CHAPTER 1
The Story No One Ever Heard
Smal towns are known for lots of smal things, but they're known for some big things, too. Like stories that start out as smal as the town itself, until folks grow them. You can't grow tales any tal er than we do here in Gatlin. Maybe it's because we're so close to Charleston, home to more haunted houses than unhaunted ones—each with a story more unbelievable than the next. Why should Gatlin be any different? And why did it take me almost seventeen years to figure that out?
Some of the things that happened to me in the last year—true things—were so big and so impossible, they felt like lies. I discovered my girlfriend was a Supernatural, a Caster with a curse. Lena split her Seventeenth Moon and Claimed herself both Light and Dark. I found myself locked in a battle with supernatural creatures that could rival the ones in any comic book. It was just the icing on the cake that Macon Ravenwood, who had once been an Incubus himself, found his way back from the dead.
That was al before July. When we got back to Gatlin after our terrifying trip to the Great Barrier, the stories—the truths that should have been lies—got even bigger.
One thing did, anyway. My best friend, Link.
Probably the biggest thing that happened this summer—aside from the heat that wouldn't stop overheating and the creepy crawlers that wouldn't stop creeping or crawling—was the introduction of a Linkubus to the unsuspecting world of Gatlin. It was worthy of the whole front page of The Stars and Stripes, the biggest story no one ever heard. Which is a good thing, I guess. Because if anyone had heard it, Mrs. Lincoln would have found herself with a lot of explaining to do. It wasn't like the Baptists had an official religious stance on Immortals—aside from the heavenly kind—but the word Incubus had some less-than-stel ar connotations. Let's just say it wasn't exactly something Link's mom would've been anxious to share with the reverend when it was time to give her testimony in church.
Linkubus wouldn't have gone over much better.
The way Link told it, the whole thing had dropped on his head out of nowhere, like the anvil that always fel on the coyote in those old Road Runner cartoons.
When I tried to point out that getting bitten by a hybrid Incubus like John Breed should've been Link's first clue about what was happening, he shrugged it off and said, “You weren't there, dude.
One minute I'm sittin' in front a my mom's biscuits 'n' gravy, lookin' at half a pig for my second breakfast and thinkin' about my third. The next minute, everything changed.…”
Okay, I wasn't there. But the way he told it, it almost felt like I was. Stil , I'm getting ahead of myself.
This is the story of Gatlin's first, and only, Linkubus. You won't read about it in The Stars and Stripes, and you won't hear it from anyone but me.
Lena said I should write it down, so here goes.
Someone ought to know, someday.
It's the truest tal tale in town.
“Wesley Lincoln! You get that fork movin' right now, young man! Don't you tel me this poor pig gave its life in vain!”
Link was sitting in front of a plate loaded down with bacon and his mother's biscuits 'n' gravy. There was nothing different about this breakfast, not from the perspective of the pig, anyway. Or Mrs. Lincoln.
The table was covered with the same sad-looking biscuits, the same thick white gravy. And if Link was lucky, there was probably stil a little something left in the bottom of the jar of Amma's apricot freezer jam.
There was only one problem.
For the first time in his entire life, Link wasn't hungry. But tel ing his mom that was like trying to explain that Baptists and Methodists aren't al that different. You might be able to explain it, but not to the Baptists or the Methodists around here.
“Yes, ma'am.” So he kept his head down, staring at the same breakfast he had eaten a hundred times before, maybe even a thousand.
The one he'd always liked until this morning.
“I stil don't see that fork movin'.” Though Mrs.
Lincoln's fork was operating at lightning speed. Her hands flashed back and forth over the biscuits like she was trying out for captain of the clean plate club.
“I'm not that hungry, Mom. I think I caught a stomach bug or somethin'.” Link mustered up the most pathetic expression he could manage. It was the same one he gave his teachers when he didn't finish his assignments. They'd seen it so many times that it had stopped working back around fifth grade.
His mother's eyes narrowed, her fork hovering above her plate. “The only bug you've ever had was a bad case a head lice from playin' with Jimmy Weeks, after I told you he wasn't our kinda people.”
It was true. Link never got sick, and his mom knew that better than anyone. “If this is your way a tel in' me that you don't care for my biscuits 'n' gravy, then cook your own breakfast from now on. You hear me, Wesley?”
“Yes, ma'am.” Link scooped up a bite with his good arm—the one that wasn't in a sling—but he couldn't bring himself to eat it. He stared at the white gravy. It looked harmless enough. But it smel ed like a heart-stopping mix of old aluminum, dirt, rancid butter, and, worst of al , his mom's fingernails. He'd rather eat Jimmy Weeks' lice.
“Martha, leave the boy alone. Maybe he real y is under the weather,” Link's dad said between bites.
Big mistake.
Mrs. Lincoln dropped her fork on the edge of her china plate with a clatter.
“Excuse me? Did you say somethin', Clayton?
Because I thought I heard you underminin' my authority while you're sittin' there eatin' the breakfast I cooked for you.”
Link's dad swal owed hard. “I was just sayin'—”
“I think it would be best if you didn't say anything at al ,” she snapped.
