Beautiful Chaos(42)

“I—I needed to see you.”

John reached for the lamp on his desk.

Sarafine grabbed his hand. “Don’t. Leave it off. You’ll wake up your parents.”

He looked at her more closely, his eyes adjusting to the dark. “Did something happen? Are you hurt?”

She was beyond hurt, beyond hope, and there was no way to prepare John for what she was about to tell him. He knew about her family and the curse. But Sarafine had never told John the date of her real birthday. She had made up a date, one that was several months away, so he wouldn’t worry. He didn’t know that tonight was her Sixteenth Moon—the night she had been dreading for as long as she could remember.

“I don’t want to tell you.” Sarafine’s voice broke as she choked back tears.

John pulled her into his arms, resting his chin on her head. “You’re so cold.” He rubbed his hands over her arms. “I love you. You can tell me anything.”

“Not this,” she whispered. “Everything’s ruined.”

Sarafine thought about all the plans they had made. Going off to college together, John next year and Sarafine the year after. John was going to study engineering, and she planned to major in literature. She had always wanted to be a writer. After they graduated, they would get married.

There was no point thinking about it. None of it would happen now.

John squeezed her tighter. “Izabel, you’re scaring me. Nothing could ruin what we have.”

Sarafine pushed him away and pulled off the sunglasses, revealing the golden-yellow eyes of a Dark Caster. “Are you sure about that?”

For a second, John only stared. “What happened? I don’t understand.”

She shook her head, the tears burning the skin on her icy cheeks. “It was my birthday. I never told you because I was sure I would go Light. I didn’t want you to worry. But at midnight—”

Sarafine couldn’t finish. He knew what she was going to say. He could see it in her eyes.

“It’s a mistake. It has to be.” She was talking to herself as much as to John. “I’m still the same person. They say you feel different when you go Dark—you forget about the people you care about. But I haven’t. I never will.”

“I think it happens gradually….” John’s voice trailed off.

“I can fight it! I don’t want to be Dark. I swear.” It was too much—her mother turning her away, her sister calling for her, losing John. Sarafine couldn’t face any more heartbreak. She crumpled, her body sinking to the floor.

John knelt beside her, gathering her into his arms. “You’re not Dark. I don’t care what color your eyes are.”

“No one believes that. My mother wouldn’t even let me in the house.” Sarafine choked.

John pulled her up. “Then we’ll leave tonight.” He grabbed a duffel bag and started shoving clothes into it.

“Where are we going to go?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find somewhere.” John zipped the bag and pulled her face into his hands, looking into her gold eyes.

“It doesn’t matter. As long as we’re together.”





We were in my bedroom again, in the bright afternoon heat. The vision faded, taking the girl who seemed nothing like Sarafine with it. The book dropped to the floor.

Lena’s face was streaked with tears, and for a second she looked exactly like the girl in the vision. “John Eades was my dad.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded, wiping her face with her hands. “I’ve never seen a picture of him, but Gramma told me his name. He seemed so real, like he was still alive. And they really seemed to love each other.” She reached down to pick up the book where it had fallen, open, with the cover faceup, the worn cracks in its spine proof of how many times it had been read.

“Don’t touch it, L.”

Lena picked it up. “Ethan, I’ve been reading it. That’s never happened before. I think it was because we were touching it at the same time.”

She opened the book again, and I could see dark lines where someone had underlined sentences and circled phrases. Lena noticed me trying to read over her shoulder. “The whole book is like this, marked up like some kind of map. I just wish I knew where it led.”

“You know where it leads.” We both did. To Abraham and the Dark Fire—the Great Barrier and darkness and death.

Lena didn’t take her eyes away from the book. “This line is my favorite. ‘I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.’ ”

We had both been bent and broken by Sarafine.

Was the result a better shape? Was I better for what I’d been through? Was Lena?

I thought about Aunt Prue lying in a hospital bed, and Marian sifting through boxes of burnt books, charred documents, waterlogged photographs. Her life’s work destroyed.

What if the people we loved were bent until they broke and were left with no shape at all?

I had to find John Breed before they were too broken to put back together.





9.26





Visiting Hours


The next day, Aunt Grace figured out where Mercy was hiding her coffee ice cream in the icebox. The day after that, Aunt Mercy found out Grace had been eating it, and pitched a three-alarm fit. The day after the day after that, I played Scrabble with the Sisters’ nonsense words all afternoon, until I was so beaten down I didn’t challenge YOUBET as a single word, COTTON as a verb, SKUNKED as an adjective, and IFFEN as the long form of if.