Beautiful Chaos (11 page)

Abraham’s gone, L.

Even as I thought the words, I knew I was lying. John might have been gone, but Abraham wasn’t.

“So we’re left with two questions, Miss Durand. How and, more important, why?”

“If John Breed is gone, it doesn’t matter.” Liv’s face was pale, and it occurred to me that she looked as exhausted as Macon did.

“Is he? I’m not entirely willing to make assumptions without a body.”

“Shouldn’t we turn our research to the more pressing issues—the infestations, the climate change? How to stop these plagues that Lena’s Seventeenth Moon seems to have brought on the Mortal world?”

Macon leaned forward in his chair. “Olivia, do you have any idea how old this library is?”

She shook her head doubtfully.

“Do you know how old any of the Caster libraries are? Across the pond and beyond? In London? Prague? Madrid? Istanbul? Cairo?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“In any of these libraries, many of which I’ve visited myself in the past few weeks, do you imagine there is one reference to how to restore the Order of Things?”

“Of course. There has to be. This must have happened at least once before.”

He closed his eyes.

“Never?” She was trying to say the word, but from where we stood, we almost couldn’t hear it.

“Our only clue is the boy. How did he come to be, and for what purpose?”

“Or the girl?” Liv asked.

“Olivia. That’s enough.”

But Liv wasn’t deterred that easily. “Perhaps you already know? How did she come to be, and for what purpose? Scientifically speaking, it would be relevant.”

Lena shut me out, willing her mind apart from mine, until I was alone in the passageway even as we clung to each other.

Macon shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was harsh. “Don’t say anything to the others. I want to be absolutely certain.”

“Before you tell Lena what she’s done,” Liv said flatly. It was a fact, but somehow she didn’t say it that way.

Macon’s green eyes held all the emotion his black ones never had. Fear. Anger. Resentment. “Before I tell her what she has to do.”

“You might not be able to stop this.” She looked down at her selenometer out of habit.

“Olivia, it’s not only the universe that could be destroyed. It’s my niece. Who is, as far as I am concerned, more important than a thousand lost universes.”

“Believe me, I know.” If Liv was bitter, she didn’t let on.

It felt like my heart stopped beating. Lena slipped out of my arms before I even realized she was gone.

I found Lena in her room. She didn’t cry, and I didn’t try to console her. We sat in silence, holding hands until it hurt, until the sun fell away—behind the words, behind the glass and the trees and the river. The night slid across her bed, and I waited for the darkness to erase everything.

9.15

A
re you sure we’re going the right way?” We had turned off the highway, south of Charleston. But the houses had changed from traditional Victorians with wraparound porches and white turrets stretching toward the clouds to—nothing. The houses were gone, replaced with miles of tobacco fields and an occasional weather-beaten barn.

Lena glanced at the sheet of notebook paper in her lap. “This is the way. Gramma said there weren’t a lot of other houses near my old… where my house used to be.” When Lena told me she wanted to see the house where she was born, it made sense—for about ten seconds. Because it wasn’t just the house where she took her first steps and scribbled on the walls with crayon. It was also the place where her father died. Where Lena could have died, when her mother set fire to the house, right before Lena’s first birthday.

But Lena insisted, and there was no talking her out of it. We hadn’t said a word to each other about what we’d overheard in Macon’s study, but I knew this had to be another piece of the puzzle. Macon thought Lena’s and John’s pasts held some kind of key to what was happening in the Caster and Mortal worlds. Which was the reason we were driving through the backwoods right now.

Aunt Del leaned forward from the backseat of the Volvo. Lucille was sitting in her lap. “It doesn’t look familiar to me, but I could be wrong.” That was an understatement. Aunt Del was the last person I would ask for directions, unless we were in the Tunnels. And lately I wasn’t sure if she could find her way around down there either. If visiting the charred remains of Lena’s birthplace had been a bad idea, bringing Aunt Del with us was an even worse one. Since Lena’s Claiming, no one seemed to be turned inside out as much as Lena’s aunt.

Lena pointed at my window. “I think it’s up here. Uncle M said to look for a driveway on the left.” A fence, with white paint peeling down the sides, guarded the road. There was a break in the fence a few yards ahead. “That’s it.”

As I turned between the crooked posts, I heard Lena’s breath catch. I took her hand, and my pulse quickened.

Are you sure you want to do this?

No. But I need to know what happened.

L, you know what happened.

This is where it all started. Where my mother held me as a baby. Where she decided to hate me.

She was a Dark Caster. She wasn’t capable of love.

Lena leaned against my shoulder as I drove down the dusty driveway.

Part of me is Dark, too, Ethan. And I love you.

I stiffened. Lena wasn’t Dark, not like her mother.

It’s not the same. You’re also Light.

