Beautiful Darkness tcc-2

by Garcia, Kami

  There were two other women, most likely Aunt Delilah and Sister, and an old man, his face punished by the sun, standing in the back with a beard that would've put Moses to shame. Uncle Abner. I wished I had some Wild Turkey for him.

  The Greats tightened their circle around Amma, chanting the same verse again and again, in Gullah, the original language of her family. Amma repeated the same verse in English, shaking the beads and bone, shouting to the heavens.

  "Of Vengeance and Wrath, Bind the Suspended, Hasten his path."

  The Vex rose even higher, the fog and shadow circling and swirling above Amma and the Greats. Its scream was deafening, but Amma didn't even flinch. She closed her eyes and raised her voice to meet the demonic cry.

  "Of Vengeance and Wrath, Bind the Suspended, Hasten his path."

  Sulla raised her bracelet-laden arm, spinning a long stick with dozens of tiny charms dangling from it, back and forth between her fingers. She took her hand from Ivy's shoulder and rested it on Amma's, her glowing, translucent skin glimmering in the darkness. The second her hand touched Amma's shoulder, the Vex let out a final gnarled cry and was sucked into the void of the night sky.

  Amma turned to the Greats. "I'm much obliged."

  The Greats disappeared, as if they had never been there at all.

  It probably would've been better if I had disappeared with the Greats, because one look at Amma's face made it clear that she had only saved us so she could kill us herself. We would've had better odds against the Vex.

  Amma was seething, her eyes narrow and focused on her main targets, Link and me.

  "V. E. X. A. T. I. O. N." She grabbed us by our collars at the same time, as if she could have thrown us up the Doorwell behind her with a single toss. "As in, trouble. Worry. Agitation. Botheration. Need me to go on?"

  We shook our heads.

  "Ethan Lawson Wate. Wesley Jefferson Lincoln. I don't know what business the two a you think you have down in these Tunnels." She was shaking her bony finger as she pointed at us. "You don't have a lick a sense between you, but you think you're ready to be battlin' Dark forces."

  Link tried to explain. Big mistake. "Amma, we weren't tryin' to battle any Dark forces. Honest. We were just --"

  Amma advanced, that finger barely an inch from Link's eyes. "Don't you tell me. When I get through with you, you're gonna wish I'd told your mamma about what you were doin' in my basement when you were nine years old." He backed up until he hit the wall behind him, next to the Doorwell. Amma matched him step for step. "That story's as sad as the day is long."

  Amma turned to Liv. "And you're studyin' to be a Keeper. But you don't have any more sense than they do. Knowin' what you do and still lettin' these boys drag you into this dangerous business. You're in a world a trouble with Marian." Liv slunk down a few inches.

  Amma whipped around to face me. "And you." She was so angry she was talking with her jaw clenched. "You think I don't know what you're up to? You think because I'm an old woman, you can fool me? It'll take you three lifetimes before you can sell me a raft that doesn't float. Soon as Marian told me you were down here, I found you straightaway." I didn't ask her how she'd found us. Whether it was chicken bones or tarot cards or the Greats, she had her ways. Amma was the closest thing I'd ever seen to a Supernatural without actually being one.

  I didn't look her in the eye. It was like avoiding a dog attack. Don't make eye contact. Keep your head down and your mouth shut. Instead, I kept walking, with Link looking back at Amma every few steps. Liv wandered behind us, confused. I knew she hadn't counted on a run-in with a Vex, but Amma was more than she could handle.

  Amma shuffled along behind us, muttering to herself or the Greats. Who knew? "Think you're the only one who can find somethin'? Don't need to be a Caster to see what you fools are up to." I could hear the bones rattling against the beads. "Why do you think they call me a Seer? Because I can see the mess you're into just as soon as you're into it."

  She was still shaking her head as she disappeared up the Doorwell, not a speck of mud on her sleeves or a rumple in her dress. What had felt like a rabbit hole on the way down was a broad stairwell on the way up, as if it had expanded out of respect for Miss Amma herself.

