Beautiful Creatures(50)

“No.” A creeping pink spread across her nose and cheeks. She looked away.

I wanted to ask her what it was she’d been thinking, but I didn’t want to embarrass her. I just hoped it had something to do with me, with her hand nestled in mine. With the word I thought I heard her say, the moment before I blacked out.

I looked dubiously at the crack. A lot was riding on that crack in the plaster.

“Can you undo them? These things that just… happen?”

Lena sighed, relieved to talk about something else. “Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I can’t control it and I can’t fix it, not even after. I don’t think I could have put the glass back into that window at school. I don’t think I could have stopped the storm from coming, the day we met.”

“I don’t think that one was your fault. You can’t blame yourself for every storm that rolls through Gatlin County. Hurricane season isn’t even over yet.”

She flipped over onto her stomach and looked me right in the eye. She didn’t let go, and neither did I.

My whole body was buzzing with the warmth of her touch. “Didn’t you see what happened tonight?”

“Maybe sometimes a hurricane is just a hurricane, Lena.”

“As long as I’m around, I am hurricane season in Gatlin County.” She tried to pull her hand away, but that only made me hold on more tightly.

“That’s funny. You seem more like a girl to me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. I’m a whole storm system, out of control. Most Casters can control their gifts by the time they’re my age, but half the time it feels more like mine control me.” She pointed to her own reflection in the mirror on the wall. The Sharpie writing scribbled itself across the reflection as we watched. Who is this girl? “I’m still trying to figure it all out, but sometimes it seems like I never will.”

“Do all Casters have the same powers, gifts, whatever?”

“No. We can all do simple things like move objects, but each Caster also has more specific abilities related to their gifts.”

Right about now, I wished there was some kind of class I could take so I’d be able to follow these conversations, Caster 101, I don’t know, because I was always sort of lost. The only person I knew who had any special abilities was Amma. Reading futures and warding off evil spirits had to count for something, right? And for all I knew, maybe Amma could move objects with her mind; she could sure get my butt moving with just a look. “What about Aunt Del? What can she do?”

“She’s a Palimpsest. She reads time.”

“Reads time?”

“Like, you and I walk into a room and see the present. Aunt Del sees different points in the past and the present, all at once. She can walk into a room and see it as it is today and as it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago, at the same time. Kind of like when we touch the locket. That’s why she’s always so confused. She never knows exactly when or even where she is.”

I thought about how I felt after one of the visions, and what it would be like to feel that way all of the time. “No kidding. How about Ridley?”

“Ridley’s a Siren. Her gift is the Power of Persuasion. She can put any idea into anyone’s head, get them to tell her anything, do anything. If she used her power on you, and she told you to jump off a cliff—you’d jump.” I remembered how it felt in the car with her, like I would’ve told her almost anything.

“I wouldn’t jump.”

“You would. You’d have to. A Mortal man is no match for a Siren.”

“I wouldn’t.” I looked at her. Her hair was blowing in the breeze around her face, except there wasn’t an open window in the room. I searched her eyes for some kind of sign that maybe she was feeling the same way I was. “You can’t jump off a cliff when you’ve already fallen off a bigger one.”

I heard the words coming out of my mouth, and I wanted to take them back as soon as I said them.

They had sounded a lot better in my head. She looked back at me, trying to see if I was serious. I was, but I couldn’t say that. Instead, I changed the subject. “So what’s Reece’s superpower?”

“She’s a Sybil, she reads faces. She can see what you’ve seen, who you’ve seen, what you’ve done, just by looking into your eyes. She can open up your face and literally read it, like a book.” Lena was still studying my face.

“Yeah, who was that? That other woman Ridley turned into for a second, when Reece was staring at her? Did you see that?”

Lena nodded. “Macon wouldn’t tell me, but it had to be someone Dark. Someone powerful.”

I kept asking. I had to know. It was like finding out I’d just had dinner with a bunch of aliens. “What can Larkin do? Charm snakes?”

“Larkin’s an Illusionist. It’s like a Shifter. But Uncle Barclay’s the only Shifter in the family.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Larkin can Spellcast, or make anything look like anything he wants, for a spell—people, things, places. He creates illusions, but they’re not real. Uncle Barclay can Shiftcast, which means he can actually change any object into another object, for as long as he wants.”

“So your cousin changes how things seem, and your uncle changes how they are?”