Beautiful Redemption

“You mean from the Far Keep? The Keepers had it with them when they came for my Aunt Marian.”

“That’s right.” He looked at me, startled. I guess he hadn’t expected me to know anything about The Caster Chronicles.

“So what are we doing sitting around here talking? Let’s get on with it.” I was halfway out of my chair before I realized Obidias wasn’t moving.

“And you think you’ll just walk in there and take the page?” he asked. “It’s not that easy.”

“Who’s going to stop me? A bunch of Keepers? What do I have to lose?” I tried not to think about how terrifying they had seemed when they came for Marian.

Obidias pulled the hood off his hand, and the snakes hissed and struck one another. “Do you know who did this to me? A ‘bunch of Keepers’ who caught me trying to steal my page from the Chronicles.”

“Lord have mercy,” Aunt Prue said, fanning herself with her handkerchief.

For a second, I didn’t know if I believed him. But I recognized the emotion playing out on his face, because I was feeling it myself.

Fear.

“Keepers did that to you?”

He nodded. “Angelus and Adriel. On one of their more generous days.” I wondered if Adriel was the big one who had shown up in the archive with Angelus and the albino woman. They were the three strangest-looking people I’d seen in the Caster world. At least until today.

I looked at Obidias and his snakes.

“Like I said, what can they do to me now? I’m already dead.” I tried to smile, even though it wasn’t funny. It was the opposite of funny.

Obidias held out his hand, the snakes jerking and stretching as they tried to reach me. “There are things worse than death, Ethan. Things that are darker than the Dark Casters. I should know. If you are caught, the Keepers will never let you leave the library at the Far Keep. You will be their scribe and their slave, forced to rewrite the futures of innocent Casters… and Mortal Waywards who are Bound to them.”

“Waywards are supposed to be pretty rare. How many can there be to write about?” I had never met another one, and I’d met Vexes and Incubuses and more kinds of Casters than I ever wanted to.

Obidias leaned forward in his chair, cloaking his cruelly deformed hand once again. “Perhaps they aren’t as rare as you think. Maybe they just don’t live long enough for the Casters to find them.” There was an undeniable truth in his words that I couldn’t explain. I guess there was some part of me that knew a lie would have sounded different. Another part knew I’d always been in danger, one way or another—with or without Lena.

Whether I was meant to jump off a water tower or not.

Either way, the fear in his voice should’ve been proof enough.

“Okay. So I won’t get caught.”

Aunt Prue’s face was filled with concern. “Maybe this isn’t the best idea. We should go on back ta my house and think on it. Talk ta your mamma about it. She’s waitin’ on us, I reckon.” I squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Aunt Prue. I know a way in. There’s a Temporis Porta in an old tunnel beneath Wate’s Landing. I can get in and out before the Keepers ever realize I was there.” If I could walk through walls in the Mortal realm, I was pretty sure I could step through the Temporis Porta, too.

Obidias broke the end off a thick cigar. His hand was shaking as he lit the match and held it up. He took a few puffs, until it glowed a steady orange. “You can’t enter the library at the Far Keep through the Mortal realm. You have to enter through the seam.” He delivered the news as calmly as if he was giving me directions to the local Stop & Steal, to pick up some milk.

“You mean the Great Barrier?” It seemed like a strange place for a door to the Far Keep’s inner sanctum. “I can handle it. I did it once, and I can do it again.”

“What you’ve done is nothing compared to what you’re about to do. The Great Barrier is just one place you can get to from the seam,” Obidias explained. “You can cross into other worlds from there that will make the Barrier feel like home.”

“Just tell me how to get there.” We were wasting time, and every second we sat around talking was another second away from Lena.

“You have to cross the Great River. It runs through the Great Barrier, all the way to the seam. It forms the border between the realms.”

“Like the River Styx?”

He ignored me. “And you can’t cross unless you have the river eyes—two smooth black stones.”

“Are you kidding?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. They’re very rare and hard to come by.”

“River eyes. Got it. I can find a couple rocks.”

“If you get across the river, and that’s a big if, you’ll still have to make it past the Gatekeeper before you can get into the library.”

“How do I do that?”

Obidias took a puff from the cigar. “You have to offer him something he can’t refuse.”

“What exactly would that be?” Aunt Prue asked, as though she might have whatever it was tucked in her pocketbook. Like the Gatekeeper would be interested in three linty breath mints, some nondairy creamer, and a wad of folded-up Kleenex.

“It’s always different. You’ll have to figure it out when you get there,” Obidias said. “He has… eclectic taste.” He didn’t say any more on the subject.

An offering. Eclectic taste. Whatever the hell that meant.

“Okay. So I have to find the black stones and get across the Great River,” I said. “Figure out what the Gatekeeper guy wants and give it to him to get inside the library. Then find The Caster Chronicles and destroy my page.” I paused, because the question I was about to ask was the most important detail, and I wanted to get it straight. “If I do all that and don’t get caught, I’ll get back home—my real home? How do I do that? What happens after I destroy the page?” Obidias looked at Aunt Prue and back to me. “I’m not sure. It’s never happened, as far as I know.” He shook his head. “It’s a chance, nothing more. And not even a good one…”

“Nothin’s certain, Ethan Wate, ’cept for that you had a shot at a life a your own, and the Keepers stole it from you.” I stood up before they could finish talking.

Lena was waiting, in my room or hers, by the crooked cross stuck in the grass at my gravesite or somewhere else.

But she was waiting—that’s what mattered.

If I had a chance in hell to get back home, I’d take it.

I’m trying, ll. Don’t give up on me.

“I need to get going, Mr. Trueblood. I have a river to cross.”

Aunt Prue opened her pocketbook and pulled out a faded map, covered with shapes that didn’t represent any continent, country, or state I’d ever seen. This was more than a doodle on the back of an old church program. I knew what Aunt Prue’s maps were like, and I knew how important they had been to me before—the last time I found my way to the seam, for Lena’s Seventeenth Moon.

“I’ve been workin’ on it since I got here, jus’ a little bit here and there. Obidias told me you’d be needin’ it.” She shrugged. “Reckoned it was the least I could do.”

I leaned down and hugged her. “Thanks, Aunt Prue. And don’t be worried.”

“I’m not,” she lied. But she didn’t need to be.

I was worried enough for both of us.

CHAPTER 12

Still Here

After we got back to our side of the Otherworld—Harlon Jameses and all—I didn’t go home. I left Aunt Prue at her house and walked the streets—more like the rows—of His Garden of Perpetual Peace.

Peace wasn’t exactly what I was feeling.

I stopped in front of Wate’s Landing. It looked every bit the same as when I left, and I knew my mom was inside. I wanted to talk to her. But there were other things I had to do first.

I sat down on the front steps, closing my eyes.

“Carry me home.”

What was it?

To remember. And be remembered.

Ducite me domum.

Ut meminissem.

Ut in memoria tenear.

I remember Lena.

Not the water tower.

What came before.

I remember Ravenwood.

Let Ravenwood remember me.

Let Ravenwood—

Carry me—

I was lying in the dirt in front of Ravenwood, half-stuck beneath a rosebush and an overgrown camellia hedge. I had crossed again—and this time, all on my own.

“I’ll be damned.” I laughed, relieved. I was getting pretty good at this whole being-dead thing.

Then I practically ran up the old veranda steps. I had to see if Lena had gotten the message—my message. My only problem was that no one bothered to do the crossword in The Stars and Stripes , not even Amma. I had to find a way to get them to look at that paper, if they hadn’t already.

Lena wasn’t in her room, and she wasn’t at my grave either. She wasn’t in any of the usual places we used to go.

Not in the lemon grove or the crypt, where I’d died the first time.

I even looked in Ridley’s old room, where Liv was asleep in Ridley’s creaking four-poster bed. I was hoping she’d be able to sense that I was there with her Ethan Wate–ometer. No such luck. That’s when I realized it was nighttime in Gatlin, the real Gatlin, and there was absolutely no correlation between time that passed in the Otherworld and Mortal time. I felt like I’d only been gone a few hours—and here it was, the middle of the night.

I didn’t even know what day it was, come to think of it.

Worse yet, when I leaned over Liv’s face in the moonlight, it looked like she had been crying. I felt guilty, since there was a strong possibility I was the reason for the tears, unless she and John had had a fight.

But that was unlikely, because when I looked down, I was standing right in the middle of John Breed’s chest. He was curled up next to the bed, on the worn pink shag carpeting.

Poor guy. As many times as he had screwed up in the past, he was good to Liv, and for a while he believed he was the One Who Is Two. It’s hard to hold a grudge against a guy who tried to give his life to save the world. If anyone understood that, it was me.

It wasn’t his fault the world wouldn’t have him.

So I stepped off his chest as quickly as I could, and vowed to be a little more careful where I put my feet in the future. Not that he’d ever know.

As I moved through the rest of the house it seemed completely vacant. Then I heard the crackling of a fireplace and followed the sound. At the bottom of the stairs, straight off the front hall, I found Macon sitting in his cracked leather chair by the fire. True to form, where there was Macon, there was also Lena. She was sitting at his feet, leaning against the ottoman. I could smell the Sharpie she was writing with. Her notebook lay open on her lap, but she was barely looking at it. Drawing circles over and over, until the page looked like it was ripping apart.

She wasn’t crying—far from it.

She was plotting.

“It was Ethan. It had to be. I could feel him there with us, like he was standing right next to his grave.” Had she seen the crossword? Maybe that was why she was so fired up. I looked around the study, but if she’d read the paper, there was no sign of it. A stack of old newspapers filled a brass bin next to the fireplace; Macon used them for kindling. I tried to lift a single page of newsprint, and I could barely make a corner flutter.

I wondered if I would’ve been able to figure out the crossword without a more experienced Sheer like my mom helping me.

Amma didn’t need to worry so much about the haint blue and the salt and the charms. This whole haunting thing wasn’t as easy as it was cracked up to be.

Then I noticed how sad Macon looked, studying Lena’s face. I gave up on the newspaper and focused harder on their conversation.

“You may have felt the essence of him, Lena. A burial site is a powerful place, no doubt.”

“I don’t mean I felt something, Uncle Macon. I felt him. Ethan, the Sheer. I’m sure of it.” The smoke from the fire curled out from the grating. Boo lay with his head in Lena’s lap, the flames reflecting in his dark eyes.

“Because a button fell onto his grave?” Macon’s voice didn’t change, but he sounded tired. I wondered how many of these conversations he’d endured since I died.

“No. Because he moved it.” Lena didn’t give up.

“What about the wind? What about someone else? Wesley could have bumped it off, considering he is not the most graceful of creatures.”

“It was only a week ago. I remember it perfectly. I know it happened.” She was even more stubborn than he was.

A week ago?

Had that much time passed in Gatlin?

Lena hadn’t seen the paper. She couldn’t prove I was still here, not to herself or my family or even my best friend.

There was no way to explain about Obidias Trueblood and all the complications in my life, not while she didn’t even know I was in the room with her.

“What about since then?” Macon asked.

She looked troubled. “Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he’s up to something. I don’t know how it works in the Otherworld.” Lena stared into the fire as if she was looking for something. “It’s not just me. I went to see Amma. She said she felt him in the house.”

“Amma’s feelings are not to be trusted when it comes to Ethan.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course Amma can be trusted. She’s the most trustworthy person I know.” Lena looked furious, and I wondered how much she actually knew about that night at the water tower.

He didn’t say a word.

“Isn’t she?”

Macon closed his book. “I can’t see the future. I’m not a Seer. All I know is Ethan did what needed to be done. The whole realm—Dark and Light—will always be grateful to him.”

Lena stood up, ripping the ink-stained page from her notebook. “Well, I’m not. I understand he was very brave and noble and whatever, but he left me here, and I’m not sure it was worth it. I don’t care about the universe and the realm and saving the world, not anymore. Not without Ethan.”

She tossed the ripped page into the fire. The orange flames leaped up around it.

Uncle Macon spoke as he watched the fire. “I understand.”

“Really?” Lena didn’t seem to believe him.

“There was a time when I put my heart above all else.”

“And what happened?”

“I don’t know. I got older, I suppose. And I learned that things often are more complicated than we think.” Leaning against the mantel, Lena stared into the fire.

“Maybe you just forgot what it feels like.”

“Perhaps.”

“I won’t.” She looked at her uncle. “I won’t ever forget.”

She twisted her hand, and the smoke rose up until it curled around her and took shape. It was a face. It was my face.

“Lena.”

My face disappeared at the sound of Macon’s voice, fading away into streaks of gray cloud.

“Leave me alone. Let me have what little I can, what I have left of him.” She sounded fierce, and I loved her for it.

“Those are only memories.” There was sadness in Macon’s voice. “You have to move on. Trust me.”

“Why? You never did.”

He smiled sadly, staring past her into the fire. “That’s how I know.” I followed Lena up the stairs. Though the ice and snow had melted away since my last visit to Ravenwood, a thick gray fog hung throughout the house, and the air was colder.

Lena didn’t seem to notice or care what was going on around her, even though her breath was curling up toward her face in a quiet white cloud. I noticed the dark rings under her eyes, the way she looked as thin and as frail as she had when Macon died. She wasn’t the same person she had been then, though—she was someone much stronger.

She had believed Macon was gone forever, and we found a way to bring him back. I knew deep down she couldn’t hold out for any less of a fate for me.

Maybe Lena didn’t know I was here, but she knew I wasn’t gone. She wasn’t giving up on me yet. She couldn’t.

I knew, because if I was the one left behind, I couldn’t have either.

Lena slipped into her room, past the pile of suitcases, and crawled into bed without even taking off her clothes. She waved her fingers, and her door slammed shut. I lay down next to her, my face on the edge of her pillow. We were only inches apart.

The tears began to roll down her face, and I thought my heart would break, just watching her.

I love you, ll. I always will.

I closed my eyes and reached for her. I wished, desperately, that there was something I could do. There had to be some way I could let her know I was still here.

I love you, Ethan. I won’t forget you. I’ll never forget you, and I’ll never stop loving you.

I heard her voice uncurl inside my head. When I opened my eyes, she was staring right through me.

“Never,” she whispered.

“Never,” I said.

I wrapped my fingers in the curls of black hair and waited until she fell asleep. I could feel her nestled up next to me.

I had to make sure she found that newspaper.

As I followed Lena down the stairs the next morning, I was starting to feel a) like some kind of stalker and b) like I was losing my mind. Kitchen sent out as big a breakfast as ever—but thankfully, now that the Order wasn’t broken and the world wasn’t about to end, the food wasn’t so raw that the sight of it made you want to throw up.

Macon was waiting for Lena at the table, and he was already digging in. I still wasn’t used to the sight of him eating.

