Beautiful Creatures(88)

Marian put her teacup down on the table. “Teenagers—everything is so apocalyptic.”

Amma shook her head. “Some things are meant to be and some take some doin’. This one isn’t done just yet.”

I could feel Lena’s hand shaking in mine. “They’re right, L. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She yanked her hand away. “Everything’s going to be okay? My mother, a Cataclyst, is trying to kill me. A vision from a hundred years ago just clarified that my whole family has been cursed since the Civil War. My sixteenth birthday is in two months, and that’s the best you can do?”

I took her hand again, gently, because she let me. “I saw the same vision you did. The Book chooses who it takes. Maybe it won’t choose you.” I was clutching at straws, but they were all I had.

Amma looked at Marian, slamming her saucer on the table. The cup rattled against it.

“The Book?” Macon’s eyes drilled down on me.

I tried to look him in the eye, but I couldn’t do it. “The Book in the vision.”

Don’t say another word, Ethan.

We should tell them. We can’t do this alone.

“It’s nothing, Uncle M. We don’t even know what the visions mean.” Lena wasn’t going to give in, but after tonight I felt like I had to. We had to. Everything was spiraling out of control. I felt like I was drowning and I couldn’t even save myself, let alone Lena.

“Maybe the visions mean not everyone in your family goes Dark when they’re Claimed. What about Aunt Del? Reece? Think cute little Ryan is going to the dark side when she can heal people?” I said, moving closer to her.

Lena shrank back into her chair. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

“But he’s not wrong, Lena.” Macon looked at her, exasperated.

“You’re not Ridley. And you’re not your mother,” I said, as convincingly as I could.

“How do you know? You’ve never even met my mother. And by the way, neither have I, except in psychic attacks that no one can seem to prevent.”

Macon tried to sound reassuring. “We were unprepared for these sorts of attacks. I didn’t know she could Travel. I didn’t know she shared some of my powers. It is not a gift afforded to Casters.”

“Nobody seems to know anything about my mother, or me.”

“That’s why we need the Book.” This time, I looked right at Macon as I said it.

“What is this book you keep talking about?” Macon was losing his patience.

Don’t tell him, Ethan.

We have to.

“The Book that cursed Genevieve.” Macon and Amma looked at each other. They already knew what I was going to say. “The Book of Moons. If that’s how the curse was Cast, something in it should tell us how to break it. Right?” The room fell silent.

Marian looked at Macon. “Macon—”

“Marian. Stay out of this. You’ve interfered more than enough already, and the sun will rise just minutes from now.” Marian knew. She knew where to find The Book of Moons, and Macon wanted to make sure she kept her mouth shut.

“Aunt Marian, where’s the Book?” I looked her in the eye. “You have to help us. My mom would’ve helped us, and you’re not supposed to take sides, right?” I wasn’t playing fair, but it was true.

Amma raised her hands, then dropped them into her lap. A rare sign of surrender. “What’s done is done.

They’ve already started pullin’ the thread, Melchizedek. That old sweater’s bound to unravel, anyhow.”

“Macon, there are protocols. If they ask, I’m Bound to tell them,” Marian said. Then she looked up at me. “The Book of Moons isn’t in the Lunae Libri.”

“How do you know?”

Macon stood to leave, turning to both of us. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark and angry. When he finally spoke, his voice echoed over the chamber, over all of us. “Because that’s the book for which this archive was named. It is the most powerful book from here to the Otherworld. It is also the book that cursed our family, for eternity. And it’s been missing for over a hundred years.”

12.01

It Rhymes with Witch

On Monday morning, Link and I drove down Route 9, stopping at the fork in the road to pick up Lena.

Link liked Lena, but there was no way he was driving up to Ravenwood Manor. It was still the Haunted Mansion to him.

If he only knew. Thanksgiving break had only been a long weekend, but it felt a lot longer, considering that Twilight Zone of a Thanksgiving dinner, the vases flying between Macon and Lena, and our journey to the center of the earth, all without leaving the Gatlin city limits. Unlike Link, who had spent the weekend watching football, beating up his cousins, and trying to determine whether or not the cheese ball had onions in it this year.

But according to Link, there was trouble of another kind brewing, and this morning it sounded equally dangerous. Link’s mom had been burning up the lines for the last twenty-four hours, whispering on the phone with the long cord and the kitchen door closed. Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Asher had shown up after dinner, and the three of them had disappeared into the kitchen—the War Room. When Link went in, pretending to grab a Mountain Dew, he didn’t catch much. But it was enough to figure out his mom’s end game. “We’ll get her outta our school, one way or another.” And her little dog, too.