionary we had in the Gatlin County Library. Marian would’ve loved this place.

There was nothing else in the room aside from four threadbare armchairs. Obidias waited for Aunt Prue and me to sit down before he chose a chair opposite ours. He removed the dark glasses he was wearing, and his eyes locked on mine.

I should have known.

Yellow eyes.

He was a Dark Caster. Of course.

That made sense, if he really was the guy from Link’s story. But still, now that I thought about it, what was Aunt Prue doing, taking me to see a Dark Caster?

Obidias must have realized what I was thinking. “You didn’t think there were Dark Casters here, did you?” I shook my head. “No, sir. I guess I didn’t.”

“Surprise.” Obidias smiled grimly.

Aunt Prue swooped in to save me. “The Otherworld’s a place for unfinished business. For folks like me and you and Obidias here, who aren’t ready ta move on just yet.”

“And my mom?”

She nodded. “Lila Jane more than anyone. She’s been kickin’ around here longer than the whole lot a us.”

“Some can cross freely between this world and others,” Obidias explained. “We all eventually get to our destination.

But those of us whose lives were cut short before we could right the wrongs haunting us, we remain here until we find that moment of peace.”

He didn’t have to tell me. I already knew it for myself—crossing was complicated business. And I hadn’t felt anything remotely peaceful. Not yet.

I turned to Aunt Prue. “So you’re stuck here, too? I mean, when you aren’t crossing back to visit the Sisters?

Because of me?”

“I can leave if I set my mind ta it.” She patted my hand, as if to remind me I was silly to think there was ever anyone or anything that could keep my aunt from a place she wanted to go. “But I’m not goin’ anywhere till you’re back home, where you belong. You’re a part a my unfinished business now, Ethan, and I ’cept that. I mean ta make things right.” She patted my cheek. “Besides, what else am I gonna do? I got myself Mercy and Grace ta wait for, don’t I?”

“Back home? You mean to Gatlin?”

“Ta Miss Amma, and Lena, and all our kin,” she answered.

“Aunt Prue, I could barely cross to visit Gatlin, and even then nobody could see me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, boy.” Obidias spoke up, and one of his angry-looking snakes sank its fangs into his wrist. He winced, pulling a piece of black material shaped like a mitten out of his pocket. He dropped the hood over the hissing snakes, using two pieces of cord at the bottom to tighten it. The snakes shifted and thrashed beneath the fabric.

“Now, where was I?”

“Are you okay?” I was a little distracted. It’s not every day that a guy, or even a Sheer, gets bitten by his own hand.

At least I hoped it wasn’t.

But Obidias didn’t want to talk about himself. “When I heard about the circumstances that brought you to this side of the veil, I sent word to your aunt immediately. Your aunt and your mother.” My Aunt Prue clicked her tongue impatiently.

That explained my aunt wanting to bring me here—and my mother not wanting her to. Just because you told any two people in my family the same piece of news, that didn’t mean they’d agree about what they’d heard. My mom used to say the people in the Evers family were about the most hog-minded, mule-stuck bloodline you could find—and the Wates were worse. A pack of wasps fighting over the nest—that’s what my dad called the Wate family reunions.

“How did you hear about what happened?” I tried not to stare at the snakes twisting beneath the black hood.

“News travels fast in the Otherworld,” he said, hesitating. “More importantly, I knew it was a mistake.”

“I told you, Ethan Wate.” Aunt Prue looked mighty satisfied.

If it was a mistake—if I wasn’t supposed to be here—maybe there was a way to fix it. Maybe I really could go home.

I wanted so badly for it to be true, the same way I had wanted this to be a dream I could wake up from. But I knew better.

Nothing was ever how you wanted it to be. Not anymore. Not for me.

They just didn’t understand.

“It wasn’t a mistake. I chose to come, Mr. Trueblood. I worked it out with the Lilum. If I didn’t, the people I loved, and lots of others, were going to die.”

Obidias nodded. “I know all of that, Ethan. Just like I know about the Lilum and the Order of Things. I’m not questioning what you did. What I’m saying is that you never should’ve had to make that choice. It wasn’t in the Chronicles.”

“The Caster Chronicles ?” I had only seen the book once, in the archive when the Council of the Far Keep came to question Marian, yet it was the second time I’d heard the subject come up since I got here. How did Obidias know about it? And whatever any of it meant, my mom hadn’t exactly wanted to elaborate.

“Yes.” Obidias nodded.

“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

He was silent for a moment.

“Go on, tell him.” Aunt Prue was giving Obidias Trueblood the same forceful look she always gave me right before she made me do something crazy, like bury acorns in her yard for baby squirrels. “He deserves ta know. Set it right.” Obidias nodded at Aunt Prue and looked back at me with those golden-yellow eyes that made my skin crawl almost as much as his snake hand did. “As you know, The Caster Chronicles is a record of everything that has happened in the world. But it is also a record of what might be—possible futures that have not come to pass.”

