Beautiful Creatures(128)

I can’t say for sure how the room looked. I was too distracted by how it felt, and it felt pretty rank. I took a tentative step onto the grand flying staircase that led up to Lena’s bedroom. I’d gone up those stairs a hundred times before; it’s not like I didn’t know where they went. And yet somehow, today felt different. Aunt Del looked at Reece and Ryan, following behind me, as if I was leading the way into an unknown war front.

When I stepped onto the second stair, the whole house shook. The thousand candles of the ancient chandelier swinging over my head shuddered and dripped wax down onto my face. I winced and jerked back. Without warning, the stairway curled up beneath my feet and snapped underneath me, tossing me back onto my butt, sending me skidding halfway across the polished floors of the entry hall. Reece and Aunt Del made it out of the way, but I took poor Ryan with me like a bowling ball hitting the pins at County Line Lanes.

I stood up and shouted up the stairs. “Lena Duchannes. If you sic those stairs on me again, I’m gonna report you to the Disciplinary Committee myself.”

I took a step onto the first stair, and then the second. Nothing happened. “I will call Mr. Hollingsworth and personally testify that you’re a dangerous lunatic.” I double-jumped the stairs, all the way up to the first landing. “Because if you do that to me again, you will be, you hear me?” Then I heard it, her voice, uncurling in my mind.

You don’t understand.

I know you’re scared, L, but shutting everyone out isn’t going to make things any better.

Go away.

No.

I mean it, Ethan. Go away. I don’t want anything to happen to you.

I can’t.

Now I was standing at her bedroom door, leaning my cheek against the cold white wood of the paneling. I wanted to be with her, as close to her as I could get without having another heart attack. And if this was as near as she would let me get, it was enough for me, for now.

Are you there, Ethan?

I’m right here.

I’m afraid.

I know, L.

I don’t want you to get hurt.

I won’t.

Ethan, I don’t want to leave you.

You won’t.

What if I do?

I’ll wait for you.

Even if I’m Dark?

Even if you’re very, very Dark.

She pulled the door open and pulled me inside. Music was blasting. I knew the song. This was an angry, almost metal version of it, but I recognized it all the same.

Sixteen moons, sixteen years

Sixteen of your deepest fears

Sixteen times you dreamed my tears

Falling, falling through the years…

It looked like she had been crying all night. She probably had. When I touched her face, I saw it was still striped with tears. I held her in my arms, and we swayed while the song played on.

Sixteen moons, sixteen years

Sound of thunder in your ears

Sixteen miles before she nears

Sixteen seeks what sixteen fears…

Over her shoulder, I could see her room was in shambles. The plaster on her walls was cracked and falling and her dresser was overturned, the way a thief tosses a room during a breakin. Her windows were shattered. Without the glass the small metal panes looked like prison bars from some ancient castle. The prisoner clung to me as the melody wrapped around us.

Still, the music didn’t stop.

Sixteen moons, sixteen years,

Sixteen times you dreamed my fears, Sixteen will try to Bind the spheres, Sixteen screams but just one hears…

The last time I was here, the ceiling had been almost completely covered in words detailing Lena’s innermost thoughts. But now, every surface of the room was covered in her distinctive black handwriting. The edges of the ceiling now read: Loneliness is holding the one you love / When you know you might never hold him again. The walls: Even lost in the darkness / My heart will find you.

The doorjambs: The soul dies at the hand of the one who carries it. The mirrors: If I could find a place to run away / Hidden safely, I would be there today. Even the dresser was marred with phrases: The darkest daylight finds me here, those who wait are always watching, and the one that seemed to say it all, How do you escape from yourself? I could see her story in the words, hear it in the music.

Sixteen moons, sixteen years,

The Claiming Moon, the hour nears,

In these pages Darkness clears,

Powers Bind what fire sears…

Then the electric guitar slowed, and I heard a new verse, the end of the song. Finally, something had an ending. I tried to put the earth and fire and water and wind dreams out of my head as I listened.

Sixteenth Moon, Sixteenth Year,

Now has come the day you fear,

Claim or be Claimed,

Shed blood, shed tear,

Moon or Sun—destroy, revere.

The guitar died out, and now we were standing in silence.

“What do you think—”

She put her hand on my lips. She couldn’t bear to talk about it. She was as raw as I had ever seen her. A cold breeze was blowing past her, surrounding her, and exhaling out through the open door behind me.

I didn’t know if her cheeks were red from the cold or from her tears, and I didn’t ask. We fell onto her bed and curled into one ball, until it would have been hard to sort out whose limbs were whose. We weren’t kissing, but it was like we were. We were closer than I’d ever realized two people could be.