There were biscuits this morning, baked with so much butter it came bubbling up through cracks in the dough. Thick slices of bacon crowded against an Amma-sized mountain of scrambled eggs. Berries piled inside a big piece of pastry crust that Link, before his Linkubus days, would have swallowed whole in one bite.

Then I saw it. The Stars and Stripes was folded at the bottom of a whole stack of newspapers—from about as many countries as I could name.

I reached for the paper just as Macon reached for the coffeepot, shoving his hand right through my chest. It felt cold and strange, like I’d swallowed a piece of ice. Maybe like brain freeze from an ICEE, only in my heart rather than in my head.

I grabbed the paper with both hands and pulled on it as hard as I could. One edge slowly peeked out from beneath the pile.

Not good enough.

I looked up at Macon and Lena. Macon had his head buried in a newspaper called ll’Express, which looked like it was written in French. Lena had her eyes glued to her plate, like the eggs were going to reveal an important truth.

Come on, ll. It’s right here. I’m right here.

I yanked the paper harder, and it slid all the way out from the pile and fluttered onto the floor.

Neither one of them looked up.

Lena stirred milk into her tea. I reached for her hand with mine, squeezing it until she dropped the spoon, splashing tea onto the tablecloth.

Lena stared at her teacup, flexing her fingers. She leaned down to blot the tablecloth with her napkin. Then she noticed the paper on the floor, where it had landed next to her foot.

“What’s this?” She picked up The Stars and Stripes . “I didn’t know you subscribed to this paper, Uncle M.”

“I do. I find it’s helpful to know what’s going on in town. You wouldn’t want to miss, I don’t know, the latest diabolical plan of Mrs. Lincoln and the Ladies Auxiliary.” He smiled. “Where would the fun be in that?” I held my breath.

She tossed it over, facedown on the table.

The crossword was on the back. The Sunday edition, just like I’d planned it back in the office of The Stars and Stripes.

She smiled to herself. “Amma would do this crossword in about five minutes.” Macon looked up. “Less than that, I’m sure. I believe I could do it in three.”

“Really?”

“Try me.”

“Eleven across,” she said. “Apparition or phantasm. A spectral being. A spirit from another world. A ghost.” Macon looked at her, his eyes narrowing.

Lena leaned over the paper, holding her tea. I watched as she began to read.

Figure it out, ll. Please.

It was only when the teacup began to shake and fell to the carpet that I knew she’d gotten it—not the crossword but the message behind it.

“Ethan?” She looked up. I leaned closer, holding my cheek against hers. I knew she couldn’t feel it; I wasn’t back with her, not yet. But I knew she believed I was there, and for now that’s all that mattered.

Macon stared at her, surprised.

The chandelier above the table began to sway. The room brightened until it was blindingly white. The enormous dining room windows began to crack into hundreds of glass spiderwebs. Heavy drapes flew against the walls like feathers in the wind.

“Darling,” Macon began.

Lena’s hair curled in every direction. I closed my eyes as window after window began to shatter like fireworks.

Ethan?

I’m here.

Above everything, that was all I needed her to know.

Finally.

CHAPTER 13

Where the Crow Carries You

Lena knew I was there. It was hard to drag myself away, but she had figured out the truth. That was the main thing.

Amma and Lena. I was two for two. It was a start.

And I was exhausted.

Now I had to find my way back to her for good. I crossed back in about ten seconds flat. If only the rest of the way was that easy.

I knew I should go home and tell my mom everything, but I also knew how worried she’d be about me going to the Far Keep. From what Genevieve and my mom and Aunt Prue and Obidias Trueblood had said, the Far Keep seemed like the last place a person would voluntarily go.

Especially a person with a mother.

I cataloged everything I needed to do, everywhere I needed to go. The river. The book. The river eyes—two smooth black stones. That’s what Obidias Trueblood said I needed. My mind kept going back to it, over and over.

How many smooth black stones could there be in the world? And how was I going to know which ones happened to be the eyes of the river, whatever that even meant?

Maybe I’d find them on the way. Or maybe I’d already found them, and I didn’t even know it.

A magical black rock, the eye of the river.

It sounded strangely familiar. Had I heard it before?

I thought back to Amma, to all the charms, every tiny bone, every bit of graveyard dirt and salt, every piece of string she’d given me to wear.

Then I remembered.

It wasn’t one of Amma’s charms. It was from the vision I saw when I opened the bottle in her room.

I had seen the stone hanging around Sulla’s neck. Sulla the Prophet. In the vision Amma had called it “the eye.” The river’s eye.

Which meant I knew where to find it and how to get there—as long as I could figure out how to find my way to Wader’s Creek on this side.

It couldn’t be avoided, intimidating as it was. It was time to pay a visit to the Greats.

I unfolded Aunt Prue’s map. Now that I knew how to read the map, it wasn’t that hard to see where the Doorwells were marked. I found the red X on the Doorwell that led to Obidias’ place—the one at the Snow family crypt—so after that I went looking for every red mark I could find.

There were plenty of red Xs, but which of those Doorwells would take me to Wader’s Creek? Their destinations weren’t exactly marked like exits on the interstate—and I didn’t want to stumble into any of the surprises that could be waiting for a guy behind Otherworld door number three.

Snakes for fingers might be getting off easy.

There had to be some kind of logic. I didn’t know what connected the Doorwell behind the Snow family plot to the rocky path that had taken me to Obidias Trueblood, but there had to be something. Seeing as we were all related to one another around here, that something was probably blood.

What would connect one of these plots in His Garden of Perpetual Peace to the Greats? If there was a liquor store in the graveyard—or a buried coffin full of Uncle Abner’s Wild Turkey, or the ruins of a haunted bakery known for lemon meringue pie—he wouldn’t have been far behind me.

But Wader’s Creek had its own graveyard. There wasn’t a crypt or a plot for Ivy, Abner, Sulla, or Delilah in Perpetual Peace.

Then I found a red X behind what my mom had said was one of the oldest tribute markers in the graveyard, and I knew it had to be the one.

So I folded up the map and decided to check it out.

Minutes later, I found myself staring at a white marble obelisk.

Sure enough, the word SACRED was carved into the crumbling veined stone, right above a gloomy-looking skull with empty eyes that stared at you straight on. I never understood why a single creepy skull marked a handful of Gatlin’s oldest graves. But we all knew about this particular tribute, even though it was tucked away on the far edge of Perpetual Peace, where the heart of the old graveyard sat, long before the new one was built up around it.

The Confederate Needle—that’s what folks around Gatlin called it, not because of its pointed shape but because of the ladies who had put it there. Katherine Cooper Sewell, who founded the Gatlin chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution—probably not long after the Revolution itself—had seen to it that the DAR raised enough money for the obelisk before she died.

She had married Samuel Sewell.

Samuel Sewell had built and run the Palmetto Brewery, the first distillery in Gatlin County. Palmetto Brewery made one thing and one thing only.

Wild Turkey.

“Pretty smart,” I said, circling to the back of the obelisk, where the twisted wrought iron fencing bowed and broke into pieces. I didn’t know if I would’ve been able to see it back home, but here in the Otherworld, the trapdoor of a Doorwell cut into the base of the rock was plain as day. The rectangular outline of the entrance snaked between rows of engraved shells and angels.

I pressed my hand against the soft stone and felt it give way beneath me, swinging from sunlight into shadow.

A dozen uneven stone steps later, I found myself on what sounded like a gravel pathway. I made my way around a turn in the passage and caught sight of light pooling in the distance. As I got closer, I smelled swamp grass and waterlogged palmettos. There was no mistaking that smell.

This was the right place.

I reached a warped wooden door, propped halfway open. Nothing could keep out the light now—or the hot, sticky air, which only got hotter and stickier as I climbed the steps on the other side of the door.

Wader’s Creek was waiting for me. I couldn’t see past the first fringe of tall cypress trees, but I knew it was there.

If I followed the muddy path in front of me, I would find my way to Amma’s home away from home.

I pushed through the palmetto branches and saw a row of tiny houses, just off the edge of the water.

The Greats. It had to be.

As I made my way down the path, I heard voices. On the nearest veranda, three women were crowded around a table with a deck of cards. They were fussing and swatting at one another the way the Sisters did when they played Scrabble.

I recognized Twyla from a distance. I suspected she was going to join the Greats when she died on the night of the Seventeenth Moon. Still, it was strange to see her here, hanging out on the porch and playing cards with them.

“Now, you can’t throw that card, Twyla, and you know it. You think I can’t see you cheatin’?” A woman in a colorful shawl pushed the card back toward Twyla.

“Now, Sulla. You may be a Seer, cher . But there’s nothin’ there to see,” Twyla responded.

Sulla. That’s who she was. Now I recognized her from the vision—Sulla the Prophet, Amma’s most famous ancestor of all.

“Well, I think you’re both cheatin’.” The third woman tossed her cards down and adjusted her round glasses. Her shawl was bright yellow. “And I don’t want ta play with either one a you.” I tried not to laugh, but the scene was too familiar; I might as well be home.

“Don’t you be such a sourpuss, Delilah.” Sulla wagged her head.

Delilah. She was the one in the glasses.

A fourth woman was sitting in a rocking chair at the edge of the porch, with a hoop in one hand and a needle in the other. “Why don’t you go on in and cut your old Aunt Ivy a slice a pie? I’m busy with my stitchin’.” Ivy. It was weird to finally see her in person after the visions.

“Pie? Ha!” An old man laughed from his rocking chair—a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a pipe in the other.

Uncle Abner.

I felt like I knew the man personally, though we’d never met. After all, I’d been in the kitchen when Amma made him more than a hundred pies over the years—maybe a thousand.

The giant crow flew down and landed on Uncle Abner’s shoulder. “Won’t find any pie in there, Delilah. We’re runnin’

low.”

Delilah stopped, one hand on the screen door. “Why would we be runnin’ low, Abner?” He nodded in my direction. “I’m guessin’ Amarie’s busy bakin’ for him now.” He emptied his pipe, tapping the old tobacco over the side of the porch railing.

“Who, me?” I couldn’t believe Uncle Abner was actually talking to me. I took a step closer to all of them. “I mean, hello, sir.”

He ignored me. “I’m guessin’ I won’t be seein’ another lemon meringue unless it’s the boy’s favorite, too.”

“Are you gonna stand there starin’ or come on over here already?” Sulla had her back to me, but she still knew I was there.

Twyla squinted into the sunlight. “Ethan? That you, cher ?”

I walked toward the house, as much as I felt like staying where I was. I don’t know why I was so nervous. I hadn’t expected the Greats to seem so regular. They could’ve been any group of old folks, hanging out on the porch on a sunny afternoon. Except that they were all dead.

“Yeah. I mean, yes, ma’am. It’s me.”

Uncle Abner stood up and walked over to the railing to get a better look. The enormous crow was still perched on his shoulder. It flapped its wings, and he didn’t even flinch. “Like I said, we won’t be gettin’ any pie—or much else

—now that the boy’s up here with us.”

Twyla waved me over. “Maybe he’ll share a bit a his with you.”

I climbed up the scuffed wooden steps, and the wind chimes tapped against one another. There wasn’t so much as a breeze.

“He’s a spirit, all right,” Sulla said. There was a tiny brown bird hopping around the table. A sparrow.

“ ’Course he is.” Ivy sniffed. “Wouldn’t be up here otherwise.”

I gave Uncle Abner and his scavenger a wide berth.

When I was close enough, Twyla jumped up and threw her arms around me. “Can’t say I’m happy you’re here, but I am happy to see you.”

I hugged her back. “Yeah, well, I’m not all that happy to be here either.” Uncle Abner took a swig of whiskey. “Then why’d you go and jump off that fool tower?” I didn’t know what to say, but Sulla answered before I had to think of anything. “You know the answer to that, Abner, about as well as you know your own name. Now stop givin’ the boy a hard time.” The crow flapped its wings again. “Somebody should,” Uncle Abner said.

Sulla turned and gave Uncle Abner the look. I wondered if that was where Amma had learned it. “Unless you were strong enough to stop the Wheel a Fate yourself, you know the boy didn’t have a choice.” Delilah brought a wicker chair over for me. “Now, you come on and sit down here with us.” Sulla was still flipping cards, but these were ordinary playing cards.

“Can you read those, too?” It wouldn’t have surprised me.

She laughed, and the sparrow chirped. “No, we’re just playin’ gin.” Sulla slapped down her cards. “Speakin’ a that

—gin.”

Delilah pouted. “You always win.”

“Well, I’ve won again,” Sulla said. “So why don’t you sit down here, Ethan, and tell us what brings you ’round our way.”

“I’m not sure how much you know.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Okay, so you probably already know that I went to see Obidias Trueblood, this old—”

“Mmm hmm.” She nodded.

“And if he’s telling the truth, there’s a way I can get back home.” I was stumbling over my words. “I mean, to the home where I was alive.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I have to get my page from—”

“The Caster Chronicles ,” she finished for me. “I know all that. So why don’t you go on and say what you need from us.”

I was sure she knew, but she wanted me to ask anyway. It was only proper.

“I need a stone.” I thought about the best way to describe it. “This will probably sound strange, but I saw you wearing it once, in kind of a dream. It’s shiny and black….”

“This one?” Sulla held out her palm. There it was. The black stone I saw in my vision.

I nodded, relieved.

“Darn right you do.” She pressed the rock into my hand, closing my fingers around it. It pulsed with a kind of strange warmth that seemed to come from inside.

Delilah looked at me. “You know what that is?”

I nodded. “Obidias said it’s called a river’s eye, and I need two of them to get across the river.”

“Then I reckon you’re one short,” Uncle Abner said. He hadn’t moved from the railing. He was busy packing his pipe with dry leaf tobacco.

“Oh, there’s another one.” Sulla smiled knowingly. “Don’t you know?”

I shook my head.

Twyla reached over and took my hand. A smile spread across her face, her long braids slipping over her shoulder as she nodded. “Un cadeau. A gift. I remember when I gave it to Lena,” she said in her heavy French Creole accent.

“River’s eye is a powerful stone. Brings luck and a safe journey.” As she spoke, I saw the charm from Lena’s necklace.

The smooth black rock she always wore hanging from the chain.

Of course.

Lena had the second stone I needed.

“You know how to get to the river and get on your way?” Twyla asked, dropping my hand.

I pulled Aunt Prue’s map out of my back pocket. “I have a map. My aunt gave it to me.”

“Maps are good,” Sulla said, looking it over. “But birds are better.” She made a clicking noise with her tongue, and the sparrow fluttered onto her shoulder. “A map can lead you astray if you don’t read it right. A bird always knows the way.”

“I wouldn’t want to take your bird.” She had already given me the stone. It felt like I was taking too much. Plus, birds made me nervous. They were like old ladies but with sharper beaks.

Uncle Abner took a long puff of his pipe and walked toward us. Even though he wasn’t looming over me from the sky, he was still taller than me. He had a slight limp, and I couldn’t help but wonder what caused it.

