Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

“You belong with me, Uncle M. With Her.”

Ridley stood up, dragging me to my feet. The three of them were standing now—Lena, Macon, and Ridley, the three points of a really frightening triangle. “I’m not scared of your kind.”

“That may be, but you have no power here. Not against all of us, and a Natural.”

Ridley cackled. “Lena, a Natural? That’s the funniest thing you’ve said all night. I’ve seen what a Natural can do. Lena could never be one.”

“A Cataclyst and a Natural aren’t the same.”

“Aren’t they, though? A Cataclyst is a Natural gone Dark, two sides of the same coin.”

What was she talking about? I was in over my head.

And then I felt my body seize up, and I knew I was blacking out—that I was probably going to die. It was like all the life had been sucked out of me, with the warmth of my blood. I could hear the sound of thunder. One—then lightning and the crash of a tree branch just outside the window. The storm was here. It was right on us.

“You’re wrong, Uncle M. Lena isn’t worth protecting, and she’s certainly not a Natural. You won’t know her fate until her birthday. You think that just because she’s sweet and innocent now, she’ll be Claimed by the Light? That means nothing. Wasn’t I the same a year ago? And from what Short Straw here has been telling me, she’s closer to going Dark than Light. Lightning storms? Terrorizing the high school?”

The wind grew stronger, and Lena was getting angrier. I could see the rage in her eyes. A window shattered, just like in English class. I knew where this was going.

“Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Rain came pouring into the dining room. Wind followed, sending glasses and plates crashing to the floor, black liquid staining the floor in long streaks. No one moved.

Ridley turned back to Macon. “You’ve always given her too much credit. She’s nothing.”

I wanted to break free from Ridley’s hold, to grab her and drag her out of the house myself, but I couldn’t move.

A second window shattered, then another, and another. Glass was breaking everywhere. China, wineglasses, the glass on every picture frame. Furniture was banging against the walls. And the wind, it was like a tornado had been sucked into the room with us. The sound was so loud, I couldn’t hear anything else. The tablecloth blew right off the table, with every candle, platter, and plate still on it, throwing everything against the wall. The room was spinning, I think. Everything was being sucked out into the foyer, toward the front door. Boo Radley screamed, that horrible human scream. Ridley’s grip seemed to loosen around my arm. I blinked hard, trying not to pass out.

And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Lena. She was perfectly still, her hair whipping in the wind around her. What was happening?

I felt my legs

buckle. Just as I lost consciousness, I felt the wind, a surge of power that literally ripped my arm out of Ridley’s hand, as she was sucked out of the room, toward the front door. I collapsed to the floor, as I heard Lena’s voice, or thought I did.

“Get the hell away from my boyfriend, witch.”

Boyfriend.

Was that what I was?

I tried to smile. Instead, I blacked out.

10.09

A Crack in the Plaster

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I tried to focus on the first few things that came into view. Words. Phrases handwritten in what looked like carefully scripted Sharpie, right on the ceiling over the bed.

moments bleed together, no span to time

There were hundreds of others, too, written everywhere, parts of sentences, parts of verses, random collections of words. On one closet door was scrawled fate decides. On the other, it said until challenged by the fated. Up and down the door I could see the words desperate / relentless / condemned / empowered. The mirror said open your eyes; the windowpanes said and see.

Even the pale white lampshade was scribbled with the words illuminatethedarknessilluminatethedarkness over and over again, in an endlessly repeating pattern.

Lena’s poetry. I was finally getting to read some of it. Even if you ignored the distinctive ink, this room didn’t look like the rest of the house. It was small and cozy, tucked up under the eaves. A ceiling fan swirled slowly above my head, cutting through the phrases. There were stacks of spiral notebooks on every surface, and a stack of books on the nightstand. Poetry books. Plath, Eliot, Bukowski, Frost, Cummings—at least I recognized the names.

I was lying in a small white iron bed, my legs spilling over the edge. This was Lena’s room, and I was lying in her bed. Lena was curled in a chair at the foot of the bed, her head resting on the arm.

I sat up, groggy. “Hey. What happened?”