Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

Sweet Sixteen

Leave me alone! I told all of you! There’s nothing you can do!

Lena’s voice woke me from a few hours of fitful sleep. I pulled on my jeans and a gray T-shirt without even stopping to think about it. About anything other than this: Day One. We could stop waiting for the end to come.

The end was here.

not with a bang but a whimper not with a bang but a whimper not with a bang but a whimper

Lena was losing it, and it was barely daylight.

The Book. Damn, I’d forgotten it. I ran back up into my room, two stairs at a time. I reached up to the top shelf of my closet, where I’d hidden it, bracing myself for the scorching that went along with touching a Caster book.

Only it didn’t happen. Because it wasn’t there.

The Book of Moons, our book, was gone. We needed that book, today of all days. But Lena’s voice was pounding in my head.

this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper

Lena reciting T. S. Eliot was not a good sign. I grabbed the keys to the Volvo and ran.

The sun was rising as I drove down Dove Street. Greenbrier, or the only empty field in Gatlin to everyone else in town—making it the location of the Battle of Honey Hill—was beginning to come to life, too. The funny thing was, I couldn’t even hear the artillery outside my car window, because of the artillery going off in my head.

By the time I ran up the steps of Ravenwood’s veranda, Boo was waiting for me, barking. Larkin was on the steps, too, leaning against one of the pillars. He was in his leather jacket, playing with the snake that curled and uncurled its way around his arm. First it was his arm, then it was a snake. He Shifted idly between shapes, like a dealer shuffling a deck of cards. The sight of it caught me off guard for a second. That, and the way he made Boo bark. Come to think of it, I couldn’t tell if Boo was barking at me or Larkin. Boo belonged to Macon, and Macon and I hadn’t exactly left things on speaking terms.

“Hey, Larkin.” He nodded, disinterested. It was cold, and a puff of breath crept out of his mouth, as if from an imaginary cigarette. The puff stretched out into a circle that became a tiny white snake, which then bit into its own tail, devouring itself until it disappeared.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you. Your girlfriend is a little, how should I put it? Venomous?” The snake curved its length around his neck, then became the collar of his leather jacket.

Aunt Del flung the door open. “Finally, we’ve been waiting for you. Lena’s in her room and she won’t let any of us in.”

I looked at Aunt Del, so muddled, her scarf dangling lopsidedly from one shoulder, her glasses askew, even her off-kilter gray bun coming unraveled from its twist. I leaned in to give her a hug. She smelled like one of the Sisters’ antique cabinets, full of lavender sachets and old linens, handed down from Sister to Sister. Reece and Ryan stood behind her like a mournful family in a grim hospital lobby, waiting for bad news.

Again, Ravenwood seemed more attuned to Lena and her mood than to Macon’s, or maybe this was a mood they shared. Macon was nowhere to be found, so I couldn’t tell. If you could imagine the color of anger, it had been splashed over every wall. Rage, or something equally dense and seething, was hanging from every chandelier, resentment woven into thick carpets padding the room, hatred flickering underneath every lampshade. The floor was bathed in a creeping shadow, a particular darkness that had seeped up into the walls, and right now was rolling across my Converse so I almost couldn’t see them. Absolute darkness.

I can’t say for sure how the room looked. I was too distracted by how it felt, and it felt pretty rank. I took a tentative step onto the grand flying staircase that led up to Lena’s bedroom. I’d gone up those stairs a hundred times before; it’s not like I didn’t know where they went. And yet somehow, today felt different. Aunt Del looked at Reece and Ryan, following behind me, as if I was leading the way into an unknown war front.

When I stepped onto the second stair, the whole house shook. The thousand candles of the ancient chandelier swinging over my head shuddered and dripped wax down onto my face. I winced and jerked back. Without warning, the stairway curled up beneath my feet and snapped underneath me, tossing me back onto my butt, sending me skidding halfway across the polished floors of the entry hall. Reece and Aunt Del made it out of the way, but I took poor Ryan with me like a bowling ball hitting the pins at County Line Lanes.

I stood up and shouted up the stairs. “Lena Duchannes. If you sic those stairs on me again, I’m gonna report you to the Disciplinary Committee myself.”

I took a step onto the first stair, and then the second. Nothing happened. “I will call Mr. Hollingsworth and personally testify that you’re a dangerous lunatic.” I double-jumped the stairs, all the way up to the first landing. “Because if you do that to me again, you will be, you hear me?” Then I heard it, her voice, uncurling in my mind.

You don’t understand.

I know you’re scared, L, but shutting everyone out isn’t going to make things any better.

Go away.

No.

I mean it, Ethan. Go away. I don’t want anything to happen to you.

I can’t.

Now I was standing at her bedroom door, leaning my cheek against the cold white wood of the paneling. I wanted to be with her, as close to her as I could get without having another heart attack. And if this was as near as she would let me get, it was enough for me, for now.

Are you there, Ethan?