“The past, the present, and the future. I remember.” The three weird-looking Keepers I saw in the library and during Marian’s trial. How could I forget?

“Yes. In the Far Keep, those futures can be altered, transforming them from possible futures to actual ones.”

“Are you saying the book can change the future?” I was stunned. Marian had never mentioned any of this.

“It can,” Obidias answered. “If a page is altered, or one is added. A page that was never intended to be there.” A shiver moved up my back. “What are you saying, Mr. Trueblood?”

“The page that tells the story of your death was never part of the original Chronicles. It was added.” He looked up at me, haunted.

“Why would someone do that?”

“There are more reasons for people’s actions than the number of actions that are actually set in motion.” His voice was distant, full of regret and sorrow I would never have expected from a Dark Caster. “The important thing is that your fate—this fate—can be changed.”

Changed? Could you save a life once it was over?

I was terrified to ask the next question, to believe there was a way I could get back to everything I lost. To Gatlin. To Amma.

Lena.

All I wanted was to feel her in my arms and hear her voice in my head. I wanted to find a way back to the Caster girl I loved more than anything in this world, or any world.

“How?” The answer didn’t actually matter. I would do whatever I had to, and Obidias Trueblood knew it.

“It’s dangerous.” Obidias’ expression was a warning. “More dangerous than anything in the Mortal world.” I heard the words, but I couldn’t believe them. There was nothing more terrifying than staying here. “What do I have to do?”

“You’ll have to destroy your own page in The Caster Chronicles . The one that describes your death.” I had a thousand questions, but only one mattered. “What if you’re wrong, and my page was there all along?” Obidias stared down at what was left of his hand, the snakes rearing and striking even under the cloth. A shadow passed across his face.

He raised his eyes to meet mine.

“I know it wasn’t there, Ethan. Because I’m the one who wrote it.”

CHAPTER 11

Darker Things

The room went quiet, so quiet you could hear the house creak as the wind pushed against it. So quiet you could hear the snakes hiss almost as loudly as Aunt Prue’s asthma and my pounding heart. Even the Harlon Jameses slunk away, whimpering behind a chair.

For a second, I couldn’t think. My mind was completely blank.

There was no way to process this—to understand why a man I had never met would change the course of my life, so irreparably and violently.

What the hell did I do to this guy?

I finally found the words, at least some of them. There were others I couldn’t say in front of Aunt Prue, or she’d wash my mouth out with more than soap and probably make me suck down a bottle of Tabasco, too. “Why? You don’t even know me.”

“It’s complicated—”

“Complicated?” My voice started rising, and I pulled myself up out of my chair. “You ruined my life. You forced me to choose between saving the people I loved and sacrificing myself. I hurt everyone I care about. They had to put a Cast on my own father to keep him from going crazy!”

“I’m sorry, Ethan. I wouldn’t have wished this on my worst enemy.”

“No. You just wished it on some seventeen-year-old kid you’d never met.” This guy wasn’t going to help me. He was the reason I was stuck in this nightmare in the first place.

Aunt Prue reached out and took my hand. “I know you’re angry, and you’ve got more right than anyone ta be. But Obidias can help us get you back home. So you need ta sit down here and listen ta what he’s got ta say.”

“How do you know we can trust him, Aunt Prue? Every word that comes out of his mouth is probably a lie.” I pulled my hand away.

“You listen here, and you listen good.” She yanked on my arm harder than I would’ve expected, and I sank back down into the chair next to her. She wanted me to look her in the eye. “I’ve known Obidias Trueblood since before he was Light or Dark, before he’d done wrong or right. Spent the better part a my days walkin’ the Caster Tunnels with the True bloods and my daddy.” Aunt Prue paused and glanced at Obidias. “And he saved me a time or two down there.

Even if he wasn’t smart enough ta save himself.”

I didn’t know what to think. Maybe my aunt had charted the Tunnels with Obidias. Maybe she could trust him.

But that didn’t mean I could.

Obidias seemed to know what I was thinking. “Ethan, you may find this hard to believe, but I know what it’s like to feel helpless—to be at the mercy of decisions that you didn’t make.”

“You have no idea how I feel.” I heard the anger in my voice, but I didn’t try to hide it. I wanted Obidias Trueblood to know I hated him for what he’d done to me and the people I loved.

I thought about Lena leaving the button on my grave. He didn’t know what that felt like—for me or Lena.

“Ethan, I know you don’t trust him, and I don’t blame you.” Aunt Prue was playing hardball now. This meant something to her. “But I’m askin’ you ta trust me and hear him out.”

I locked eyes with Obidias. “Start talking. How do I get back?”

Obidias took a long breath. “As I said, the only way to get your life back is to erase your death.”

“So if I destroy the page, I go home—right?” I wanted to be sure there were no loopholes.

No calling a moon out of time, no splitting the moon in half. No curses that kept me from leaving, once the page was gone.

He nodded. “Yes. But first you have to get to the book.”