  "Takin' on a Vex, as if a day with this child wasn't trouble enough ..." She sniffed with every step. It went on like that the whole way back. We dropped Liv off on our way through the Tunnels, but Link and I kept walking. We didn't want to be too close to that finger, or those beads.

  6.16

  Revelations

  By the time I crawled into my bed, it was nearly sunrise. There would be even more hell to pay in the morning when Amma saw me, but I had a feeling Marian wasn't expecting me to be on time for work. She was as scared of Amma as anyone. I kicked off my shoes and fell asleep before I hit the pillow.

  Blinding light.

  I was overwhelmed by the light. Or was it the dark?

  I felt my eyes ache, as if I had been staring at the sun too long, creating spots of darkness. All I could make out was a silhouette, blocking out the light. I wasn't scared. I knew this particular shadow intimately, the slight waist, the delicate hands and fingers. Every strand of hair, twisting in the Casting Breeze.

  Lena stepped forward, reaching out for me. I watched, frozen, as her hands moved out of the darkness and into the light where I was standing. The light crept up her arms, until it hit her waist, her shoulders, her chest.

  Ethan.

  Her face was still shrouded in shadow, but now her fingers were touching me, moving along my shoulders, my neck, and finally my face. I held her hand against my cheek, and it burned me, though not with heat but cold.

  I'm here, L.

  I loved you, Ethan. But I have to go.

  I know.

  In the darkness, I could see her eyelids lift and the golden glow -- the eyes of the curse. The eyes of a Dark Caster.

  I loved you, too, L.

  I reached out my hand and gently closed her eyes. The chill of her hand disappeared from my face. I looked away and forced myself to wake up.

  I was prepared to face Amma's wrath when I got downstairs. My dad had gone to the Stop & Steal to get a newspaper, and it was just the two of us. The three of us if you counted Lucille, who was staring at the dry cat food in her bowl, something she'd probably never seen before. I guess Amma was mad at her, too.

  Amma was at the stove, pulling out a pie. The table was set, but breakfast wasn't cooking. There were no grits or eggs, not even a piece of toast. It was worse than I thought. The last time she baked in the morning instead of making breakfast was the day after Lena's birthday, and before that, the day after my mom died. Amma kneaded dough like a prizefighter. Her fury could generate enough cookies to feed the Baptists and the Methodists combined. I hoped the dough had taken the brunt of it this morning.

  "I'm sorry, Amma. I don't know what that thing wanted with us."

  She slammed the oven door shut, her back to me. "Of course you don't. There's a lot you don't know, but that didn't stop you from wanderin' around where you didn't have any business. Now did it?" She picked up her mixing bowl, stirring the contents with the One-Eyed Menace, as if she hadn't used it to scare Ridley into submission the day before.

  "I went down there looking for Lena. She's been hanging out with Ridley, and I think she's in trouble."

  Amma spun around. "You think she's in trouble? You have any idea what that thing was? The one that was about to take you outta this world and into the next?" She stirred madly.

  "Liv said it was called a Vex, and it was summoned by someone powerful."

  "And Dark. Someone who doesn't want you and your friends pokin' around in those Tunnels."

  "Who would want to keep us out of the Tunnels? Sarafine and Hunting? Why?"

  Amma slammed the bowl on the counter. "Why? Why are you always askin' so many questions about things that are none a your concern? I reckon it's my fault. I let you run me ragged with those questions when you weren't tall enough to see
over this counter." She shook her head. "But this is a fool's game. There can't be a winner."

  Great. More riddles. "Amma, what are you talking about?"

  She pointed her finger at me again, the same way she had last night. "You've got no business in the Tunnels, you hear me? Lena's havin' a hard time and I'm ten kinds a sorry, but she's got to figure all this out for herself. There's nothin' you can do. So you stay out a those Tunnels. There are worse things down there than Vexes." Amma turned back to her pie, pouring the filling from the bowl into a pie shell. The conversation was over. "You go on to work now, and keep your feet aboveground."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  I didn't like lying to Amma, but technically I wasn't. At least, that's what I told myself. I was going to work. Right after I stopped by Ravenwood. After last night, there was nothing left to say, and everything.

