Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

Ethan, are you okay?

I looked at Lena, at those big green eyes full of concern. Tonight I could lose her, too. I could lose them both.

“Ethan, did you hear me?”

Ethan, you have to go. It’s going to be okay.

“Come on, man!” Link was pulling me. The rock star was gone. Now he was just my best friend, trying to save me from myself. But I couldn’t leave Lena.

I’m not going to leave you here. Not by yourself.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Larkin coming toward us. He had untangled himself from Emily for a minute. “Larkin!”

“Yeah, what’s up?” He seemed to sense something was going on, and actually looked concerned, for a guy whose general expression was disinterest.

“I need you to take Lena back to the house.”

“Why?”

“Just promise you’ll take her back to the house.”

“Ethan, I’ll be fine. Just go!” Lena was pushing me toward Link. She looked as scared as I felt. But I didn’t move.

“Yeah, man. I’ll take her back right now.”

Link gave me a final jerk, and we were tearing through the crowd. Because we both knew I might be a few minutes away from being a guy with two dead parents.

We ran through the overgrown fields of Ravenwood, toward the road and the Fallen Soldiers. The air was already thick with smoke from the mortar, compliments of the Battle of Honey Hill, and every few seconds you could hear a round of rifle fire. The evening campaign was in full force. We were getting close to the edge of Ravenwood Plantation, where Ravenwood ended and Greenbrier began. I could see the yellow ropes that marked the Safe Zone, glowing in the darkness.

What if we were too late?

The Fallen Soldiers was dark. Link and I took the steps two at a time, trying to get up the four flights as quickly as possible. When we got to the third landing, instinctively, I stopped. Link sensed it, the same way he sensed when I was going to pass him the ball when I was trying to run out the clock, and stopped alongside me. “He’s up here.”

But I couldn’t move. Link read my face. He knew what I was afraid of. He had stood next to me at my mom’s funeral, passing out all those white carnations for folks to put on her coffin, while my dad and I stared at the grave like we were dead, too.

“What if… what if he’s already jumped?”

“No way. I left Rid with him. She’d never let that happen.” The floor felt like it dropped out from under me.

If she used her power on you, and she told you to jump off a cliff—you’d jump.

I pushed past Link, up the stairs, and scanned the hallway. All the doors were shut, except one. Moonlight spilled onto the perfectly stained pine floorboards.

“He’s in there,” Link said, but I already knew that.

When I entered the room, it was like going back in time. The DAR had really done their job in here. There was a huge stone fireplace at one end, with a long wooden mantel, lined with tapered wax candles, dripping as they burned. The eyes of fallen Confederates stared back from the sepia portraits hanging on the wall, and across from the fireplace was an antique four-poster bed. But something was out of place, disrupting the authenticity. It was a smell, musky and sweet. Too sweet. A mix of danger and innocence, even though Ridley was anything but innocent.

Ridley was standing next to the open balcony doors, her blond hair twisting in the wind. The doors were thrown open, and the dusty, billowy drapes were blowing into the room, like they had been forced inside by a rush of air. Like he had already jumped.

“I found him,” Link called to Ridley, catching his breath again.

“I can see that. How’s it goin’, Short Straw?” Ridley smiled her sickly sweet smile. It made me want to simultaneously smile back and throw up.

I walked over to the doors slowly, afraid he might not be out there. But he was. Standing on the narrow ledge, on the wrong side of railing, in his flannel pajamas and bare feet. “Dad! Don’t move.”

Ducks. There were malla

rd ducks on his pajamas, which seemed out of place, considering he might be about to jump off of a building.