Beautiful Darkness (31 page)

I had seen it on Ridley and John Breed, and at Exile. The mark
of a Dark Caster. The tattoo they all shared. Each one looked different yet unmistakably similar. More like a brand than a tattoo, as if it had been burned into them rather than inked.

I shuddered and picked up a small object from the top of a black dresser. It was a framed photograph of Macon and a woman. I could see Macon standing next to her, but it was dark and I could only make out the outline of her silhouette, a shadow caught on film. I wondered if it was Jane.

How many secrets had Macon carried to his grave? I tried to put the frame back, but it was so dark I misjudged the distance and the picture fell. When I bent to pick it up, I noticed the corner of the rug was flipped back. It looked exactly like the rug I had seen in Macon's room in the Tunnels.

I lifted up the rug, and underneath there was a perfect rectangle cut into the floorboards, big enough for a man. It was another door into the Tunnels. I yanked on the floorboard, and it came loose. I could see down into Macon's study, but there were no stairs, and the stone floor looked too far down to jump without risking serious head trauma.

I remembered the cloaked door to the
Lunae Libri
. There was no way to find out, except to try. I held on to the edge of the bed and stepped down carefully. I stumbled for a second, then felt something solid under my foot. A step. Though I couldn't see it, I could feel the splintery wooden stair under my feet. Seconds later, I was standing on the stone floor of Macon's study.

He didn't spend all of his days sleeping. He spent them in the Tunnels, probably with Marian. I could picture the two of them looking up obscure old Caster legends, debating antebellum garden formations, having tea. She had probably spent more time with Macon than anyone, except Lena.

I wondered if Marian was the woman in the picture and her name was really Jane. I hadn't considered it before, but it would explain a lot of things. Why the countless brown library packages were kept neatly piled in Macon's study. Why a Duke professor would be hiding out as a librarian, even as a Keeper, in a town like Gatlin. Why Marian and Macon were inseparable so much of the time, at least for a reclusive Incubus who didn't go anywhere.

Maybe they had loved each other all these years.

I looked around the room until I saw it, the wooden box that held Macon's thoughts and secrets. It was on the shelf where Marian had left it.

I closed my eyes and reached for it —

It was the thing Macon wanted least and most — to see Jane one last time. It had been weeks since he'd seen her, unless you counted the nights he had followed her home from the library, watching her from a distance, wishing he could touch her.

Not now, not when the Transformation was so close. But she was here, even though he'd told her to stay away. “Jane, you have to get out of here. It's not safe.”

She walked slowly across the room to where he was standing. “Don't you understand? I can't stay away.”

“I know.” He drew her to him and kissed her, one last time.

Macon took something out of a small box in the back of his closet. He put the object in Jane's hand, closing her fingers around it. It was round and smooth, a perfect sphere. He closed his hand around hers, his voice grave. “I can't protect you after the Transformation, not
from the one thing that poses the greatest threat to your safety. Me.” Macon looked down at their hands, gently cradling the object he had hidden so carefully. “If something happens, and you're in danger … use this.”

Jane opened her hand. The sphere was black and opalescent, like a pearl. But as she watched, the sphere began to change and glow. She could feel the buzz of tiny vibrations emanating from it. “What is it?”

Macon stepped back, as if he didn't want to touch the orb now that it had come to life. “It's an Arclight.”

“What is it for?”

“If the time comes when I become a danger to you, you'll be defenseless. There's no way you will be able to kill me or hurt me. Only another Incubus can do that.”

Jane's eyes clouded over. Her voice was a whisper. “I could never hurt you.”

Macon reached out and touched her face tenderly. “I know, but even if you wanted to, it would be impossible. A Mortal cannot kill an Incubus. That's why you need the Arclight. It's the only thing that can contain my kind. The only way you would be able to stop me if —”

“What do you mean, contain?”

Macon turned away. “It's like a cage, Jane. The only cage that can hold us.”

Jane looked down at the dark orb glowing in her palm. Now that she knew what it was, it felt as if it was burning a hole in her hand and her heart. She dropped it on his desk, and it rolled across the tabletop, its glow
fading to black. “You think I'm going to imprison you in that thing, like an animal?”

“I'll be worse than an animal.”

Tears ran down Jane's face and over her lips. She grabbed Macon's arm, forcing him to face her. “How long would you be in there?”

“Most likely, forever.”

