Beautiful Redemption

“Here.” I held it out to Xavier. “You can add it to your collection.” I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need it to cross the river again. I would either find my way back home or I would never leave here. Somehow I knew that, even if I didn’t know anything else.

Xavier stared at the stone for a long minute. “You keep it, dead man. Those aren’t—” After that, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. My vision started to blur, Xavier’s leathery black skin and the stone in my palm shifting until they started to bleed together into a single dark shadow.

Sulla sat at an old wicker table, an oill lamp illuminating the small room. A spread was laid out in front of her, the Cards of Providence lined up in two neat rows, each stamped with a black sparrow in the corner

—Sulla’s mark. A tall man sat across from her, his smooth head gleaming in the light.

“The Bleeding Blade. Blind Man’s Rage. Liar’s Promise. The Stolen Heart.” She frowned and shook her head. “Can tell you, none a this is good. What you’re chasin’, you ain’t never gonna find. And it’ll be worse if you do.”

The man ran his huge hands over his scalp nervously. “What’s that supposed to mean, Sulla? Stop talking in circles.”

“It means they’re never gonna give you what you want, Angelus. The Far Keep doesn’t need a spread to know you’ve been breakin’ their rules all along.”

Angelus pushed away from the table violently. “I don’t need them to give me what I want. I have other Keepers behind me. Keepers who want to be more than scribes. Why should we be forced to record history when we can be the ones who make it!”

“Can’t change the cards—that’s all I know.”

Angelus stared at the beautiful woman with the golden skin and delicate braids. “Words can change things, Seer. You just have to put them in the right book.”

Something caught Sulla’s eye, and she was distracted for a moment. Her granddaughter crouched behind the door, listening. On any other night, Sulla wouldn’t have minded. Amarie was seventeen, older than Sulla was when she learned to read cards. Sulla didn’t want the girl to see this man. There was something evil inside him. She didn’t need the cards to see that much.

Angelus started to stand, his huge hands clenched into fists.

Sulla tapped a card at the top of the spread, with a pair of golden gates inked across the face. “This one here’s a wild card.”

The man hesitated. “What does it mean?”

“Means sometimes we make our own fate. Things the cards can’t see. Depends on which side a the gate you choose.”

Angelus picked up the card, crumpling it in his hand. “I’ve stood outside the gates long enough.” The door slammed, and Amarie stepped out from her hiding place. “Who was that, Grandmamma?” The older woman picked up the crumpled card, smoothing it with her hands. “He’s a Keeper from up north. A man who wants more than any man should have.”

“What does he want?”

Sulla’s eyes met Amarie’s, and for a second she was not sure if she would answer the girl. “To tamper with fate. Change the cards.”

“But you can’t change the cards.”

Sulla looked away, remembering what she’d seen in the cards the day Amarie was born. “Sometimes you can. But there’s always a price.”

When I opened my eyes, Xavier was standing above me, his features twisted in concern. “What did you see, dead man?”

The black stone was warm in my hand. I squeezed it tighter, as if it could somehow bring me closer to Amma. To the memories locked within its shiny black surface. “How many times has Angelus changed The Caster Chronicles , Xavier?”

The Gatekeeper looked away, wringing his long fingers nervously.

“Xavier, answer me.”

Our eyes met, and I saw the pain in his. “Too many times.”

“Why is he doing it?” What did Angelus have to gain?

“Some men want to be more than Mortal. Angelus is one of those men.”

“Are you saying he wanted to be a Caster?”

Xavier nodded slowly. “He wanted to change fate. To find a way to defy supernatural law and mix Mortal and Caster blood.”

Genetic engineering. “So he wanted Mortals to have powers like Casters?” Xavier ran his abnormally long hand over his bald head. “There is no reason to have power if you are left with no one to torment and control.”

It didn’t make sense. It was too late for Angelus. Was he, like Abraham Ravenwood, trying to create some kind of hybrid child? “Was he experimenting on children?”

Xavier turned away, and for a long moment he was silent. “He experimented on himself using Dark Casters.” A chill ran up my spine, and I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t imagine what the Keeper must have done to them. I was trying to find the right words to ask, but Xavier told me before I had a chance.

trying to find the right words to ask, but Xavier told me before I had a chance.

“Angelus tested their blood, tissue—I don’t know what else. And he injected a serum made from their blood into his own. It didn’t give him the power he wanted. But he kept trying. Each injection made him paler and more desperate.”

“That sounds horrible.”

He turned his deformed face back toward mine. “That was not the horrible part, dead man. That would come later.” I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t stop myself. “What happened?”

“Eventually, he found a Caster whose blood gave him a mutated version of his own power. She was Light and beautiful and kind. And I…” He hesitated.

“Did you love her?”

His features looked more human than ever before. “I did. And Angelus destroyed her.”

“I’m so sorry, Xavier.”

He nodded. “She was a powerful Telepath before she went mad from Angelus’ experiments.” A mind reader. Suddenly I understood.

“Are you saying Angelus can read minds?”

“Only Mortal ones.”

Only Mortal ones. Like mine and Liv’s and Marian’s.

I needed to find my page in The Caster Chronicles and get back home.

“Don’t look so sad, dead man.”

I watched the hands on Xavier’s clocks turn in different directions, marking the passage of time that didn’t exist here. I didn’t want to tell him that I wasn’t sad.

I was afraid.

I kept my eyes on those clocks, but I still couldn’t keep track of the time. Sometimes it got so bad that I started to forget what I was waiting for in the first place. Too much time will do that to you. Blur the edges between your memories and your imagination until everything feels like something you saw in a movie instead of your life.

I was beginning to give up on ever seeing The Book of Moons again. Which meant giving up on a whole lot more than some old Caster book.

It meant giving up on Gatlin, the good and the bad of it. Giving up on Amma and my dad and Aunt Marian. Link and Liv and John. Jackson High and the Dar-ee Keen and Wate’s Landing and Route 9. The place where I first realized Lena was the girl from my dreams.

Giving up on the Book meant giving up on her.

I couldn’t do that.

I wouldn’t.

After what had to be a few days or a few weeks—it was impossible to know—Xavier realized I was losing more than time.

He was sitting on the dirt floor inside the cave, cataloging what looked like thousands of keys. “What did she look like?”

“Who?” I asked.

“The girl.”

I watched him sort the keys by size, then shape. I wondered where they came from, whose doors they opened, as I searched for the right words. “She was… alive.”

“Was she beautiful?”

Was she? It was getting harder to remember.

“Yeah. I think so.”

Xavier stopped sorting the keys, watching me. “What did she look like, the girl?” How could I tell him everything was swirling in my mind, blending together in a way that made it impossible to picture her clearly?

“Ethan? Did you hear me? You have to tell me. Otherwise you will forget. That’s what happens if you spend too much time here. You’ll lose everything that made you who you were. This place takes it from you.” I turned away before I answered. “I’m not sure. It’s all a blur.”

“Was her hair gold?” Xavier loved gold.

“No,” I said. I was pretty sure, though I couldn’t remember why. I stared at the wall in front of me, trying to picture her face. Then a single thought came to me, and I opened my eyes. “There were curls. Lots and lots of curls.”

“The girl?”

“Yes.” I looked at the rocky outcroppings at the top of the cave. “Lena.”

“Her name is Lena?”

I nodded as tears began to stream down my face. I was so relieved I could still remember her name.

Hurry, Lena. I don’t have much time left.

By the time I saw the crow again, I had forgotten. My memories were like dreams, except I never slept. I watched Xavier. I counted buttons and cataloged coins. I stared at the sky.

That’s what I was trying to do now, but the stupid bird kept shrieking and flapping its enormous wings.

“Go away.”

He shrieked even louder.

I rolled onto my side and swatted at him. That’s when I saw the Book lying in the dirt in front of me.

“Xavier,” I said, my voice unsteady. “Come here.”

“What is it, dead man?” I heard him call from the cave.

“The Book of Moons .” I picked it up, and it was warm in my hands. But my hands didn’t burn. I remembered thinking they should.

As I held the Book, my memories came flooding back to me. Just as this book had brought me back from the dead once before, so now was it bringing my life back to me again. I could picture every detail. The places I’d been. The things I’d done. The people I loved.

I could see Lena’s delicate face. Her green and gold eyes and the crescent-shaped birthmark on her cheek. I remembered lemons and rosemary and hurricane-force winds and spontaneous combustion. Everything that made Lena the girl I loved.

I was whole again.

And I knew I had to leave this place before it claimed me forever.

I picked up the Book in both hands and carried it into the cave. It was time to make a trade.

With every step, the Book was heavy in my hands. It didn’t slow me down, though. Nothing could, not now.

Not until there were no more steps to take.

The Gates of the Far Keep rose before me, straight and tall. Now I understood why Xavier was so obsessed with gold. The Gates were a filthy blackish brown, but underneath I could see the gold fighting through. They rose in forbidding spires. They didn’t seem to lead anywhere a person would want to go.

“They look so evil.”

Xavier followed my eyes to the tips of the spires. “They are what they are. Power is neither good nor evil.”

“Maybe that’s true, but this place is evil.”

“Ethan. You are a strong Mortal. You have more life in you than any dead man I’ve met.” Somehow, that wasn’t a comfort. “I cannot open the Gates if you do not truly wish to go.” The words sounded ominous.

“I have to go. I have to get back to Lena, and Amma, and Link. And my dad, and Marian, and Liv, and everybody.” I saw their faces, every one of them. I felt surrounded by them, by their spirits, and by mine. I remembered what it was to live among them, my friends.

I remembered what it was to live.

“Lena. The girl with the golden curls?” Xavier sounded curious.

There was no point trying to explain, not to him. I just nodded—it seemed easier.

“And you love her?” He looked even more curious about that.

“Yes.” There was no doubt. “I love her beyond the universe and back. I love her from this world to the next.” He blinked, expressionless. “Well. That’s very serious.”

I almost felt like smiling. “Yeah. I tried to tell you. It’s like that.” He stared at me for a long moment, finally nodding. “All right. Follow me.” Then he disappeared up the dusty pathway in front of me.

I followed him as the path twisted into an impossibly rocky staircase. We climbed until we reached a narrow cliff that dropped away into what seemed like oblivion. When I tried to look over the edge of the rock, all I could see were clouds and darkness.

In front of me were the imposing black Gates. I couldn’t see anything beyond them. But I could hear terrible sounds

—chains rattling, voices wailing and crying.

“It sounds like Hell.”

He shook his head. “Not Hell. Only the Far Keep.”

Xavier moved in front of me, blocking my path to the Gates. “Are you sure you want to do this, dead man?” I nodded, keeping my eyes on his disfigured face.

“Human boy. The one called Ethan. My friend.” His eyes went pale and glassy, as if he was going into some kind of trance.

“What is it, Xavier?” I was impatient, but more than that I was terrified. And the longer we stood outside listening to the terrible sounds of whatever was going on inside, the worse it seemed to get. I was afraid of losing my nerve—of giving up and turning back—of wasting everything Lena had gone through to get The Book of Moons to me.

He ignored me. “You propose a trade, dead man? What do you offer me if I open the Gates? How do you propose to pay your way for entrance into the Far Keep?”

I just stood there.

He opened one eye, hissing at me. “The Book. Give me the Book.”

I gave it to him, but I couldn’t move my hands away. It was like the Book and I were one thing, yet somehow connected to Xavier as well.

“What the—”

“I accept this offering, and in return I open the Gates of the Far Keep.” Xavier’s body went limp, and he collapsed in a heap around the Book.

“Are you okay, Xavier?”

“Shh.” The sound coming from the heap of robes was the only thing that told me he was still alive.

I heard another sound, like rocks falling or cars crashing, but really it was just the enormous Gates opening. It seemed like they hadn’t been opened in a thousand years. I watched the black walls give way to the world inside.

As a rush of relief and exhaustion and adrenaline made my heart race, one thought kept running through my mind.

It has to be over soon.

This had to be the hardest part. I paid the Ferryman. I crossed the river. I got the Book. I made the trade.

I made it to the Far Keep. I’m almost home. I’m coming, ll.

I could picture her face. Imagined seeing her and holding her in my arms again.

It wouldn’t be long.

At least that’s what I thought as I walked through the Gates.

CHAPTER 31

Keepers of Secrets

I don’t remember what I saw when I walked into the Far Keep. What I remember are the feelings. The pure terror. The way my eyes couldn’t find anything—not one familiar thing—to rest on. Nothing they could understand. I was prepared in no way, by any world I’d ever encountered, for the one I was encountering now.

This place was cold and evil, like Sauron’s tower in The Lord of the Rings . I had that same feeling of being watched, the feeling that some sort of universal eye could see what I was seeing, could sense the innermost terrors of my heart and exploit them.