Mr. Lincoln knew when he wasn't going to win a battle. He'd given up and started waving the white flag at his wife as soon as their son was born.
“Not a word,” Mrs. Lincoln repeated.
“I expect I can do that.” Mr. Lincoln sighed at his
“I expect I can do that.” Mr. Lincoln sighed at his fork.
Link's mom picked out the crispiest pieces of bacon from the serving platter and turned her attention back to Link, who had been pushing the food around on his plate while she wasn't looking.
“Now that you mention it, you've been actin' peculiar ever since you came home last night.”
“No, ma'am. I didn't.”
“Didn't what?”
“Mention it.”
“Don't you sass me. I was the one who said spending time with questionable folks only gets you a big fat question mark next to your own name.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Link stared down at the pile of white slush. His mom was no Amma in the kitchen. Amma would no more sit down to a plate of Mrs. Lincoln's biscuits 'n' gravy than she would bring home store-bought biscuits.
“Aren't I always sayin' that, dear?” She turned to Link's dad, but she didn't give him a second to respond. “I'm here to tel you, there's no question mark by my good name. The Lincolns have kept the family name spit shine around these parts for generations.”
Link looked up in time to see gravy dribbling down his mother's chin. His stomach lurched. He shoved his chair back from the table, then sprinted out of the room and up the stairs.
“Wesley Lincoln!” she cal ed after him.
“Mom, I think I'm gonna be—”
The sound of dry heaving floated down the stairs.
Link's parents looked at each other. “That boy probably caught some kinda nasty virus,” Mrs.
Lincoln said. “I'm gonna cal over to Doc Asher's and see if he can squeeze Wesley in today.”
Mr. Lincoln put down his fork, hesitating. But I guess al the browbeating had taken its tol , and he couldn't resist. “Maybe it was somethin' he ate.”
The look his wife shot him was so charged, it could've knocked a whole flock of pigeons off a telephone wire. Without saying a word, she grabbed every dish she could off the table and carried them over to the sink. It was al Mr. Lincoln could do to hold on to his half-eaten biscuit.
“I'l tel you one thing. People in this house should start listenin' to me. If Mary Beth Sutton had listened when I told her that husband a hers was as crazy as a wolf starvin' in a henhouse, she wouldn't be in the fix she is now. Sissy Honeycutt told me that she heard from Loretta Snow that Mary Beth told her he took their son Waylon's pickup and drove it al the way to Memphis. And they'd just gone and put new tires on it.”
Link's mom kept talking as fast as she could. She had to. Otherwise, she would have to think about the fact that either something was wrong with her only son or something was wrong with her only biscuits 'n'
gravy recipe.
It would be hard for her to decide which was worse.
CHAPTER 2
The Birds, the Bees & Mötley Crüe
Up in Link's room, everything was al wrong.
I mean, it always looked wrong because his mom hadn't let him change anything in it since third grade.
She said the wal paper had at least ten good years left in it, and every good Baptist knew that vanity was the Devil's business, anyway. The Star Wars border around his ceiling was stil there, Darth Vader peeling around the edges, right above the cross with Noah's ark and the animals marching over it. His basketbal trophies, going al the way back to elementary school, were lined up above his Field Day ribbons.
And in case there was any doubt, a church camp poster read: GOD WANTS YOU!
Only Link had changed YOU to YOUTUBE in pencil, light enough that his mom couldn't see it if she wasn't wearing her good reading glasses, the ones she saved for the packages wrapped in brown paper that Marian sent from the library. Link liked to hide the glasses because he said it made his life a whole lot easier if his mom could only see half of what he did. Since I had delivered some of those packages with Liv, and knew that Mrs. Lincoln was reading romance novels, I hoped she never found her glasses. And this from a woman who made us turn off the television if the animals got too frisky on the Discovery Channel.
Link's CDs were in a box under his bed, next to his comic book col ection and some back issues of Hot Rod magazine. But tonight even his favorite comic, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and his favorite CD, The Best of Heavy Metal Power Ballads, couldn't distract the most distractible guy in town.
Al he could think about was his mom's gravy and how it had smel ed like roadkil on a plate. It was time to pul out the big guns. The one girl who could keep his mind off anything—except her.
Ridley. His candy-striped pink and blond bad girl with a heart of gold. Or, at least, gold plate. Not that Link would want it any other way. In his eyes—and in hers—she was perfect.
He thought about Lena's Claiming, which he had started thinking of as Hel Night. It had felt like someone tore a hole right through him when Ridley disappeared and he thought she was dead. And then like someone had duct-taped it closed again when he saw her alive just a few minutes later. She'd jumped into his arms and hugged him like she was a regular girl—for about two minutes. Those were an awesome two minutes, the best two minutes of his life.
But standing in front of the bathroom mirror now, Link knew something was different. He just couldn't nail down exactly what. His spiky blond hair was stil spiked, his lopsided grin stil lopsided, his blue eyes stil blue. But they looked darker somehow. Maybe his mom had switched lightbulbs again, to save energy, or the whales, or whatever her friends at the Daughters of the American Revolution decided they were going to save this week. Usual y his soul.