He hooked his finger around one of the suspenders attached to his loose brown pants. “Then take mine.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“My bird.” He cocked his shoulder, and the huge crow’s feathers ruffled. “If you don’t wanna take Sulla’s bird—which I understand, since it’s not much bigger than a field mouse—then take mine.” I was scared to stand next to that vulture-sized crow. I definitely didn’t want to take it anywhere with me. But I had to be careful, because he was offering me something he valued, and I didn’t want to insult him.

I really didn’t want to insult him.

“I appreciate it, sir. But I don’t want to take your bird either. It seems…” The crow squawked loudly. “Really attached to you.”

The old man waved off my concern. “Nonsense. Exu is smart, named for the god of the crossroads. He watches the doors between worlds and knows the way. Don’t you, boy?”

The bird sat proudly on the man’s shoulder as if he knew Uncle Abner was singing his praises.

Delilah walked over and held out her arm. Exu flapped his wings once, dropping down to land on her. “The crow is also the only bird that can cross between the worlds—the veils between life and death, and places far worse. That old heap a feathers is a powerful ally, and a better teacher, Ethan.”

“Are you saying he can cross over to the Mortal realm?” Was that really possible?

Uncle Abner blew the thick pipe smoke in my face as he spoke. “ ’Course he can. There and back, there and back again. Only place that bird can’t go is underwater. And that’s only ’cause I never taught him to swim.”

“So he can show me the way to the river?”

“He can show you a lot more than that if you pay attention.” Uncle Abner nodded at the bird, and it took off into the sky, circling above our heads. “He behaves best if you give a gift every now and again, just like the god I named him after.”

I had no idea what kinds of gifts to offer a crow, a voodoo god, or a crow named after one. I got the feeling regular birdseed wasn’t going to cut it.

But I didn’t have to worry, because Uncle Abner made sure I knew. “Take some a this.” He poured whiskey into a dented flask and handed me a small tin. It was the same one he had opened to fill his pipe.

“Your bird drinks whiskey and eats tobacco?”

The old man frowned. “Just be glad he doesn’t like eatin’ scrawny boys that don’t know their way ’round the Otherworld.”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded.

“Now you get outta here and take my bird and that stone.” Uncle Abner shooed me away. “I won’t get any a Amarie’s pie with you hangin’ ’round here.”

“Yes, sir.” I put the tobacco tin and the flask in my pocket with the map. “And thank you.” I started down the stairs and stepped off the porch. I turned back to take one last look at the Greats, gathered around a card table, sewing and fussing, scowling and drinking whiskey, depending on which one of them you were talking about. I wanted to remember them this way, like regular people who were great for reasons that had nothing to do with seeing the future or scaring the hell out of Dark Casters.

They reminded me of Amma and everything I loved about her. The way she always had the answers and sent me off with something strange in my pocket. The way she scowled at me when she was worried, and reminded me of all the things I still didn’t know.

Sulla stood up and leaned over the porch rail. “When you see the River Master, you be sure to say I sent ya, you hear?”

She said it like I should know what she was talking about. “River Master? Who is that, ma’am?”

“You’ll know him when you see him,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” I started to turn away.

“Ethan,” Uncle Abner called, “when you get home, tell Amarie I’m expectin’ a lemon meringue and a basket a fried chicken. Two big, fat drumsticks…. Make that four.”

I smiled. “I will.”

“And don’t forget to send my bird back. He gets ornery after a while.” The crow circled above me as I made my way down the stairs. I had no idea where I was going, not even with a map and a tobacco-eating bird that could cross over between worlds.

It didn’t matter if I had my mom, Aunt Prue, a Dark Caster who had escaped from the very place I was trying to break into, and all the Greats, with Twyla thrown in for good measure.

I had one stone now, and the more I thought about Lena, the more I realized I’d always known where to find the other one. She never took it off her charm necklace. Maybe that’s why Twyla had given it to her when she was a little girl—for some kind of protection. Or for me.

After all, Twyla was a powerful Necromancer. Maybe she’d known that I’d need it.

I’m coming, ll. As soon as I can.

I knew she couldn’t hear me Kelting, but I listened for her voice in the back of my mind anyway. As if the memory of it could somehow replace hearing her.

I love you.

I imagined her black hair and her green and gold eyes, her beat-up Chucks and her chipped black nail polish.

There was only one thing left to do, and it was time for me to do it.

CHAPTER 14

Messed-Up Things

It didn’t take me long to retrace my steps to the Confederate Needle, and I found my own way to The Stars and Stripes this time around. I was crossing like an old Sheer now. Once I got the hang of it—a certain way of letting my mind do the work for me without focusing on anything at all—it seemed as easy as walking. Easier, since I wasn’t actually walking.

And once I was there, I knew what to do, and I could do it myself. In fact, I was actually looking forward to it. I’d done a little thinking ahead of time. I could see why Amma liked crossword puzzles so much. Once you got the right mind-set, they were sort of addictive.

When I found my way into the office—past Swamp Cooler City—the mock-up of the current issue was on one of the three little desks, right where it had been last time. I fanned open the papers. This time I found the crossword puzzle without much trouble.

This puzzle was even less finished than the last one. Maybe the staff was getting lazy, now that they knew there was a chance someone else would do it for them.

Either way, Lena would be reading the crossword puzzle. I picked up the nearest letter and pushed it into place.

Four down.

O. N. Y. X.

As in, a black stone.

Nine across.

T. R. I. B. U. T. A. R. Y.

As in, a river.

Six down.

O. C. U. ll. U. S.

As in, an eye.

Eight across.

C. H. A. R. I. S. M. A.

As in, charm.

M. A. T. E. R.

As in, my own. Lila Jane Evers Wate.

S. E. R. I. O. U. S.

As in, grave.

That was the message. I need the black stone—the eye of a river, and the one you wear on your charm necklace.

And I need you to leave it for me at my mother’s grave. I couldn’t spell it out any clearer than that.

At least not in this edition of the paper.

By the time I finished, I was exhausted, as if I’d been running sprints all afternoon on the basketball court. I didn’t know how much time would need to pass in the Otherworld before Lena got my message in this one. I only knew that she’d get it.

Because I was as sure of her as I was of myself.

When I got home to the Otherworld—to my house, or my mom’s grave, whatever you wanted to call it—there it was, waiting for me on the doorstep.

She must have left it on my mother’s grave, like I asked.

I couldn’t believe it had worked.

Lena’s black-rock charm from Barbados, the one she always wore around her neck, sat in the middle of the doormat.

I had the second river stone.

A wave of relief settled over me. It lasted about five seconds, until I realized what the stone also meant.

It was time to go. Time to say good-bye.

So why couldn’t I bring myself to say it?

“Ethan.” I heard my mom’s voice, but I didn’t look up.

I was sitting on the floor of the living room, my back to the couch. I had a house and a car in my hands, stray pieces of my mom’s old Christmas town. I couldn’t take my eyes off the car.

“You found the lost green car. I never could.”

She didn’t answer. Her hair looked even messier than usual. Her face was streaked with tears.

I don’t know why the town was set out on the coffee table like that, but I put down the house and moved the tiny green tin car farther along the table. Away from the toy animals, the church with the bent steeple, and the pipe-cleaner tree.

Like I said, time to go.

Part of me wanted to take off running the second I heard about what I had to do to get back to my old life. Part of me didn’t care about anything but seeing Lena again.

But as I sat there, all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to leave my mom. How much I’d missed her, and how quickly I had gotten used to seeing her in the house, hearing her in the next room. I didn’t know if I wanted to give that up again, no matter how badly I needed to go back.

So all I could do was just sit there and look at that old car and wonder how something that had been lost for so long could be found again.

My mom took a breath, and I closed my eyes before she could say a word. It didn’t stop her. “I don’t think it’s wise, Ethan. I don’t think it’s safe, and I don’t think you should be going. No matter what your Aunt Prue says.” Her voice wavered.

“Mom.”

“You’re only seventeen.”

“Actually, I’m not. What I am now is nothing.” I looked up at her. “And I hate to break it to you, but it’s a little late for that speech. You have to admit that safety might not be my biggest concern at the moment. Now that I’m dead and everything.”

“Well, if you say it like that.” She sighed and sat down on the floor next to me.

“How do you want me to say it?”

“I don’t know. Passed on?” She tried not to smile.

I half-smiled back. “Sorry. Passed on.” She was right. Folks didn’t like saying dead, not where we were from. It was impolite. As if saying it somehow made it true. As if words themselves were more powerful than anything that could actually happen to you.

Maybe they were.

After all, that’s what I had to do now, wasn’t it? Destroy the words on a page in some book in a library that had changed my Mortal destiny. Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person’s whole life?

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, sweetheart. Maybe if I had figured it out for myself, before all this, you wouldn’t even be here. There wouldn’t have been a car accident, and there wouldn’t have been a water tower—” She stopped.

“You can’t keep things from happening to me, Mom. Not even these things.” I leaned my head back along the edge of the couch. “Not even messed-up things.”

“What if I want to?”

“You can’t. It’s my life, or whatever this is.” I turned to look at her.

She leaned her head on my shoulder, holding the side of my face close with her hand. Something she hadn’t done since I was a kid. “It’s your life. You’re right about that. And I can’t make a decision like this for you, however much I want to. Which is very, very much.”

“I kind of figured that part out.”

She smiled sadly. “I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I know. I don’t want to leave you either.”

Side by side, we stared at the Christmas town, maybe for the last time. I put the car back where it belonged.

I knew then that we would never have another Christmas together, no matter what happened. I would stay or I would go—but either way, I would move on to somewhere that wasn’t here. Things couldn’t be like this forever, not even in this Gatlin-that-wasn’t-Gatlin. Whether I was able to get my life back or not.

Things changed.

Then they changed again.

Life was like that, and even death, I guess.

I couldn’t be with both my mom and Lena, not in what was left of one lifetime. They would never meet, though I had already told them everything there was to tell about the other. Since I got here, my mom had me describe every charm on Lena’s necklace. Every line of every poem she’d ever written. Every story about the smallest things that had

happened to us, things I didn’t even know I remembered.

Still, it wasn’t the same as being a family, or whatever we could have been.

Lena and my mom and me.

They would never laugh about me or keep a secret from me or even fight about me. My mom and Lena were the two most important people in my life, or afterlife, and I could never have both of them together.

That’s what I was thinking when I closed my eyes. When I opened them, my mom was gone—as if she’d known I couldn’t leave her. As if she’d known I wouldn’t be able to walk away.

Truthfully, I didn’t know if I could have done it, myself.

Now I’d never find out.

Maybe it was better that way.

I pocketed the two stones and made my way down the front steps, closing the door carefully behind me. The smell of fried tomatoes came wafting out the door as it shut.

I didn’t say good-bye. I had a feeling we’d see each other again. Someday, somehow.

Aside from that, there wasn’t anything I could tell my mom that she didn’t already know. And no way to say it and still walk out the door.

She knew I loved her. She knew I had to go. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much more to say.

I don’t know if she watched me go.

I told myself she did.

I hoped she didn’t.

CHAPTER 15

The River Master

As I stepped inside the Doorwell, the known world gave way to the unknown world more quickly than I expected. Even in the Otherworld, there are some places that are noticeably more other than others.

The river was one of them. This wasn’t any kind of river I’d seen in the Mortal Gatlin County. Like the Great Barrier, this was a seam. Something that held worlds together without being in any one of them.

I was in totally uncharted territory.

Luckily, Uncle Abner’s crow seemed to know the way. Exu flapped overhead, gliding and hanging in circles above me, sometimes landing on high branches to wait for me if I fell too far behind. He didn’t seem to mind the job either; he tolerated our quest with only the occasional squawk. Maybe he enjoyed getting out for a change. He reminded me of Lucille that way, except I didn’t catch her eating little mice carcasses when she was hungry.

And when I caught him looking at me, he was really looking at me. Every time I started to feel normal again, he would catch my eye and send shivers down my spine, like he was doing it on purpose. Like he knew he could.

I wondered if Exu was a real bird. I knew he could cross between worlds, but did that make him supernatural?

According to Uncle Abner, it only made him a crow.

Maybe all crows were just creepy.

As I walked farther, the swamp weeds and cypress trees jutting out of the murky water led to greener grass beyond the bank, grass so tall I could barely see over it in places.

I wove through the grass, following the black bird in the sky, trying not to remember too much about where I was going or what I was leaving behind. It was hard enough not to imagine the look on my mother’s face when I walked out the door.

I tried desperately not to think about her eyes, about the way they lit up when she saw me. Or her hands, the way she waved them in the air as she talked, as if she thought she could pull words out of the sky with her fingers. And her arms, wrapping around me like my own house, because she was the place where I was from.

I tried not to think about the moment the door closed. It would never open again, not for me. Not like that.

It’s what I wanted. I said it to myself as I walked. It’s what she wanted for me. To have a life. To live.

To leave.

Exu squawked, and I beat back the tall brush and the grass.

Leaving was harder than I ever could’ve imagined, and part of me still couldn’t believe I had done it. But as much as I tried not to think about my mom, I tried to keep Lena’s face in my mind, a constant reminder of why I was doing this

—risking everything.

I wondered what she was doing right now…. Writing in her notebook? Practicing the viola? Reading her battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird ?

I was still thinking about it when I heard music in the distance. It sounded like… the Rolling Stones?

Part of me expected to push through the grass and see Link standing there. But as I edged closer to the chorus of

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” I realized it was the Stones, but it definitely wasn’t Link.

The voice wasn’t bad enough, and too many of the notes were right.

It was a big guy, wearing a faded bandanna tied around his head, and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt with scaly wings across the back. He was sitting at a plastic folding table like the ones the bridge club used back in Gatlin. With his black shades and long beard, he looked like he should be riding an old chopper instead of sitting next to a riverbank.

Except for his lunch. He was spooning something out of a plastic Tupperware container. From where I was, it looked like intestines or human remains. Or…

The biker belched. “Best chili-ghetti this side a the Mississippi.” He shook his head.

Exu cawed and landed on the edge of the folding table. An enormous black dog lying on the ground next to it barked but didn’t bother to get up.

“What’re you doing around here, bird? Unless you’re looking to make a deal, there’s nothing for you here. An’ don’t even think I’m letting you get into my whiskey this time.” The biker shooed Exu off the table. “Go on. Shoo. You tell Abner I’m ready to deal when he’s ready to play.”

As he waved the crow off the table, and Exu disappeared into the blue sky, the biker noticed me standing at the edge of the grass. “You out sightseeing, or are you looking for something?” He tossed the remains of his lunch into a small white Styrofoam cooler and picked up a deck of playing cards.

He nodded my way, shuffling the cards from hand to hand.