As I stepped away from the Gates, tall walls loomed on either side of me. They extended toward an overlook, where I could see the greater part of a city. It was as if I was looking into a valley from a high mountaintop. Beneath me, the city extended toward the horizon in a great recess of structures. As I looked more closely, I realized it didn’t resemble a regular city.

It was a labyrinth, a massive, interlocking puzzle of paths carved from cut hedges. It threaded through the whole of the city between me and the golden building that rose steeply toward the horizon ahead.

The building I needed to reach.

“Have you come here to face the labyrinth? Are you here for the games?” I heard a voice behind me, and I turned to see an unnaturally pale man, like the Keepers who had appeared in the Gatlin Library before Marian’s trial. He had the opaque eyes and prismatic glasses I had come to associate with the Far Keep.

Over his thin frame hung a black robe like the ones the Council members had worn when they sentenced Marian

—or whatever they had planned to do, before Macon, John, and Liv stopped them.

Those were the bravest people I knew. I couldn’t let them down now.

Not Lena. Not any of them.

“I’m here for the library,” I answered. “Can you show me the way?”

“That’s what I said. The games?” He pointed to a braid of gold rope around his shoulder. “I’m an officer. I’m here to make sure all who enter the Keep find their way.”

“Huh?”

“You want to gain entrance to the Great Keep. Is that your desire?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you’re here for the games.” The pale man pointed at the overgrown green maze below us. “If you survive the labyrinth, you’ll end up there.” He moved his finger until he was pointing at the gold towers. “The Great Keep.” I didn’t want to find my way through a labyrinth. Everything about the Otherworld felt like one gigantic maze, and all I wanted to do was find my way out.

“I don’t think you understand. Isn’t there some kind of door? A place where I can walk inside without having to play any games?” I didn’t have time for this. I needed to find The Caster Chronicles and get out. Get home.

Come on.

He slapped his hand against my arm, and I struggled to stay standing. The man was incredibly strong—Link and John strong. “It would be too easy if you could walk into the Great Keep. What would be the point of that?” I tried to hide my frustration. “I don’t know? How about to get inside?” He frowned. “Where have you come from?”

“The Otherworld.”

“Dead man, listen well. The Great Keep is not like the Otherworld. The Great Keep has many names. To the Norse it is Valhalla, Hall of the Lords. To the Greeks it is Olympus. There are as many names as there are men who would speak them.”

“Okay. I’m down with all that. I just want to find my way inside this one library. If I could just find someone to talk to—

”

“There is but one way into the Great Keep,” he said. “The Warrior’s Way.” I sighed. “So there’s no other way? Like, a doorway? Maybe even a Warrior’s Doorway?” He shook his head. “There are no doors to the Great Keep.”

Of course there weren’t.

“Yeah? What about a stairway?” I asked. The pale man shook his head again. “Or maybe an alley?” He was finished with this conversation. “There is only one way in, an honorable death. And there is only one way out.

”

“You mean I can be more dead than this?”

He smiled politely.

I tried again. “What’s that, exactly? An honorable death?”

“You face the labyrinth. It does what it will with you. You accept your fate.”

“And? What’s the one way out?”

He shrugged. “No one leaves unless we choose to let them leave.”

Great.

“Thanks, I guess.” What else was there to say?

“Good luck, dead man. May you fight in peace.”

I nodded. “Yeah, sure. I hope so.”

The strange Keeper, if that’s what he was, went back to guarding his post.

I stared down at the massive labyrinth, wondering once again what I’d gotten myself into and how I could possibly get myself out.

They shouldn’t call death passing on. They should call it leveling up.

Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. The only way to get through this whole labyrinth thing, like most other crappy things, was to just get through it.

I would have to find a path the hard way.

The Warrior’s Way, or whatever.

And fight in peace? What was that about?

My guard was up as I stumbled my way down a staircase cut out of rock. I moved deeper into the valley below, and the stairs widened into layers of steep cliffs, where green moss grew between the rocks, and ivy clung to the walls.

When I reached the base of the walled stairwell, I found myself in an immense garden.

Not just a garden like the ones folks in Gatlin grew their tomatoes in, out behind their swamp coolers. A garden in the sense of the Garden of Eden—and not Gardens of Eden, the florist over on Main Street.

It looked like a dream. Because the colors were all wrong—they were too bright, and there were too many of them.

As I moved closer, I realized where I was.

The labyrinth.

Rows of hedges tangled with so many flowering bushes that they made the gardens of Ravenwood look small and shabby in comparison.

The farther I walked, the less it seemed like walking and the more it felt like bushwhacking. I pulled branches out of my face and kicked my way through the waist-high brambles and brush. Root hog or die. That’s what Amma would have said. Keep trying.

It reminded me of the time I tried to walk home from Wader’s Creek when I was nine. I had been poking around in Amma’s craft room, which wasn’t a craft room at all. It was the room where she stored the supplies for her charms. She gave me a piece and a half of her mind, and I told her I was walking home. “I can find my own way”—that’s what I told her. But I didn’t find my way, or any way. Instead, I wandered deeper and deeper into the swamplands, spooked by the sound of gators’ tails thrashing in the water.

I didn’t know Amma was following me, until I dropped to my knees and started to cry. She stepped out into the moonlight, hands on her hips. “Guess you shoulda dropped some bread crumbs if you were plannin’ to run off.” She didn’t say anything else, just held out her hand.

“I would’ve found my way back,” I’d said.

She nodded. “I don’t doubt it for a minute, Ethan Wate.”

But now, yanking dirt and thorns out of my face, I didn’t have Amma to come find me. This was something I had to do on my own.

Like plowing the Lilum’s field and bringing the water back to Gatlin.

Or taking a dive off the Summerville water tower.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was pretty much in the same boat I’d been in that day in the swamp when I was nine. I was walking down the same pathways over and over, unless some other guy was wearing the same size Converse as me. I might as well be lost on the way home from Wader’s Creek.

I tried to think.

A maze is just a big puzzle.

I was going about this wrong. I needed to mark the pathways I had already taken. I needed some of Amma’s bread crumbs.

I stripped the nearest bush of its leaves, stuffing them in my pockets. I reached out my right hand until it touched the wall of bushes, and I started walking. I kept my right hand on the wall of the maze and used my left to drop the waxy leaves every few feet.

It was like a giant corn maze. Keep the same hand on the stalks until you dead-end. Then switch hands and go the other way. Anyone who’s ever been stuck in a corn maze can tell you that.

I followed the path to the right until it dead-ended. Then I switched hands and bread crumbs. This time I reached out with my left hand, and I used stones instead of leaves.

After what felt like hours of winding my way through this particular puzzle, hitting one dead end after another and stepping over the same rocks and leaves I had used to mark my tracks, I finally reached the very center of the maze, the place where all pathways came to an end. Only the center wasn’t an exit. It was a pit, with what looked like enormous mud walls. As thick rolls of white fog spread toward me, I was forced to confront the truth.

The labyrinth wasn’t a labyrinth at all.

It was a dead end.

Beyond the fog and dirt, there was nothing but the impenetrable brush.

Keep moving. Keep your bearings.

I walked forward, kicking waves in the dense mist that clung to the ground around me. Just as I made some progress, my foot hit something long and hard. Maybe a stick or a pipe.

I tried to navigate more carefully, but the fog made it hard to see. It was like looking through glasses smeared with Vaseline. As I moved closer to the center, the white mist began to clear, and I tripped again.

This time I could see what was in the way.

It wasn’t a pipe or a stick.

It was a human bone.

Long and thin, it must have been a leg bone, or maybe an arm.

“Holy crap.” I yanked on it, and it pulled free, sending a human skull rolling toward my feet. The dirt around me was piled high with bones, as long and bare as the one I was holding in my hand.

I let the bone drop and backed away, stumbling over what I thought was a rock. But it was another skull. The faster I ran, the more I tripped, twisting my ankle in the loops of an old hip bone, catching my Chucks on a piece of spine.

Am I dreaming?

On top of that, I had an overpowering sense of déjà vu. The feeling that I was running toward a place I’d been before. Which didn’t make sense, because I had no experience with pits or bones or wandering around being dead, until now.

Still.

It felt like I’d been here, like I’d always been here, and I couldn’t get far enough away. Like every path I’d ever taken was here in this maze.

No way out but through it.

I had to keep moving. I had to face this place, this pit full of bones. Wherever it was leading me. Or to who.

Then a dark shadow emerged, and I knew I wasn’t alone.

Across the clearing, there was a person sitting on what looked like a box, perched on a gruesome hill of human remains. No—it was a chair. I could see the back rising higher than the rest, the arms jutting wider.

It was a throne.

The figure laughed with impossible confidence as the fog parted to reveal the corpse-ridden waste of the uneven battleground. It didn’t matter to the person on the throne.

To her.

Because as the fog rolled back to reveal the center of the pit, I knew immediately who was sitting tall on a hideous throne of bones. Back made of broken backs. Arms made of broken arms. Feet made of broken feet.

The Queen of the Dead and the Damned.

Laughing so hard her black curls slithered through the air, like the snakes on Obidias’ hand. My worst nightmare.

Sarafine Duchannes.

CHAPTER 32

Throne of Bones

Her dark cloak flapped in the wind like a shadow. The mist swirled around her black-buckled boots, disappearing into the darkness, as if she could draw it to her. Maybe she could. After all, she was a Cataclyst—the most powerful Caster in two universes.

Or the second most powerful.

Sarafine pushed back her cloak, letting it fall off her shoulders, around her long black curls. My skin went cold.

“Karma’s a bitch, wouldn’t you say, Mortal Boy?” she called across the pit, her voice confident and strong. Full of energy and evil.

She stretched luxuriously, clasping the arms of the chair in her own bony claws.

“I wouldn’t say anything, Sarafine. Not to you.” I tried to keep my voice even. I hadn’t wanted to see her in one lifetime, let alone two.

Sarafine beckoned with one curving finger. “Is that why you’re hiding? Or are you still afraid of me?” I took a step closer. “I’m not afraid of you.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t know that I blame you. After all, I did kill you. A knife to the chest, in warm Mortal blood.”

“Hard to remember back that far. I guess you weren’t that memorable.” I folded my arms stubbornly. Trying to hold my ground.

It was no use.

She rolled a ball of mist toward me, and it wrapped around me, closing the gap between us. I felt myself moving forward, powerless, as if she was dragging me by a leash.

So she still had her powers even here.

Good to know.

I stumbled over the ridge of an inhuman skeleton, something twice as big as me, with twice as many arms and legs. I swallowed. More powerful creatures than a guy from Gatlin County had met their fates here. I hoped she wasn’t the reason why.

“What are you doing here, Sarafine?” I tried not to sound as intimidated as I was. I dug my feet into the dirt.

Sarafine leaned back in her throne of bones, examining the nails on one of her claws. “Me? Lately I’ve spent most of my time being dead, like you. Oh, wait—you were there. You watched when my daughter let me burn to death. A real charmer, that one. Teenagers. What are you going to do?”

Sarafine had no right to mention Lena. She’d surrendered that right when she walked away from a burning house with her baby daughter inside. When she tried to kill Lena like she’d killed Lena’s father. And me.

I wanted to throw myself at her, but every instinct I had left told me to stay back. “You’re nothing, Sarafine. You’re a ghost.”

She smiled when I said the word “ghost,” biting the tip of one of her long black nails. “Something we have in common now.”

“We don’t have anything in common.” I could feel my hands clenching into fists. “You make me sick. Why don’t you get out of my sight?”

I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t in any position to be ordering her around. I didn’t have a weapon. No possible means of attack. No way past her.

My mind raced, but I couldn’t find an advantage—and you couldn’t let Sarafine get the upper hand.

Kill or be killed, that was her style. Even when it seemed like we should have moved past something as Mortal as death.

Her mouth curled into a snarl. “Your sight?”

She laughed, a cold sound that rippled down my spine. “Maybe your girlfriend should have thought about that before she killed me. She’s the reason I’m here. If it weren’t for that ungrateful little witch, I would still be in the Mortal world. Instead of stuck in the dark, battling the ghosts of lost and pathetic Mortal boys.” She was close enough now that I could see her face. She didn’t look too good, even for Sarafine. Her dress was ragged and black, the bodice charred into tattered pieces. Her face was smudged with soot, and her hair smelled like smoke.

Sarafine turned toward me, her eyes glowing and white—milky with an opaque light I had never seen before.

“Sarafine?”

I took a step back—just as she struck me with a bolt of electricity, the smell of burnt flesh traveling faster than her body possibly could.

I heard a psychotic scream. Saw her face, contorted into an inhuman death mask. Sharp teeth seemed to match the dagger she held in her hand—only inches from my throat.

I winced, pulling back from the blade, but I knew it was too late. I wasn’t going to make it.

Lena!

