Beautiful Darkness (34 page)

“To Earl!” They grabbed each other around the neck, raising their cans and bottles over Earl's grave. Beer and Wild Turkey sloshed all over the headstone, Gatlin's tribute to the fallen.

“Jeez, I hope we don't end up like that one day.” Link slunk away, and I followed. His parents never failed to embarrass him. “Why couldn't my parents be like yours?”

“You mean mental? Or gone? No offense, but I think you've got the mental part covered.”

“Your dad's not mental anymore, at least not more than anyone else around here. No one cares if you walk around in your pajamas when your wife just died. My folks don't have an excuse. They're a few pistons short of an engine.”

“We won't end up like that. Because you'll be a famous drummer in New York, and I'll be doing — I don't know, something that doesn't involve a Confederate uniform and Wild Turkey.” I tried to sound convincing, but I didn't know which was more unlikely — Link becoming a famous musician or me getting out of Gatlin.

I still had the map on my bedroom wall, the one with the thin green line connecting all the places I'd read about, the places I wanted to go. I'd spent my whole life thinking about roads leading anywhere but Gatlin. Then I met Lena, and it was like the map never existed. I think I would've been able to deal with getting stuck anywhere, even here, as long as we were together. Funny how the map seemed to have lost its appeal when I needed it the most.

“I'd better get over to see my mom.” I said it like I was going by the library to see her in the archive. “You know what I mean.”

Link tapped his knuckles against mine. “I'll catch you later.
I'm gonna walk around for a while.” Walk around? Link didn't walk around. He tried to get drunk and hit on girls who wouldn't hook up with him.

“What's up? You're not going looking for the next Mrs. Wesley Jefferson Lincoln, are you?”

Link ran his hand over his spiky blond hair. “I wish. I know I'm an idiot, but there's only one girl in my head right now.” The one girl who shouldn't be. What could I say? I knew how it felt to be in love with a girl who didn't want anything to do with you.

“Sorry, man. I guess Ridley's not that easy to forget.”

“Yeah, and seein’ her last night didn't help.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I know she's supposed to be Dark and all, but I can't shake the feelin’ what we had was more than just an act.”

“I know what you mean.”

We were a couple of pathetic losers. Though I didn't think Ridley was capable of anything real, I didn't want to make him feel worse. Link wasn't looking for an answer, anyway.

“You know all that stuff you told me about Casters and Mortals not bein’ able to be together ’cause it'll kill the Mortal?”

I nodded. It was only about eighty percent of what I thought about. “What about it?”

“We came close more than once.” He kicked the grass, making a brown spot on the perfectly manicured lawn.

“Too much information.”

“I'm makin’ a point here. I wasn't the one who put on the brakes. It was Rid. I figured she was slummin’ with me, like I was good enough to mess around with, and that's it.” Link was pacing. “But now, when I think back on it, maybe I was wrong.
Maybe she didn't want to hurt me.” Link had clearly put a lot of thought into this.

“I don't know. She's still a Dark Caster.”

Link shrugged. “Yeah, I know, but a guy's gotta have a dream.”

I wanted to tell Link what was going on, that Ridley and Lena might already have taken off. I opened my mouth, then shut it without making a single sound. If Lena had put a Cast on me, I didn't want to know.

I had only visited my mom's grave once since the funeral, but it wasn't on All Souls. I couldn't face it that soon. I didn't feel like she was actually here, hanging around the graveyard like Genevieve or the Greats. The only place I sensed her was in the archive or the study at our house. Those were the places she loved, the places I could imagine her spending her days wherever she was now.

But not here, not under the ground, where my dad was kneeling with his face in his hands. He'd been here for hours and it showed.

I cleared my throat so my dad would know I was there. It felt like I was eavesdropping on a private moment between them. He wiped his face and stood up. “How are you holding up?”

“I'm okay, I guess.” I didn't know what I was feeling, but it wasn't okay.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, staring down at the headstone. A delicate white flower lay on the grass beneath it.
Confederate jasmine. I read the curving letters carved into the stone.

LILA EVERS WATE

BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

SCIENTIAE CUSTOS

I repeated the last line. I'd noticed it the last time I was here, in the middle of July, a few weeks before my birthday. But I had come alone, and by the time I got home I was so numb from staring at my mother's grave, I'd forgotten all about it.
“Scientiae Custos.”

“It's Latin. It means ‘Keeper of Knowledge.’ Marian suggested it. It's fitting, don't you think?” If he only knew.

I forced a smile. “Yeah. It sounds like her.”

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

M
y 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 …