Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

“I thought you might want to know so we can find him.” I stood up. “And I’m sorry if I don’t seem like myself. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the world is falling apart.”

Ethan, where are you going?

This is bullshit.

“Ethan, calm down. Please.” Marian started to get up.

“Tell that to the Vexes that destroyed the whole town. Or Abraham and Sarafine and Hunting.” I looked right at Macon. “Why don’t you turn your X-ray vision on them?”

Ethan!

I’m done here.

He doesn’t mean—

I don’t care what he means, L.

Macon was watching me.

“There are no coincidences, right? When the universe warns me about something, it’s usually my mom talking. So I’m going to listen.” I walked out before anyone could say anything. I didn’t need to be a Wayward to see who was lost.

10.04

Rubbery Chicken

All I could see was fire. I felt the heat and saw the color of the flames. Orange, red, blue. Fire was so many more colors than people thought.

I was in the Sisters’ house, and I was trapped.

Where are you?

I looked down at my feet. I knew he would be there any minute. Then I heard the voice, through the flames below me.

I’M WAITING.

I ran down the stairs, toward the voice, but the staircase crumbled under my feet, and suddenly I was falling. As the floor gave way, I hit the

basement beneath me, my shoulder crashing through the burning wood below.

I saw orange, red, blue.

I realized I was in the library, when I should have been in Aunt Prue’s basement. Books were burning all around me.

Da Vinci. Dickinson. Poe. And another one.

The Book of Moons.

And I saw a flash of gray that wasn’t part of the fire at all.

It was him.

The smoke swallowed me, and I blacked out.

I woke up on the floor. When I looked in the bathroom mirror, my face was black with soot. I spent the rest of the day trying not to cough up ash.

I had been sleeping even worse than usual since my argument with Macon, or whatever you’d call it. Fighting with Macon usually led to fighting with Lena, which was more painful than fighting with everyone I knew combined. But now everything was different, and Lena didn’t know what to say any more than I did.

We tried to avoid thinking about what was happening around us—the things we couldn’t stop and the answers we couldn’t find. But it was always lurking in the back of our minds, even if we didn’t admit it. We tried to focus on things we could control, like keeping Ridley out of trouble and the lubbers out of our houses. Because when every day is the End of Days, after a while they feel pretty much like every other day, even though you know that’s crazy. And nothing is the same.