Sarafine stopped short, as if smashed backward by an invisible current. Her arms stretched toward me, her blade shaking with anger.

Something was wrong with her.

I heard the sound of chains as she fell, stumbling back toward her throne. She dropped the blade, and her long skirt kicked open, and I saw the manacles around her ankles. The chains holding her to the ground and pinning her to the throne.

She wasn’t the Queen of the Underworld. She was an angry dog trapped in a kennel. Sarafine screamed, beating her fists against the bones. I moved to the side, but she didn’t even look at me.

Now I understood.

I picked up a bone and tossed it at her. She didn’t react until it hit the throne, falling harmlessly into the pile of debris at her feet.

She spit at me, shaking with rage. “Fool!”

But I knew the truth.

Her white eyes saw nothing.

Her pupils were fixed.

She was blind.

Maybe it was from the fire that had killed her in the Mortal world. It all came flooding back to me—the terrible end of her terrible life. She was as damaged here as she was when she burned to death. But that wasn’t all. Something else had happened. Even the fire couldn’t explain the chains.

“What happened to your eyes?” I watched her recoil when I said it. Sarafine wasn’t one to show weakness. She was better at finding and exploiting it.

“My new look. Old blind woman, like the Fates or the Furies. What do you think?” Her lips curved over her teeth, into a growl.

It was impossible to feel sorry for Sarafine, so I didn’t. Still, she seemed bitter and broken.

“The leash is a nice touch,” I said.

She laughed, but it was more like the hiss of an animal. She had become something that didn’t resemble a Dark Caster, not anymore. She was a creature, maybe even more of one than Xavier or the River Master. She was losing it

—whatever part of our world she’d known.

I tried again. “What happened to your sight? Was it the fire?”

Her white eyes burned as she answered. “The Far Keep wanted to have their fun with me. Angelus is a sadistic pig. He thought they would even the odds by forcing me to battle without being able to see my opponents. He wanted me to know how it would feel to be powerless.” She sighed, picking at a bone. “Not that it’s slowed me down yet.” I didn’t think it had.

I looked at the circus of bones surrounding her, the bloodstains in the dirt at her feet. “Who cares? Why fight? You’re dead. I’m dead. What do we even have left to fight about? Tell this Angelus guy to go jump off a—”

“Water tower?” She laughed.

But I had a point, if you thought about it. It was starting to feel like those old Terminator movies between us. If I killed her now, I could imagine her skeleton dragging itself across this pit with glowing red eyes until it could kill me a thousand more times.

She stopped laughing. “Why are you here? Think about it, Ethan.” She lifted her hand, and I felt my throat beginning to close. I gasped for air.

I tried to back away, but it was pointless. Even with her dog chain, she still had enough power to make my not-quite-a-life miserable.

“I’m trying to get into the Great Keep.” I choked. I tried to inhale, but I couldn’t get a real breath.

Am I even breathing, or am I only imagining it?

Like she said herself, she’d already killed me once. What was left?

“I just want to take my page. You think I want to be stuck here forever, wandering through a maze of bones?”

“You’ll never get past Angelus. He’d die before he’d let you near The Caster Chronicles .” She smiled, twisting her fingers, and I gasped again. Now it felt like she had a hand around my lungs.

“Then I’ll kill him.” I grabbed at my neck with both hands. My face felt like it was on fire.

“The Keepers already know you’re here. They sent an officer to lead you into the labyrinth. They didn’t want to miss out on the fun.” Sarafine twisted around at the mention of the Keepers, as if she was looking over her shoulder, which we both knew she wasn’t. An old habit, I guess.

“I still have to try. It’s the only way I can get home.”

“To my daughter?” Sarafine rattled her chains, looking disgusted. “You never give up, do you?”

“No.”

“It’s like a sickness.” She rose from her throne, crouching on her heels like an evil, overgrown little girl, dropping the hand that was choking me. I collapsed onto a heap of bones. “You really think you can hurt Angelus?”

“I can do anything if it will get me back to Lena.” I looked straight into her sightless eyes. “Like I said, I’ll kill him. At least part of him is Mortal. I can do it.”

I don’t know why I said it that way. I guess I wanted her to know, in case there was any small part of her that still cared about Lena. Any part of her that needed to hear I really would do anything under the sun to find a way back to her daughter.

Which I would.

For a second, Sarafine didn’t move. “You actually believe that, don’t you? It’s charming, really. Shame you have to die again, Mortal Boy. You certainly amuse me.”

Light flooded into the pit, as if we really were two gladiators competing for our lives.

“I don’t want to fight. Not with you, Sarafine.”

She smiled darkly. “You really don’t know how this works, do you? The loser faces Eternal Darkness. It’s simple enough.” She sounded almost bored.

“There’s something Darker than this?”

“Much.”

“Please. I just need to get back to Lena. Your daughter. I want to make her happy. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, and I know you’ve never wanted to make anyone happy but yourself, but it’s the only thing I want.”

“I want something, too.” She twisted the fog around her in her hands until it wasn’t fog at all but something glowing and alive—a ball of fire. She stared right at me, even though I knew she couldn’t see. “Kill Angelus.” Sarafine started to Cast, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Fire shot from the base of her throne, spreading in all directions. It moved closer and closer, turning from orange to blue and purple flames as it ignited bone after bone.

I backed away from her.

Something was wrong. The fire was growing, spreading faster than I could run. She wasn’t trying to stop the flames.

She was the one making them grow.

“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”

She was in the very center of the flames. “It’s a battle to the death. Absolute destruction. Only one of us can survive. And as much as I hate you, I hate Angelus more.” Sarafine raised her arms over her head, and the fire grew, as if she was pulling the flames up with her.

“Make him pay.”

Her cloak caught fire, and her hair started burning.

“You can’t just give up!” I shouted, but I didn’t know if she could hear me. I couldn’t see her anymore.

I hurled myself into the fire without thinking, falling toward her through the flames. I wasn’t sure I could stop, even if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.

It was Sarafine or me.

Lena or Eternal Darkness.

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to sit there and watch anyone die chained like a dog. Not even Sarafine.

It wasn’t about her. It was about me.

I reached for the manacles around her ankles, beating on the iron with a bone at the base of her throne. “We have to get out of here.”

The fire had completely surrounded me, when I heard the screaming. The sound tore across the barren dirt, rising into the air over the pit. It sounded like a wild animal dying. For a second, I thought I saw the distant golden spires of the Great Keep flicker at the sound of her voice through the flames.

Sarafine’s burning body arched back, writhing in pain, and started to crumble into tiny pieces of burnt skin and bone. There was nothing I could do as the flames consumed her. I wanted to close my eyes or turn away. But it seemed like someone should bear witness to her last moments. Maybe I just didn’t want her to die alone.

After a few minutes that felt more like hours, I watched as the last bits of the Darkest Caster in two worlds blew into cold white ash.

It was too late to get out.

I felt the fire crawl up my arms.

I was next.

I tried to picture Lena one last time, but I couldn’t even think. The pain was unbearable. I knew I was going to pass out. This was it.

I closed my eyes….

When I opened them again, the pit was gone, and I was standing in front of a quiet doorway in a still hallway, in a building that looked like a castle.

There was no pain.

No Sarafine.

No fire.

Exhausted, I wiped the ash out of my eyes and sank into a ball at the foot of the wooden doors. It was over. There were no bones beneath my feet, only marble tiles.

I tried to focus on the doors. They were so familiar.

I’d seen all of this before. It was even more familiar than the feeling I had when I saw Sarafine coming toward me.

Sarafine.

Where is she now? Where is her soul?

I didn’t want to think about it, and I closed my eyes and let the tears fall. Crying for her felt impossible. She was an evil monster. No one ever felt sorry for her.

So that couldn’t be it.

At least that’s what I told myself, until I stopped shaking and stood up again.

The pathways of my life had doubled back on me, as if the universe was forcing me to choose them all over again.

I was standing in front of the unmistakable doorway to all other doorways, to all other places and times.

I didn’t know if I had the strength to go any farther, and I knew I didn’t have the courage to give up. I reached out and touched the carved wood of the ancient Caster doorway.

The Temporis Porta.

CHAPTER 33

The Wayward’s Way

I took a deep breath and tried to let the power of the Temporis Porta flow into me. I needed to feel something other than shock. But they felt like two regular wooden doors, even if they were about a thousand years old and framed with Niadic script, an even older lost language.

I pressed my fingers against the wood. It felt like Sarafine’s blood was on my hands in this world, as my blood had been on hers in the last. It didn’t matter if I had tried to stop her.

She had sacrificed herself so I would have a chance to make it to the Great Keep, even if hate was her only motivation. Sarafine had still given me a shot at getting back home to the people I loved.

I had to keep going. Like the officer at the Gates said, there was only one way into the one place I needed to go

—the Way of the Warrior. Maybe this was how it felt.

Awful.

I tried not to think about the other thing. The fact that Sarafine’s soul was trapped in Eternal Darkness. It was hard to imagine.

I took a step back from the broad wooden doors of the Temporis Porta. It was identical to the doorway I found in the Caster Tunnels beneath Gatlin. The one that took me to the Far Keep for the first time. Rowan wood, carved into Caster circles.

I placed my palms against the rough exterior of the paneling.

Just like always, they gave way beneath me. I was the Wayward, and they were the Way. These doors would open for me in this world as they had in the other. They would show their pathway to me.

I pushed harder.

The doors swung open, and I stepped inside.

There were so many things I didn’t realize when I was alive. So many things I took for granted. My life didn’t seem precious when I had one.

But here, I’d fought through a mountain of bones, crossed a river, tunneled through a mountain, begged and bargained and bartered from one world to another, to get myself this close to these doors and this room.

Now I just had to find the library.

One page in one book.

One page in The Caster Chronicles, and I can go home.

The nearness of it swirled in the air around me. I had experienced this feeling only once before, at the Great Barrier

—another seam between worlds. Then, just like now, I had felt the power crackling in the air, too, the magic. I was in a place where great things could happen and did happen.

There were some rooms that could change the world.

Worlds.

This was one of them, with its heavy drapes and dusty portraits and dark wood and rowan doors. A place where all things were judged and punished.

Sarafine had promised that Angelus would come for me—that he had practically led me here himself. There was no use trying to hide. He was probably the reason I was sentenced to die in the first place.

If there was a way around him, a way to get to the library and The Caster Chronicles , I hadn’t figured it out yet. I just hoped it would come to me, the way so many ideas had in the past when my future was at stake.

The only question was, would he come first?

I decided to take my chances and try to find the library before Angelus found me. It would have been a good plan if it had actually worked out. I had barely crossed the room when I saw them.

The Council Keepers—the man with the hourglass, the albino woman, and Angelus—appeared in front of me.

Their robes fell around them, pooling at their feet, and they barely moved. I couldn’t even tell if they were breathing.

“Puer Mortalis. Is qui, unus, duplex est. Is qui mundo, qui fuit, finem attulit.” When one spoke, all their mouths moved like they were the same person, or at least governed by the same brain. I had almost forgotten.

I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t move.

They looked at one another and spoke again. “Mortal Boy. The One Who Is Two. He Who Endeth the World That Was.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds kind of creepy.” It wasn’t Latin, but it was the best I could come up with. They didn’t respond.

I heard the murmuring of foreign voices around me and turned to see the room suddenly crowded with unfamiliar people. I looked for the telltale tattoos and gold eyes of the Dark Casters, but I was too disoriented to register anything beyond the three robed figures who stood in front of me.

“Child of Lila Evers Wate, deceased Keeper of Gatlin.” The choral voices filled the great hall like some kind of trumpet. It reminded me of Beginning Band with Miss Spider back at Jackson High, only less off-key.

“In the flesh.” I shrugged. “Or not.”

“You have taken the labyrinth and defeated the Cataclyst. Many have tried. Only you have been—” There was a hitch, a pause, like the Keepers didn’t know what to say. I took a breath, half expecting them to say something like exterminated. “Victorious.”

It was almost like they couldn’t bring themselves to say the word.

“Not really. She kind of defeated herself.” I scowled at Angelus, who was standing in the center. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to know that I knew what he’d done to Sarafine. How he’d chained the Caster, like a dog, to a throne of bones. What kind of sick game was that?

But Angelus didn’t flinch.

I took a step closer. “Or I guess you defeated her, Angelus. At least, that’s what Sarafine said. That you enjoyed torturing her.” I looked around the room. “Is that what Keepers do around here? Because it’s not what Keepers do where I come from. Back home they’re good people, who care about things like right and wrong and good and evil and all that.

Like my mom.”

I looked at the crowd behind me. “Seems like you guys are pretty messed up.” The three spoke again, in unison. “That is not our concern. Victori spolia sunt. To the victor go the spoils. The debt has been paid.”

“About that—” If this was my way back to Gatlin, I wanted to know.

