Beautiful Creatures(93)

It was Lena’s idea. Today was Aunt Del’s birthday, and at the last minute, Lena decided to throw a family party at Ravenwood. It was also Lena who invited Amma, knowing full well nothing short of divine intervention could get Amma to set foot through the door of Ravenwood Manor. Whatever it was about Macon, Amma reacted only slightly better to his presence than she did to the locket. And she preferred to keep Macon just as far away.

Boo Radley had shown up in the afternoon with a scroll in his mouth, lettered in careful calligraphy.

Amma wouldn’t touch the thing, even if it was an invitation, and almost didn’t let me go. Good thing she didn’t see me get into the hearse with my mom’s old garden shovel. That would have raised a flag or two.

I was glad to get out of my house, for any reason, even if the reason involved grave robbing. After Thanksgiving, my father had shut himself in the study, and since Macon and Amma caught us at the Lunae Libri, all I was getting from Amma was stinkeye.

Lena and I weren’t allowed to go back to the Lunae Libri, either, at least, not for the next sixty-eight days. Macon and Amma didn’t seem to want us digging up any more information they hadn’t planned on telling us in the first place.

“After the eleventh a February, you can do what you like,” Amma had harrumphed. “Until then, you can do what everyone else your age does. Listen to music. Watch the television. Just keep your nose away from those books.”

My mom would have laughed, the idea that I wasn’t allowed to read a book. Things had obviously gotten pretty bad around here.

It’s worse here, Ethan. Boo even sleeps at the foot of my bed now.

That doesn’t sound so bad to me.

He waits for me outside the bathroom door.

That’s just Macon being Macon.

It’s like house arrest.

It was, and we both knew it.

We had to find The Book of Moons, and it had to be with Genevieve. It was more than possible Genevieve had been buried at Greenbrier. There were some weathered headstones in the clearing just outside the garden. You could see them from the stone where we usually sat, which had turned out to be a hearthstone. Our spot, that’s how I thought of it, even if I had never said it out loud. Genevieve had to be buried out there, unless she’d moved away after the War, but nobody ever left Gatlin.

I always thought I’d be the first.

But now that I had gotten out of the house, how was I going to find a lost Casting book that may or may not save Lena’s life, that may or may not be buried in the grave of a cursed ancestral Caster, that may or may not be next door to Macon Ravenwood’s house? Without her uncle seeing me, stopping me, or killing me first?

The rest was up to Lena.

“What sort of history project requires visiting a graveyard at night?” Aunt Del asked, tripping over a bramble of vines. “Oh my!”

“Mamma, be careful.” Reece looped her arm through her mother’s, helping her negotiate the overgrowth. Aunt Del had a hard enough time walking around without bumping into anything in the daylight, but in the dark it was asking too much.

“We have to make a rubbing from one of our ancestors’ tombstones. We’re studying genealogy.” Well, that was sort of true.

“Why Genevieve?” Reece asked, looking suspicious.

Reece looked at Lena, but Lena immediately turned away. Lena had warned me not to let Reece see my face. Apparently, one look was all it took for a Sybil to know if you were lying. Lying to a Sybil was even trickier than lying to Amma.

“She’s the one in the painting, in the hall. I just thought it would be cool to use her. It’s not like we have a big family cemetery to choose from, like most people around here.”

The hypnotic Caster music from the party was starting to fade in the distance, replaced by the sound of dry leaves crackling under our feet. We had crossed over into Greenbrier. We were getting close. It was dark, but the full moon was so bright we didn’t even need our flashlights. I remembered what Amma had said to Macon at the graveyard. Half moon’s for workin’ White magic, full moon’s for workin’

Black. We weren’t going to be working any magic, I hoped, but it didn’t make it seem any less spooky.

“I’m not sure Macon would want us wandering out here in the dark. Did you tell him where we were going?” Aunt Del was apprehensive. She pulled on the collar of her high-necked lace blouse.

“I told him we were going for a walk. He just told me to stay with you.”

“I don’t know that I’m in good enough shape for this. I have to admit, I’m a bit winded.” Aunt Del was out of breath, and the hair around her face had escaped from her always slightly off-center bun.

Then I smelled that familiar scent. “We’re here.”

“Thank goodness.”

We walked toward the crumbling stone wall of the garden, where I’d found Lena crying the day after the window shattered. I ducked under the archway of vines, into the garden. It looked different at night, less like a spot for cloud gazing and more like the place a cursed Caster would be buried.

This is it, Ethan. She’s here. I can feel it.

Me, too.

Where do you think her grave is?

As we crossed over the hearthstone where I’d found the locket, I could see another stone in the clearing a few yards just beyond it. A headstone, with a hazy looking figure sitting on it.