I swallowed hard and stepped closer as “Hand of Fate” started playing on the old transistor radio sitting in the dust. I wondered if he listened to anything besides the Rolling Stones, but I wasn’t about to ask. “I’m looking for the River Master.”

The biker laughed, dealing a hand as if someone was sitting on the other side of the table. “River Master. I haven’t heard that one in a while. River Master, Ferryman, Water Runner—I go by a lot of names, kid. But you can call me Charlie. It’s the one I answer to when I feel like answering.” I couldn’t imagine anyone getting this guy to do anything he didn’t feel like doing. If we were in the Mortal realm, he would probably be a bouncer at a biker bar or a pool hall where people were dragged out for breaking bottles over one another’s heads.

“Nice to meet you… Charlie,” I choked. “I’m Ethan.”

He waved me over. “So what can I do for you, Ethan?”

I walked over to the table, careful to give the giant creature on the ground a wide berth. It looked like a mastiff, with its square face and wrinkled skin. Its tail was bandaged with white gauze.

“Don’t mind old Drag,” he said. “He won’t get up unless you’re carrying some raw meat.” Charlie grinned. “Or unless you are raw meat. Dead meat like you, kid—you’re off the hook.” Why didn’t that surprise me?

“Drag? What kind of name is that?” I reached out toward the dog.

“Dragon. The kind that breathes fire and chews your hand off if you try to pet him.” Drag looked at me, growling. I moved my hand back to my pocket.

“I need to cross the river. I brought you these.” I laid the river eyes on the padded card table. It really did look like the ones at the bridge club.

Charlie glanced at the stones, unimpressed. “Good for you. One for the way there, one for the way back. That’s like showin’ a bus driver your bus ticket. Still don’t make me want to get on no bus.”

“It doesn’t?” I swallowed. So much for my plans. Somehow I had thought this was all working out too easily.

Charlie looked me over. “You play blackjack, Ethan? You know, twenty-one?” I knew what he meant. “Um, not really.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I used to play with Thelma, until she started cheating as badly as the Sisters did at Rummikub.

He pushed my cards toward me, flipping a nine of diamonds on top of the first one. My hand. “You’re a smart boy

—I bet you can figure it out.”

I checked my card, a seven. “Hit me.” That’s what Thelma would have said.

Charlie seemed like a risk-taker. If I was right, he probably respected other people who did the same. And what did I have to lose?

He nodded approvingly, flipping a king. “Sorry, kid, that’s twenty-six. You’re over. But I would’ve taken the hit, too.” Charlie shuffled the deck and dealt us each another hand.

This time I had a four and an eight. “Hit me.”

He flipped a seven. I had nineteen, which was hard to beat. Charlie had a king and a five sitting in front of him. He had to take a hit, or I would win for sure. He pulled a card from the top of the deck. A six of hearts.

“Twenty-one. That’s blackjack,” he said, shuffling again.

I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of test or if he was just bored out here, but he didn’t seem anxious to get rid of me anytime soon. “I really need to get across the river, si—” I stopped myself before I called him “sir.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, Charlie. See, there’s a girl—”

Charlie nodded, interrupting. “There’s always a girl.” The Rolling Stones started crooning “2,000 Light Years from Home.” Funny.

“I need to get back to her—”

“I had a girl once. Penelope was her name. Penny.” He leaned back in his chair, smoothing his scraggly beard.

“Eventually she got tired of hanging around here, so she took off.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” The second I asked the question, I realized it was probably too personal. But he answered anyway.

“I can’t leave.” He said it matter-of-factly, flipping cards for both of us. “I’m the River Master. It’s part of the gig. Can’t run out on the house.”

“You could quit.”

“This isn’t a job, kid. It’s a sentence.” He laughed, but there was a bitterness that made me feel sorry for him. That and the folding card table and the lazy dog with the messed-up tail.

Then “2,000 Light Years from Home” faded out, replaced by “Plundered My Soul.” I didn’t want to know who was powerful enough to sentence him to sit by what, for the most part, looked like a pretty unimpressive river. It was slow and calm. If he wasn’t hanging out here, I probably could’ve swum across.

“I’m sorry.” What else could I say?

“It’s okay. I made my peace with it a long time ago.” He tapped on my cards. An ace and a seven. “You want a hit?” Eighteen again.

Charlie had an ace, too.

“Hit me.” I watched as he turned the card between his fingers.

A three of spades.

He took off his shades, ice blue staring back at me. His pupils were so light, they were barely visible. “You gonna call it?”

“Blackjack.”

Charlie pushed back his chair and nodded toward the riverbank. There was a poor man’s ferry waiting, a crude raft made of logs that were bound together with thick rope. It was just like the ones that lined the swamp in Wader’s Creek.

Dragon stretched and ambled after him. “Let’s go before I change my mind.” I followed him to the rickety platform and stepped onto the rotting logs.

Charlie held out his hand. “Time to pay the Ferryman.” He pointed toward the brown water. “Come on. Hit me.” I tossed the stone and it hit, without so much as a splash.

The moment he lowered the long pole to push against the river bottom, the water changed. A putrid odor rose from the surface—swamp rot, spoiled meat—and something else.

I looked down into the shadowy depths beneath me. The water was clear enough to see all the way to the bottom now, except I couldn’t, because there were bodies everywhere I looked, only inches below the surface. And these weren’t the writhing forms from myths and movies. They were corpses, bloated and waterlogged, still as death. Some faceup, some facedown—but what faces I could see had the same blue lips and terrifyingly white skin. Their hair fanned out around them in the water as they floated and bumped against one another.

“Everyone pays the Ferryman sooner or later.” Charlie shrugged. “Can’t change that.” The taste of bile rose in my throat, and it took every ounce of energy I had to keep from throwing up. The revulsion must have registered on my face, because Charlie’s tone was sympathetic. “I know, kid. The smell’s hard to take. Why do you think I don’t make many trips across?”

“Why did it change? The river.” I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the waterlogged bodies. “I mean, it wasn’t like this before.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You just couldn’t see it. There are lots of things we choose not to see. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, even if we wish they weren’t.”

“I’m tired of seeing everything. It was easier back when I didn’t know anything. I barely even knew I was alive.” Charlie nodded. “Yeah. So I hear.”

The wooden platform smacked against the opposite bank. “Thanks, Charlie.” He leaned on the pole, his unnaturally blue, pupil-less eyes staring right through me. “Don’t mention it, kid. I hope you find that girl.”

I reached my hand out cautiously and scratched Dragon behind the ears. I was happy to see my hand didn’t burn off.

The huge dog barked at me.

“Maybe Penny will come back,” I said. “You never know.”

“The odds are against it.”

I stepped onto the bank. “Yeah, well. If you’re going to look at it that way, I guess you could say they’re against me, too.”

“You may be right. If you’re headed where I think.”

Did he know? Maybe this side of the river only led to one place, though I doubted it. The more I learned about the world I thought I knew and all the ones I didn’t, the more everything threaded together, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“I’m going to the Far Keep.” I didn’t think he’d get the chance to tell any of the Keepers, since he couldn’t leave this spot. Besides, there was something about Charlie I liked. And saying the words only made me feel more like they were true.

“Straight ahead. You can’t miss it.” He pointed into the distance. “But you have to get past the Gatekeeper.”

“I heard.” I had been thinking about it since my visit to Obidias’ house with Aunt Prue.

“Well, you tell him he owes me money,” Charlie said. “I won’t wait around forever.” I looked at him, and he sighed.

“Well, say it anyway.”

“You know him?”

He nodded. “We go way back. There’s no telling how long it’s been, but I’d guess a lifetime or two.”

“What’s he like?” Maybe if I knew more about this guy, I would have a better chance of convincing him to let me into the Far Keep.

Charlie smiled, pushing off with the pole and sending the poor man’s ferry floating back into the sea of corpses.

“Not like me.”

CHAPTER 16

A Rock and a Crow

Once I left the river behind, I realized the road to the Gates of the Far Keep wasn’t a road at all. It was more of a crude, winding path, hidden within the walls of two towering black mountains that stood side by side, creating a natural gate more ominous than anything that could’ve been made by Mortals—or Keepers. The mountains were slick, with razor-sharp corners that reflected the sun, as if they were made of obsidian. They looked like they were cutting black slits into the sky.

Great.

The idea of navigating a path through those jagged knife-blade cliffs was a little more than intimidating. Whatever the Keepers were up to, they definitely didn’t want anyone to know about it.

Big surprise there.

Exu circled overhead now, as if he knew exactly where he was going. I picked up my pace to follow his shadow on the trail in front of me, feeling grateful for the creepy bird that was even bigger than Harlon James. I wondered what Lucille would think about him. Funny how a supernatural crow borrowed from the Greats could seem like the one familiar thing in the landscape.

Even with the help of Uncle Abner’s crow, I kept stopping to consult Aunt Prue’s map. Exu definitely knew the general direction of the Far Keep, but he disappeared from view every mile or so. The cliffs were high, the trail was twisted, and Exu didn’t have to worry about navigating those mountains.

Lucky bird.

On the map, my path was outlined in Aunt Prue’s shaky hand. Every time I tried to trace where it would lead, the path disappeared a few miles ahead. I was starting to worry that her hand had shaken a little too far in the wrong direction. Because the directions on the map didn’t have me going over the mountains or between them—I was supposed to go through one of them.

“That can’t be right.”

I stared from the paper up to the sky. Exu glided from tree to tree in front of me, though now that we were closer to the mountains, the trees were that much farther apart. “Sure. Go ahead. Rub it in. Some of us have to walk, you know.” He squawked again. I waved the whiskey flask over my head. “Just don’t forget who has your dinner, eh?” He dove at me, and I laughed, sliding the flask back into my pocket.

It didn’t seem so funny after the first few miles.

When I reached the sheer cliff face, I double-checked the map. There it was. A circle drawn in the hillside—marking some sort of cave entrance or a tunnel. It was easy enough to find on the map. But when I lowered the paper and tried to find the cave, there was nothing.

Just a rocky cliff face, so steep it rose into a straight vertical, cutting the trail off right in front of me. It pushed up into the clouds so high that it looked like it never ended.

Something had to be wrong.

There had to be an entrance to the tunnel somewhere around here. I felt along the cliff, stumbling over broken pieces of the shiny black rock.

Nothing.

It wasn’t until I stepped back from the cliff and noticed a patch of dead brush growing along the stones that I put it together.

The brush grew in what was vaguely the shape of a circle.

I grabbed the dead overgrowth with both hands, yanking as hard as I could—and there it was. Sort of. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the reality of what that circle drawn on the mountain actually represented.

A small, dark hole—and by small, I mean tiny —barely big enough for a man. Barely big enough for Boo Radley.

Maybe Lucille, but even that would have been cutting it tight. And it was pitch-dark inside. Of course it was.

“Aw, come on!”

According to the map, the tunnel was the only way to the Far Keep, and to Lena. If I wanted to get home, I was going to have to crawl through it. I felt sick just thinking about it.

Maybe I could go around. How long would it take to reach the other side of the mountain? Too long, that was for sure.

Who was I kidding?

I tried not to think about what it would feel like to have a whole mountain fall on you while you were crawling through the middle of it. If you were already dead, could you be crushed to death? Would it hurt? Was there anything left to hurt?

The more I told myself not to think about it, the more I thought about it, and soon I was almost ready to turn back.

But then I imagined the alternative—being trapped here in the Otherworld without Lena for “infinity times infinity,” as Link would say. Nothing was worth that risk. I took a deep breath, wedged my way inside, and started to crawl.

The tunnel was smaller and darker than I ever could’ve imagined. Once I squeezed inside, I had only a few inches of free space above me and on either side. This was worse than the time Link and I got locked in the trunk of Emory’s dad’s car.

I had never been scared of small spaces, but it was impossible not to feel claustrophobic in here. And it was dark

—worse than dark. The only light came from cracks in the rock, which were few and far between.

Most of the time, I was crawling in complete darkness, only the sound of my breathing echoing off the walls.

Invisible dirt filled my mouth, stung my eyes. I kept thinking that I was going to hit a wall—that the tunnel would just stop and I’d have to backtrack to get out. Or that I wouldn’t be able to.

The ground beneath me was made of the same sharp black stone as the mountain itself, and I had to move slowly to avoid bearing down on the exposed edges of razored rubble. My hands felt like I’d shredded them to pieces; my knees, like two sacks of shattered glass. I wondered if dead people could bleed to death. With my luck, I would be the first guy to find out.

I tried to distract myself—counting to a hundred, humming the off-key tunes of some of the Holy Rollers’ songs, pretending I was Kelting with Lena.

Nothing helped. I knew I was alone.

It only strengthened my resolve not to stay that way.

It’s not much farther, ll. I’m going to make it and find the Gates. We’ll be back together soon, and then I’ll tell you about how much this really sucked.

I fell silent after that.

It was too hard to pretend to Kelt.

My movements slowed, and my mind slowed with them, until my arms and legs moved in some kind of stiff syncopation, like the driving beat to one of Link’s old songs.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Lena. Lena. Lena.

I was still Kelting her name when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel—not a metaphoric light but a real one.

I heard Exu cawing in the distance. I felt the beginnings of a breeze, the stir of air in my face. The cold dampness of the tunnel began to give way to the warm light of the outside world.

I was almost there.

I squinted when the sunlight hit the mouth of the hole. I hadn’t hauled my body out yet. But the tunnel was so dark that my eyes were having a hard time adjusting to even the smallest amount of light.

When I was only halfway out, I dropped onto my stomach with my eyes still closed, the black dirt pressing against my cheek. Exu was calling loudly, probably angry that I was taking a break. At least that’s what I thought.

I opened my eyes to see the sun glinting off a pair of black-laced boots. Then the bottom of a matching wool robe came into focus.

Great.

I raised my head slowly, prepared to see a Keeper towering over me. My heart began to pound.

It looked like a man—in a way. If you ignored the fact that he was completely bald, with impossibly smooth grayish-black skin and enormous eyes. The black robe was tied at the waist with a long cord, and he—if you could call it a he

—looked like some kind of miserable alien monk.

“Did you lose something?” he asked. The voice sounded so much like a man’s. Like an old man, sort of sad or maybe kind. It was hard to reconcile the human features and voice with the rest of what I was staring at.

I pulled against the rock opening, yanking my legs out from the tunnel, trying to avoid bumping into whatever he was. “I—I’m trying to find the way to the Far Keep,” I stammered. I tried to remember what Obidias had said. What was I looking for? Doors? Gates? That was it. “I mean, the Gates of the Far Keep.” I got to my feet and tried to step back, but there was nowhere to go.

“Really?” He looked interested. Or maybe sick. Honestly, I wasn’t sure it was really even a face I was looking at, so it was hard to tell what the expression meant.

“That’s right.” I tried to sound confident. When I stood tall, I was almost his height, which was reassuring.