Angelus raised his hand, silencing me. “In return, you have gained entry to this Keep, the Warrior’s Way. You are to be commended.”

The crowd fell silent, which didn’t exactly make me feel all that commended. More than anything, it felt like I was about to be sentenced. Or maybe that was how I was used to things going down in here.

I looked around. “It doesn’t really sound like you mean it.”

The crowd began to whisper again. The three Council Keepers stared at me. At least I think they did. It was impossible to see their eyes behind the strangely cut prism glasses, with the twisting strands of gold, silver, and copper holding them in place.

I tried again. “In terms of spoils, I was thinking more about going home to Gatlin. Wasn’t that the deal? One of us goes to Eternal Darkness, and one of us gets to leave?”

The crowd burst into chaos.

Angelus stepped forward. “Enough!” The room fell silent again. This time he spoke alone. The other Keepers looked at me but said nothing. “The bargain was for the Cataclyst alone. We have made no such pact with a Mortal. Never would we return a Mortal to existence.”

I remembered Amma’s past, revealed through the black stone I still had in my pocket. Sulla had warned her that Angelus hated Mortals. He was never going to let me walk away. “What if the Mortal was never meant to be here?” Angelus’ eyes widened.

“I want my page back.”

This time the crowd gasped.

“What is written in the Chronicles is law. The pages cannot be removed,” Angelus hissed.

“But you can rewrite them however you want?” I couldn’t hide the rage in my voice. He had taken everything from me. How many other lives had he destroyed?

And why? Because he couldn’t be a Caster?

“You were the One Who Is Two. Your fate was to be punished. You should not have brought the Lilum into matters that were not hers to resolve.”

“Wait. What does Lilian English—I mean, the Lilum—have to do with any of this?” My English teacher, whose body had been inhabited by the most powerful creature in the Demon world, had been the one who showed me what I had to do to fix the Order of Things.

Was that why he was punishing me? Did I get in the way of whatever he was planning with Abraham? Destroying the Mortal race? Using Casters as lab rats?

I always believed that when Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead with The Book of Moons , they had set something in motion that couldn’t be undone. It started the unraveling that ripped the hole in the universe, which was the reason I had to right it at the water tower.

What if I had it backward?

What if the thing that was supposed to happen was the unraveling?

What if fixing it was the crime?

It was all so clear now. Like everything had been lost in darkness, and then the sun came out. Some moments are like that. But now I knew the truth.

I was supposed to fail.

The world as we knew it was supposed to end.

The Mortals weren’t the point. They were the problem.

The Lilum wasn’t supposed to help me, and I wasn’t supposed to jump.

She was supposed to condemn me, and I was supposed to give up. Angelus had bet on the wrong team.

A sound echoed through the hall as the great doors on the far side pushed open, revealing a small figure standing between them. Talk about betting on the wrong team—I wouldn’t have made this bet, not in a thousand lifetimes.

It was more unexpected than Angelus or any of the Keepers.

He smiled broadly; at least I think it was a smile. It was hard to tell with Xavier.

“He-hello.” Xavier glanced around the intimidating room, clearing his throat. He tried again. “Hello, friend.” It was so quiet, you could’ve heard one of his precious buttons drop.

The only thing that wasn’t quiet was Angelus. “How dare you show your defiled face here again, Xavier. If there is anything of Xavier left, beast.”

Xavier’s leathery wings shrugged.

Angelus only looked angrier. “Why have you involved yourself in this? Your fate is not intertwined with the Wayward.

You are serving your sentence. You don’t need to take a dead Mortal’s battles on as your own.”

“It is too late for that, Angelus,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because he paid his way, and I accepted the price. Because”—Xavier slowed his words, as if he was letting them fall into place in his mind—“he is my friend, and I have no other.”

“He’s not your friend,” Angelus hissed. “You’re too brainless to have a friend. Brainless and heartless. All you care about are your worthless trinkets, your lost baubles.” Angelus sounded frustrated. I wondered why he cared what Xavier thought or did.

What is Xavier to him?

There had to be a story there. But I didn’t want to know about anything that involved Angelus and his minions, or the crimes they must have committed. The Far Keep was the closest thing I’d ever found to Hell in real life—at least in my real afterlife.

“What you know of me,” said Xavier slowly, “is nothing.” His twisted face was even more expressionless than usual. “Less than I know of myself.”

“You are a fool,” Angelus answered. “That I know.”

“I am a friend. I have in my possession two thousand assorted buttons, eight hundred keys, and only one friend.

Perhaps it is not something you can understand. I have not often been one before.” He looked proud of himself. “I will be one now.”

I was proud of him, too.

Angelus scoffed. “You will sacrifice your soul for a friend?”

“Is a friend different from a soul, Angelus?” The Council Keeper said nothing. Xavier cocked his head again. “Would you know if it were?”

Angelus didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. We all knew the answer.

“What are you doing here, then? Mortali Comes. ” Angelus took a step toward Xavier, and Xavier took a step back.

“Friend of the Mortal,” Angelus snarled.

I resisted the urge to insert myself between them, hoping that Xavier, for both our sakes, didn’t try to run away.

“You seek to destroy the Mortal, do you not?” Xavier swallowed.

“I do,” Angelus answered.

“You seek to end the Mortal race.” It wasn’t a question.

“Of course. Like any infestation, the ultimate goal is annihilation.” Even though I was expecting it, Angelus’ answer caught me off guard. “You—what?” Xavier looked at me like he was trying to shut me down. “It is no secret. The Mortals are an irritant to the supernatural races. This is not a new concept.”

“I wish it was.” I knew Abraham wanted to wipe out the Mortal race. If Angelus was working with him, their goals were aligned.

“You seek entertainment?” Xavier watched Angelus.

Angelus looked at Xavier’s leathery wings, disgusted. “I seek solutions.”

“To the Mortal condition?”

Angelus smiled, dark and joyless. “As I said. The Mortal infestation.” I felt sick, but Xavier only sighed. “As you wish to call it. I propose a challenge.”

“A what?” I didn’t like the sound of it.

“A challenge.”

Angelus looked suspicious. “The Mortal defeated the Dark Queen and won. That was the only challenge he will face today.”

I was annoyed. “I told you. I didn’t kill Sarafine. She defeated herself.”

“Semantics,” Angelus said.

Xavier silenced us both. “So you are unwilling to face the Mortal in a challenge?” There was an uproar in the crowd, and Angelus looked like he wanted to tear Xavier’s wings off. “Silence!” The chatter stopped immediately.

“I do not fear any Mortal!”

“Then this is my proposition.” Xavier tried to keep his voice steady, but he was obviously terrified. “The Mortal will face you in the Great Keep and attempt to regain his page. You will attempt to stop him. If he succeeds, you will allow him to do with it as he likes. If you stop him from reaching his page, he will allow you to do with it as you like.”

“What?” Xavier was suggesting that I face off against Angelus. My odds were not good in this scenario.

Angelus was aware that all eyes were on him as the crowd and the other Council Keepers waited for his response.

“Interesting.”

I wanted to bolt out of the room. “Not interesting. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Angelus leaned toward me, his eyes sparking. “Let me explain it to you. A lifetime of servitude or the simple destruction of your soul. It doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll decide on a whim, as I like. When I like.”

“I’m not sure about this.” It sounded like a lose-lose proposition to me.

Xavier let one hand fall on my shoulder. “You don’t have a choice. It’s the only chance you have to get home to the girl with the curls.” He turned to Angelus, holding out his hand. “Is it a deal?” Angelus stared at Xavier’s hand as if it was infected. “I accept.”

CHAPTER 34

The Caster Chronicles

Angelus swept out of the room, the other Keepers right behind him.

I let out the breath I was holding. “Where are they going?”

“They have to give you a chance, or they will be perceived as unjust.”

“Perceived as unjust?” Was he serious? “Are you saying no one’s caught on to that before?”

“The Council is feared. No one questions them,” Xavier said. “But they are also proud. Especially Angelus. He wishes his followers to believe he is giving you a chance.”

“But he’s not?”

“That depends on you now.” Xavier turned to me with something resembling a sad expression on what was left of his human face. “I can’t help you. Not beyond this, my friend.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not going back there. I can’t,” he said. “Not to the Chamber of the Chronicles.” Of course. The room that housed the book. It had to be close.

I looked at the row of doors beyond us, bordering one side of the room. I wondered which one led to the end of my journey—or to the death of my soul.

“You can’t go back there? And I can? Don’t chicken out on me now.” I lowered my voice. “You just took on Angelus.

You made a deal with the Devil. You’re my hero.”

“I am no hero. As I said, I am your friend.”

Xavier couldn’t do it. Who could blame the guy? The Chamber of the Chronicles must have been some kind of house of horrors for him. And he had put himself in enough danger already.

“Thanks, Xavier. You’re a great friend. One of the best.” I smiled at him. The look he gave me in return was sobering.

“This is your journey, dead man. Yours alone. I can go no farther.” He put his arm on my shoulder, pressing heavily.

“Why do I have to do everything alone?” As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.

The Greats had sent me on my way.

Aunt Prue made sure I got a second chance.

Obidias told me everything I needed to know.

My mom gave me the strength to do it.

Amma watched for me, and believed it when she found me.

Lena sent me The Book of Moons , against all odds and all the way from the other side of the universe. Aunt Marian and Macon, Link and John and Liv—they were there for Lena when I couldn’t be.

Even the River Master and Xavier had helped me move forward, when all along it would have been so much easier to give up and go back.

I had never been alone. Not for a minute.

I may have been a Wayward, but my way was full of people who loved me. They were the only way I knew.

I could do this.

I had to.

“I understand,” I said. “Thanks, Xavier. For everything.”

He nodded. “I will meet you again, Ethan. I will see you when next you cross the river.”

“I hope it’s not for a long time.”

“I hope this as well, my friend. For you more than me.” His eyes seemed to twinkle for a second. “But I will keep busy collecting and counting until you return.”

I didn’t say anything as he slipped through the shadows and back into the world where nothing ever happened and the days became the same as nights.

I hoped he would remember me.

I was pretty sure he wouldn’t.

One by one, I touched the row of doors in front of me with my hand. Some felt as cold as ice. Some felt like nothing, like plain wood. There was only one that pulsed beneath my fingertips.

Only one burned at my touch.

I knew it was the right door, before I saw the telltale Caster circles carved into the rowan wood, just like the Temporis Porta.

This was the doorway to the heart of the Great Keep. The one place any son of Lila Jane Evers Wate would instinctively find his way, whether or not he was a Wayward.

The library.

Pushing my way through the massive doors directly across from the Temporis Porta, I knew it was time to face the most dangerous part of my journey.

Angelus would be waiting.

The doors were just the beginning. The moment I stepped into the inner chamber, I found myself standing in an almost entirely reflective room. If it was supposed to be a library, it was the strangest one I’d ever seen.

The crumbling stones beneath my feet, the stubbled cave walls, the ceiling and floor that grew into stalactites and stalagmites as the room circled back upon itself—they all seemed to be made of some kind of transparent gemstone, cut into a thousand impossible facets that reflected the light in every direction. It looked like I was standing in one of the eleven jewelry boxes in Xavier’s collection.

Except less claustrophobic. A small opening in the ceiling let in enough natural light to catch the whole room in a dizzying glow. The effect reminded me of the tidal cave where we’d first met Abraham Ravenwood, on the night of Lena’s Seventeenth Moon. In the center of this room, there was a pond of water the size of a swimming pool. The body of milky white water churned as if there was a fire beneath it. It was the color of Sarafine’s sightless opaque eyes, before she died….

I shuddered. I couldn’t think about her, not now. I had to focus on surviving Angelus. Defeating him. I took a deep breath and tried to get my bearings. What was I dealing with?

My eyes fixed on the bubbling white liquid. In the center of the pool, a small stretch of earth rose above the water, like a tiny island.

In the center of the island was a pedestal.

On the pedestal was a book, surrounded by candles that flickered with strange green and gold flames.

The book.

I didn’t need someone to tell me which book it was, or what it was doing here. The reason there was an entire library devoted to only one book, and with a moat around it.

I knew exactly why it was here, and why I was.

It was the only part of this whole journey I understood. The only thing that was perfectly clear from the moment Obidias Trueblood told me the truth about what had happened to me. It was The Caster Chronicles , and I was here to destroy my page. The one that killed me. And I had to do it before Angelus could stop me.

After all I’d learned about being a Wayward and finding my way—this was where it led. There was no way left to go, no more path to find.

I was at the end.

And all I wanted was to go back.

But first I had to get to that island—to the pedestal and The Caster Chronicles . I had to do what I’d come here to do.

A shout from across the room startled me. “Mortal Boy. If you leave now, I will leave you your soul. How’s that for a challenge?” Angelus appeared on the other side of the pool. I wondered how he got over there, and I wished there were as many ways to leave this room as there were to enter it.