I know. But Sarafine isn’t gone. She’s out there somewhere, with Abraham, waiting. And the more I know about her, the more prepared I’ll be to fight her.

I wasn’t sure if that’s what this trip was really about. But it didn’t matter. Because when I pulled up to what was left of the house, it was suddenly about something different.

Reality.

“My stars,” Aunt Del whispered.

It was worse than the yellowed photos in my mom’s archive—the ones that captured what was left of the plantations after the Great Burning—black skeletons of enormous homes reduced to nothing but charred framework, as empty and hollow as the towns the Union soldiers left in their wake.

This house, Lena’s old house, was nothing more than a cracked foundation floating in a sea of blackened earth. Nothing had grown back. It was as if the ground itself had been scarred by what happened here.

How could Sarafine have done this to her family?

We didn’t matter to her. This proves it.

Lena dropped my hand and walked toward the rubble.

Let’s go, L. You don’t have to do this.

She looked back at me, green and gold eyes determined.

Yes, I do.

Lena turned to Aunt Del. “I need to see what happened here. Before… this.” She wanted her aunt to use her powers to peel away the layers of the past so Lena could see the house that once stood here—and, more important, see inside it.

Aunt Del looked more nervous than usual, her hair coming loose from her bun as we walked over to Lena. “My powers have been misfiring a bit. I may not be able to find exactly the moment you’re looking for, sweetheart.” What moment was that? The fire? I didn’t know if I could stand to see it—if Lena could. “They may not even work at all.”

I put my hand on the back of Lena’s neck gently. Her skin was hot.

“Can you try?”

Her face pained, Aunt Del looked at the burnt wood scattered around the base of the house. She nodded and held out her hand. The three of us sat on the black ground and joined hands, the heat beating down on us like a fire of its own.

“All right.” Aunt Del stared at the crumbling foundation intently, preparing to use her powers as a Palimpsest to show us the history of what was left of this place.

The air began to shift around us, slowly at first. Just as the world started to spin around me—I saw it for a split second. The shadow that always moved too fast for me to see. The one I felt in English class, the one following me. The one I couldn’t escape. It was watching, as if somehow it could see whatever we saw in the layers of Aunt Del’s perception.

Then a door opened into the past, and I was looking into a bedroom—

The walls are painted a pale, shimmering silver, and strands of white lights hang across the ceiling like stars in a magical sky. A girl with long black curls is standing by the window, staring out at the real sky. I know those curls and that beautiful profile—it’s Lena. But the girl turns, holding a bundle in her
arms, and I realize it isn’t Lena. It’s Sarafine, her golden eyes shining. She stares at the baby, whose tiny hands are reaching. Sarafine holds out her finger, and the baby grabs it. She looks down at the baby, smiling.
“You are such a special girl, and I will always take care of you—”

The door slams shut.

I waited for another to open, the way the doors always did, opening and closing like a chain reaction. But there was no point. The sky swirled back into view, and for a minute I was seeing double. Both Aunt Dels looked flustered.

“I—I’m sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It doesn’t make sense.” Only it did. Aunt Del’s powers were out of whack, like everyone else’s. Usually, she could stand anywhere and see the pieces of the past, present, and future, like the pages of a flip-book. Now there were pages missing, and she had only caught a single glimpse of the past.

Aunt Del was visibly shaken and looked more confused than ever. I took her arm to help her up. “Don’t worry, Aunt Del. Macon’s going to figure out how to… fix the Order.” Which seemed like the right thing to say, even though it was clear that Gatlin—maybe the whole world—was pretty broken.

Lena looked broken, too. She pushed herself up and walked closer to what was left of the house, as if she could still see the bedroom. Rain pelted down without warning, and heat lightning flashed across the sky. The grasshoppers scattered, and within seconds I was drenched.

L?

Standing there in the rain reminded me of the first night we met, in the middle of Route 9. She looked almost the same, and yet so different.

Am I crazy, or did it look like Sarafine cared about me?

You’re not crazy.

But, Ethan, that’s not possible.

I pushed the wet hair out of my eyes.

Maybe it is.

The rain stopped instantly, from a downpour back to sunshine in the span of a few seconds. It happened all the time now—Lena’s powers fluctuating between extremes she couldn’t control.

“What are you doing?” I jogged to catch up with her.

“I want to see what’s left.” She wasn’t talking about the stones and burnt wood. Lena wanted a feeling to hold on to, proof of the one happy moment she had experienced here.

I followed her to the edge of the foundation, which was more of a wall now. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but the closer we got to the charred remains, the more it smelled like ash. You could see where the steps that led up to the porch had burned away. I was tall enough to see over the side of the wall. There was nothing but a hole filled with cracked concrete, splintered pieces of rotted black wood littering the ground.