Amma's grip on my arm tightened, and she pul ed the gold charm she always wore out from underneath her blouse and rubbed it between her fingers. Amma was more than superstitious. She was a Seer, from generations of women who read tarot cards and communed with spirits, and Amma had a charm or a dol for everything. This one was for protection. I stared at the Incubuses in front of us, the rain running off their shoulders without leaving a trace. I hoped they were the kind that only fed on dreams.
I tried to look away, but it wasn't easy. There was something about an Incubus that drew you in like a spider's web, like any good predator. In the dark, you couldn't see their black eyes, and they almost looked like a bunch of regular guys.
A few of them were dressed the way Macon always had, dark suits and expensive-looking overcoats. One or two looked more like construction workers on their way to get a beer after work, in jeans and work boots, their hands shoved in the pockets of their jackets. The woman was probably a Succubus. I had read about them, mostly in comics, and I thought they were just old wives' tales, like werewolves. But I knew I was wrong because she was standing in the rain, dry as the rest of them.
The Incubuses were a sharp contrast to Lena's family, cloaked in iridescent black fabric that caught what little light there was and refracted it, as if they were the source themselves. I had never seen them like this before. It was a strange sight, especial y considering the strict dress code for women at Southern funerals.
In the center of it al was Lena. The way she looked was the opposite of magical. She stood in front of the casket with her fingers quietly resting upon it, as if Macon was somehow holding her hand. She was dressed in the same shimmering material as the rest of her family, but it hung on her like a shadow. Her black hair was twisted into a tight knot, not a trademark curl in sight. She looked broken and out of place, like she was standing on the wrong side of the aisle.
Like she belonged with Macon's other family, standing in the rain.
Lena?
She lifted her head, and her eyes met mine. Since her birthday, when one of her eyes had turned a shade of gold while the other remained deep green, the colors had combined to create a shade unlike anything I'd ever seen. Almost hazel at times, and unnatural y golden at others. Now they looked more hazel, dul and pained. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to pick her up and carry her away.
I can get the Volvo, and we can drive down the coast all the way to Savannah. We can hide out at my Aunt Caroline's.
I took another step closer to her. Her family was crowded around the casket, and I couldn't get to Lena without walking past the line of Incubuses, but I didn't care.
Ethan, stop! It's not safe --
A tal Incubus with a scar running down the length of his face, like the mark of a savage animal attack, turned his head to look at me. The air seemed to ripple through the space between us, like I had chucked a stone into a lake. It hit me, knocking the wind out of my lungs as if I'd been punched, but I couldn't react because I felt paralyzed -- my limbs numb and useless.
Ethan!
Amma's eyes narrowed, but before she could take a step the Succubus put her hand on Scarface's shoulder and squeezed it, almost imperceptibly. Instantly, I was released from his hold, and the blood rushed back into my limbs. Amma gave her a grateful nod, but the woman with the long hair and the longer coat ignored her, disappearing back into line with the rest of them.
The Incubus with the brutal scar turned and winked at me. I got the message, even without the words. See you in your dreams.
I was stil holding my breath when a white-haired gentleman, in an old-fashioned suit and string tie, stepped up to the coffin. His eyes were a dark contrast to his hair, which made him seem like some creepy character from an old black and white movie.
"The Gravecaster," Amma whispered. He looked more like the gravedigger.
He touched the smooth black wood, and a carved crest on the top of the coffin began to glow with a golden light. It looked like some old coat of arms, the kind of thing you saw at a museum or in a castle. I saw a tree with great spreading boughs, and a bird. Beneath it there was a carved sun, and a crescent moon.
"Macon Ravenwood of the House of Ravenwood, of Raven and Oak, Air and Earth. Darkness and Light." He took his hand from the coffin, and the light fol owed, leaving the casket dark again.
"Is that Macon?" I whispered to Amma.
"The light's symbolic. There's nothin' in that box. Wasn't anythin' left to bury. That's the way with Macon's kind -- ashes to ashes and dust to dust, like us. Just a whole lot quicker."
The Gravecaster's voice rose up again. "Who consecrates this soul into the Otherworld?"
Lena's family stepped forward. "We do," they said in unison, everyone except Lena. She stood there staring down at the dirt.
"As do we." The Incubuses moved closer to the casket.
"Then let him be Cast to the world beyond. Redi in pace, ad Ignem Atrum ex quo venisti. " The Gravecaster held the light high over his head, and it flared brighter. "Go in peace, back to the Dark Fire from where you came." He threw the light into the air, and sparks showered down onto the coffin, searing into the wood where they fel . As if on cue, Lena's family and the Incubuses threw their hands into the air, releasing tiny silver objects not much bigger than quarters, which rained down onto Macon's coffin amidst the gold flames. The sky was starting to change color, from the black of night to the blue before the sunrise. I strained to see what the objects were, but it was too dark.
" His dictis, solutus est. With these words, he is free."
An almost blinding white light emanated from the casket. I could barely see the Gravecaster a few feet in front of me, as if his voice was transporting us and we were no longer standing over a gravesite in Gatlin.
Uncle Macon! No!
The light flashed, like lightning striking, and died out. We were al back in the circle, looking at a mound of dirt and flowers. The burial was over. The coffin was gone. Aunt Del put her arms protectively around Reece and Ryan.
Macon was gone.
