Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

As Lena drifted off, I listened to the hum of the crickets until I realized it wasn’t the crickets at all. It was the lubbers. The plague, or whatever Mrs. Lincoln wanted to call it. The longer I listened, the more it sounded like a million buzz saws in the distance, destroying my town and everything around it. Then the lubbers faded into something else—the low chords of a song I would recognize anywhere.

I’d been hearing the songs since before I met Lena. Sixteen Moons had led me to her, the song only I could hear. I couldn’t escape them, any more than Lena could run from her destiny or I could hide from mine. They were warnings from my mom—the person I trusted most, in any world.

Eighteen Moons, eighteen spheres,

From the world beyond the years,

One Unchosen, death or birth,

A Broken Day awaits the Earth…

I tried to make sense of the words, the way I always did. “The world beyond the years” ruled out the Mortal world. But what was coming from this other world—the Eighteenth Moon or the “One Unchosen”? And who could that be?

The only person it ruled out was Lena. She’d made her choice. Which meant there was another choice to be made—by someone who had yet to make one.

But the last line was the one that made me sick. “A Broken Day?” That pretty much covered every day now. How could things possibly get more broken than this?

I wished I had more than a song and that my mom was here to tell me what it meant. More than anything, I wished I knew how to fix everything we had broken.

9.12

Glass Houses and Stones

A whole catfish stared at me with glassy eyes, its tail giving a final flop. On one side of the fish was a massive plate piled with slabs of fatty, uncooked bacon. A platter of raw shrimp, translucent and gray, sat on the other side, next to a bowl of dry instant grits. A plate of runny eggs, with bleeding yolks in thick white sauce, was the best of the worst. It was weird, even for Ravenwood, where I sat across from Lena in the formal dining room. Half the food looked like it was ready to get up and run or swim its way off the table. And there wasn’t one thing on the table that anyone in Gatlin would ever eat for breakfast. Especially not me.

I looked back at my empty plate, where chocolate milk had appeared in a tall crystal glass. Sitting next to the runny eggs, the milk wasn’t appealing.

Lena made a face. “Kitchen? Seriously? Again?” I heard an indignant clanging from the other room. Lena had irritated Ravenwood’s mysterious cook, who I’d still never seen. Lena shrugged, looking at me. “I told you. Everything is out of whack around here. It gets worse every day.”

“Come on. We can grab a sticky bun at the Stop & Steal.” I’d lost my appetite around the time I saw the uncooked bacon.

“Kitchen’s doing her best. Life is hard enough lately, I’m afraid. Last night Delphine was pounding on my door in the middle of the night, insisting the British were coming.” A familiar voice, the soft shuffling of slippers, a scraping chair—and there he was. Macon Ravenwood, holding an armful of rolled newspapers, lifting a teacup that was suddenly full of what probably was supposed to be tea but looked like some kind of soupy green muck. Boo stalked in after him and curled up at his master’s feet.

Lena sighed. “Ryan’s crying. She won’t admit it, but she’s afraid she’ll never completely come into her powers now. Uncle Barclay can’t Shift anymore. Aunt Del says he can’t even turn a frown into a smile.”

Macon raised his cup, nodding in my direction. “That can all wait until after breakfast. ‘How do you rate the morning sun,’ Mr. Wate?”

“Excuse me, sir?” It sounded like a trick question.

“Robbie Williams. Quite the songwriter, don’t you think? And quite a relevant question as of late.” He glanced down at his tea before taking a sip, and put the cup down. “My way of saying good morning, I suppose.”

“Morning, sir.” I tried not to stare. He was wearing a black satin robe. At least I thought it was a robe. I’d never seen a robe with a handkerchief sticking out of the chest pocket. It didn’t look anything like my dad’s ratty checkered bathrobe.

Macon caught me staring. “I believe the term you’re searching for is smoking jacket. I find, now that I have whole days of sunshine ahead of me, I’ve discovered there is more to life than formal haberdashery.”

“Huh?”

“Uncle M likes to lounge around in his pajamas. That’s what he means.” Lena gave him a kiss on the cheek. “We have to get going or we’ll miss out on the sticky buns. Be nice and I’ll bring you one.”

He sighed. “Hunger is such an incredible inconvenience.”

Lena picked up her backpack. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Macon ignored her, smoothing open the first of his newspapers. “Earthquakes in Paraguay.” He snapped open the next, which appeared to be written in French. “The Seine is drying up.” Another. “The polar ice cap is melting at ten times the predicted rate. If one is to believe the Helsinki press.” A fourth paper. “And the entire southeastern coast of the United States appears to be afflicted by a curious plague of pestilence.”

Lena closed his newspaper, revealing a plate of white bread sitting directly in front of him. “Eat. The world will still be on the brink of disaster when you finish your breakfast. Even in your smoking jacket.”

The darkness in Macon’s expression lifted, the green eyes of an Incubus-turned-Light-Caster blazing a bit lighter at her touch. Lena gave him a smile, the one she saved only for him. The smile that said she had noticed all of it—every minute of their life together. What they had, they knew. Since Macon had basically come back to her from the dead, Lena hadn’t taken a minute they shared for granted. I never doubted that, though I envied it.