Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

I caught myself and tried to pull my mind away. I don’t know why I still reached for her. Habit, I guess. But instead of Lena’s voice, I heard Savannah’s. She stood in front of me, wearing way too much makeup but somehow still managing to look pretty. She was all glossy hair and gloppy eyelashes and tied-up little straps on her sundress that were probably only there to make a guy think about untying them. I mean, if you didn’t know what a bitch she was, or didn’t care.

“I’m real sorry about your mamma, Ethan.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. Her mother probably made her come over here, pillar of the community that Mrs. Snow was. Tonight, though it was barely over a year since my mom died, I’d find more than one casserole on our doorstep, just like the day after her funeral. Time passed slowly in Gatlin, kind of like dog years, only in reverse. And like the day after the funeral, Amma would leave every one of them out there for the possums.

Seems possums never get tired of ham ’n’ apple casserole.

It was still the nicest thing Savannah had said to me since September. Even though I didn’t care what she thought of me, today it was nice to have one less thing to feel like crap about. “Thanks.”

Savannah smiled her fake smile and walked off, her high heels jerking as they got stuck in the grass. Link loosened his tie, which was crooked and too short. I recognized it from sixth-grade graduation. Underneath it, he had snuck out of the house wearing a T-shirt that said I’M WITH STUPID, with arrows pointing in all different directions. It pretty much summed up how I was feeling today, too. Surrounded by stupid.

The hits kept on coming. Maybe folks were feeling guilty because I had a crazy father and a dead mother. More likely, they were scared of Amma. Anyway, I must have surpassed Loretta West, a three-time widow whose last husband died after a gator bit a hole in his stomach, as the most pathetic person at All Souls. If they gave out prizes, I would’ve won the blue ribbon. I could tell by the way folks shook their heads when I walked by. What a pity, Ethan Wate doesn’t have a mamma anymore.

It was the same way Mrs. Lincoln was shaking her head right now, as she headed my way, with You Poor Misguided Motherless Boy written on her face. Link ducked out before she hit her target. “Ethan, I wanted to say how much we all miss your mamma.” I wasn’t sure who she was talking about—her friends in the DAR, who couldn’t stand my mom, or the women who sat around the Snip ’n’ Curl talking about how my mother read too many books and no good could come from that. Mrs. Lincoln blotted a nonexistent tear from her eye. “She was a good woman. You know, I remember how much she loved to garden. Always outside tendin’ her roses with her tender heart.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The closest my mom ever came to gardening was when she sprinkled cayenne pepper all over the tomatoes so my dad wouldn’t kill the rabbit that kept eating them. The roses were Amma’s. Everyone knew that. I wished Mrs. Lincoln would try that “tender heart” comment to Amma’s face. “I like to think she’s right up there with the angels, tendin’ that old, sweet Garden a Eden now. Prunin’ and trimmin’ the Tree a Knowledge, with the cherubs and the—”

Snakes?

“I’ve gotta go find my dad, ma’am.” I had to get away from Link’s mom before lightning struck her—or me, for wanting it to.

Her voice trailed after me. “Tell your daddy I’m gonna drop him off one a my famous ham ’n’ apple casseroles!” That sealed the deal. I was getting the blue ribbon for sure. I couldn’t get away from her fast enough. But at All Souls, there was no escape. As soon as you made it past one creepy relative or neighbor, there was another one right around the corner. Or, in Link’s case, another creepy parent.

Link’s dad slung his arm around Tom Watkins’ neck. “Earl was the best of us. He had the best uniform, the best battle formations—” Link’s dad choked back a drunken sob. “And he made the best ammunition.” Coincidently, Big Earl was killed making some of that ammo, and Mr. Lincoln had replaced him as the leader of the Cavalry, in the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill. Some of that guilt was here today in the form of whiskey.

“I wanted to bring my gun and give Earl a proper salute, but Dammit Doreen hid it from me.” Ronnie Weeks’ wife was generally known as Dammit Doreen, sometimes shortened to DD, on account of that’s all he ever said to her. He took another swig of whiskey.

“To Earl!” They grabbed each other around the neck, raising their cans and bottles over Earl’s grave. Beer and Wild Turkey sloshed all over the headstone, Gatlin’s tribute to the fallen.

“Jeez, I hope we don’t end up like that one day.” Link slunk away, and I followed. His parents never failed to embarrass him. “Why couldn’t my parents be like yours?”

“You mean mental? Or gone? No offense, but I think you’ve got the mental part covered.”

“Your dad’s not mental anymore, at least not more than anyone else around here. No one cares if you walk around in your pajamas when your wife just died. My folks don’t have an excuse. They’re a few pistons short of an engine.”

“We won’t end up like that. Because you’ll be a famous drummer in New York, and I’ll be doing—I don’t know, something that doesn’t involve a Confederate uniform and Wild Turkey.” I tried to sound convincing, but I didn’t know which was more unlikely—Link becoming a famous musician or me getting out of Gatlin.

I still had the map on my bedroom wall, the one with the thin green line connecting all the places I’d read about, the places I wanted to go. I’d spent my whole life thinking about roads leading anywhere but Gatlin. Then I met Lena, and it was like the map never existed. I think I would’ve been able to deal with getting stuck anywhere, even here, as long as we were together. Funny how the map seemed to have lost its appeal when I needed it the most.

“I’d better get over to see my mom.” I said it like I was going by the library to see her in the archive. “You know what I mean.”

Link tapped his knuckles against mine. “I’ll catch you later. I’m gonna walk around for a while.” Walk around? Link didn’t walk around. He tried to get drunk and hit on girls who wouldn’t hook up with him.

“What’s up? You’re not going looking for the next Mrs. Wesley Jefferson Lincoln, are you?”

Link ran his hand over his spiky blond hair. “I wish. I know I’m an idiot, but there’s only one girl in my head right now.” The one girl who shouldn’t be. What could I say? I knew how it felt to be in love with a girl who didn’t want anything to do with you.

“Sorry, man. I guess Ridley’s not that easy to forget.”

“Yeah, and seein’ her last night didn’t help.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I know she’s supposed to be Dark and all, but I can’t shake the feelin’ what we had was more than just an act.”

“I know what you mean.”

We were a couple of pathetic losers. Though I didn’t think Ridley was capable of anything real, I didn’t want to make him feel worse. Link wasn’t looking for an answer, anyway.

“You know all that stuff you told me about Casters and Mortals not bein’ able to be together ’cause it’ll kill the Mortal?”

I nodded. It was only about eighty percent of what I thought about. “What about it?”