She shook her head. “I won't do it. I would never condemn you to that.”

It looked as if tears were welling up in Macon's eyes, even though Jane knew it was impossible. He had no tears to shed, yet she swore she could see them glistening. “If something happened to you, if I hurt you, you would be condemning me to a fate, an eternity, far worse than anything I would find in here.” Macon picked up the Arclight and held it up between them. “If the time comes and you have to use it, you have to promise me you will.”

Jane choked back her tears, her voice shaking. “I don't know if I —”

Macon rested his forehead against hers. “Promise me, Janie. If you love me, promise me.”

Jane buried her face in his cool neck. She took a deep breath. “I promise.”

Macon raised his head and looked over her shoulder. “A promise is a promise, Ethan.”

I woke up lying on a bed. There was light streaming in a window, so I knew I wasn't in Macon's study anymore. I stared at
the ceiling, but there was no crazy black chandelier, so I wasn't in his room at Ravenwood either.

I sat up, groggy and confused. I was in my own bed, in my room. The window was open, and the morning light was shining into my eyes. How could I have passed out there and ended up here, hours later? What had happened to space and time and all the physics in between? What Caster or Incubus was powerful enough to do that?

The visions had never affected me like this before. Both Abraham and Macon had seen me. How was that possible? What was Macon trying to tell me? Why did he want me to see these visions? I couldn't put it together, except for one thing. Either the visions were changing, or I was. Lena had made sure of that.

6.17

I
stayed away from Ravenwood, like I promised. By morning, I didn't know where Lena was or where she was headed. I wondered if John and Ridley were with her.

The only thing I knew was Lena had waited all her life to take charge of her own destiny — to find a way to Claim herself, in spite of the curse. I wasn't going to be the person to stand in her way now. And, as she pointed out, she wasn't going to let me.

Which left me with my own immediate destiny: to stay in bed all day feeling sorry for myself. Me and some comic books, anything but
Aquaman
.

Gatlin had planned otherwise.

The county fair meant a day of pageants and pies and a night of hooking up, if you were lucky. All Souls meant something else entirely. It was a tradition in Gatlin. Instead of spending the day in shorts and flip-flops at the fair, everyone in town spent all
day at the graveyard in their Sunday best, paying their respects to their dead relatives and everyone else's. Forget the fact that All Souls Day was actually a Catholic holiday that took place in November. In Gatlin, we had our own way of doing things. So we turned it into our own day of remembrance, guilt, and general competition over who could pile the most plastic flowers and angels on our ancestors’ graves.

Everyone turned out on All Souls: the Baptists, the Methodists, even the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals. It used to be that the only two people in town who didn't show up at the cemetery were Amma, who spent All Souls at her own family plot in Wader's Creek, and Macon Ravenwood. I wondered if those two had ever spent All Souls together, in the swamp with the Greats. I doubted it. I couldn't imagine Macon or the Greats appreciating plastic flowers.

I wondered if the Casters had their own version of All Souls, if Lena was somewhere feeling the same way I was feeling now. Like she wanted to crawl back into bed and hide until the day was over. Last year, I didn't make it to All Souls. It was too soon. The years before that, I spent the day standing over the graves of Wates I never knew or barely remembered.

But today I would be standing over the grave of someone I thought about every day. My mother.

Amma was in the kitchen in her good white blouse, the one with the lace collar, and her long blue skirt. She was clutching one of those tiny old-lady pocketbooks. “You best get on over to your aunts’.” She pulled on the knot of my tie to straighten it. “You know how they get all worked up if you're late.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I grabbed the keys to my dad's car off the
counter. I had dropped him off at the gates of His Garden of Perpetual Peace an hour ago. He wanted to spend some time alone with my mom.

“Wait a second.”

I froze. I didn't want Amma to look into my eyes. I couldn't talk about Lena right now, and I didn't want her to try to get it out of me.

Amma rifled through her bag, pulling out something I couldn't see. She opened my hand, and the chain dropped into my palm. It was thin and gold, with a tiny bird hanging from the center. It was much smaller than the ones from Macon's funeral, but I recognized it right away. “It's a sparrow for your mamma.” Amma's eyes were shiny, like the road after the rain. “To Casters, sparrows mean freedom, but to a Seer, they mean a safe journey. Sparrows are clever. They can travel a long ways, but they always find their way back home.”