“Are the Keepers expecting you?” His strange, dull eyes slitted.

“Yes,” I lied.

He turned abruptly on his heel to go, his robe swinging after him.

Wrong answer.

“No,” I called out. “And they’ll torture me if they find me. At least that’s what everyone seems to think. But there’s this girl—it was all a mistake—I’m not supposed to be here—and then the lubbers came, and the Order broke, and I had to jump.” My words died out, once I realized how crazy I sounded. There was no point trying to explain. It barely made sense even to me.

The creature stopped, tilting his head to the side, as if he was considering my words. Me. “Well, you’ve found them.”

“What?”

“The Gates of the Far Keep.”

I looked past him. There was nothing around but shiny black rock and clear blue sky. Maybe he was crazy. “Um, I don’t see anything but mountains.”

He turned and pointed. “There.”

The sleeve of his robe slid down, and I caught a glimpse of an extra fold of skin flapping away from his body and disappearing under the robe.

It looked like the wing of a giant bat.

I remembered the crazy story Link told me over the summer. Macon had sent him into the Caster Tunnels to deliver a message to Obidias Trueblood. That much I’d already put together. But there was another part, about how Link was attacked by some kind of creature he ended up stabbing with his garden shears—it was grayish black and bald, with the features of a man, and deformed black bands of skin that Link was convinced were wings. “Seriously,” I remembered him saying. “You don’t want to face that thing in an alley at night.” I knew it couldn’t be the same creature, because Link said the monster he saw had yellow eyes. And the one standing here was staring back at me with green eyes—almost Caster green. Then there was the other thing. The whole gardening-shears-to-the-chest thing.

This couldn’t be him.

Green eyes. Not gold. I didn’t need to be afraid, right? He couldn’t be Dark, could he?

Still, it wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before—and I had seen more than my share.

The creature turned around, lowering his arm that wasn’t an arm. “Do you see them?”

“What?” The wings? I was still trying to figure out what he was—or wasn’t.

“The Gates.” He seemed disappointed by my stupidity. I guess I’d be disappointed, too, if I were him. I was feeling pretty stupid myself.

I searched in the direction he had pointed a moment ago. There was nothing there. “I don’t see anything.” A satisfied smile spread across his face, as if he had a secret. “Of course you don’t. Only the Gatekeeper can see them.”

“Where’s the—” I stopped, realizing I didn’t need to ask the question. I already knew the answer. “You’re the Gatekeeper.” There was a River Master and a Gatekeeper. Of course there was. There was also a snake man, a whiskey-drinking crow that could fly from the land of the living to the land of the dead, a river full of bodies, and a dragon dog. It was like waking up in the middle of a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

“The Gatekeeper.” The creature nodded, obviously pleased with himself. “I am that, among other things.” I tried not to fixate on the word thing. But as I looked at his charcoal-colored skin and thought about those awful wings, I couldn’t stop imagining him as some terrifying cross between a person and a bat.

A real-life Batman, sort of.

Only not the kind who saves anyone. Maybe the reverse.

What if this thing doesn’t want to let me in?

I took a deep breath. “Look, I know it’s crazy. I left crazy behind about a year ago. But there’s something I need in there. And if I don’t get it, I won’t be able to go home. Is there any way you can show me where the Gates are?”

“Of course.”

I heard the words before I saw his face. And I smiled, until I realized I was the only one smiling.

The creature frowned, his huge eyes narrowing. He put his hands together in front of his chest, tapping his crooked fingertips. “But why would I do that?”

Exu shrieked in the distance.

I looked up to see the massive black shape circling above our heads, as if he was prepared to swoop down and attack.

Wordlessly, without looking up, the creature held up his hand.

Exu descended and landed on the Gatekeeper’s fist, nuzzling his arm as if reunited with an old friend.

Maybe not.

The Gatekeeper looked even more frightening with Exu at his side. It was time to face facts. The creature was right.

He had no reason to help me.

Then the bird squawked, almost sympathetically. The creature made a low, throaty sound—almost a chuckle—and raised a hand to smooth the bird’s feathers. “You are lucky. The bird is a good judge of character.”

“Yeah? What does the bird say about me?”

“He says—slow on the switchbacks, cheap with the whiskey, but a good heart. For a dead man.” I grinned. Maybe that old crow wasn’t so bad.

Exu squawked again.

“I can show you the Gates, boy.”

“Ethan.”

“Ethan.” He hesitated, repeating my name slowly. “But you have to give me something in return.” I was almost afraid to ask. “What do you want?” Obidias had mentioned that the Gatekeeper would expect some kind of gift, but I hadn’t really put much thought into it.

He looked at me thoughtfully, considering the question. “Trade is a serious matter. Balance is a key principle within the Order of Things.”

“The Order of Things? I thought we didn’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“There is always Order. Now more than ever, the New Order must be carefully maintained.” I didn’t understand the details, but I understood the importance. Wasn’t that how I got into this mess in the first place?

He kept talking. “You say you need something to take you home? The thing you desire most? I say, what brought you here? That is what I desire most.”

“Great.” It sounded simple, but he might as well have been speaking in riddles or randomly written Mad Libs.

“What do you have?” His eyes glinted greedily.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and pulled out the one remaining river stone and Aunt Prue’s map. The whiskey and the tobacco—Exu’s stash—were long gone.

The Gatekeeper lifted his hairless brows. “A rock and an old map? Is that all?”

“That’s what brought me here.” I pointed at Exu, still perched on his shoulder. “And a bird.”

“A rock and a crow. That is difficult to pass up. But I already have both of those things in my collection.” Exu pushed off from his shoulder and flew back up into the sky, like he was offended. Within seconds the crow disappeared.

“And now you have no bird,” the Gatekeeper said matter-of-factly.

“I don’t understand. Is there something specific you want?” I tried to hide the frustration in my voice.

The Gatekeeper seemed delighted by the question. “Specific, yes. Specifically, a fair trade is what I prefer.”

“Could you be a little more specific than that?”

He tilted his head. “I don’t always know what will interest me until I see it. The things that are the most valuable are often the ones you don’t even know exist.”

That was helpful.

“How am I supposed to know what you have already?”

His eyes lit up. “I can show you my collection if you would like to see it. There isn’t another one like it anywhere in the Otherworld.”

What could I say? “Yeah. That would be great.”

As I followed him along the sharp black stones, I could hear Link’s voice in my head. “Bad move, man. He’s gonna kill you, stuff you, and add you to his collection of idiots who followed him back to his creepy cave.” This was one time I was probably safer dead than alive.

How fair and balanced was that?

The Gatekeeper slid through a narrow crack in the wall of slick black stone. It was bigger than the hole, but not by much. I moved along sideways because there wasn’t enough room to turn around.

I knew this could be some kind of trap. Link had described the creature he encountered as an animal—dangerous and crazed. What if the Gatekeeper was no different, just better at hiding it? Where was that stupid crow when I needed him?

“We’re almost there,” he called back to me.

I could see a faint light ahead, flickering in the distance.

His shadow passed in front of it, momentarily darkening the passage as the narrow space opened into a cavernous room. Wax dripped from an iron chandelier bolted directly into the glossy stone ceiling. The walls sparkled in the candlelight.

If I hadn’t just crawled through a whole mountain of the stuff, I might have been more impressed. As it was, the closeness of the cavern walls just made my skin crawl.

But when I glanced around, I realized this place was more like a museum—with an even crazier collection than what you’d find if you dug up the Sisters’ whole backyard. Glass cases and shelves lined the walls, filled with hundreds of objects. It was the randomness of the collection that intrigued me, like a child had done not only the collecting but the cataloging. Intricately carved silver and gold jewelry boxes sat next to a collection of cheap children’s music boxes.

Shiny black vinyl records were piled in towering stacks next to one of those old-fashioned record players with a funnel speaker, like the one the Sisters used to have. A Raggedy Ann doll curled in a rocking chair, a huge green jewel the size of an apple resting in her lap. And on a center shelf, I saw an opalescent sphere similar to the one I had carried in my hand the past summer.

It couldn’t be… an Arclight.

But it was. Exactly like the one Macon had given my mom, except milky white instead of midnight black.

“Where did you get that?” I walked toward the shelf.

He darted in front of me, snatching the sphere. “I told you. I’m a collector. You could say a historian. You mustn’t touch anything in here. The treasures in this room cannot be replaced. I’ve spent a thousand lifetimes collecting them.

They are all equally valuable,” he breathed.

“Yeah?” I looked at a Snoopy lunch box full of pearls.

He nodded. “Priceless.”

He replaced the Arclight. “All sorts of things have been offered to me at the Gates,” he added. “ Most people, and non-people, know it is only polite to bring me a gift when they come knocking.” He stole a look at me. “No offense.”

“Yeah, sorry. I mean, I wish I had something to give you—”

He lifted a hairless eyebrow. “Besides a rock and a crow?”

“Yeah.” I scanned the rows of leather books lined up neatly on the shelves, the spines inscribed with symbols and languages I didn’t recognize. The spine of a black leather book caught my eye. It looked like it said… “The Book of Stars?”

The Gatekeeper looked pleased and rushed to pull it down from the shelf. “This is one of the rarest books of its kind.” Niadic, the Caster language I had come to recognize, looped around the edges of the cover. A cluster of stars was embossed in the center. “There is only one other like it—”

“The Book of Moons ,” I finished for him. “I know.”

His eyes widened, and he clutched The Book of Stars to his chest. “You know about the Dark half? No one in our world has seen it for hundreds of years.”

“That’s because it isn’t in your world.” I looked at him for a long moment before correcting myself. “Our world.” He shook his head in disbelief. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I was the one who found it.”

For a moment, he didn’t say a word. I could tell he was trying to decide if I was lying or crazy. There was nothing in his expression that made it seem like he actually believed me, but like I said, there wasn’t really too much to go on

—his face not really being a face and all.

“Is this a trick?” His dull green eyes narrowed. “It wouldn’t serve you well to play games with me if you ever expect to find the Gates of the Far Keep.”

“I didn’t even know The Book of Moons had another half, or whatever you said. So how would I know to lie about it?”

It was true. I had never heard anyone mention it—not Macon or Marian or Sarafine or Abraham.

Is it possible they didn’t know?

“As I said, balance. Light and Dark are both part of the invisible scale that is always tipping as we hang on to the edges.” He ran his crooked fingers over the cover of the book. “You can’t have one without the other. Sad as that might be.”

After everything I had learned about The Book of Moons , I couldn’t imagine what was within the covers of its counterpart. Did The Book of Stars yield the same kind of devastating consequences?

I was almost afraid to ask. “Is there a price for using that one, too?” The Gatekeeper walked to the far end of the room and sat down in an intricately carved chair that looked like a throne from an old castle. He lifted a Mickey Mouse Thermos, pouring a stream of amber liquid into the plastic cup, and drank half of it. There was a weariness in his movements, and I wondered how long it had taken him to amass the collection of intangibly valuable and valueless items within these walls.

When he finally spoke, he sounded like he’d aged a hundred years.

“I have never used the book myself. My debts are too steep to risk owing anything more. Though there is not much left for them to take, is there?” He threw back the rest of his drink and slammed the plastic cup on the table. Within seconds, he was pacing again, nervous and agitated.

I followed him to the other side of the room.

“Who do you owe?”

He stopped walking, pulling his robe tighter, as if he was protecting himself from an unseen enemy. “The Far Keep, of course.” There was a mix of bitterness and defeat in his voice. “And they always collect their debts.”

CHAPTER 17

The Book of Stars

The Gatekeeper turned his back to me, moving instead to a glass case behind him. He examined a collection of charms—amulets hanging from long leather cords, crystals and exotic rocks that reminded me of the river stones, runes with markings I didn’t recognize. He opened the cabinet and took out one of the amulets, rubbing the silver disk between his fingers. It reminded me of the way Amma touched the gold charm she wore around her neck, whenever she got nervous.

“Why don’t you just leave?” I asked. “Take all this stuff and disappear?” I knew the answer even as I asked the question.

Nobody would stay here unless they had to.

He spun a large enamel globe on a tall stand next to the cabinet. I watched as it turned, strange shapes spinning past me. They weren’t the continents I was used to seeing in history class.

“I can’t leave. I’m Bound to the Gates. If I venture too far from them, I’ll continue to change.” He stared down at his bent, gnarled fingers. A chill rushed up my back.

“What do you mean?”

The Gatekeeper turned his hands over slowly, as if he had never seen them before. “There was a time when I looked like you, dead man. A time when I was a man.”

The words were swimming around in my head, but I couldn’t find a way to make them true. Whatever the Gatekeeper was—however reminiscent his features were of a man’s—it wasn’t possible.

Was it?

“I—I don’t understand. How—?” There was no way to say what I was thinking without being cruel. And if he was a man somewhere inside there, he had suffered more than enough cruelty already.

“How did I become this?” The Gatekeeper fingered a large crystal hanging from a golden chain. He picked up a second necklace, made of rings of sugar candy, the kind you could buy at the Stop & Steal, smoothing it back down inside its velvet-lined case. “The Council of the Far Keep is very powerful. They have powerful magic at their disposal, stronger than anything I witnessed as a Keeper.”

“You were a Keeper?” This thing used to be like my mom and Liv and Marian?

His dull green eyes stared back at me. “You might want to take a seat….” He paused. “I don’t think you told me your name.”

“Ethan.” I’d told him twice now.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ethan. My name is—was—Xavier. No one calls me that anymore, but you can if it makes things easier.”

I knew what he was trying to say—if it made it easier to imagine him as a man instead of a monster.

“Okay. Thanks, Xavier.” It sounded funny, even coming from me.

He tapped the case with his fingers, some kind of nervous habit. “And to answer your question, yes. I was a Keeper. One who made the mistake of questioning Angelus, the head—”

“I know who he is.” I remembered the one named Angelus, the Keeper with the bald head. I also remembered the ruthless expression on his face when he had come after Marian.

“Then you know he’s dangerous. And corrupt.” Xavier watched me carefully.

I nodded. “He tried to hurt a friend of mine—two, actually. He brought one of them to the Far Keep to stand trial.”

“Trial.” He laughed, only there was nothing like a smile on his nothing like a face.

“It wasn’t funny.”

“Of course not. Angelus must have been making an example of your friend,” Xavier said. “I was never given a trial.

He finds them dull compared to the punishment.”

“What did you do?” I was afraid to ask, but I felt like I had to.

Xavier sighed. “I questioned the authority of the Council, the decisions they were making. I never should have done it,” he said quietly. “But they were breaking our vows, the laws we swore to abide by. Taking things that were not theirs to Keep.”

I tried to imagine Xavier in a Caster library somewhere like Marian, stacking books and recording the details of the Caster world. He had created his own version of a Caster library here, a place filled with magical objects—and a few unmagical ones.

“What kind of things, Xavier?”

