Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles 1)

She shut her eyes and buried her face in my sweatshirt. I knew I must reek like a wild possum by now. “I think so.”

“I could hear you screaming, all the way from my house.”

“Who knew Kelting would save my life.”

I had missed something, as usual. “What’s Kelting?”

“That’s what it’s called, the way we’re able to communicate with each other no matter where we are. Some Casters can Kelt, some can’t. Ridley and I used to be able to talk to each other in school that way, but—”

“I thought you said it had never happened to you before?”

“It’s never happened to me before with a Mortal. Uncle Macon says it’s really rare.”

I like the sound of that.

Lena nudged me. “It’s from the Celtic side of our family. It’s how Casters used to get messages to each other, during the Trials. In the States, they used to call it ‘The Whispering.’”

“But I’m not a Caster.”

“I know, it’s really weird. It’s not supposed to work with Mortals.” Of course it wasn’t.

“Don’t you think it’s a little more than weird? We can do this Kelting thing, Ridley got into Ravenwood because of me, even your uncle said I can protect you somehow. How is that possible? I mean, I’m not a Caster. My parents are different, but they’re not that different.”

She leaned into my shoulder. “Maybe you don’t have to be a Caster to have power.”

I pushed her hair behind her ear. “Maybe you just have to fall for one.”

I said it, just like that. No stupid jokes, no changing the subject. For once, I wasn’t embarrassed, because it was the truth. I had fallen. I think I had always been falling. And she might as well know, if she didn’t already, because there was no going back now. Not for me.

She looked up at me, and the whole world disappeared. Like there was just us, like there would always be just us, and we didn’t need magic for that. It was sort of happy and sad, all at the same time. I couldn’t be around her without feeling things, without feeling everything.

What are you thinking?

She smiled.

I think you can figure it out. You can read the writing on the wall.

And as she said it, there was writing on the wall. It appeared slowly, one word at a time.

You’re

not

the

only

one

falling.

It wrote itself out, in the same curling black script as the rest of the room. Lena’s cheeks flushed a little, and she covered her face with her hands. “It’s going to be really embarrassing if everything I think starts showing up on the walls.”

“You didn’t mean to do that?”

“No.”

You don’t need to be embarrassed, L.