Or at least, as many ways home.

“My soul? No, you won’t.” I stood at the edge of the pool and chucked a rock into the bubbling water, watching it disappear. I wasn’t stupid. He would never let me go. I would end up like Xavier or Sarafine. Black wings or white eyes

—it didn’t make a difference. In the end, we were all bound in his chains, whether you could see them or not.

Angelus smiled. “No? I suppose that’s true.” He gestured with his hand, and at least a dozen rocks rose into the air around him. They fired themselves at me, one after another, hitting with uncanny accuracy. I flung my arms across my face as a rock sailed past.

“Very mature. What are you going to do now? Tie me up and stick me in your old boneyard? Blind and chained like an animal?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t want a Mortal pet.” He twisted his finger, and the water began to spin into a kind of whirlpool. “I’ll just destroy you. It’s easier for all of us. Though not much of a challenge.”

“Why did you torture Sarafine? She wasn’t a Mortal. Why bother?” I shouted.

I had to know. It felt like our fates were tied together somehow—mine, Sarafine’s, Xavier’s, and those of all the other Mortals and Casters Angelus had destroyed.

What were we to him?

“Sarafine? Was that her name? I had almost forgotten.” Angelus laughed. “Do you expect me to concern myself with every Dark Caster who ends up here?”

The water churned violently now. I knelt and touched it with one hand. It was freezing cold and sort of slimy. I didn’t want to swim through it, but I couldn’t tell if there was another way across.

I looked up at Angelus. I didn’t know how this whole challenge thing was going to take shape, but I thought it was better to keep him talking until I figured it out. “Do you blind every Dark Caster and make them fight to the death?” I looked back at the water. It rippled where I had touched it, turning clear and calm.

Angelus folded his arms, smiling.

I kept my hand in the water as the transparent current spread across the pool, though my hand was going numb.

Now I could see what was really beneath the milky surface.

Corpses. Just like the ones in the river.

Floating upward, their green hair and blue lips looked like masks on their bloated dead bodies.

Like me, I thought. That’s what I look like, right now. Somewhere—where I still had a body.

I heard Angelus laughing. But I could barely hear, barely think. I wanted to vomit.

I backed away from the water. I knew he was trying to frighten me, and I resolved not to look at it again.

Keep your mind on Lena. Get to the page, and you can go home.

Angelus watched me, laughing harder. He called to me as if I was a child. “Don’t be afraid. Your final death doesn’t have to happen like this. Sarafine failed to achieve the tasks entrusted to her.”

“So you do know her name.” I cracked a smile.

He glared. “I know she failed me.”

“You and Abraham?”

Angelus stiffened. “Congratulations. I see you’ve been digging around in matters that are none of your concern.

Which means you’re no smarter than the first Ethan Wate who visited the Great Keep. And no more likely to see the Duchannes Caster you love than he was.”

My whole body went numb.

Of course. Ethan Carter Wate had been here. Genevieve told me.

I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “What did you do to him?”

“What do you think?” A sadistic smile spread across Angelus’ face. “He tried to take something that did not belong to him.”

“His page?”

With every question, the Keeper looked more satisfied. I could tell he was enjoying this. “No. Genevieve’s—the Duchannes girl he loved. He wanted to lift the curse she brought upon herself and the Duchannes children who would come after her. Instead, he lost his foolish soul.”

Angelus looked down into the churning water. He nodded, and a single corpse rose to the surface. Empty eyes that looked too much like my own stared back at me.

“Look familiar, Mortal?”

I knew that face. I would’ve known it anywhere.

It was mine. Or actually, his.

Ethan Carter Wate was still wearing the Confederate uniform he died in.

My heart dropped. Genevieve would never see him again, not in this world or any other. He had died twice, like me.

But he would never get back home. Never hold Genevieve in his arms, even in the Otherworld. He had tried to save the girl he loved, and Sarafine and Ridley and Lena and all the other Casters who would come after her in the Duchannes family.

He’d failed.

It didn’t make a guy feel better. Not about standing where I stood. And not about leaving a Caster girl behind, the way we both had.

“You will fail as well.” The words echoed across the cavern.

Which meant Angelus was reading my mind. At this point, it was the least surprising thing happening in the room.

I knew what I had to do.

I emptied my mind the best I could, picturing the old baseball diamond where Link and I used to play T-ball. I watched Link throw a bum pitch in the ninth inning as I stood on home plate punching my glove. I tried to picture the batter. Who was it? Earl Petty, chewing gum, since the coach had outlawed chaw?

I struggled to keep my mind on the game while my eyes did something else.

Come on, Earl. Knock it out of the park.

I glanced at the pedestal, then at the corpses floating at my feet. More bodies continued to rise, bumping into one another like sardines packed in a can. It wouldn’t be long until they were so close that I wouldn’t even be able to see the water.

If I waited, maybe I could use them as stepping stones….

Stop! Think about the game!

But it was too late.

“I wouldn’t try it.” Angelus watched me from the other side of the pool. “No Mortal can survive that water. You need the bridge to cross, and as you can see, it’s been removed. A security precaution.” He held his hand in front of him, twisting the air into a current I could feel all the way across the water.

I had to brace myself to stay on my feet.

“You will not retrieve your page. You will die the same dishonorable death as your namesake. The death all Mortals deserve.”

“Why me, and why him? Why any of us? What did we ever do to you, Angelus?” I shouted at him over the wind.

“You are inferior, born without the gifts of Supernaturals. Forcing us to stay in hiding while your cities and schools fill with children who will grow to do nothing more than occupy space. You’ve turned our world into our prison.” The air picked up, and he twisted his hand further. “It’s absurd. Like building a city for rodents.” I waited, picturing that stupid baseball game—Earl swinging, the crack of the bat—until the words formed, and I spoke them. “But you were born a Mortal. What does that make you?”

His eyes widened, his face a mask of pure rage. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” I turned my mind to the vision I’d seen, forcing myself to remember the faces, the words. Xavier, when he was just a Caster. Angelus, when he was just a man.

The wind increased, and I stumbled, the edge of my sneaker splashing at the edge of the pool of bodies. I braced myself, willing my feet not to slip.

Angelus’ face had turned even paler than before. “You know nothing! Look what you sacrificed—to save what? A town full of pathetic Mortals?”

I closed my eyes, letting the words find him.

I know you were born a Mortal. All those experiments can’t change that. I know your secret.

His eyes widened, hate raging across his face. “I am not a Mortal! I never was, and I never will be!” I know your secret.

The wind picked up, and rocks flew again through the air—harder this time. I tried to shield my face as they pelted my ribs, smashing against the wall behind me. A trail of blood ran down my cheek.

“I will tear you to shreds, Wayward!”

I screamed over the din. “You may have powers, Angelus, but deep down, you’re still a Mortal, just like me.” You can’t harness Dark forces like Sarafine and Abraham, or Travel like an Incubus. You can’t cross that water any more than I can.

“I am not Mortal!” he screamed.

Nobody can.

“Liar!”

Prove it.

There was a second, one terrible second, when Angelus and I stared across the water at each other.

Then, without a word, Angelus flung himself into the air, lunging across the corpses in the pool—as if he couldn’t contain himself a moment longer. That’s how desperate he was to prove he was better than me.

Better than a Mortal.

Better than anyone else who ever tried to walk on water.

I had been right.

The rotting corpses were packed so tight that he ran right over their bodies until they started to move. Arms reached for him, the hundreds of bloated hands rising up out of the water. This was not like the river I had crossed to get here.

This river was alive.

An arm slithered over his neck, weighing him down.

“No!”

I shuddered as his voice echoed against the walls.

The corpses tore at his robe desperately, pulling him down into the abyss of loss and misery. The same souls he had tortured were drowning him.

His eyes locked on mine. “Help me!”

Why should I?

But there was nothing I could do, even if I’d wanted to. I knew those corpses would drown me. I was Mortal, just as Angelus was—at least part of him.

Nobody walks on water, not where I come from. Nobody except the guy in the picture frame in Sunday school class.

Too bad Angelus wasn’t from Gatlin; he would’ve known that.

His hands clawed at the surface of the water until there was nothing left but a sea of bodies again. The stench of death was everywhere. It was suffocating, and I tried to cover my mouth, but the distinct odor of rot and decay was too strong.

I knew what I’d done. I wasn’t innocent. Not in Sarafine’s death, and not in this one either. He was reading my mind and I had pushed him to this, even if his hate and pride had propelled him into the pool.

It was too late.

A rotted arm slid around his neck, and within seconds he disappeared under the sea of bodies. It was a death I wouldn’t have wished on anyone.

Not even Angelus.

Maybe just him.

Within moments, the pool turned milky white again, though I knew what was lurking underneath.

I shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a challenge after all.”

I had to find the bridge, or something I could use to cross.

The splintering plank wasn’t well hidden. I found it in an alcove only a few yards from where Angelus stood moments ago. The wood was dry and cracked, which wasn’t reassuring, considering what I had just witnessed.

But the book was so close.

As I slid the plank over the surface of the water, I could practically feel Lena in my arms and hear Amma hollering at me. I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was I had to get across that water and get back to them.

Please. Let me cross. All I want is to go home.

With that thought, I took a breath.

Then a step.

Then another.

I was five feet from the edge of the water now, maybe six.

Halfway across. There was no turning back now.

The bridge was surprisingly light, though it creaked and wobbled with my every step. Still, it had held up so far.

I took a deep breath.

Five more feet.

Four—

I heard a crash like a wave behind me. The water began to thrash. I felt a shooting pain in my leg as it gave way beneath me. The old board snapped like a broken toothpick.

Before I could scream, I lost my balance, falling into the deadly water. Only then there wasn’t any water—or if there was, I wasn’t in it.

I was in the arms of the rising dead.

Worse.

I was face to face with the other Ethan Wate. He was as much a skeleton as he was a man, but I recognized him now. I tried to pull away, but he grabbed me around the neck with a bony hand. Water poured out of his mouth, where his teeth should have been. I’d had nightmares less terrifying.

I turned my head to keep corpse drool from my face.

“Could a Mortal Cast an Ambulans Mortus?” Angelus pushed past the dead who crowded around me, pulling my arms and legs in every direction with such force I thought my limbs would rip right out of their sockets. “From under the water? To wake the dead?” He stood triumphantly on the land, in front of the book. Looking crazier than I’d thought even a crazy-looking Keeper could. “The challenge is over. Your soul is mine.” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. Instead, I found myself staring into Ethan Wate’s empty eyes.

“Now. Bring him to me.”

At Angelus’ command, the corpses rose from the stinking water, pulling me with them up onto the shore. The other Ethan tossed me onto the dirt like I was weightless.

As he did, a small black stone rolled out of my pocket.

Angelus didn’t notice. He was too busy staring at the book. But I saw it clear enough.

The river’s eye.

I had forgotten to pay the River Master.

Of course. You couldn’t just expect to cross the water anytime you wanted. Not around here. Not without paying a price.

I picked up the rock.

Ethan Wate, the dead one, whipped his head toward me. The look he gave me—if that’s what you’d call it, considering the guy barely had eyes—sent a shiver down my spine. I felt sorry for him. But I sure didn’t want to be him.

Between the two of us, we owed each other that much.

“So long, Ethan,” I said.

With my last remaining bit of strength, I hurled the rock into the water. I heard it hit, making only the tiniest sound.

You wouldn’t have noticed it unless you were me.

Or one of the dead.

Because they disappeared a few seconds after the rock hit the water. About as quickly as it took a rock to sink all the way down to the bottom of a pool of bodies.

I fell back on the tiny stretch of dry land, exhausted. For a second, I was too scared to move.

Then I saw Angelus standing there, glued to the book, reading in the light of the flickering green and gold flames.

I knew what I had to do. And I didn’t have long to do it.

I pulled myself to my feet.

There it was. It was open on the pedestal, right in front of me.

In front of Angelus, too.

THE CASTER CHRONICLES

I reached for the book, and it burned my fingers.

“Don’t,” Angelus growled, grabbing my wrist. His eyes were shining, as if the book had some strange hold on him.

He didn’t even look up from the page. I’m not sure he could.

Because it was his page.

I could almost read it from where I stood, a thousand rewritten words, one crossed out over the next. I could see the quill, ink-stained at the tip, almost twitching in his fingers next to the book.

So this was how he’d done it. How he’d forced the supernatural world to bend to his will. He controlled the story. Not just his, but all of ours.

Angelus had changed everything.

One person could do that.

And one person could change it back.

“Angelus?”

He didn’t answer. Staring into the book, he looked more like a zombie than the corpses did.

So I didn’t look. Instead, I closed my eyes and pulled on the page, as hard and as fast as I could.