He glanced around the cavernous room, panicked. “I don’t think we should be talking about this. What if the Council finds out?”

“How would they?”

“They will. They always do. I don’t know what more they could do to me, but they would think of something.”

“We’re in the center of a mountain.” My second one today. “It’s not like they can hear you.” He pulled the collar of the heavy wool robe away from his neck. “You would be surprised at what they can find out.

Let me show you.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant as he moved past a heap of broken bicycles to another glass cabinet. He opened the doors and took out a cobalt-blue sphere the size of a baseball.

“What is that thing?”

“A Third Eye.” He held it in his palm carefully. “It allows you to see the past, a specific memory in time.” The color began to swirl inside the ball, churning like storm clouds. Until it cleared, and a picture came into view…

A young man was sitting behind a heavy wooden desk in a dimly lit study. His long robe appeared to be too big for him, much like the ornately carved chair he was sitting in. His hands were clasped together as he leaned heavily on his elbows. “What is it now, Xavier?” he asked impatiently.

Xavier ran his hands through his dark hair and over his face, his green eyes darting around the room.

It was obvious that he was dreading the conversation. He twisted the cord of his own robe in his lap. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir. But certain events have come to my attention—atrocities that violate our vows and threaten the mission of the Keepers.”

Angelus looked bored. “What atrocities are you referring to, Xavier? Has someone failed to file a report? Lost a crescent key to one of the Caster libraries?”

Xavier straightened. “We’re not talking about lost keys, Angelus. Something is going on in the dungeons below the Keep. At night I hear the screams, bloodcurdling screams you can’t—” Angelus waved off the comment. “People have nightmares. We can’t all sleep as blissfully as you.

Some of us run the Council.”

Xavier pushed back from his chair and stood. “I’ve been down there, Angelus. I know what they are hiding. The question is, do you?”

Angelus whipped around, his eyes narrowing. “What is it you think you’ve seen?” The rage in Xavier’s eyes was impossible to ignore. “Keepers using Dark power—Casting—as if they are Dark Casters. Conducting experiments on the living. I’ve seen enough to know that you must take action.”

Angelus turned his back on Xavier, facing the window that overlooked the vast mountains surrounding the Far Keep. “Those experiments, as you call them, are for their protection. There is a war, Xavier.

Between Light and Dark Casters, and the Mortals are caught in the middle.” He turned. “Do you want to watch them die? Are you prepared to take responsibility for that atrocity? Your acts have already cost you enough, wouldn’t you agree?”

“For your protection,” Xavier corrected. “That is what you meant, isn’t it, Angelus? Mortals are caught in the middle of the war. Or have you become something beyond Mortal?” Angelus shook his head. “It’s clear we aren’t going to agree on this matter.” He started to speak the words of a Cast in low tones.

“What are you doing?” Xavier pointed at Angelus. “Casting? This is not right. We are the balance—we observe and Keep the records. Keepers do not cross the line into the world of magic and monsters!” Angelus closed his eyes and continued the incantation.

Xavier’s skin seared and blackened, as if it was burnt.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

The charcoal color spread like a rash, the skin tightening as it turned impossibly smooth. Xavier screamed, clawing at his own skin.

Angelus spoke the final word of the Cast and opened his eyes in time to watch Xavier’s hair fall out in tufts.

He smiled at the sight of the man he was destroying. “It seems to me that you are crossing a line right now.”

Xavier’s limbs started to lengthen unnaturally, bones cracking and breaking. Angelus listened. “You should consider having a bit more sympathy for monsters.”

Xavier dropped to his knees. “Please. Have mercy….”

Angelus stood over the Keeper, who was almost unrecognizable. “This is the Far Keep. Removed from the Mortal and Caster worlds. The vows are the words I speak, and the laws the ones I choose.” He

pushed Xavier’s devastated body over with his boot.

“There is no mercy here.”

The images faded, replaced by the swirling blue haze. For a second, I didn’t move. I felt like I had just witnessed a man’s execution—and he was standing right next to me. What was left of him.

Xavier looked like a monster, but he was a good guy, trying to do the right thing. I shuddered, thinking about what could have happened to Marian if Macon and John hadn’t gotten there in time.

If I hadn’t made a deal with the Lilum.

At least I knew enough not to regret what I did. As bad as things were, they could have been worse. I knew that now.

“I’m sorry, Xavier.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He put the Third Eye back on the shelf. “That was a long time ago. But I thought you should know what they are capable of, since you are so anxious to get inside. If I were you, I would run the other way.” I leaned against the cold wall of the cavern. “I wish I could.”

“Why do you want so badly to get in there?”

I was sure he couldn’t think of one good reason. For me, one reason was all I needed.

“Someone added a page in The Caster Chronicles , and I ended up dead. If I can destroy it—” Xavier reached his hands toward me as if he was going to grab me by the shoulders and shake some sense into me. But he drew them back before he touched me. “Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you if you’re caught? Look at me, Ethan. I’m one of the lucky ones.”

“Lucky? You?” I shut my mouth before I accidentally made it worse. Was he nuts?

“They’ve done this to others, Mortals and Casters alike. It’s Dark power.” His hands were shaking. “Most of them have gone mad, left to wander the Tunnels or the Otherworld like animals.” It was exactly the way Link had described the creature that attacked him the night Obidias Trueblood died. But what Link had encountered wasn’t an animal. It was a man, or something that had been a man once—driven crazy as his body was mutated and tortured.

I felt sick.

The walls of the Far Keep were hiding more than The Caster Chronicles .

“I don’t have a choice. If I don’t destroy the page, I can’t get back home.” I could almost see his mind spinning.

“There has to be a Cast—something in The Book of Stars or one of your books that could help me.” Xavier whipped around, pointing a broken finger inches from my face. “I would never let anyone touch one of my books or use them to Cast! Have you learned nothing here?”

I backed up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ll find another way, but I still have to get inside.” Everything about his demeanor had changed when I suggested using a Cast. “You still have nothing to offer. I can’t show you the Gates unless you give me something in return.”

“Are you serious?” But I could tell from his expression that he was. “What the hell do you want?”

“The Book of Moons ,” he said without hesitation. “You know where it is. That’s my price.”

“It’s in the Mortal realm. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m dead. And by the way, Abraham Ravenwood has it. He’s not what you’d call a nice guy.” I was beginning to think that getting past the Gates was going to be the hardest part of finding my way home, if it was even possible.

Xavier started moving toward the slit in the rock that led back to the outside. “I think we both know there are ways around that. If you want to get through the Gates, bring me The Book of Moons .”

“Even if I could get it, why would I give you the most powerful book in the Caster world?” I practically shouted. “How do I know you won’t use it to do something terrible?”

His unnaturally large eyes widened. “What could be more terrible than how I am standing before you now? Is there something worse than watching your body betray you? Feeling your bones break as you move? Do you think I can risk the trade the Book might choose to make?”

He was right. You couldn’t get something from The Book of Moons without giving something in return. We’d all learned that, the hard way. The other Ethan Wate. Genevieve. Macon and Amma and Lena and me. The Book made the choice.

“You could change your mind. People get desperate.” I couldn’t believe I was lecturing a desperate man about desperation.

Xavier turned to face me, his body already partially hidden in shadow. “Because I know what it is capable of—what it could do in the hands of men like Angelus—I would never speak a word from that book. And I would be sure it never left this room, so no one else could either.”

He was telling the truth.

Xavier was terrified of magic, Light or Dark.

It had destroyed him in the worst possible way. He didn’t want to Cast or wield supernatural power. If anything, he It had destroyed him in the worst possible way. He didn’t want to Cast or wield supernatural power. If anything, he wanted to protect himself and others from that kind of power. If there was anywhere The Book of Moons would be safe, it was here—safer than in the Lunae Libri or some other faraway Caster library. Safer than hidden in the depths of Ravenwood or buried in Genevieve’s grave. No one would ever find it here.

That was when I decided I was going to give it to him.

There was only one problem.

I had to figure out how to get it away from Abraham Ravenwood first.

I looked at Xavier.

“How many powerful objects would you say you’ve got in this room, Xavier?”

“It doesn’t matter. I told you—they’re not to be used.”

I smiled. “What if I were to tell you I could get you The Book of Moons , but I’d need your help? Your help, and the help of a few of your treasures?”

He made a strange expression, twisting his uneven mouth from one side to the other. I really, really hoped it was a smile.

CHAPTER 18

Shadows

How I get there isn’t as important as getting there.” I said it for the fifth time.

“To this Land of the Stars and Stripes?” he asked.

“Yeah. Well, kinda. The office anyway. On Main.”

He nodded. “Ah, the Mainlands. Is that past the Swamp of the Coolers?”

“The swamp coolers? Yeah. More or less.” I sighed.

I tried to explain my plan to Xavier. I wasn’t sure when he had been in the Mortal world last, but whenever it was, it was way before swamp coolers and newspapers. Which was kind of funny, given how much he liked lunch boxes, vinyl records, and sweets.

I picked up another ancient book, opening it to a cloud of dust and possibility—and uncertainty. I was frustrated, and sitting on the floor surrounded by Caster Scrolls in the middle of this strange creature’s cave made me feel as if I was back working in the Gatlin County Library on the first day of my summer break.

I tried to think. There had to be something we could do. “What about Traveling? Can Waywards use Casts that pertain to an Incubus?”

Xavier shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

I leaned back against a stack of books. I was close to giving up. Once again, if Link was here, he’d lecture me about being the Aquaman of the Caster world.

“A dead Aquaman,” I said to myself.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” I muttered.

“A dead man?” he asked.

“You don’t have to rub it in.”

“No, that’s it. You don’t need Casts that work for a Mortal. You’re not a Mortal anymore. You need Casts that work for a Sheer.” He flipped page after page. “An Umbra Cast. Sending a shadow from one world to the next. That’s you, the shadow. It should work.”

I thought about it. Could it be that simple?

I stared at my hand, at the flesh and bones of it.

It only looks like flesh and bones. You’re not really here, not like that. You don’t have a body.

What was the big difference between a Sheer and a shadow?

“I need to be able to touch something, though. It won’t work unless I can get the message to Lena, and I’ll need to be able to move some papers around.”

He cocked his head, twisting his face into a grimace. I hoped it was his thinking face.

“Do you need to touch something?”

“That’s what I just said.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not. You said you need to move something. That’s different.”

“Does it matter?”

“Entirely.” He flipped a few more pages. “A Veritas Cast should allow the truth to appear. As long as you’re looking for the truth.”

“That’ll work?”

I hoped he was right.

Minutes later, any doubts I had about Xavier were gone.

I was here. I hadn’t flown across the Great River, or the Great Barrier, or any other supernatural seam. I hadn’t turned on the crow-vision. I was here, on Main, staring into the office of The Stars and Stripes .

At least, my shadow was.

I felt like Peter Pan in reverse. Like Wendy had unstitched my shadow from me instead of sewing it back to my feet.

I moved through the wall and into the darkness of the room, only I was even darker. I had no body, but it didn’t matter. I lifted my hand—the shadow of my hand—and thought the words Xavier had taught me.

I watched as the words on the page rearranged themselves. I had no time for riddles. No time for games, hidden messages.

My words were simple.

Five across.

Read, in Spanish.

ll. I. B. R. O.

Two down.

Belonging to.

O. F.

Five across.

Lunae.

M. O. O. N. S.

I lowered my hand and disappeared.

My last message, all I had left to say. Lena had figured out how to send me the river rock charm, and she would know how to send the Book to me. I hoped. If not, maybe Macon would.

If Abraham still had it, and Lena could get it away from him.

There were only about a thousand other ifs in between. I tried not to think about them, and all the people they involved. Or the danger that always surrounded The Book of Moons .

I couldn’t afford to think like that. I’d come this far, right?

She would find it, and I would find her.

It was the only Order of Things I cared about now.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 19

Mortal Problems

Sometimes Link could be a real idiot.

“Libro what? Book of Moons ? What does that mean?” Link looked from me to The Stars and Stripes , scratching his head. You would have thought I was bringing up the subject for the first time.

“Three words. It’s a book, Link. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” It was only the book that had destroyed our lives, and the lives of all the Casters in my family before me on our sixteenth birthdays.

“That’s not what I meant.” He looked hurt.

I knew what Link meant.

But I didn’t know why Ethan was asking for The Book of Moons any more than Link did. So I just kept staring at the newspaper in the middle of the kitchen.

Amma was behind me, and she didn’t say a word. She’d been that way for a while now—since Ethan. The silence was as wrong as everything else. It was strange to not hear her banging around in her kitchen. Even stranger that we were sitting around Ethan’s kitchen table trying to figure out the message he’d left in today’s crossword puzzle. I wondered if he could see us or knew we were here.

surrounded by strangers who love me

(un)strangers made strange

by pain

I felt my fingers twitch, looking for the pen that wasn’t there. I fought the poetry off. It was a new habit. It hurt too much to write now. Three days after Ethan left, the word NO appeared, inked in black Sharpie on my left hand. WORDS

appeared on my right.

I hadn’t written a word since, not on paper. Not in my notebook. Not even on my walls. It seemed like forever since I had.

How long had Ethan been gone? Weeks? Months? It was all one long blur, as if time had stopped when he left.

Everything had stopped.

Link stared up at me from where he was sitting on the kitchen floor. When he unfolded his new quarter-Incubus body like that, he took up most of the kitchen. There were arms and legs everywhere, like a praying mantis, only with muscles.

Liv studied her own copy of the puzzle from the table—clipped and taped into her trusty red notebook, covered in her neatly penciled analysis—while John leaned over her shoulder. The way they moved together, you would think it hurt them not to touch.

Unlike Casters and Mortals.

A human and a hybrid Incubus. They don’t know how good they have it. Nothing catches fire when they kiss.

I sighed, resisting the urge to Cast a Discordia on them. We were all here. You would have thought nothing had changed. Only one person was missing.

Which made everything different.

I folded up the morning paper, sinking into the chair next to Liv. “ Book of Moons. That’s all it says. I don’t know why I keep reading it. If I read this thing any more times, I’m going to burn a hole in it with my eyes.”

“You can do that?” Link looked interested.

I wriggled my fingers in front of him. “Maybe I can burn more than just paper. So don’t tempt me.” Liv smiled at me sympathetically. As if the situation called for anything like a smile. “Well then, I suppose we have to think. Those are three rather specific words. So it seems the messages are changing.” She sounded precise and logical, like a British version of Marian, as she always did.

“And?” Link sounded irritated, like he always did lately.

“So what’s going on… over there?” Where Ethan is. Liv didn’t say it. Nobody wanted to. Liv pulled the three crossword puzzles out of her notebook. “At first, it seems like he just wants you to know he is…”

“Alive? Hate to break it to you—” Link said, but John kicked him under the table. Amma dropped a pan behind me, sending it clattering toward where Link sat on the floor. “Oww. You know what I meant.”

