Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

up from painting her long purple nails as we passed by, leaving the Demon and the Mortal worlds behind us.

Lake Moultrie really was as hot and brown as Link said. There wasn’t a drop of water in sight. Nobody was around, though there were a few souvenirs from Mrs. Lincoln and her friends, stuck in the cracked mud of the sloping shore.

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REPORT ALL APOCALYPTIC BEHAVIOR

She’d even written her home phone number across the bottom.

“What, exactly, constitutes apocalyptic behavior?” Lena tried not to smile.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure if we asked Mrs. Lincoln to post a clarification, she’d have it up here tomorrow.” I thought about it. “No fishing. No dumping. No calling up the Devil. No plagues of heat and lubbers, or Vexes.”

Lena kicked the dry dirt. “No rivers of blood.” I’d told her about my dream—that one, anyway. “And no human sacrifice.”

“Don’t give Abraham any ideas.”

Lena put her head on my shoulder.

“Do you remember last time we were here?” I poked her with a dry piece of river grass. “You ran away on the back of John’s Harley.”

“I don’t want to remember that part. I want to remember the good part,” she whispered.

“There are a lot of good parts.”

She smiled, and I knew I would always remember this day. Like the day I found her crying in the garden at Greenbrier. There were times when I looked at her and everything stopped. When the world fell away and I knew nothing could ever come between us.

I pulled her against me and kissed her harder, in a dead lake where no one could see us and no one cared. With every passing second, the pain was building in my body, the pressure of my pounding heart, but I didn’t stop. Nothing else mattered but this. I wanted to feel her hands on my skin, her mouth tugging on my bottom lip. I wanted to feel her body against mine until I couldn’t feel anything else.

Because unless we found whoever it was, and convinced the One Who Is Two to do whatever had to be done by the Eighteenth Moon, I had a sinking feeling it didn’t matter what happened to either of us.

She closed her eyes, and I closed mine, and even though we weren’t holding hands, it felt like we were.

Because what we had, we knew.

11.20

The Next Generation

Back off, Boy Scout. I’ve told you everything I know. Why would I hide anything now?” John smiled and looked over at Liv. “I only wear the pants around here. She’s the one wearing the belt.”

It was true. His scorpion belt was slung around Liv’s waist. Lena had given it to Liv, since she seemed to be John’s babysitter when Macon wasn’t with him. They never left him alone. At night, Macon even Bound the study with Concealment and Confinement Casts.

But if John was telling the truth about his abilities, he would only have to touch Macon to gain some of his powers. The question was, why didn’t he? I was beginning to think he didn’t want to leave, but it made no sense.

Lately, nothing did.

Since my conversation with the Lilum—Wheel of Fate, Demon Queen, Mrs. English Who Was Not Mrs. English—I had more questions than answers. I had no idea how to find the One Who Is Two, and I didn’t know how much time we had left.

I needed to figure when the Eighteenth Moon was coming. I couldn’t give up on the idea that it had something to do with John Breed, ever since the John in County Care scribbled that message.

This John didn’t seem to care. He was lounging around on a cot against the wall, alternating between sleeping and pissing me off.

Lena was frustrated. John’s charm didn’t get him anywhere with her. “Abraham must have said something to you about the Eighteenth Moon.”

He shrugged, looking bored. “Your boyfriend’s the one who can’t shut up about it.”

“Yeah? You want to get off your ass and shut me up?”