“What are you doing?” Angelus sounded frantic, but I didn’t open my eyes. “What have you done?” My hands were burning. The page wanted to rip free from me, but I wouldn’t let go. I only held on tighter. Nothing was going to stop me now.

It came off in my hands.

The ripping sound reminded me of an Incubus, and I half expected to see John Breed or Link appear next to me. I opened my eyes.

No such luck. Angelus reached for the page, shoving me in one direction while pulling my arm in another.

I grabbed a dripping candle from the pedestal stand and lit the bottom of the page on fire. It began to smoke and flame, and Angelus howled with rage.

“Leave it! You don’t know what you’re doing! You could destroy everything—” He threw himself at me, punching and kicking, almost ripping my shirt off. His nails raked my skin, again and again, but I didn’t let go.

I didn’t let go when I felt the flames sear their way down to my fingers.

I didn’t let go when the ink-smeared page crumbled into ash.

I didn’t let go until Angelus himself crumbled into nothing, as if he was made of parchment.

Finally, when the wind had blown every last trace of the Keeper and his page into oblivion, I found myself staring at my burnt, blackened hands.

“My turn.”

Ducking my head, I flipped through the delicate pages of parchment. I could see dates and names at the top, penned by different hands. I wondered which ones Xavier had written. If Obidias had changed anyone else’s page. I hoped he wasn’t the one who changed Ethan Carter Wate’s.

I thought of my namesake and shuddered, fighting to keep the bile down.

That could have been me.

Halfway through the book, I found our pages.

Ethan Carter’s was right before mine, the two pages clearly written by different hands.

I skimmed Ethan Carter’s page until I reached the part of the story I already knew. It read like a script of the vision I had witnessed with Lena, the story of the night he died and Genevieve used The Book of Moons to bring him back.

The night that started it all.

I stared at the edge where the page met the binding. I almost tore it out, but I knew it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was too late for the other Ethan.

I was the only one who still had a chance to change his fate.

Finally, I turned the page to find I was staring at Obidias’ script.

Ethan Lawson Wate

I didn’t read my page. I couldn’t risk it. I could already feel the pull of the book on my eyes, powerful enough to Bind me to my page, forever.

I looked away. I already knew what happened in the end of this revision.

Now I was changing it.

I tore the page, the edges pulling away from the binding in a flash of electricity stronger and brighter than lightning. I heard what sounded like thunder in the sky above me, but I kept tearing.

This time, I kept the candles as far from the parchment as I could.

I pulled until the words came loose, disappearing like they had been written in invisible ink.

I looked down at the page again and it was blank.

I let it drop into the water around me, watching as it fell through the milky depths, vanishing into the endless shadow of the chasm.

My page was gone.

And in that second, I knew I was, too.

I stared at my Chucks beneath me

until they were gone

and I was gone

and it didn’t matter anymore….

because

there

was

nothing

beneath

me

now

and

then

no

me

CHAPTER 35

A Crack in the Universe

The toes of my Chucks hung over the white metal edge, a town sleeping hundreds of feet below me. The tiny houses and tiny cars looked like toys, and it was easy to imagine them dusted with glitter under the tree with the rest of my mother’s Christmas town.

But they weren’t toys.

I knew this view.

You don’t forget the last thing you see before you die. Trust me.

I was standing on top of the Summerville water tower, veins of cracked white paint spreading out from under my sneakers. The curve of a black heart drawn in Sharpie caught my eye.

Was it possible? Could I really be home?

I didn’t know until I saw her.

The fronts of her black orthopedic shoes were lined up perfectly with my Chucks.

Amma was wearing her black Sunday dress with the tiny violets scattered all over it, and a wide-brimmed black hat. Her white gloves gripped the handles of her patent-leather pocketbook.

Our eyes met for a split second, and she smiled—relief spreading across her features in a way that was impossible to describe. It was almost peaceful, a word that I would never use to describe Amma.

That’s when I realized something was wrong. The kind of wrong you can’t stop or change or fix.

I reached for her at the exact same moment she stepped off the edge, into the blue-black sky.

“Amma!” I reached for her, the way I used to reach for Lena in my dreams when she was the one falling. But I couldn’t catch Amma.

And she didn’t fall.

The sky split open like the universe was tearing, or like someone had finally picked that hole in it. Amma turned her face toward it, tears running down her cheeks even as she smiled at me.

The sky held her up, as though Amma was worthy of standing on it, until a hand reached out from the center of the tear and the blinking stars. It was a hand I recognized—the one that had offered me his crow so I could cross from one world to another.

Now Uncle Abner was offering that hand to Amma.

His face blurred in the darkness next to Sulla, Ivy, and Delilah. Amma’s other family. Twyla’s face smiled down at me, charms tied into her long braids. Amma’s Caster family was waiting for her.

But I didn’t care.

I couldn’t lose her.

“Amma! Don’t leave me!” I shouted.

Her lips didn’t move, but I heard her voice, as sure as if she was standing next to me. “I could never leave you, Ethan Wate. I’ll always be watchin’. Make me proud.”

My heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself, shattering into pieces so small I might never find them. I dropped to my knees and looked up into the heavens, screaming louder than I ever thought possible. “Why?” It was Amma who answered. She was farther away now, stepping into the sliver of sky that opened just for her. “A woman’s only as good as her word.” Another one of Amma’s riddles.

The last one.

She touched her fingers to her lips and reached them out to me as the universe swallowed her up. Her words echoed across the sky, as if she had spoken them aloud.

“And everyone said I couldn’t change the cards….”

The cards.

She was talking about the spread that predicted my death so many months ago. The spread she had bargained with the bokor to change. The one she swore she’d do anything to change.

She’d done it.

Defied the universe and fate and everything she believed in. For me.

Amma was trading her life for mine, protecting the Order by offering one life for another. That was the deal she had made with the bokor. I understood now.

I watched the sky knit itself back together one stitch at a time.

But it didn’t look the same. I could still see the invisible seams where the world had torn itself in half to take her.

And I would always know they were there, even if no one else could see them.

Like torn edges of my heart.

CHAPTER 36

Translation

As I sat on the cold metal in the darkness, part of me wondered if I imagined the whole thing. I knew I didn’t. I could still see those stitches in the sky, no matter how dark it was.

Still, I didn’t move.

If I left, it would be real.

If I left, she would be gone.

I don’t know how long I sat there trying to make sense of everything, but the sun came up, and I was still sitting in the same spot. No matter how many times I tried to work it out, I kept getting stuck.

I had this old Bible story in my head, playing over and over, like a bad song from the radio. I’m probably getting it wrong, but I remember it like this: There was this city of people who were so righteous, they got picked right up off the earth and taken to Heaven. Just like that.

They didn’t even die.

They got to skip dying, the way you pass Go and head directly to Jail if you pull the wrong card in Monopoly.

Translated—that’s the name for what happened to them. I remember because Link was in my Sunday school class, and he said teleported, then transported, and finally transportated.

We were supposed to act real jealous about it, like those people were so lucky to get plucked up and taken into the Lap o’ the Lord.

Like it was a place or something.

I remember coming home and asking my mom about it, because that’s how creeped out I was. I don’t remember what she said, but I decided right then and there that the goal wasn’t to be good. It was to be just good enough .

I didn’t want to risk getting translated, or even teleported.

I wasn’t looking to go live in the Lap o’ the Lord. I was more excited about Little League.

But it seemed like that’s what happened to Amma. She was lapped right up, transported, transportated—all of it.

Did the universe, or the Lord and his lap, or the Greats expect me to feel happy about it? I had just been through hell to get back to the regular world of Gatlin—back to Amma, and Lena, and Link, and Marian.

How long did we have together?

Was I supposed to be okay with that?

One minute she was there, and then it was over. Now the sky was the sky again, flat and blue and calm, as if it really was just painted plaster, like my bedroom ceiling. Even if someone I loved was trapped somewhere behind it.

That’s how I felt now. Trapped on the wrong side of the sky.

Alone on the top of the Summerville water tower, looking out over the world I had known my entire life, a world of dirt roads and paved routes, of gas stations and grocery stores and strip malls. And everything was the same, and nothing was the same.

I wasn’t the same.

I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to. I had changed.

I had come back from the dead, and Amma was gone, even if she was one of the Greats now.

You couldn’t get more changed than that.

I heard a clanging on the ladder beneath me, and I knew who it was before I felt her curling around my heart. The warmth exploded across me, across the water tower, across Summerville. The sky was striped with gold and red, as if the sunrise was reversing itself, lighting up the sky all over again.

There was only one person who could do that to a sky or my heart.

Ethan, is that you?

I smiled even as my eyes turned wet and blurry.

It’s me, ll. I’m right here. Everything’s going to be okay now.

I reached my hand down and wrapped it around hers, pulling her up onto the platform at the top of the water tower.

She slid into my arms, falling into sobs that beat against my chest. I don’t know which one of us was crying harder.

I’m not even sure we remembered to kiss. What we had went so much deeper than a kiss.

When we were together, she turned me completely inside out.

It didn’t matter if we were dead or alive. We could never be kept apart. There were some things more powerful than worlds or universes. She was my world, as much as I was hers. What we had, we knew.

The poems are all wrong. It’s a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper.

And sometimes gold can stay.

Anybody who’s ever been in love can tell you that.

CHAPTER 37

What the Words Never Say

Amma Treadeau has been declared legally dead, following her disappearance from Wate’s Landing, the home of Mitchell and Ethan Wate, on Cotton Bend, in Central Gatlin’—” I stopped reading out loud.

I was sitting at her kitchen table, where her One-Eyed Menace waited sadly in the mason jar on her counter, and it didn’t seem possible that I was reading Amma’s obituary. Not when I could still smell the Red Hots and the pencil lead.

“Keep readin’.” Aunt Grace was leaning over my shoulder, trying to read the print that her bifocals were ten strengths too weak to read.

Aunt Mercy was sitting in her wheelchair, on the other side of the table, next to my dad. “They best say somethin’

about Amma’s pie. Or the Good Lord as my witness, I’ll go down there ta The Stars ’n’ Bars and give them a piece a my mind.” Aunt Mercy still thought our town newspaper was named after the Confederate flag.

“It’s The Stars and Stripes ,” my father corrected gently. “And I’m sure they worked hard to assure Amma is remembered for all her talents.”

“Hmm.” Aunt Grace sniffed. “Folks ’round here don’t know a lick about talent. Prudence Jane’s singin’ was looked over by the choir for years.”

Aunt Mercy crossed her arms. “She had the voice of an angel if I ever heard one.” I was surprised Aunt Mercy could hear anything without her hearing aid. She was still carrying on when Lena began to Kelt with me.

Ethan? Are you okay?

I’m okay, ll.

You don’t sound okay.

I’m dealing.

Hold on. I’m coming.

Amma’s face stared out at me from the newspaper, printed in black and white. Wearing her best Sunday dress, the one with the white collar. I wondered if someone had taken that photo at my mom’s funeral or Aunt Prue’s. It could’ve been Macon’s.

There had been so many.

I laid the paper down on the scarred wood. I hated that obituary. Someone from the paper must have written it, not someone who knew Amma. They’d gotten everything wrong. I guess I had a new reason to hate The Stars and Stripes as much as Aunt Grace did.

I closed my eyes, listening to the Sisters fuss about everything from Amma’s obituary to the fact that Thelma couldn’t make grits the right way. I knew it was their way of paying their respects to the woman who had raised my dad and me. The woman who had made them pitcher after pitcher of sweet tea and made sure they didn’t leave the house with their skirts hitched up in their pantyhose when they left for church.

After a while, I couldn’t hear them at all. Just the quiet sound of Wate’s Landing mourning, too. The floorboards creaked, but this time I knew it wasn’t Amma in the next room. None of her pots were banging. No cleavers were attacking the cutting board. No warm food would be coming my way.

Not unless my dad and I taught ourselves how to cook.

There were no casseroles piled up on our porch either. Not this time. There wasn’t a soul in Gatlin who would have dared bring their sorry excuse for a pot roast to mark Miss Amma Treadeau’s passing. And if they did, we wouldn’t have eaten it.

Not that anyone around here really believed she was gone. At least that’s what they said. “She’ll come back, Ethan.

’Member the way she just showed up without sayin’ a word, the day you were born?” It was true. Amma had raised my father and moved out to Wader’s Creek with her family. But as the story goes, the day my parents brought me home from the hospital, she showed up with her quilting bag and moved back in.

Now Amma was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. More than anyone, I knew how that worked. I looked at the worn spot on the floorboards over by the stove, in front of the oven door.

I miss her, ll.

I miss her, too.

I miss both of them.

I know.