“Around,” John corrected him, looking from Amma to me. I nodded, feeling Amma’s hands slip down to rest on my shoulders.

I touched her hand with mine; her fingers curled tightly around it. Neither one of us wanted to let go. Especially now that it was possible Ethan wasn’t gone forever. It had been weeks since Ethan had started sending me messages through The Stars and Stripes . It didn’t matter what they said. They all said the same thing to me.

I’m here.

I’m still here.

You’re not alone.

I wished there was a way I could say it to him.

I squeezed Amma’s fingers harder. I tried to talk to her about it right after I found the first message, but she just muttered something about a fair trade and how it was her mess to sort out. How it was what she aimed to do, sooner or later.

But she didn’t doubt me. Neither did my uncle, not anymore. In fact, Uncle Macon and Amma were the only ones who really believed me. They understood what I was going through, because they had gone through it themselves. I didn’t know if Uncle Macon would ever get over losing Lila. And Amma seemed to be having as hard a time without Ethan as I was. They had seen the proof, too. Uncle Macon was there when I saw Ethan’s crossword for the first time.

And Amma had all but seen Ethan standing in the kitchen of Wate’s Landing.

I said it out loud again to everyone, for the tenth time. “Of course he’s around. I told you, he’s going somewhere.

He’s got some kind of plan. He’s not just sitting there, waiting in a grave full of dirt. He’s trying to get back to us. I’m sure of it.”

“How sure?” Link asked. “You’re not sure, Lena. Nothin’s sure, except death an’ taxes. And when they said it, I think they were talkin’ more about stayin’ dead, not comin’ back again.” I didn’t know why Link was having so much trouble believing that Ethan was still there, that he could come home again. Wasn’t Link the one who was part Incubus? He knew as well as anyone that strange things happened around here all the time. Why was it so hard for him to believe that this particular strange thing could be happening?

Maybe losing Ethan was harder on Link than it was for the rest of them. Maybe he couldn’t let himself risk losing his best friend all over again, even if it was only the idea of him. No one knew what Link was going through.

Except me.

While Link and Liv returned to arguing about whether or not Ethan was actually gone, I felt myself slipping into the fog of nagging doubts that I worked so hard to push out of my mind.

They just kept coming.

What if this whole thing really was my imagination, like Reece and Gramma kept saying? What if they were right, and it was just too hard for me to accept my life without him? And it wasn’t just them—Uncle Macon wouldn’t try anything to bring him back either.

And if it was real—if Ethan could hear me—what would I say?

Come home.

I’m waiting.

I love you.

Nothing he didn’t already know.

Why bother?

I refused to write, but the words were hard to even think now.

words same as always

same as nothing

when nothing is the same

There was no point in saying it to myself.

John kicked Link again, and I tried to focus on the present. The kitchen and the conversation. All the things I could do for Ethan, rather than all the things I felt about him.

“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Ethan is—around.” Liv looked at Link, who kept quiet this time. “Like I said, it seemed he spent all his energy trying to convince us of that a few weeks ago.”

“Right around the time you measured the energy spiking at Ravenwood,” John reminded her. Liv nodded, flipping pages in her notebook.

“Or maybe Reece was just usin’ the microwave,” Link muttered.

“Which was the same time Ethan moved the button at his grave,” I said obstinately.

“Or maybe it was just windy.” Link sighed.

“Something was definitely going on.” John moved his foot closer to Link, the threat of another good kick shutting Link up for a while. I thought about slapping a Silentium Cast on him, but it didn’t seem right. Plus, knowing Link, it would take more than magic to shut him up.

Liv went back to examining the papers in front of her. “But then, quite soon, his messages began to change. It’s like he figured something out. What he needed to do.”

“To come home,” I said.

“Lena, I know you want to think that’s what’s happenin’.” Amma’s voice was bleak. “And I felt my boy here, same as you. But we don’t know which end is up. There are no easy answers, not when it comes to gettin’ someone in or outta the Otherworld. Believe me, if there was an easy way, I would’ve already done it.” She sounded so haggard and tired. I knew she had been working on getting Ethan home as hard as I had. And I’d tried everything at first—everything and everyone. The problem was trying to get Light Casters to talk about raising the dead. And I didn’t have quite the access to the Dark Casters that I used to. Uncle Macon had come for me the moment I’d set foot in Exile. I suspected he made some kind of deal with the bartender, a shifty-looking Blood Incubus who looked like he’d do anything if he was thirsty enough.

“But we don’t know that’s not it,” I said, looking at Liv.

“True. The logical assumption would be that wherever Ethan was, he would be trying to get back.” Liv carefully erased a small mark in the margin. “To where you are.” She didn’t look at me, but I knew what she meant. Liv and Ethan had a history of their own, and even though Liv had found something better for her with John, she was always very careful of how she spoke about Ethan, especially to me.

She tapped the pencil. “First the river rock. Now The Book of Moons . He must need them for something.” John pulled the last puzzle toward him. “If he needs The Book of Moons , it’s a good sign. It has to be.”

“A mighty powerful book, on this side or the other. A book like that would be worth bargaining for.” Amma rubbed my shoulders as she spoke, and I felt a shiver go down my spine.

John looked at both of us. “Bargaining for what? Why?”

Amma said nothing. I suspected she knew more than she was saying, which was usually the case. Plus, she hadn’t even mentioned the Greats in weeks, which was unlike her. Especially now that Ethan was in their care, technically speaking. But I had no idea what Amma was up to any more than I knew what Ethan was planning.

I finally answered for both of us, because there was only one possible answer. “I don’t know. It’s not like I can ask him.”

“Why not? Can’t you Cast something?” John looked frustrated.

“It doesn’t work like that.” I wished it did.

“Some kind of Reveal Cast?”

“There’s nothing to Cast it on.”

“His grave?” John looked at Liv, but she shook her head. No one had an answer, because none of us had ever even contemplated anything like this before. A Cast on someone who wasn’t even on this plane of existence? Short of raising the dead—which Genevieve had done to start this whole mess in the first place, and I had done again, more than a hundred years later—what could anyone do?

I shook my head. “What does it matter? Ethan wants it, and we have to get it to him. That’s the important thing.” Amma chimed in. “Besides, only one kind a bargain my boy would be makin’ over there. Only one thing he wants bad enough. And that would be to get himself back home again, sure as the sunrise.”

“Amma’s right.” I looked at them. “We have to get him the Book.”

Link sat up. “Are you sure, Lena? Are you absolutely death-and-taxes sure it’s Ethan who’s even sendin’ us these messages? What if it’s Sarafine? Or even Colonel Sanders?” He shuddered.

I knew who Link meant. Abraham, in his rumpled white suit and his string tie. Satan himself, at least as far as Gatlin County was concerned.

That really would be the worst-case scenario.

“It’s not Sarafine. I’d know.”

“Would you really know if it was her?” Link rubbed his hair, which was sticking out in a thousand different directions. “How?”

Through the window, I watched as Mr. Wate’s Volvo pulled into the driveway. I knew the conversation was over, even before I felt Amma’s hands stiffen on my shoulders. “I just would.”

Wouldn’t I?

I stared at the stupid crossword puzzle as if it could give me some kind of answer, when all it could tell me was that I knew nothing at all.

The front door opened as the back door banged shut. John and Liv must have disappeared out the back. I braced for the inevitable.

“Afternoon, kids. You waitin’ for Ethan to get home?” Mr. Wate looked at Amma hopefully. Link scrambled to his feet, but I looked away. I couldn’t bear to answer.

More than anything. More than you know.

“Yes, sir. Waitin’s hardly the word. Bored outta my thick skull without Ethan around.” Link tried to smile, but even he looked like he was about to cry.

“Cheer up, Wesley. I miss him as much as you do.” Mr. Wate reached for Link’s spiked hair, rubbing it with one hand. Then he opened the pantry and looked inside. “You hear anything from our boy today, Amma?”

“Afraid not, Mitchell.”

Mr. Wate stopped short, frozen in place with a box of cereal in his hand. “I’ve half a mind to drive down to Savannah myself. It makes no sense, keeping a boy out of school this long. Something’s not right.” His face clouded over.

I focused my eyes on the tall, gaunt figure of Mitchell Wate, just as I had so often since Ethan died. Once he was fixed in my sight, I slowly began reciting the words of the Oblivio Cast that Gramma had taught me to repeat every time I saw Ethan’s dad.

He stared at me, curious. My eyes didn’t even flicker. Only my lips began to move, and I whispered the words as they formed in my mind.

“Oblivio, Oblivio, Non Abest.

Oblivion, Oblivion, He Is Not Gone.”

A bubble expanded inside my chest the moment I formed the Cast, pushing past me toward Ethan’s father, reaching right across the room and wrapping itself around him. The room seemed to stretch and contract, and I thought for a moment the bubble was about to pop.

Then I felt the air snap around us, and suddenly it was over, and the air was just air, and everything seemed normal again.

As normal as things could be.

Mr. Wate’s eyes brightened and glazed over. He shrugged, smiling at me, sticking one hand back inside the cereal box. “Ah well, what are you going to do? He’s a good kid. But if Ethan doesn’t get his tail home from Caroline’s soon, he’s going to be mighty behind when he gets back. At this rate, he’ll be doing homework all the way through spring break. You tell him that for me, will you?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll tell him.” I smiled, wiping at my eye before anything like a tear could fall. “I’ll tell him the next time I talk to him.”

That’s when Amma almost threw the pan of pork chops down on the burner. Link shook his head.

I turned and fled. I tried not to think, but the words followed me, like a curse, like a hex.

oblivion eyes on a cereal box,

the warm blinds of a father

lost and last to know

lost and last to love

last boy lost

you can’t see

even a bubble

once it’s

popped

I fought off the words.

But you couldn’t unpop a bubble.

Even I knew that.

CHAPTER 20

A Deal with the Devil

This is freakin’ nuts. We don’t even have the stupid Book a Moons. You sure The Stars and Sucks didn’t say anythin’

else?”

Link was sitting on the floor again, with only his feet sticking out from under the table—this time the one in Macon’s study. We’d made no progress, but here we were again. New table. Same people. Same problems.

Only the presence of my Uncle Macon, half-hidden in the flickering shadows of the fireplace, changed the conversation. That, and the fact that we’d left Amma back at Wate’s Landing to keep an eye on Ethan’s father.

“I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but maybe Link’s right. Even if we all agreed—even if we knew we had no choice but to get Ethan The Book of Moons —it still wouldn’t matter. We don’t know where it is, and we don’t know how to get it to him.” Liv said what we all were thinking.

I said nothing, twisting my charm necklace between my fingers.

It was Macon who finally answered. “Yes. Well. These things are difficulties, not impossibilities.” Link sat up. “The whole death thing, yeah, I’d say that’s pretty difficult, sir. I mean, no offense, Mr. Ravenwood.”

“Finding The Book of Moons is not out of the question, Mr. Lincoln. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you where we last saw it and who last had it.”

“Abraham.” We all knew who he was talking about, but it was Liv who said it. “He had it with him at the Seventeenth Moon, in the cave. And he used it to bring up the Vexes, right before—”

“The Eighteenth Moon,” John said quietly. None of us ever wanted to talk about the night at the water tower.

All of which just set Link off more. “Oh well. That’s easy. Find the Book. How about we just find our way over to whatever backwoods swamp hole Colonel Sanders has been livin’ in for the last two hundred years, and ask him real nice if he wouldn’t mind handin’ over his creepy book? So our dead friend can use it for who knows what, over in who knows where.”

I flicked my wrist at Link, annoyed. A spark flew from the fire grating, singeing his leg.

He jerked away. “Cut it out!”

“Uncle Macon’s right. It’s not impossible,” I said.

Liv played with the rubber band holding her red notebook closed—an anxious habit that meant she was thinking.

“And this time Sarafine’s dead. He won’t have her backing him up.”

Uncle Macon shook his head. “He never needed her, I’m afraid. Not really. You can’t rely on him being any weaker now than he ever was. Don’t underestimate Abraham.”

Liv looked somber. “What about Hunting and his pack?”

Macon stared into the fire. I watched the flames grow taller, deepening into purple and red and orange. I couldn’t tell if my uncle really believed me or not. I didn’t know if he thought for a minute there was a way to bring Ethan back.

I didn’t care what he thought, as long as he was willing to help me.

He looked at me as if he knew what I was thinking. “Hunting, though stupid, is a powerful Incubus. But Abraham alone is a formidable threat. If fear is going to stop us, we should concede failure right now.” Link huffed from the floor behind him.

Macon looked at him over his shoulder. “That is, if you’re frightened.”

“Who said anything about that?” Link was indignant. “I just like a better set a odds when I throw myself into a snake pit.”

“It’s me.” John sat up and announced it, as if he’d just figured out the answer to all our problems.

“What?” Liv pulled away from him.

“I’m the one thing Abraham wants. And the only thing he can’t have.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Link groaned. “You sound like his girlfriend.”

“I’m not stupid. I’m right. I thought I was the One Who Is Two, and I thought it was up to me to do… what Ethan did.

But that wasn’t about me. This is.”

“Shut up,” Link snapped.

Macon’s face twisted into a frown, his green eyes darkening. I knew that expression too well.

Liv nodded. “I agree. Do as your brilliant Incubus brother says. Shut up.” John put his arm gently around her, as if he was speaking only to Liv. But I was hanging on his every word, because everything he was saying was starting to make sense. “I can’t. Not this time. I’m not going to sit around and let Ethan take all the punches. For once, I’m going to get what’s coming to me. Or who.”

“And that is?” Liv wouldn’t look at him.

“Abraham. If you tell him you’ll make a trade, he’ll come for me. He’ll swap me for The Book of Moons .” John looked at Macon, who nodded.

Link looked skeptical. “How do you know?”

John smiled weakly. “He’ll come. Trust me.”

Macon sighed, finally turning from the fireplace toward us. “John, I appreciate your honor and your courage. You’re a fine young man, even if you have your own demons. We all do. But you should take some time to make certain this is a trade you’re willing to make. It’s a last course of action, nothing more.”

“I’m willing.” John stood up, like he was ready to enlist now.

“John!” Liv was furious.

Macon waved him into his seat. “Think it over. If Abraham does take you, it’s not likely we will be able to bring you home, not anytime soon. And as much as I want to bring Ethan back—” Uncle Macon glanced over at me before continuing. “I’m not certain trading one life for another is worth the risk Abraham poses, for any of us.” Liv stepped in front of John, as if she wanted to protect him from everyone else in the room and everything else in the world. “He doesn’t need time to think about it. It’s a terrible plan. Absolutely horrid. The worst plan we’ve ever come up with. The worst plan in the history of plans.” Liv was pale and shaking, but when she saw me watching her, she stopped talking.

