Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

Or you think you’re not really going to die. You’re going to be the first person in the history of the world who doesn’t have to. Maybe that’s some kind of lie our brains tell us to keep us from going crazy while we’re alive.

But nothing’s that simple.

Not when you were standing where I was.

And nobody’s any different from anyone else, not when you come right down to it.

These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.

I sat down next to my headstone and flopped back on the hard soil and grass. I plucked a single blade poking through the scattering of snow. At least it was coming in green. No dead, brown grass and lubbers now.

Thank the Sweet Redeemer, as Amma liked to say.

You’re welcome. That’s what I’d like to say.

I looked at the grave next to me and touched the fresh, cold soil with my hand, letting it fall through my fingers. Not a bit dry either. Things really had changed around Gatlin.

I was brought up a good Southern boy, and I knew better than to disturb or disrespect any grave in town. I had walked circles around graveyards, trailing my mom carefully to avoid accidentally putting a stray foot on someone’s sacred plot.

It was Link who didn’t know better than to lie on top of the graves and pretend to sleep where the dead were resting. He wanted to practice—that’s what he said. A dry run. “I want to see what the view is like from down there. You wouldn’t want a guy to head out for the rest a his life without knowin’ where it was all takin’ him in the end, would you?”

But when it came to graves, it was a different thing to worry about disrespecting your own.

That’s when a familiar voice caught in the wind, surprising me with how close it was. “You get used to it, you know.”

I followed the voice a few graves over, and there she was, red hair blowing wild. Genevieve Duchannes. Lena’s ancestor, the first Caster who had used The Book of Moons to try to bring back someone she loved—the original Ethan Wate. He was my great-great-great-great-uncle, and it hadn’t worked out any better for him than it had for me. Genevieve failed, and Lena’s family was cursed.

The last time I saw Genevieve, I was digging up her grave with Lena, looking for The Book of Moons.

“Is that—Genevieve? Ma’am?” I sat up.

She nodded, curling and uncurling a loose strand of hair with her hand. “I thought you might be coming around. I wasn’t sure when. There’s been a lot of talk.” She smiled. “Though your kind tends to stay in Perpetual Peace. Casters, we go where we like. Most of us stay in the Tunnels. I feel better here.”

Talk? I bet there was, though it was hard to imagine a town full of ghostly Sheers doing the talking. More like my Aunt Prue, probably.

Her smile faded. “But you’re just a boy. It’s worse, isn’t it? That you’re so young.”

I nodded in Genevieve’s direction. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, you’re here now, and that’s what matters. I suppose I owe y

ou, Ethan Lawson Wate.”

“You don’t owe me anything, ma’am.”

“I hope to repay the debt one day. Returning my locket meant the world to me, but I don’t think you’ll see much gratitude from Ethan Carter Wate, wherever he may be. He always was a bit stubborn that way.”

“What happened to him? If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am.” I’d always wondered about Ethan Carter Wate—after he came back to life for only a second. I mean, he was the beginning of all of this, everything that had happened to Lena and me. The other end of the thread we pulled, the one that had unraveled the entire universe.

Didn’t I have a right to know how his story ended? It couldn’t have been much worse than mine, could it?

“I don’t really know. They took him away to the Far Keep. We couldn’t be together, but I’m sure you know that. I learned it myself, the hard way,” she said, her voice sad and far away.

Her words caught in my mind, snagging on others I’d tried to push off until now. The Far Keep. The Keepers of The Caster Chronicles—the same ones my mom refused to talk about. Genevieve didn’t look like she wanted to elaborate either.

Why didn’t anyone want to talk about the Far Keep? What were The Caster Chronicles really about?

I looked from Genevieve to the lemon trees. Here we were, at the site of the first big fire. It was the place where her family’s land had burned, and where Lena tried to face off against Sarafine for the first time.