Beautiful Darkness(116)

Macon's face.

I heard my mother's words. He's with you now.

Macon opened his eyes and looked at me. Only you can redeem him.

He was dressed in the burnt clothes from the night he died. Only something was different.

His eyes were green.

Caster green.

“It's good to see you, Mr. Wate.”





6.20





Flesh and Blood


Macon!”

It was all I could do not to fling my arms around him. He, on the other hand, looked at me calmly, brushing off some of the burnt grit from his dinner jacket. His eyes were unsettling. I was used to the glassy black eyes of Macon Ravenwood the Incubus, the eyes that regarded you with nothing but your own reflection. Now he was standing in front of me, as green-eyed as any Light Caster. Ridley stared, but didn't utter a sound. It wasn't often you saw Ridley speechless.

“Much obliged, Mr. Wate. Much obliged.” Macon rolled his neck back and forth, uncoiling his arms, as if he was waking up from a long nap.

I bent down and picked up the Arclight, lying in the sandy dirt. “I was right. You were in the Arclight all along.” I thought about how many times I'd held it in my hand and relied on it to guide me. How familiar the warmth of the stone had felt.

Link was having trouble coming to grips with the idea that Macon was alive, too. Without thinking, he reached out to touch him. Macon's hand flew up and grabbed Link's arm. Link flinched. “So sorry, Mr. Lincoln. I'm afraid my reflexes are a bit — reflexive. I haven't gotten out much lately.”

Link rubbed his arm. “You didn't have to do that, Mr. Ravenwood. I just wanted, you know, I thought you were —”

“What? A Sheer? A Vex, perhaps?”

Link shivered. “You tell me, sir.”

Macon extended his arm. “Go ahead, then. Be my guest.”

Link stuck out his hand tentatively, as if he was about to hold it over a candle on a birthday dare. His finger came within a millimeter of Macon's ragged jacket and stopped.

Macon sighed, rolling his eyes, and tapped Link's hand against his chest. “See? Flesh and blood. Something we have in common now, Mr. Lincoln.”

“Uncle Macon?” Ridley crept up to him, finally ready to face him. “Is it really you?”

He looked deep into her blue eyes. “You've lost your powers.”

She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. “So have you.”

“Some of them, yes, but I suspect I've gained others.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled away. “It's impossible to tell. I'm still in the midst of it.” He smiled. “Sort of like being a teenager. Twice.”

“But your eyes are green.”

Macon shook his head, flexing his hands. “True. My life as an Incubus is over, but the Transition is not complete. Although my eyes are those of a Light Caster, I can still feel Darkness within me. It has not been fully exorcised, yet.”

“I'm not Transitioning. I'm nothing, a Mortal.” She said the word like it was a curse, and the sadness in her voice was real. “I don't have a place in the Order of Things anymore.”

“You're alive.”

“I don't feel like myself. I'm powerless.”

Macon weighed this in his mind, as if he was trying to determine her present state as much as she was. “You may be in the midst of a Transition of your own, unless this is one of my sister's more impressive tricks.”

Ridley's eyes lit up. “Does that mean my powers might come back?”

Macon studied her blue eyes. “I think Sarafine is too cruel for that. I only meant that you might not be fully Mortal yet. Darkness does not leave us as easily as we would hope.” Macon pulled her awkwardly to his chest, and she buried her face in his jacket, like a twelve-year-old. “It's not easy to be Light when you've been Dark. It's almost too much to ask of anyone.”

I tried to quiet the torrent of questions racing through my mind, and settled for the first. “How?”

Macon turned from Ridley, his green eyes burning into me with their newfound light. “Could you be more specific, Mr. Wate? How am I not resting in twenty-seven thousand distinct fragments of ash in an urn within the Ravenwood family vault? How am I not rotting under a lemon tree in the sodden prestige of His Garden of Perpetual Peace? How did I come to find myself imprisoned in a small crystalline ball in your grimy pocket?”

“Two,” I said without thinking.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are two lemon trees over your grave.”

“How very generous. One would have sufficed.” Macon smiled tiredly, which was pretty remarkable, considering he'd spent four months in a supernatural prison the size of an egg. “Or are you perhaps wondering how is it that I died and you lived? Because I have to tell you, as far as hows go, that's a story your neighbors on Cotton Bend would be talking about for a lifetime.”

“Except you didn't, sir. Die, I mean.”

“You are correct, Mr. Wate. I am, and have always been, very much alive. In a manner of speaking.”

Liv stepped forward tentatively. Even though she would probably never become a Keeper now, there was still a Keeper inside her seeking answers. “Mr. Ravenwood, may I ask you a question, sir?”