Lena fel forward onto her knees in the muddy grass.
The gate around Macon's plot slammed shut behind her, without so much as a finger touching it. This wasn't over for her. No one was going anywhere.
Lena?
The rain started to pick up almost immediately, the weather stil tethered to her powers as a Natural, the ultimate elemental in the Caster world. She pul ed herself to her feet.
Lena! This isn't going to change anything!
The air fil ed with hundreds of cheap white carnations and plastic flowers and palmetto fronds and flags from every grave visited in the last month, al flying loose in the air, tumbling airborne down the hil . Fifty years from now, folks in town would stil be talking about the day the wind almost blew down every magnolia in His Garden of Perpetual Peace. The gale came on so fierce and fast, it was a slap in the face to everyone there, a hit so hard you had to stagger to stay on your feet. Only Lena stood straight and tal , holding fast to the stone marker next to her. Her hair had unraveled from its awkward knot and whipped in the air around her. She was no longer al darkness and shadow. She was the opposite --
the one bright spot in the storm, as if the yel owish-gold lightning splitting the sky above us was emanating from her body. Boo Radley, Macon's dog, whimpered and flattened his ears at Lena's feet.
He wouldn't want this, L.
Lena put her face in her hands, and a sudden gust blew the canopy out from where it was staked in the wet earth, sending it tumbling backward down the hil .
Gramma stepped in front of Lena, closed her eyes, and touched a single finger to her granddaughter's cheek. The moment she touched Lena, everything stopped, and I knew Gramma had used her abilities as an Empath to absorb Lena's powers temporarily. But she couldn't absorb Lena's anger. None of us were strong enough to do that.
The wind died down, and the rain slowed to a drizzle. Gramma pul ed her hand away from Lena and opened her eyes.
The Succubus, looking unusual y disheveled, stared up at the sky. "It's almost sunrise." The sun was beginning to burn its way up through the clouds and over the horizon, scattering odd splinters of light and life across the uneven rows of headstones. Nothing else had to be said. The Incubuses started to dematerialize, the sound of suction fil ing the air. Ripping was how I thought of it, the way they pul ed open the sky and disappeared.
I started to walk toward Lena, but Amma yanked my arm. "What? They're gone."
"Not al a them. Look --"
She was right. At the edge of the plot, there was only one Incubus remaining, leaning against a weathered headstone adorned with a weeping angel. He looked older than I was, maybe nineteen, with short, black hair and the same pale skin as the rest of his kind. But unlike the other Incubuses, he hadn't disappeared before the dawn. As I watched him, he moved out from under the shadow of the oak directly into the bright morning light, with his eyes closed and his face tilted toward the sun, as if it was only shining for him.
Amma was wrong. He couldn't be one of them. He stood there basking in the sunlight, an impossibility for an Incubus.
What was he? And what was he doing here?
He moved closer and caught my eye, as if he could feel me watching him. That's when I saw his eyes. They weren't the black eyes of an Incubus.
They were Caster green.
He stopped in front of Lena, jamming his hands in his pockets, tipping his head slightly. Not a bow, but an awkward show of deference, which somehow seemed more honest. He had crossed the invisible aisle, and in a moment of real Southern gentility, he could have been the son of Macon Ravenwood himself. Which made me hate him.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
He opened her hand and placed a smal silver object in it, like the ones everyone had thrown onto Macon's casket. Her fingers closed around it. Before I could move a muscle, the unmistakable ripping sound tore through the air, and he was gone.
Ethan?
I saw her legs begin to buckle under the weight of the morning -- the loss, the storm, even the final rip in the sky. By the time I made it to her side and slid my arm under her, she was gone, too. I carried her down the sloping hil , away from Macon and the cemetery.
She slept curled in my bed, on and off, for a night and a day. She had a few stray twigs matted in her hair, and her face was stil flecked with mud, but she wouldn't go home to Ravenwood, and no one asked her to. I had given her my oldest, softest sweatshirt and wrapped her in our thickest patchwork quilt, but she never stopped shivering, even in her sleep. Boo lay at her feet, and Amma appeared in the doorway every now and then. I sat in the chair by the window, the one I never sat in, and stared out at the sky. I couldn't open it, because a storm was stil brewing.
As Lena was sleeping, her fingers uncurled. In them was a tiny bird made of silver, a sparrow. A gift from the stranger at Macon's funeral. I tried to take it from her hand just as her fingers tightened around it.
Two months later, and I stil couldn't look at a bird without hearing the sound of the sky ripping open.
4.17
Burnt Waffles
Four eggs, four strips of bacon, a basket of scratch biscuits (which by Amma's standard meant a spoon had never touched the batter), three kinds of freezer jam, and a slab of butter drizzled with honey. And from the smel of it, across the counter buttermilk batter was separating into squares, turning crisp in the old waffle iron. For the last two months, Amma had been cooking night and day. The counter was piled high with Pyrex dishes -- cheese grits, green bean casserole, fried chicken, and of course, Bing cherry salad, which was real y a fancy name for a Jel -O mold with cherries, pineapple, and Coca-Cola in it. Past that, I could make out a coconut cake, orange rol s, and what looked like bourbon bread pudding, but I knew there was more. Since Macon died and my dad left, Amma kept cooking and baking and stacking, as if she could cook her sadness away. We both knew she couldn't.