Beautiful Creatures(123)

“Got it. Demon. Death. Doom.”

We were in the garden at Greenbrier again. Lena handed me the Book and flopped on her back, staring up at the sky. I hoped she was playing with the clouds instead of thinking about how little we had figured out during these afternoons with the Book. But I didn’t ask her to help me as I paged through it, wearing Amma’s old garden gloves that were way too small.

There were thousands of pages in The Book of Moons, and some pages contained more than one Cast.

There was no rhyme or reason to the way it was organized, at least none that I could see. The Table of Contents had turned out to be some kind of hoax that only loosely corresponded to some of what could actually be found inside. I turned the pages, hoping I would stumble across something. But most of the pages just looked like gibberish. I stared at the words I couldn’t understand.





I DDARGANFOD YR HYN SYDD AR GOLL


DATODWCH Y CWLWM, TROELLWCH A THROWCH EF





BWRIWCH Y RHWYMYN HWN


FEL Y CAF GANFOD

YR HYN RWY’N DYHEU AMDANO

YR HYN RWY’N EI GEISIO.

Something jumped out at me, a word I recognized from a quote tacked on the wall of my parents’

study: “Pete et invenies.” Seek and you shall find. “Invenies.” Find.





UT INVENIAS QUOD ABEST


EXPEDI NODUM, TORQUE ET CONVOLVE





ELICE HOC VINCULUM


UT INVENIAM

QUOD DESIDERO

QUOD PETO.

I tore through the pages of my mom’s Latin dictionary, scrawling the words in the back as I translated them. The words of the Cast stared back at me.

To Find What is Missing

Unravel the tie, twist and wind

Cast this Bind

So I may find

That which I yearn for

That which I seek.

“I found something!”

Lena sat up, peering over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?” She sounded less than convinced.

I held my chicken scratch handwriting up for her to read. “I translated this. It seems like you use it to find something.”

Lena leaned closer, checking my translation. Her eyes widened. “It’s a Locator Cast.”

“That sounds like something we can use to find the answer, so we can figure out how to undo the curse.”

Lena pulled the Book into her lap, staring at the page. She pointed to the other Cast above it. “That’s the same Cast in Welsh, I think.”

“But can it help us?”

“I don’t know. We don’t even really know what we’re looking for.” She frowned, suddenly less enthusiastic. “Besides, Spoken Casting isn’t as easy as it looks, and I’ve never done it before. Things can go wrong.” Was she kidding?

“Things can go wrong? Things worse than turning into a Dark Caster on your sixteenth birthday?” I grabbed the Book out of her hands, burning the daisies off the tips of the gloves. “Why did we dig up a grave to find this thing and waste weeks trying to figure out what it says, if we aren’t even going to try?” I held the Book up until one of the gloves started to smoke.

Lena shook her head. “Give me that.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll try, but I have no idea what will happen. This isn’t usually how I do it.”

“It?”

“You know, the way I use my powers, all the Natural stuff. I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be natural. I don’t even know what I’m doing, half the time.”

“Okay, so this time you do, and I’ll help. What do I need to do? Draw a circle? Light some candles?”

Lena rolled her eyes. “How about sit over there.” She pointed to a spot a few feet away. “Just in case.”

I was expecting a little bit more preparation, but I was just a Mortal. What did I know? I ignored Lena’s order to put some distance between myself and her first Spoken Cast, but I did take a few steps back.

Lena held the Book in one hand, which was a feat in itself because it was incredibly heavy, and took a deep breath. Her eyes ran slowly down the page as she read.

“‘Unravel the tie, twist and wind

Cast this Bind

So I may find

That which I yearn for…’”

She looked up and spoke the last line, clear and strong.

“‘That which I seek.’”

For a second, nothing happened. The clouds still lingered overhead, the air was still cold. It didn’t work. Lena shrugged her shoulders. I knew she was thinking the same thing. Until we both heard it, a sound like a rush of air echoing through a tunnel. The tree behind me caught fire. It actually ignited, from the bottom up. Flames raced up the trunk, roaring, spreading out to every branch. I had never seen anything catch fire that quickly.

The wood started to smoke immediately. I pulled Lena away from the fire, coughing. “Are you okay?”

She was coughing, too. I pushed her black curls away from her face. “Well, obviously that didn’t work.

Unless you were looking to toast some really big marshmallows.”

Lena smiled weakly. “I told you things could go wrong.”

“That’s an understatement.”