Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

I lay down next to her in the mud, my sore body groaning. I looked over at her, her black hair curling, and her dirty wet cheeks. The tears ran down her face, but she didn’t try to wipe them away. Neither did I.

“He died because of me.” She stared up at the gray sky, unblinking. I wished there was something I could say to make her feel better, but I knew better than anyone that words like that didn’t really exist. So I didn’t say them. Instead, I kissed all the fingers on Lena’s hand. I stopped when my mouth tasted metal, and I saw it. She was wearing my mom’s ring on her right hand.

I held up her hand.

“I didn’t want to lose it. The necklace broke last night.”

Dark clouds were blowing in and out. We hadn’t seen the last of the storm, I knew that much. I wrapped my hand around hers. “I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I’ll never love you any less than I do, right this second.”

The gray expanse was just a moment of sunless calm, in between the storm that had changed our lives forever, and the one still to come.

“Is that a promise?”

I squeezed her hand.

Don’t let go.

Never.

Our hands twisted into one. She turned her head, and when I looked into her eyes, I noticed for the first time that one was green, and one was hazel—actually, more like gold.

It was almost noon by the time I started the long walk home. The blue skies were streaked with dark gray and gold. The pressure was building, but it seemed a few hours from breaking. I think Lena was still in shock. But I was ready for the storm. And when it came, it would make Gatlin’s hurricane season look like a spring shower.

Aunt Del had offered to drive me home, but I wanted to walk. Though every bone in my body ached, I needed to clear my head. I jammed my hands in my jeans pockets and felt the familiar lump. The locket. Lena and I would have to find a way to give it back to the other Ethan Wate, the one lying in his grave, just as Genevieve had wanted us to. Maybe it would give Ethan Carter Wate some peace. We owed them both that much.

I came down the steep road leading up to Ravenwood and found myself once again at the fork in the road, the one that had seemed so frightening before I knew Lena. Before I knew where I was going. Before I knew what real fear felt like, and real love.

I walked past the fields and down Route 9, thinking of that first drive, that first night in the storm. I thought about everything, how I had almost lost my dad and Lena. How I had opened my eyes to see her staring at me, and all I could think was how lucky I was. Before I realized we had lost Macon.

I thought about Macon, his books tied with string and paper, his perfectly pressed shirts, and his even more perfect composure. I thought about how hard things were going to be for Lena, missing him, wishing she could hear his voice one more time. But I would be there for her, the way I wished someone had been there for me when I lost my mom. And after the past few months, after my mom sent us that message, I didn’t think Macon was really gone, either. Maybe he was still out there somewhere, looking out for us. He had sacrificed himself for Lena, I was sure of that.

The right thing and the easy thing are never the same. No one knew that better than Macon.

I looked up at the sky. The swirls of gray were seeping across the flat blue, as blue as the paint on my bedroom ceiling. I wondered if that one shade of blue really kept the carpenter bees from nesting. I wondered if those bees really believed it was the sky.

It’s crazy what you see if you aren’t really looking.

I pulled my iPod out of my pocket and turned it on. There was a new song on the playlist.

I stared at it for a long time.

Seventeen Moons.

I clicked on it.

Seventeen moons, seventeen years,

Eyes where Dark or Light appears,

Gold for yes and green for no,

Seventeen the last to know.

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