Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

Elvis never ran away, usually content to thread his way between my ankles whenever I opened the door—until tonight. He had taken off so fast that I didn’t even have time to grab my shoes, and I had chased him eight blocks until I ended up here.

Muffled voices drifted through the trees, and I froze.

On the other side of the gates, a girl wearing blue and gray Georgetown University sweats passed underneath the pale glow of the lamppost. Her friends caught up with her, laughing and stumbling down the sidewalk. They reached one of the academic buildings and disappeared inside.

It was easy to forget that the cemetery was in the middle of a college campus. As I walked deeper into the uneven rows, the lampposts vanished behind the trees, and the clouds plunged the graveyard in and out of shadow. I ignored the whispers in the back of my mind urging me to go home.

Something moved in my peripheral vision—a flash of white.

I scanned the stones, now completely bathed in black.

Come on, Elvis. Where are you?

Nothing scared me more than the dark. I liked to see what was coming, and darkness was a place where things could hide.

Think about something else.

The memory closed in before I could stop it….

My mother’s face hovering above mine as I blinked myself awake. The panic in her eyes as she pressed a finger over her lips, signaling me to be quiet. The cold floor against my feet as we made our way to her closet, where she pushed aside the dresses.

“Someone’s in the house,” she whispered, pulling a board away from the wall to reveal a small opening. “Stay here until I come back. Don’t make a sound.”

I squeezed inside as she worked the board back into place. I had never experienced absolute darkness before. I stared at a spot inches in front of me, where my palm rested on the board. But I couldn’t see it.

I closed my eyes against the blackness. There were sounds—the stairs creaking, furniture scraping against the floor, muffled voices—and one thought replaying over and over in my mind.

What if she didn’t come back?

Too terrified to see if I could get out from the inside, I kept my hand on the wood. I listened to my ragged breathing, convinced that whoever was in the house could hear it, too.

Eventually, the wood gave beneath my palm and a thin stream of light flooded the space. My mom reached for me, promising the intruders had fled. As she carried me out of her closet, I couldn’t hear anything beyond the pounding of my heart, and I couldn’t think about anything except the crushing weight of the dark.

I was only five when it happened, but I still remembered every minute in the crawl space. It made the air around me now feel suffocating. Part of me wanted to go home, with or without my cat.

“Elvis, get out here!”

Something shifted between the chipped headstones in front of me.

“Elvis?”

A silhouette emerged from behind a stone cross.

I jumped, a tiny gasp escaping my lips. “Sorry.” My voice wavered. “I’m looking for my cat.”

The stranger didn’t say a word.

Sounds intensified at a dizzying rate—branches breaking, leaves rustling, my pulse throbbing. I thought about the hundreds of unsolved crime shows I’d watched with my mom that began exactly like this—a girl standing alone somewhere she shouldn’t be, staring at the guy who was about to attack her.

I stepped back, thick mud pushing up around my ankles like a hand rooting me to the spot.

Please don’t hurt me.

The wind cut through the graveyard, lifting tangles of long hair off the stranger’s shoulders and the thin fabric of a white dress from her legs.

Her legs.

Relief washed over me. “Have you seen a gray and white Siamese cat? I’m going to kill him when I find him.”