  I needed answers. How long had she been lying to me and sneaking around behind my back? Since the funeral, the first time I saw them together? Or the day she took the picture of his motorcycle in the graveyard? Were we talking about months or weeks or days? To a guy, those distinctions mattered. Until I knew, it would gnaw away at me and what little pride I had left.

  Because here's the thing: I heard her, inside and out. She'd said the words, and I saw her with John. I don't want you here, Ethan. It was over. The one thing I never thought we'd be.

  I pulled up in front of Ravenwood's twisted iron gates and turned off the engine. I sat in the car with the windows rolled up, even though it was already sweltering outside. The heat would be suffocating in a minute or two, but I couldn't move. I closed my eyes, listening to the cicadas. If I didn't get out of the car, I wouldn't have to know. I didn't have to drive through those gates at all. The key was still in the ignition. I could turn it and drive back to the library.

  Then none of this would be happening.

  I turned the key, and the radio came on. It wasn't on when I turned the car off. The Volvo's reception wasn't much better than the Beater's, but I heard something buried in the static.

  Seventeen moons, seventeen spheres,

  The moon before her time appears,

  Hearts will go and stars will follow,

  One is broken, One is hollow ...

  The engine died, and the music with it. I didn't understand the part about the moon, except that it was coming, which I already knew. And I didn't need the song to tell me which one of us was gone.

  When I finally opened the car door, the stifling Carolina heat seemed cool by comparison. The gates creaked as I slipped inside. The closer I got to the house, the sorrier it looked now that Macon was gone. It was worse than the last time I was here.

  I walked up the steps of the veranda, listening to each board creak under my feet. The house probably looked as bad as the garden, but I couldn't see it. Everywhere I looked, the only thing I saw was Lena. Trying to convince me to go home the first night I met Macon, sitting on the steps in her orange prison jumpsuit the week before her birthday. Part of me wanted to walk the path out to Greenbrier, to Genevieve's grave, so I could remember Lena huddled up next to me with an old Latin dictionary while we tried to make sense of The Book of Moons.

  But those were all ghosts now.

  I studied the carvings above the doorway and found the familiar Caster moon. I fingered the splintery wood on the lintel and hesitated. I wasn't sure how welcome I would be, but I pressed it anyway. The door swung open, and Aunt Del smiled up at me. "Ethan! I was hoping you would come by before we left." She pulled me in for a quick hug.

  Inside it was dark. I noticed a mountain of suitcases by the stairs. Sheets covered most of the furniture, and the shades were drawn. It was true. They were really leaving. Lena hadn't said a word about the trip since the last day of school, and with everything else that had happened, I'd almost forgotten. At least, I wanted to. Lena hadn't even mentioned they were packing. There were a lot of things she didn't tell me anymore.

  "That's why you're here, isn't it?" Aunt Del squinted, confused. "To say good-bye?" As a Palimpsest, she couldn't separate layers of time, so she was always a little lost. She could see everything that had happened or would happen in a room the minute she walked in, but she saw it all at once. Sometimes I wondered what she saw when I walked into this room. Maybe I didn't want to know.

  "Yeah, I wanted to say good-bye. When are you leaving?"

  Reece was sorting through books in the dining room, but I could still see her scowl. I looked away, out of habit. The last thing I needed was Reece reading everything that had happened last night in my face. "Not until Sunday, but Lena hasn't even packed. Don't distract her," Reece called out.

  Two days. She was leaving in two days, and I didn't know. Was she even planning to say good-bye?

  I ducked my head and stepped into the parlor to say hi to Gramma. She was an immovable force sitting in her rocking chair, with a cup of tea and the paper, as if the bustle of the morning didn't apply to her. She smiled, folding the paper in half. I had assumed it was The Stars and Stripes, but it was written in a language I didn't recognize.

  "Ethan. I wish you could come with us. I will miss you, and I'm sure Lena will be counting the days until we get back." She rose from the chair and hugged me.