She knew what I was thinking.

It didn’t involve John jumping off the Summerville water tower. It wasn’t the worst plan. I closed my eyes.

falling not flying

one lost muddy shoe

like the lost worlds

between me and you

“I’ll do it,” John said. “I don’t like it any more than the rest of you, but this is the way it has to be.” It all sounded too familiar. I opened my eyes to see Liv, stricken. As the tears began to run down Liv’s face, I felt like I was going to throw up.

“No.” I heard myself say the word before I realized I was saying it. “My uncle’s right. I’m not putting you through that, John. Any of you.” I saw the color seep into Liv’s cheeks, and she sank into the chair next to him. “It’s a last-ditch effort.

A last chance.”

“Unless you’ve got another one, Lena, I think the land of last chances is right about where we are.” John looked serious. He had made up his mind, and I loved him for it.

But I shook my head. “I do. What about Link’s idea?”

“Link’s—what?” Liv looked confused.

“My what?” Link scratched his head.

“We find our way to whatever backwoods swamp hole Abraham has been living in for the last two hundred years.”

“And we ask him real nice to give us the Book?” Link looked hopeful. John looked like he thought I was having a stroke.

“No. We steal it, real nice.”

Macon looked interested. “That presumes we can even find my grandfather’s home. The nasty brand of Dark power he wields demands a lifestyle of secrecy, I’m afraid. Tracking Abraham down won’t be easy. He keeps to the Underground.”

I looked steadily back at him. “Well, as the smartest person I know once said, these things are difficulties, not impossibilities.”

My uncle smiled at me. John shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I don’t know where the guy lives; I was just a kid. I remember rooms without windows.”

“Perfect,” Link snapped. “There can’t be many of those around.”

Liv dropped her hand onto John’s shoulder.

John shrugged. “Sorry. My childhood is one big dark cloud. I’ve done my best to block the whole thing out.” My uncle nodded, rising to his feet. “Very well. Then I suggest you start not with the smartest people but perhaps the oldest people. They might have a clue or two as to where you can find Abraham Ravenwood.”

“The oldest people? You mean the Sisters? Do you think they remember Abraham?” My stomach tensed. It wasn’t exactly scary, but it was hard to understand half the things they said—when they weren’t talking crazy.

“If they can’t, they’re likely to invent something equally plausible. They are the closest thing my exponentially-great-grandfather has to contemporaries. Even if they’re hardly what one would call contemporary.” Liv nodded. “It’s worth a try.”

I stood up.

“Just a conversation, Lena,” Uncle Macon cautioned. “Don’t get any ideas. You’re not to set out on any kind of reconnaissance mission of your own. Am I perfectly clear?”

“Crystal,” I said, because there was no talking to him about anything that seemed dangerous. He’d been like this since Ethan—

Since Ethan.

“I’ll go with you for backup,” Link said, pulling himself up from the floor of the study. Link, who couldn’t add two-digit numbers, always sensed when my uncle and I were about to start fighting.

He grinned. “I can translate.”

By now, I felt like I knew the Sisters as well as my own family. Though they were eccentric, to put it mildly, they were also the finest example of living history Gatlin had to offer.

That’s what the people around here called it.

When Link and I walked up the steps of Wate’s Landing, you could hear Gatlin’s living history fighting with each other all the way through the screen door, true to form.

“You don’t throw away perfectly good cut-ler-ee. That’s a cryin’ shame.”

“Mercy Lynne. They’re plastic spoons. Means you’re supposed ta throw ’em away.” Thelma was consoling her, patient as always. She should be sainted. Amma was the first one to say it every time Thelma broke up one of the Sisters’ arguments.

“Just because some people think they’re the queen a England doesn’t give ’em a crown,” Aunt Mercy responded.

Link stood next to me on the porch and tried not to laugh. I knocked on the door, but nobody seemed to notice.

“Now, what on earth is that supposed ta mean?” Aunt Grace interrupted. “Who’s some people? Angelina Witherspoon an’ all them partly nekkid stars—”

“Grace Ann! You don’t speak like that, not in this house.”

It didn’t even slow Aunt Grace down. “—from those smutty magazines you’re always askin’ Thelma ta get from the market?”

“Now, girls…” Thelma started.

I knocked again, more loudly this time, but it was impossible to hear over the chaos.

Aunt Mercy was shouting. “It means you wash the good spoons same as you wash the bad spoons. Then you put

’em all back in the spoon drawer. Everyone knows that. Even the queen a England.”

“Don’t listen ta her, Thelma. She washes the garbage when you and Amma aren’t lookin’.” Aunt Mercy sniffed. “What if I do? You don’t want the neighbors talkin’. We’re respectable, churchgoin’ people. We don’t smell like sinners, and there’s no reason for the cans out front ta smell any different.”

“Exceptin’ they’re full a garbage.” Aunt Grace snorted.

I knocked on the screen door one more time. Link took over, banging once—and the door practically gave out, one hinge swinging down toward the porch.

“Whoops. Sorry about that.” He shrugged awkwardly.

Amma appeared at the door, looking grateful for the distraction. “You ladies have some visitors.” She pushed the screen open wide. The Sisters glanced up from their respective afghans, looking friendly and polite, like they hadn’t been screaming bloody murder a second earlier.

I sat on the edge of a hard wooden chair, not making myself too comfortable. Link stood even less comfortably next to me.

“I reckon we do. Afternoon, Wesley. And who’s there with y’all?” Aunt Mercy squinted, and Aunt Grace elbowed her.

“It’s that girlfriend a Ethan’s. That pretty Ravenwood gal. The one who always has her nose in a book, like Lila Jane.

”

“That’s right. You know me, Aunt Mercy. I’m Ethan’s girlfriend, ma’am.” It was the same thing I said every time I came over.

Aunt Mercy harrumphed. “Well, what if it is? What’re ya doin’ around here now that Ethan’s gone and passed on ta one world or another?”

Amma froze in the kitchen doorway. “Come again?”

Thelma didn’t look up from her needlepoint.

“You heard me, Miss Amma,” Aunt Mercy said.

“Wh-what?” I stammered.

“What are you talking about?” Link could barely speak.

“You know about Ethan? How?” I leaned forward in my chair.

“You think we don’t catch a thing or two ’bout what’s goin’ on around here? Wasn’t born yesterday, and we’re smarter than y’all think. We know plenty ’bout the Casters, same as we do weather patterns and dress patterns and traffic patterns….” Aunt Grace wadded up her handkerchief, her voice trailing off.

“And the peach stand seasons.” Aunt Mercy looked proud.

“A storm cloud’s a storm cloud. This one’s been workin’ its way through the sky for a long time now. Near ’bout all our lives.” Aunt Grace nodded at her sister.

“Seems to me any right-minded person would try to keep outta a storm like that,” Amma bristled, tucking the edge of the blanket around Aunt Grace’s legs.

“We didn’t know you knew,” I said.

“Lord have mercy, you’re as bad as Prudence Jane. She thought we didn’t have a clue between us ’bout her traipsin’ all over underneath the County and back. Like we didn’t know our daddy picked her ta keep the map. Like we didn’t tell him ourselves ta pick Prudence Jane. Always thought she was the one with the steadiest hand outta all three a us.” Aunt Mercy laughed.

“Sweet Redeemer, Mercy Lynne, you know our daddy woulda picked me ’fore he picked you. I only told him ta ask you on account a I didn’t like my hair all curled up, the way it got in the Underground. Looked like a porkypine with a bad permanent, I swear.” Aunt Grace shook her head.

Mercy sniffed. “You do swear, Grace Ann, and I’m the only one who knows it.”

“You take that back.” Aunt Grace pointed a bony finger at her sister.

“I will not.”

“Please, ma’am. Ma’ams.” What was the plural of ma’am? “We need your help. We’re looking for Abraham Ravenwood. He has something of ours, something important.” I looked from one Sister to the other.

“We need it ta—” Link corrected himself. “To bring Ethan home, lickety-split.” If you hung around the Sisters long enough, you started talking like them.

I rolled my eyes.

“What’re you fussin’ ’bout?” Aunt Grace waved her handkerchief.

Aunt Mercy sniffed again. “Sounds like more Caster nonsense ta me.”

Amma raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you catch us all up? Seein’ as how we all love nonsense the way we do.” Link and I looked at each other. It was going to be a long night.

Caster nonsense or not, once Amma dragged out the Sisters’ scrapbooks, wheels began turning and mouths started moving. At first Amma couldn’t bear to hear the mention of Abraham Ravenwood’s name, but Link kept talking.

And talking, and talking.

Still, Amma didn’t stop him, which seemed like half a victory. Though talking to the Sisters themselves didn’t seem anything like the other half of one.

Within the hour, Abraham Ravenwood was denounced as the Devil, a cheat, a scoundrel, a no-goodnik, and a thief.

He’d kept their daddy’s daddy’s daddy from the southeast corner of his old apple orchard, which was rightfully his, and his daddy’s daddy from a seat on the county board, which also was rightfully his.

And on top of all that, they were more than certain that he danced with the Devil up at Ravenwood Plantation on more than one occasion, before it burned during the Civil War.

When I attempted to clarify, they didn’t want to get more specific than that.

“That’s what I said. He up and danced with the Devil. He made a deal. Don’t like talkin’ ’bout or thinkin’ ’bout him neither.” Aunt Mercy shook her head so violently, I thought her dentures were going to come unglued.

“Let’s say you did think about him, though. Where would you picture him?” Link tried again, just as we had all night.

Finally, it was Aunt Grace who found the missing piece to the scrambled crossword puzzle the Sisters considered conversation.

“Why, at his place, a course. Anybody with a lick a sense knows that.”

“Where’s his place, Aunt Grace? Ma’am?” I put my hand on Link’s arm, hopeful. It was the first clear sentence we’d gotten out of her in what felt like hours.

“The dark side a the moon, I reckon. Where all the Devils and Demons live when they’re not burnin’ down below.” My heart sank. I was never going to get anywhere with these two.

“Great. The dark side a the moon. So Abraham Ravenwood is alive and well in a Pink Floyd album.” Link was getting as crabby as I was.

“That’s what Grace Ann said. The dark side a the moon.” Aunt Mercy looked annoyed. “Don’t know why you two act like that’s such a conundy-rum.”

“Where, exactly, is the dark side of the moon, Aunt Mercy?” Amma sat down next to Ethan’s great-aunt, taking the old woman’s hands in her lap. “You know. Come on now.”

Aunt Mercy smiled at Amma. “ ’Course I do.” She glared at Aunt Grace. “ ’Cause Daddy picked me ’fore Grace. I know all sorts a things.”

“Then, where is it?” Amma asked.

Grace snorted, pulling the photo album off the coffee table in front of them. “Young people. Actin’ like they know everythin’. Actin’ like we’re one step from the home just ’cause we got a year or two on you.” She leafed through the pages madly, as if she was looking for one thing in particular—

Which, apparently, she was.

Because there, on the last page, under a faded pressed camellia and a stretch of pale pink ribbon, was the ripped-off top of a book of matches. It was from some kind of bar or club.

“I’ll be danged,” Link marveled, earning himself a swat on the head from Aunt Mercy.

There it was, marked with a silvery moon.

THE DARK SIDE O’ THE MOON

N’AWLINS’ FINEST SINCE 1911

The Dark Side o’ the Moon was a place.

A place where I might be able to find Abraham Ravenwood and, I hoped, The Book of Moons . If the Sisters were not completely out of their minds, which was a possibility that could never be discounted.

Amma took one look at the matches and left the room. I remembered the story of Amma’s visit to the bokor and knew better than to press her further.

Instead, I looked at Aunt Grace. “Do you mind?”

Aunt Grace nodded, and I pulled the antique shred of matchbook from the album page. Most of the paint was scratched off the embossed moon, but you could still see the writing. We were going to New Orleans.

You would have thought Link had solved the Rubik’s Cube. The moment we got into the Beater, he started blasting some song from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and shouting excitedly over the music.

When we slowed at the corner, I turned down the volume and cut him off. “Drop me off at Ravenwood, will you? I need to get something before I leave for New Orleans.”

“Hold on. I’m comin’ with you. I promised Ethan I’d keep my eye on you, and I keep my promises.”

“I’m not taking you. I’m taking John.”

“John? That’s the somethin’ you’re gettin’ from home?” His eyes narrowed. “No way.”

“I wasn’t asking your permission. Just so you know.”

“Why? What’s he got that I haven’t?”

“Experience. He knows about Abraham, and he’s the strongest hybrid Incubus in Gatlin County, as far as we know.

”

“We’re the same, Lena.” Link’s feathers were getting ruffled.

“You’re more Mortal than John is. That’s what I like about you, Link. But it also makes you weaker.”

“Who are you callin’ weak?” Link flexed his muscles. To be fair, he did nearly split his T-shirt in half. He was like the Incredible Hulk of Stonewall Jackson High.

“I’m sorry. You’re not weak. You’re just three-quarters human. And that’s a little too human for this trip.”

“Whatever. Suit yourself. See if you even get ten feet through the Tunnels without me. You’ll be back here, beggin’

for my help, before I can say…” His face went blank. A classic Link moment. Sometimes the words just seemed to float away from him before they could make it all the way from his brain to his mouth. He finally gave up with a shrug.

“Somethin’. Somethin’ real dangerous.”

I patted his shoulder. “Bye, Link.”

Link frowned, hitting the gas pedal, and we ripped down the street. Not the usual kind of rip for an Incubus, but then again, he was three-quarters rocker. Just the way I liked him—my favorite Linkubus.

I didn’t say that, but I’m pretty sure he knew.

I changed every light green for him, all the way down Route 9. The Beater never had it so good.

CHAPTER 21

Dark Side of the Moon

Saying we were going to New Orleans to find an old bar—and an even older Incubus—was one thing. Actually finding him was something different. What stood between those two things was talking my Uncle Macon into letting me go.

I tried my uncle at the dinner table, well after Kitchen had served up his favorite dinner, before the plates had disappeared from the endlessly long table.

Kitchen, who was never as accommodating as you’d think a Caster kitchen might be, seemed to know it was important and did everything I asked and more. When I walked downstairs, I found flickering candelabras and the scent of jasmine in the air. With a flutter of my fingers, orchids and tiger lilies bloomed across the length of the table. I fluttered them again, and my viola appeared in the corner of the room.

I stared at it, and it began to play Paganini. A favorite of my uncle’s.

Perfect.

I looked down at my grubby jeans and Ethan’s faded sweatshirt. I closed my eyes as my hair began to weave itself into a thick French braid. When I opened them again, I was dressed for dinner.

A simple black cocktail dress, the one Uncle Macon bought me last summer in Rome. I touched my neck, and the silver crescent moon necklace he gave me for the winter formal appeared at the base of my throat.

Ready.