I heard Thelma walk into the room, a hunk of tobacco tucked under her lip. “All right, girls. I think y’all have had enough excitement for one mornin’. Let’s go on in the other room and see what we can win on The Price Is Right.” Thelma winked at me and wheeled Aunt Mercy out of the room. Aunt Grace was right behind them, with Harlon James at her feet. “I hope they’re givin’ away one a those iceboxes that makes water all on its own.” My dad reached for the newspaper and started reading where I left off. “ ‘Memorial services will be held at the Chapel at Wader’s Creek.’ ” My mind flashed on Amma and Macon, standing face to face in the middle of the foggy swamp on the wrong side of midnight.

“Aw, hell, I tried to tell anyone who would listen. Amma doesn’t want a service.” He sighed.

“Nope.”

“She’s fussing around somewhere right now, saying, ‘I don’t see why you’re wastin’ good time mournin’ me. Sure as my Sweet Redeemer, I’m not wastin’ my time mournin’ you.’ ”

I smiled. He cocked his head to the left, just like Amma did when she was on the rampage. “T. O. M. F. O. O. ll. E.

R. Y. Ten down. As in, this whole thing’s nothin’ but hodgepodge and nonsense, Mitchell Wate.” This time I laughed, because my dad was right. I could hear her saying it. She hated being the center of attention, especially when it involved the infamous Gatlin Funerary Pity Parade.

My dad read the next paragraph. “ ‘Miss Amma Treadeau was born in Unincorporated Gatlin County, South Carolina, the sixth of seven children born to the late Treadeau family.’ ” The sixth of seven children? Had Amma ever mentioned her sisters and brothers? I only remembered her talking about the Greats.

He skimmed the length of the obituary. “ ‘By some count, her career as a baker of local renown spanned at least five decades and as many county fairs.’ ” He shook his head again. “But no mention of her Carolina Gold? Good Lord, I hope Amma’s not reading this from some cloud up on high. She’ll be sending lightning bolts down, left and right.” She’s not, I thought. Amma doesn’t care what they say about her now. Not the folks in Gatlin. She’s sitting on a porch somewhere with the Greats.

He kept going. “ ‘Miss Amma leaves behind her extended family, a host of cousins, and a circle of close family friends.’ ” He folded up the paper and tossed it back onto the table. “Where’s the part where Miss Amma leaves behind two of the sorriest, hungriest, saddest boys ever to inhabit Wate’s Landing?” He tapped his fingers restlessly on the wood tabletop between us.

I didn’t know what to say at first. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to be okay, you know?”

It was true. That’s what she’d been doing all this time, if you thought about it. Getting us ready for a time when she wouldn’t be there to get us ready for all the times after that.

For now.

My dad must have understood, because he let his hand fall heavily on my shoulder. “Yes, sir. Don’t I know it.” I didn’t say anything else.

We sat there together, staring out the kitchen window. “Anything else would be downright disrespectful.” His voice sounded wobbly, and I knew he was crying. “She raised us pretty well, Ethan.”

“She sure did.” I fought back the tears myself. Out of respect, I guess, like my dad said. This was how it had to be now.

This was real.

It hurt—it almost killed me—but it was real, the same way losing my mom was real. I had to accept it. Maybe this was the way the universe was meant to unravel, at least this part of it.

The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.

Amma had taught me that, better than anyone.

“Maybe she and Lila Jane are taking care of each other now. Maybe they’re sitting together, talking over fried tomatoes and sweet tea.” My dad laughed, even though he was crying.

He had no idea how close to the truth he was, and I didn’t tell him.

“Cherries.” That was all I said.

“What?” My dad looked at me funny.

“Mom likes cherries. Straight out of the colander, remember?” I turned my head his way. “But I’m not sure Aunt Prue is letting either one of them get a word in edgewise.”

He nodded and stretched out his hand until it brushed against my arm. “Your mom doesn’t care. She just wants to be left in peace with her books for a while, don’t you think? At least until we get there?”

“At least,” I said, though I couldn’t look at him now. My heart was pulled so many different ways at once, I didn’t know what I was feeling. Part of me wished I could tell him that I’d seen my mom. That she was okay.

We sat like that, not moving or talking, until I felt my heart start to pound.

ll? Is that you?

Come out, Ethan. I’m waiting.

I heard the music before I saw the Beater roll into view through the windowpanes. I stood up and nodded at my dad.

“I’m going up to Lena’s for a while.”

“You take all the time you need.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

As I turned to leave the kitchen, I caught one last sight of my dad, sitting alone at the table with the newspaper. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave him like that.

I reached back for the paper.

I don’t know why I took it. Maybe I just wanted to keep her with me a little while longer. Maybe I didn’t want my dad to sit alone with all those feelings, wrapped in a stupid paper with a bad crossword puzzle and a worse obituary.

Then it came to me.

I pulled open Amma’s drawer and grabbed a #2 pencil. I held it up to show my dad.

He grinned. “Started out sharp, and then she sharpened it.”

“It’s what she would have wanted. One last time.”

He leaned back in his chair until he could reach the drawer and tossed me a box of Red Hots. “One last time.” I gave him a hug. “I love you, Dad.”

Then I swept my hand across the length of the kitchen windows, sending salt spraying all over the kitchen floor.

“It’s time to let the ghosts in.”

I only made it halfway down the porch steps before Lena found me. She jumped up into my arms, circling her skinny legs around mine. She clung to me and I held on to her, like neither one of us was ever letting go.

There was electricity, plenty of electricity. But as her lips found mine, there was nothing but sweetness and peace.

Kind of like coming home, when a home’s still a shelter and not the storm itself.

Everything was different between us. There was nothing keeping us apart anymore. I didn’t know if it was because of the New Order, or because I’d journeyed to the end of the Otherworld and back. Either way, I could hold Lena’s hand without burning a hole in my palm.

Her touch was warm. Her fingers were soft. Her kiss was just a kiss now. A kiss that was every bit as big and every bit as small as a kiss can be.

It wasn’t an electrical storm or a fire. Nothing exploded or burned or even short-circuited. Lena belonged to me, the same way I belonged to her. And now we could be together.

The Beater honked, and we broke off kissing.

“Any day now.” Link stuck his head out the window. “I’m gettin’ gray hairs sittin’ here watchin’ you kids.” I grinned at him, but I couldn’t pull myself away from her. “I love you, Lena Duchannes. I always have, and I always will.” The words were as true today as the first time I’d said them, on her Sixteenth Moon.

“And I love you, Ethan Wate. I’ve loved you since the first day we met. Or before.” Lena looked straight in my eyes, smiling.

“Way before.” I smiled back, deep into hers.

“But I have something to tell you.” She leaned closer. “Something you should probably know about the girl you love.” My stomach flipped a little. “What is it?”

“My name.”

“You’re not serious?” I knew Casters learned their real names after they were Claimed, but Lena was never willing to tell me hers, no matter how many times I asked. I figured it was hers to tell when she felt like the time was right.

Which, I guess, was now.

“Do you still want to know?” She grinned because she already knew the answer.

I nodded.

“It’s Josephine Duchannes. Josephine, daughter of Sarafine.” The last word was a whisper, but I heard it, as if she had shouted it from the rooftops.

I squeezed her hand.

Her name. The last missing piece of her family puzzle, and the one thing you couldn’t find on any family tree.

I hadn’t told Lena about her mother yet. Part of me wanted to believe that Sarafine had given up her soul so I could be with Lena again—that her sacrifice was about more than just revenge. Someday I would tell Lena what her mother did for me. Lena deserved to know Sarafine wasn’t all bad.

The Beater honked again.

“Come on, lovebirds. We gotta get to the Dar-ee Keen. Everyone’s waitin’.” I grabbed Lena’s other hand and pulled her down the front lawn to the Beater. “We have to make a quick stop on the way.”

“Is this gonna involve any Dark Casters? Do I need the shears?”

“We’re just going to the library.”

Link leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. “I haven’t renewed my library card since I was ten. I think I’d have better odds with Dark Casters.”

I stood in front of the car door and looked at Lena. The back door opened by itself, and we both climbed in.

“Aw, man. Now I’m your cabdriver? You Casters and Mortals have a really screwed-up way a showin’ your appreciation to a guy.” Link turned up the music, as if he didn’t want to hear whatever I had to say.

“I appreciate you.” I smacked his head from behind, good and hard. He didn’t even seem to feel it. I was talking to Link, but I was looking at Lena. I couldn’t stop looking at her. She was more beautiful than I remembered, more beautiful and more real.

I curled a strand of her hair through my fingers, and she leaned her cheek against my hand. We were together. It was hard to think or see or even talk about anything else. Then I felt bad for feeling so good when I was still carrying The Stars and Stripes in my back pocket.

“Wait. Check it out.” Link paused. “That’s exactly what I needed to finish my new lyrics. ‘Candy girl. Hurts so sweet she’ll make you want to hurl—’ ”

Lena put her head on my shoulder. “Did I mention that my cousin’s back in town?”

“Of course she is.” I smiled.

Link winked at me in the rearview mirror. I smacked him in the head again as the car pulled down the street.

“I think you’re gonna be a rock star,” I said.

“I gotta get back to workin’ on my demo track, you know? ’Cause as soon as we graduate, I’m headin’ straight to New York, the big time….”

Link was so full of crap, he could pass for a toilet. Just like the old days. Just like it was supposed to be.

It was all the proof I needed.

I was really home.

CHAPTER 38

Eleven Across

You kids go on in,” Link said, turning up the latest Holy Rollers demo. “I’m gonna wait here. I get enough a books at school.”

Lena and I climbed out of the Beater and stood in front of the Gatlin County Library. The repairs were further along than I remembered. All the major construction was finished on the outside, and the fine ladies of the DAR had already started planting saplings near the door.

The inside of the building was less finished. Plastic sheets hung across one side, and I could see tools and sawhorses on the other. But Aunt Marian had already set up this particular area, which didn’t surprise me at all. She would rather have half a library than no library, any day.

“Aunt Marian?” My voice echoed more than usual, and within seconds she appeared at the end of the aisle in her stocking feet. I could see the tears in her eyes as she rushed in for a hug.

“I still can’t believe it.” She hugged me tighter.

“Trust me, I know.”

I heard the sound of dress shoes against the uncarpeted concrete.

“Mr. Wate, it is a pleasure to see you, son.” Macon had a huge smile plastered across his face. It was the same one he seemed to have every time he saw me now, and it was starting to creep me out a little.

He gave Lena a squeeze and made his way over to me. I held out my hand to shake his, but he swung his arm around my neck instead.

“It’s good to see you, too, sir. We kinda wanted to talk to you and Aunt Marian.” She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Lena was twisting her charm necklace, waiting for me to explain. I guess she didn’t want to break the news to her uncle that we could make out all we wanted now without putting my life in danger. So I did the honors. And as intrigued as Macon seemed, I was pretty sure he liked it better when kissing Lena posed the threat of electric shock.

Marian turned to Macon, at a loss. “Remarkable. What do you think it means?” He was pacing in front of the stacks. “I’m not entirely sure.”

“Whatever it is, do you think it will affect other Casters and Mortals?” Lena was hoping this was some kind of change in the Order of Things. Maybe a cosmic bonus, after everything I’d been through.

“That’s doubtful, but we will certainly look into it.” He glanced at Marian.

She nodded. “Of course.”

Lena tried to hide her disappointment, but her uncle knew her too well. “Even if this isn’t affecting other Casters and Mortals, it is affecting the two of you. Change has to start somewhere, even in the supernatural world.” I heard a creak, and the front door slammed. “Dr. Ashcroft?”

I looked at Lena. I would’ve known that voice anywhere. Apparently, Macon recognized it, too, because he ducked behind the stacks with Lena and me.

“Hello, Martha.” Marian gave Mrs. Lincoln her friendliest librarian voice.

“Was that Wesley’s car I saw out front? Is he in here?”

“I’m sorry. He’s not.”

Link was probably scrunched down on the floor of the Beater, hiding from his mother.

“Is there anything else I can do for you today?” Marian asked politely.

“What you can do,” Mrs. Lincoln fussed, “is try to read this book a witchcraft and explain to me how we can allow our children to check this out a the public library.”

I didn’t have to look to know what series she was referring to, but I just couldn’t help myself. I poked my head around the corner to see Link’s mom waving a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in the air.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. It was good to know some things in Gatlin would never change.

I didn’t take The Stars and Stripes out during lunch. They say that when someone you love dies, you can’t eat. But today I had a cheeseburger with extra pickles, a double order of fries, a raspberry Oreo shake, and a banana split with hot fudge, caramel, and extra whip.

I felt like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. I guess I hadn’t actually eaten anything in the Otherworld, and my body seemed to know it.

As Lena and I ate, Link and Ridley were joking around together, which sounded more like fighting to anyone who didn’t know better.

Ridley shook her head. “Seriously? The Beater? Didn’t we go over this on the way here?”