  Lena might be counting the days, but not for the reason Gramma thought. Her family had no idea what was going on with us anymore, or with Lena, for that matter. I had a feeling they didn't know she was hanging out in underground Caster clubs like Exile, or hitching rides on the back of John's Harley. Maybe they didn't know about John Breed at all.

  I remembered when I first met Lena, the long list of the places she'd lived, the friends she had never made, the schools she'd never been able to go to. I wondered if she was going back to a life like that.

  Gramma was staring at me curiously. She put her hand on my cheek. It was soft, like the gloves the Sisters wore to church. "You've changed, Ethan."

  "Ma'am?"

  "I can't quite put my finger on it, but something's different."

  I looked away. There was no point in pretending. She would sense that Lena and I were no longer connected, if she hadn't already. Gramma was like Amma. She was usually the strongest person in the room, by sheer force of will alone. "I'm not the one who changed, ma'am."

  She sat down again, picking her newspaper back up. "Nonsense. Everyone changes, Ethan. That's life. Now go tell my granddaughter to get packing. We need to go before the tides change and we're marooned here forever." She smiled as if I was in on the joke. Only I wasn't.

  Lena's door was open just a crack. The walls, the ceiling, the furniture -- everything was black. Her walls weren't covered in Sharpie anymore. Now her poetry was scrawled in white chalk. Her closet doors were covered with the same phrase over and over: runningtostandstillrunningtostandstillrunningto standstill. I stared at the words, separating them the way I often had to when it came to Lena's writing. Once I did, I recognized them from an old U2 song and realized how true they really were.

  It's what Lena had been doing all this time, every second since Macon died.

  Her little cousin, Ryan, was sitting on the bed, holding Lena's face in her hands. Ryan was a Thaumaturge and only used her healing powers when someone was in great pain. Usually it was me, but today it was Lena.

  I barely recognized her. She looked like she hadn't slept last night. She was wearing an oversize, faded black T-shirt as a nightgown. Her hair was tangled, her eyes red and swollen.

  "Ethan!" The minute Ryan saw me, she was a regular kid again. She jumped into my arms, and I picked her up, swinging her legs from side to side. "Why aren't you coming with us? It's going to be so boring. Reece is going to boss me around the whole summer, and Lena isn't any fun either."

  "I have to stick around here and take care of Amma and my dad, Chicken Little." I put Ryan down gently.

  Lena looked annoyed. She sat down on her unmade bed, with her legs folded under her, and waved Ryan out of the room. "Out now. Please."

  Ryan
made a face. "If you two do anything disgusting and you need me, I'll be downstairs." Ryan had saved my life on more than one occasion when Lena and I had gone too far and the electrical current between us had nearly stopped my heart.

  Lena would never have that problem with John Breed. I wondered if it was his shirt she was wearing.

  "What are you doing here, Ethan?" Lena stared up at the ceiling, and I followed her eyes to the words on the walls. I couldn't look at her. When you look up / Do you see the blue sky of what might be / Or the darkness of what will never be? / Do you see me?

  "I want to talk about last night."

  "You mean about why you were following me?" Her voice was harsh, which pissed me off.

  "I wasn't following you. I was looking for you because I was worried. But I can see how that would be inconvenient when you were busy hooking up with John."

  Lena's jaw tightened, and she stood up, the T-shirt grazing her knees. "John and I are just friends. We weren't hooking up."

  "Do you hang all over all your friends like that?"

  Lena stepped closer to me, the ends of her ratty curls beginning to lift gently off her shoulders. The chandelier hanging from the center of her ceiling began to sway. "Do you try to kiss all of yours?" She looked me right in the eye.

  There was a flash of light and sparks, then darkness. The lightbulbs on the chandelier exploded, tiny shards raining down on her bed. I heard the patter of rain on the roof.

  "What are you --?"

  "Don't bother lying, Ethan. I know what you and your library partner were doing outside Exile." The voice in my head was sharp and bitter.

  I heard you. You were Kelting. "Blue eyes and blond hair"? Sound familiar?

  She was right. I was Kelting, and she'd heard every word.

  Nothing happened.

  The chandelier crashed onto her bed, missing me by inches. The floor seemed to drop out from under me. She'd heard me.