Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

As I followed him along the sharp black stones, I could hear Link’s voice in my head. “Bad move, man. He’s gonna kill you, stuff you, and add you to his collection of idiots who followed him back to his creepy cave.”

This was one time I was probably safer dead than alive.

How fair and balanced was that?

The Gatekeeper slid through a narrow crack in the wall of slick black stone. It was bigger than the hole, but not by much. I moved along sideways because there wasn’t enough room to turn around.

I knew this could be some kind of trap. Link had described the creature he encountered as an animal—dangerous and crazed. What if the Gatekeeper was no different, just better at hiding it? Where was that stupid crow when I needed him?

“We’re almost there,” he called back to me.

I could see a faint light ahead, flickering in the distance.

His shadow passed in front of it, momentarily darkening the passage as the narrow space opened into a cavernous room. Wax dripped from an iron chandelier bolted directly into the glossy stone ceiling. The walls sparkled in the candlelight.

If I hadn’t just crawled through a whole mountain of the stuff, I might have been more impressed. As it was, the closeness of the cavern walls just made my skin crawl.

But when I glanced around, I realized this place was more like a museum—with an even crazier collection than what you’d find if you dug up the Sisters’ whole backyard. Glass cases and shelves lined the walls, filled with hundreds of objects. It was the randomness of the collection that intrigued me, like a child had done not only the collecting but the cataloging. Intricately carved silver and gold jewelry boxes sat next to a collection of cheap children’s music boxes. Shiny black vinyl records were piled in towering stacks next to one of those old-fashioned record players with a funnel speaker, like the one the Sisters used to have. A Raggedy Ann doll curled in a rocking chair, a huge green jewel the size of an apple resting in her lap. And on a center shelf, I saw an opalescent sphere similar to the one I had carried in my hand the past summer.

It couldn’t be… an Arclight.

But it was. Exactly like the one Macon had given my mom, except milky white instead of midnight black.

“Where did you get that?” I walked toward the shelf.

He darted in front of me, snatching the sphere. “I told you. I’m a collector. You could say a historian. You mustn’t touch anything in here. The treasures in this room cannot be replaced. I’ve spent a thousand lifetimes collecting them. They are all equally valuable,” he breathed.

“Yeah?” I looked at a Snoopy lunch box full of pearls.

He nodded. “Priceless.”

He replaced the Arclight. “All sorts of things have been offered to me at the Gates,” he added. “Most people, and non-people, know it is only polite to bring me a gift when they come knocking.” He stole a look at me. “No offense.”

“Yeah, sorry. I mean, I wish I had something to give you—”

He lifted a hairless eyebrow. “Besides a rock and a crow?”

“Yeah.” I scanned the rows of leather books lined up neatly on the shelves, the spines inscribed with symbols and languages I didn’t recognize. The spine of a black leather book caught my eye. It looked like it said… “The Book of Stars?”

The Gatekeeper looked pleased and rushed to pull it down from the shelf. “This is one of the rarest books of its kind.” Niadic, the Caster language I had come to recognize, looped around the edges of the cover. A cluster of stars was embossed in the center. “There is only one other like it—”

“The Book of Moons,” I finished for him. “I know.”

His eyes widened, and he clutched The Book of Stars to his chest. “You know about the Dark half? No one in our world has seen it for hundreds of years.”

“That’s because it isn’t in your world.” I looked at him for a long moment before correcting myself. “Our world.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I was the one who found it.”

For a moment, he didn’t say a word. I could tell he was trying to decide if I was lying or crazy. There was nothing in his expression that made it seem like he actually believed me, but like I said, there wasn’t really too much to go on—his face not really being a face and all.

“Is this a trick?” His dull green eyes narrowed. “It wouldn’t serve you well to play games with me if you ever expect to find the Gates of the Far Keep.”

“I didn’t even know The Book of Moons had another half, or whatever you said. So how would I know to lie about it?”

It was true. I had never heard anyone mention it—not Macon or Marian or Sarafine or Abraham.