Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

“Right, of course. The highly trained history student sorts out the stacks, while the unschooled slacker is promoted to the archive. How very American.” She rolled her eyes and picked up a box of books.

The archive hadn’t changed since last month, when I came to ask Marian about a summer job but stayed to talk about Lena and my dad and Macon. She had been sympathetic, the way she always was. There were piles of old Civil War registries on the shelf above my mother’s desk, and her collection of antique glass paperweights. A glistening, black sphere sat next to the misshapen clay apple I made for her in first grade. My mom’s and Marian’s books and notes were still stacked across the desk, over yellowed maps of Ravenwood and Greenbrier spread open on the tables. Every scribbled scrap of paper I saw made it feel like she was here. Even though everything in my life seemed to be going wrong, I always felt better in this place. It was like I was with my mom, and she was the one person who always knew how to fix things, or at least make me believe there was a way to fix them.

But something else was on my mind. “That’s your summer intern?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t tell me she’d be like that.”

“Like what, Ethan?”

“Like you.”

“Is that what’s bothering y

ou? The brains, or is it perhaps the long blond hair? Is there a certain way a librarian should look? Big glasses and hair in a graying bun? I would have thought between your mother and me, we would have disabused you of at least that notion.” She was right. My mom and Marian had always been two of the most beautiful women in Gatlin. “Liv won’t be here very long, and she’s not much older than you are. I was thinking the least you could do would be to show her around town, introduce her to some people your age.”

“Like who? Link? To improve his vocabulary and kill off a few thousand of her brain cells?” I didn’t mention that Link would spend most of his time trying to hook up with her, which I didn’t see happening.

“I was thinking of Lena.” The silence in the room was embarrassing, even to me. Of course she had been thinking of Lena. The question was, why hadn’t I? Marian looked at me evenly. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind today?”

“What is it you need me to do in here, Aunt Marian?” I didn’t feel like talking about it.

She sighed and turned back to the archive. “I thought maybe you could help me sort through some of this. Obviously a great deal of the material in here relates to the locket and Ethan and Genevieve. Now that we know the end of that story, we might want to make some room for the next one.”

“What’s the next one?” I picked up the old photo of Genevieve wearing the locket. I remembered the first time I looked at it with Lena. It felt like years since then, instead of months.

“It would seem to me that it’s yours and Lena’s. The events on her birthday raised a number of questions, most of which I can’t answer. I’ve never heard of an incident when a Caster didn’t have to choose Light or Dark on the night of their Claiming—except in the case of Lena’s family, when the choice is made for them. Now that we don’t have Macon to help us, I’m afraid we’re going to have to search out the answers ourselves.” Lucille jumped up onto my mother’s chair, her ears perking up.

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“‘He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to.’ ”

“Thoreau?”

“Harry Emerson Fosdick. A bit older and more obscure, but still quite relevant, I think.” She smiled and put her hand on the edge of the door.

“Aren’t you going to help me?”

“I can’t leave Olivia alone for long, or she’ll reshelve the entire collection, and then we’ll all have to learn Chinese.” She paused for a moment, watching me, looking so much like my mom. “I think you can handle this one on your own. At least the beginning.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I? You can’t really help me since you’re a Keeper.” I was still bitter about Marian’s revelation that she had known my mother was involved with the Caster world, but she would never explain why or how. There were so many things about my mother and her death that Marian had never told me. It always came back to the endless rules that Bound Marian to her job as a Keeper.

“I can only help you help yourself. I can’t determine the course of events, the unraveling of Darkness and Light, the Order of Things.”

“That’s such a load of crap.”

“What?”

“It’s like the prime directive on Star Trek. You have to let the planet evolve at its own pace. You can’t introduce hyperspace or warp speed until they discover it for themselves. But Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise always end up breaking the rule.”

“Unlike Captain Kirk, there is no choice in my case. A Keeper is powerfully Bound to act neither for the Dark nor the Light. I couldn’t change my destiny, even if I wanted to. I have my own place in the natural order of the Caster world, in the Order of Things.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s not a choice. I don’t have the authority to change the way things work. If I so much as tried, I might destroy not only myself but the very people I was trying to help.”

“But my mom still ended up dead.” I don’t know why I said it, but I couldn’t understand the logic. Marian had to remain uninvolved to protect the people she cared about, but the person she cared about most died anyway.