“I wasn’t listenin’. I only pay attention to about ten percent a what you say.” He glanced at her over his shoulder.

“I’m ninety percent too busy lookin’ at you sayin’ it.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m a hundred percent too busy looking the other way.” She acted annoyed, but I knew Ridley better than that.

Link only grinned. “And they say you don’t use math in real life.”

Ridley unwrapped a red lollipop and made a show of it, like always. “If you think I’m going to New York with you in that rust bucket, you’re crazier than I thought, Hot Rod.”

Link nuzzled her neck, and Rid swatted him. “Come on, Babe. It was awesome last time. And this time we won’t have to sleep in the Beater.”

Lena raised an eyebrow at her cousin. “You slept in a car?”

Rid tossed her blond and pink hair. “I couldn’t leave Shrinky Dink alone. It’s not like he was a hybrid back then.” Link wiped his greasy hands on his Iron Maiden T-shirt. “You know you love me, Rid. Admit it.” Ridley pretended to scoot away from him, but she barely moved an inch. “I’m a Siren, in case you’ve forgotten. I don’t love anything.”

Link kissed her on the cheek. “Except me.”

“You got room for two more?” John was balancing a tray of freezes and french fries in one hand, his other hand locked around Liv’s.

Lena smiled at Liv and moved over. “Always.”

There was a time when I couldn’t get the two of them to stand in the same room. But that felt like a lifetime ago.

Technically, for me, I guess it was.

Liv tucked herself under John’s arm. She was wearing her periodic table shirt and her trademark blond braids. “I hope you don’t think we’re sharing those.” She slid the paper boat full of chili fries in front of her.

“I would never get between you and your fries, Olivia.” John leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.

“Smart boy.” Liv looked happy—not make-the-best-of-it happy but the real kind of happy. And I was happy for both of them.

Charlotte Chase called out from behind the counter; looked like her summer job had turned into a year-round after-school job. “Anybody wanna slice a pecan pie? Fresh outta the oven?” She held up the sad-looking boxed pie. It wasn’t fresh out of anybody’s oven, not even Sara Lee’s.

“No, thanks,” Lena said.

Link was still staring at the pie. “Bet it’s not good enough to be Amma’s worst pecan pie.” He missed Amma, too. I could tell. She had always been on him about one thing or another, but she loved Link. And he knew it. Amma let him get away with things I never could, which reminded me of something.

“Link, what did you do in my basement when you were nine years old?” To this day, Link had never told me what Amma had on him. I had always wanted to know, but it was the one secret I’d never been able to get out of him.

Link squirmed in his seat. “Come on, man. Some things are private.”

Ridley looked at him suspiciously. “Is that when you got into the schnapps and puked everywhere?” He shook his head. “Naw. That was someone else’s basement.” He shrugged. “Hey, there’s a whole lotta basements around here.”

We were all staring at him.

“Fine.” He ran his hand over his spiky hair nervously. “She caught me…” He hesitated. “She caught me dressed up—”

“Dressed up?” I didn’t even want to think about what that meant.

Link rubbed his face, embarrassed. “It was awful, dude. And if my mom ever found out, she’d kill you for sayin’ it and me for doin’ it.”

“What were you wearing?” Lena asked. “A dress? High heels?”

He shook his head. His face was turning red with shame. “Worse.”

Ridley whacked him on the arm, looking pretty nervous herself. “Spill. What the hell did you have on?” Link hung his head. “A Union soldier’s uniform. I stole it from Jimmy Weeks’ garage.” I burst out laughing, and within seconds so did Link. No one else at the table understood the sin in a Southern boy

—with a father who led the Confederate Cavalry in the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, and a mother who was a proud member of the Sisters of the Confederacy—trying on a Civil War uniform for the opposing side. You had to be from Gatlin.

It was one of those unspoken truths, like you don’t make a pie for the Wates because it won’t be better than Amma’s; you don’t sit in front of Sissy Honeycutt in church because she talks the whole time right along with the preacher; and you don’t choose the paint color for your house without consulting Mrs. Lincoln, not unless your name happens to be Lila Evers Wate.

Gatlin was like that.

It was family, all of it and all of them—the good parts and the bad.

Mrs. Asher even told Mrs. Snow to tell Mrs. Lincoln to tell Link to tell me that she was glad to have me home from Aunt Caroline’s in one piece. I told Link to thank her, and I meant it. Maybe Mrs. Lincoln would even make me some of her famous brownies again one day.

If she did, I bet I would clean the plate.

When Link dropped us off, Lena and I headed straight for Greenbrier. It was our place, and no matter how many terrible things happened here, it would always be the place where we found the locket. Where I saw Lena move the clouds for the first time, even if I didn’t realize it. Where we’d practically taught ourselves Latin, trying to translate from The Book of Moons.

The secret garden at Greenbrier held our secrets from the beginning. And in a way, we were beginning again.

Lena gave me a funny look when I finally unrolled the paper I had been carrying around all afternoon.

“What’s that?” She closed her spiral notebook, the one she spent all her time writing in, like she couldn’t get everything on the page fast enough.

“The crossword puzzle.” We lay on our stomachs in the grass, curled up against each other in our old spot by the tree near the lemon groves, near the hearthstone. True to its name, Greenbrier was the greenest I’d ever seen it. Not a lubber or a bunch of dead brown grass in sight. Gatlin really was back to the best version of its old self.

We did this, ll. We didn’t know how powerful we were.

She leaned her head on my shoulder.

We do now.

I didn’t know how long it would last, but I swore to myself that I wouldn’t take it for granted ever again. Not one minute of what we had.

“I thought we could do it. You know, for Amma.”

“The crossword?”

I nodded, and she laughed. “You know, I never even looked at those crossword puzzles? Not once. Not until you were gone and started using them to talk to me.”

“Pretty clever, right?” I nudged her.

“Better than you trying to write songs. Though your puzzles weren’t that great either.” She smiled, biting her lower lip. I couldn’t resist kissing it over and over and over, until she finally pulled away, laughing.

“Okay. They were much better.” She touched her forehead to mine.

I smiled. “Admit it, ll. You loved my crosswords.”

“Are you kidding? Of course I did. You came back to me every time I looked at those stupid puzzles.”

“I was desperate.”

We unrolled the paper between us, and I got out the #2 pencil. I should have known what we’d see.

Amma had left me a message, like the ones I left for Lena.

Two across. As in, to be or not to.

B. E.

Four down. As in, the opposite of evil.

G. O. O. D.

Five down. As in, the victim of a sledding injury, from an Edith Wharton novel.

E. T. H. A. N.

Ten across. As in, an expression of joy.

H. A. ll. ll. E. ll. U. J. A. H.

I crumpled up the paper and pulled Lena toward me.

Amma was home.

Amma was with me.

And Amma was gone.

I pretty much wept until the sun fell out of the sky and the meadow around me was as dark and as light as I felt.

CHAPTER 39

A Hymn for Amma

order is not orderly

no more than things are things

hallelujah

no sense to be made of water towers

or christmas towns

when you can’t tell up from down

hallelujah

graves are always grave

from inside or out

and love breaks what can’t be broken

hallelujah

one I loved I loved, one I loved I lost

now she is strong though she is gone

found and paid her way

she flew away

hallelujah

light the dark—sing the greats

a new day

hallelujah

EPILOGUE

After

That night, I lay in my ancient mahogany bed in my room, like generations of Wates before me. Books beneath me.

Broken cell phone next to me. Old iPod hanging around my neck. Even my road map was back on the wall again. Lena had taped it up herself. It didn’t matter how comfortable everything was. I couldn’t sleep—that’s how much thinking I had to do.

At least, remembering.

When I was little, my grandfather died. I loved my grandfather, for a thousand reasons I couldn’t tell you, and a thousand stories I could barely remember.

After it happened, I hid out back, up in the tree that grew halfway out of our fence, where the neighbors used to throw green peaches at my friends and me, and where we used to throw them at the neighbors.

I couldn’t stop crying, no matter how hard I jammed my fists into my eyes. I guess I never realized people could die before.

First my dad came outside and tried to talk me down out of that stupid tree. Then my mom tried. Nothing they said could make me feel any better. I asked if my grandpa was in Heaven, like they said in Sunday school. My mom said she wasn’t sure. It was the historian in her. She said no one really knew what happened when we died.

Maybe we became butterflies. Maybe we became people all over again. Maybe we just died and nothing happened.

I only cried harder. A historian isn’t really what you’re looking for in that kind of situation. That’s when I told her I didn’t want Poppi to die, but more than that, I didn’t want her to die, and even more than that, I didn’t want to die either.

Then she broke down.

It was her dad.

I came down from the tree on my own afterward, and we cried together. She pulled me into her arms, right there on the back steps of Wate’s Landing, and said I wouldn’t die.

I wouldn’t.

She promised.

I wasn’t going to die, and neither would she.

After that, the only thing I remember was going inside and eating three pieces of raspberry-cherry pie, the kind with the crisscross sugar crust. Someone had to die before Amma would make that pie.

Eventually, I grew up and grew older and stopped looking for my mom’s lap every time I felt like crying. I even stopped going in that old tree. But it was years before I realized my mom had lied to me. It wasn’t until she left me that I even remembered what she’d said.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what any of this is really about.

Why we bother.

Why we’re here.

Why we love.

I had a family, and they were everything to me, and I didn’t even know it when I had them. I had a girl, and she was everything to me, and I knew it every second I had her.

I lost them all. Everything a guy could ever want.

I found my way home again, but don’t be fooled. Nothing’s the same as before. I’m not sure I’d want it to be.

Either way, I’m still one of the luckiest guys around.

I’m not a church kind of a person, not when it comes to praying. To be honest, for me it never gets much past hoping. But I know this, and I want to say it. And I really hope someone will listen.

There is a point. I don’t know what it is, but everything I’ve had, and everything I’ve lost, and everything I felt—it meant something.

Maybe there isn’t a meaning to life. Maybe there’s only a meaning to living.

That’s what I’ve learned. That’s what I’m going to be doing from now on.

Living.

And loving, sappy as it sounds.

Lena Duchannes. Her name rhymes with rain.

I’m not falling anymore. That’s what ll says, and she’s right.

I guess you could say I’m flying.

We both are.

And I’m pretty sure somewhere up there in the real blue sky and carpenter bee greatness, Amma’s flying, too.

We all are, depending on how you look at it. Flying or falling, it’s up to us.

Because the sky isn’t really made of blue paint, and there aren’t just two kinds of people in this world, the stupid and the stuck. We only think there are. Don’t waste your time with either—with anything. It’s not worth it.

You can ask my mom, if it’s the right kind of starry night. The kind with two Caster moons and a Northern and a Southern Star.

At least I know I can.

I get up in the night and make my way across the creaking floorboards. They feel astonishingly real, and there isn’t a moment I think I’m dreaming. In the kitchen, I take an armful of spotless glasses out of the cupboard that hangs over the counter.

One by one, I set them on the table in a row.

Empty except for moonlight.

The refrigerator light is so bright, it surprises me. On the bottom shelf, tucked behind a rotting head of unchopped cabbage, I find it.

Chocolate milk.

Just as I suspected.

I might not have wanted it anymore, and I might not have been here to drink it, but I knew there was no way Amma had stopped buying it.

I rip open the cardboard and fold out the spout—something I could do in my sleep, which is practically the state I’m in. I couldn’t make Uncle Abner a pie if my life depended on it, and I don’t even know where Amma keeps the recipe for Tunnel of Fudge.

But this I know.

One by one, I fill the glasses.

One for Aunt Prue, who saw everything without blinking.

One for Twyla, who gave up everything without hesitating.

One for my mom, who let me go not once but twice.

One for Amma, who took her place with the Greats so I could take mine in Gatlin again.

A glass of chocolate milk doesn’t seem like enough, but it isn’t really the milk, and we all know that—all of us here, anyway.

Because the moonlight shimmers in the empty wooden chairs around me, and I know, as always, that I am not alone.

I’m never alone.

I push the last glass through the patch of moonlight across the scarred kitchen table. The light flutters like the twinkling of a Sheer’s eye.

“Drink up,” I say, but it’s not what I mean.

Especially not to Amma and my mom.

I love you, and I always will.

I need you, and I keep you with me.

The good and the bad, the sugar and the salt, the kicks and the kisses—what’s come before and what will come after, you and me—

We are all mixed up in this together, under one warm piecrust.

Everything about me remembers everything about you.

Then I take a fifth glass down from the shelf, the last of our clean glasses. I fill it to the brim with milk, so close that I have to slurp the top to keep it from overflowing.

Lena laughs at the way I always fill my cup as full as it can go. I feel her smiling in her sleep.

I raise my glass to the moon and drink it myself.

Life has never tasted sweeter.

HERE ENDETH