Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

I knew she was coming—I was the one who’d found her at Abraham’s—but it was a different thing to see her making her way safe and sound through the plastic tables of the Dar-ee Keen. I almost knocked her off her three-inch platforms. Nobody walked in heels like my cousin.

Cuz.

She Kelted it as she buried her face in my shoulder, and all I could smell was hair spray and bath gel and sugar. Glitter swirled in the air around us, knocked loose from whatever sparkly goop she’d smeared all over her body.

Dark or Light, somehow it never mattered between us. Not when it really counted. We were still family, and we were together again.

It’s strange to be here without Short Straw. I’m sorry, Cuz.

I know, Rid.

Here at the Dar-ee Keen, it was all hitting home, like she finally understood what happened.

What I’d lost.

“You okay, kid?” She pulled back, looking me in the eyes.

I shook my head as my eyes started to blur. “No.”

“Somebody mind fillin’ me in on what’s goin’ on here?” Link looked like he was about to pass out, or throw up, or both.

“I was trying to tell you. We found Ridley, stuck in one of Abraham’s cages.”

“You know it. Like a peacock, Hot Rod.” She didn’t look right at Link, and I wondered if it was because she didn’t want to or because she didn’t dare. “A really hot one.”

I would never understand what went on between the two of them. I didn’t think anyone could—not even them.

“Hey, Rid.” Link was pale, even for a quarter Incubus. He looked like someone had just punched him in the face.

She blew him a kiss across the table. “Looking good, Hot Rod.”

He was stammering. “You look… you’re lookin’… I mean, you know.”

“I know.” Ridley winked and turned back to me. “Let’s get out of here. It’s been too long. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” Link managed not to

stammer, though his face was now as red as the plastic bucket beneath the leaking ceiling.

Ridley sighed, sticking her lollipop to one side of her mouth. “Hello? I’m a Siren, Shrinky Dink. A bad girl. I need to be back among my own.”

“Abraham, eh? That old goat?” Ridley shook her head.

I nodded. “That’s the plan.” For what it was worth, if it was worth anything.

The air was dark, and the ceiling lights of Exile only seemed to make it darker, instead of adding to the light. I didn’t blame Ridley for wanting to bring us here. It was the first place she always wanted to go when she was Dark.

But if you weren’t Dark, it wasn’t the most relaxing place in the world. You spent half the night making sure not to accidentally look anyone in the eye or smile in the wrong direction.

“And you think getting Short Straw The Book of Moons is going to help him un-kick the can?”

Link growled from the next seat. He insisted on coming with us for safekeeping, but I could tell he hated it here even more than I did.

“Watch it, Rid. Ethan hasn’t kicked the can. He’s just—bent it outta shape a little.”

I smiled. I guess Link could tell me Ethan was gone all he wanted, but it wasn’t the same when someone else said it.

And it meant Ridley wasn’t one of us anymore, at least not for Link. She really had left him, and she really was Dark.