Beautiful Darkness(71)

My dad put his arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, the way he used to after my Little League team lost a game. “I really miss her. I still can't believe she's gone.”

I couldn't say anything. My breath was caught in my throat, my chest so tight I thought I was going to pass out. My mom was dead. I would never see her again, no matter how many pages she flipped open in her books or how many messages she sent me.

“I know this has been really hard for you, Ethan. I wanted to say I'm sorry I wasn't there for you this year the way I should've been. I just —”

“Dad.” I could feel my eyes watering, but I didn't want to cry. I wouldn't give the town casserole factory that kind of satisfaction. So I cut him off. “It's okay.”

He gave my shoulder one last squeeze. “I'll give you some time alone with her. I'm going to take a walk.”

I kept staring at the headstone, with the tiny Celtic symbol of Awen etched into the stone. It was a symbol I knew, one my mother had always loved. Three lines representing rays of light, converging at the top.

I heard Marian's voice behind me. “Awen. It's a Gaelic word that means ‘poetic inspiration’ or ‘spiritual illumination.’ Two things your mother respected.” I thought about the symbols in the lintel at Ravenwood, the symbols on The Book of Moons, and the one on the door of Exile. Symbols meant something. In some cases, more than words. My mom had known that. I wondered if it was the reason she became a Keeper, or if she learned it from the Keepers before her. There was so much about her I would never know.

“Ethan, I'm sorry. Would you like to be alone?”

I let Marian hug me. “No. I don't really feel like she's here. You know what I mean?”

“I do.” She kissed my forehead and smiled, pulling a green tomato out of her pocket. She balanced it on the top of the tombstone.

I leaned back and smiled. “Now if you were a real friend, you would have fried it.”

Marian put her arm around me. She was in her best dress, like everyone else, but her best dress was somehow better. It was soft and yellow, the color of butter, with a loose bow near the neck. The skirt folded into about a thousand crinkly pleats, like a dress from an old-fashioned movie. It looked like something Lena would have worn.

“Lila knows I would do no such thing.” She squeezed me tighter. “I really only came out here to see you.”

“Thanks, Aunt Marian. It's been a rough couple of days.”

“Olivia told me. A Caster bar, an Incubus, and a Vex, all in the same night. I'm afraid Amma will never let you visit me again.” She didn't mention the trouble I imagined Liv was in today.

“There's something else.” Lena. I couldn't bring myself to say her name.

Marian pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I heard, and I'm sorry. But I brought you something.” She opened her bag and took out a small wooden box with a worn design carved into its surface. “As I said, I really came here to see you and give you this.” She held out the box. “It was your mother's, one of her most valuable possessions. It's older than the rest of her collection. I think she would want you to have it.”

I took it. The box was heavier than it looked.

“Be careful. It's delicate.”

I lifted the lid gently, expecting to find another one of my mother's treasured Civil War relics — a scrap of a flag, a bullet, a piece of lace. Something marked by history and time. But when I opened the box, it was something else, marked by a different kind of history and time. I knew what it was, the second I saw it.

The Arclight, from the visions.

The Arclight Macon Ravenwood gave to the girl he loved.

Lila Jane Evers.

I had seen it stitched on an old pillow once that belonged to my mom when she was little. Jane. My Aunt Caroline said only my grandmother called her that, but my grandmother died before I was born, so I'd never heard it myself. Aunt Caroline was wrong. My grandmother wasn't the only one who had called her Jane.

Which meant —

My mom was the girl in the visions.

And Macon Ravenwood was the love of my mother's life.





6.17





The Arclight


My mom and Macon Ravenwood. I dropped the Arclight as if it had stung me. The box fell, and the ball rolled harmlessly across the grass, like a child's toy instead of some kind of supernatural prison.

“Ethan? What is it?” It was obvious Marian had no idea I recognized the Arclight. I had never mentioned it when I told her about the visions. I hadn't thought much about it. It was another little detail about the Caster world I didn't understand.

But this one little detail mattered.

If this was the Arclight from the vision, then my mother had loved Macon the way I loved Lena. The way my father had loved her.

I needed to know if Marian knew where my mother had gotten it, or who had given it to her. “Did you know?”

She bent down and picked up the sphere, its dark surface gleaming in the sunlight. She slid it back into the box. “Did I know what? Ethan, you aren't making any sense.”

The questions were coming faster than my mind could process them. How did my mother meet Macon Ravenwood? How long were they together? Who else knew? And the biggest one …