Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

“Ma’am?”

“Harlon James’s been injured, and I’m not convinced he ain’t about ta pass over.” She whispered the last two words like God Himself might be listening, and she was afraid to give Him any ideas. Harlon James was Aunt Prudence’s Yorkshire terrier, named after her most recent late husband.

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Aunt Prudence said, appearing out of nowhere with a first aid kit in her hand. “Grace tried ta kill poor Harlon James, and he is barely hangin’ on.”

“I did not try ta kill him,” Aunt Grace shrieked from the kitchen. “Don’t you tell tales, Prudence Jane. It was an accident!”

“Ethan, you call Dean Wilks, and tell him we have an E-mergency,” Aunt Prudence instructed, pulling a capsule of smelling salts and two extra-large Band-Aids out of the first aid kit.

“We’re losin’ him!” Harlon James was lying on the kitchen floor, looking traumatized but nowhere close to death. His back leg was tucked up underneath him, and it dragged behind him when he tried to get up. “Grace, the Lord as my witness, if Harlon James dies…”

“He’s not going to die, Aunt Prue. I think his leg is broken. What happened?”

“Grace tried ta beat him ta death with a broom.”

“That’s not true. I told you, I wasn’t wearing my spectacles and he looked just like a wharf rat runnin’ through the kitchen.”

“How would you know what a wharf rat looks like? You’ve never been ta a wharf in all your life.”

So I drove the Sisters, who were completely hysterical, and Harlon James, who probably wished he was dead, to Dean Wilks’ place in their 1964 Cadillac. Dean Wilks ran the feed store, but he was the closest thing to a vet in town. Luckily, Harlon James had only suffered a broken leg, so Dean Wilks was up to the task.

By the time we got back to the house, I was wondering if I wasn’t the crazy one for thinking I’d be able to get any information out of the Sisters. Thelma’s car was in the driveway. My dad had hired Thelma to keep an eye on the Sisters after Aunt Grace almost burned their house down ten years ago, when she put a lemon meringue pie in the oven and left it in there all afternoon when they were at church.

“Where you girls been?” Thelma called from the kitchen.

They bumped into each other trying to push their way into the kitchen to tell Thelma about their misadventure. I slumped into one of the mismatched kitchen chairs next to Aunt Grace, who looked depressed about being the villain of the story again. I pulled the locket out of my pocket, holding the chain in the handkerchief, and spun it around a few times.

“Whatcha got there, handsome?” Thelma asked, pinching some snuff out of the can on the windowsill and tucking into her bottom lip, which looked even weirder than it sounded, since Thelma was kind of dainty and resembled Dolly Parton.

“It’s just a locket I found out by Ravenwood Plantation.”

“Ravenwood? What the devil were you doin’ out there?”

“My friend’s staying there.”

“You mean Lena Duchannes?” Aunt Mercy asked. Of course she knew, the whole town knew. This was Gatlin.

“Yes, ma’am. We’re in the same class at school.” I had their attention. “We found this locket in the garden behind the great house. We don’t know who it belonged to, but it looks really old.”

“That’s not Macon Ravenwood’s property. That’s part a Greenbrier,” Aunt Prue said, sounding sure of herself.

“Let me get a look at that,” Aunt Mercy said, taking her glasses out of the pocket of her housecoat.

I handed her the locket, still wrapped in the handkerchief. “It has an inscription.”

“I can’t read that. Grace, can you make that out?” she asked, handing the locket to Aunt Grace.

“I don’t see nothin’ at all,” Aunt Grace said, squinting hard.

“There are two sets of initials, right here,” I said, pointing to the grooves in the metal, “ECW and GKD. And if you flip that disc over, there’s a date. February 11, 1865.”

“That date seems real familiar,” Aunt Prudence said. “Mercy, what happened on that date?”

“Weren’t you married on that date, Grace?”

“1865, not 1965,” Aunt Grace corrected. Their hearing wasn’t much better than their vision. “February 11, 1865…”