Emmaline shook her head, pushing Izabel across the threshold. “You can’t stay here. Not now.”
Izabel’s eyes went wild. “Gramma Katherine isn’t going to let me live there anymore. I have nowhere else to go.” She was sobbing uncontrollably. “Mamma, please help me. We can fight this together. I’m your daughter!”
“Not anymore.”
Delphine had been silent, but she couldn’t believe what her mother was saying. She couldn’t turn her sister away. “Mamma, it’s Izabel! We have to help her!”
Emmaline looked at Izabel, remembering the day she was born. The day Emmaline had silently chosen her child’s true name. She had imagined the moment she would share it with Izabel—staring into her daughter’s green eyes and tucking her black curls behind her ear as she whispered the name.
Emmaline stared into her daughter’s glowing yellow eyes, then turned away.
“Her name isn’t Izabel anymore. It’s Sarafine.”
The real world came into focus slowly. Lena was standing a few feet away, still holding the box. I could see it shaking in her hands, her eyes wet with tears. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling.
In the vision, Sarafine was just a girl whose fate was decided for her. There wasn’t a trace of the monster she was now. Was that how it happened? You opened your eyes and your whole life changed?
L? Are you okay?
Our eyes met, and for a second she didn’t answer. When she did, her voice was quiet in my mind.
She was just like me.
9.15
The City That Care Forgot
I looked down at my sneakers in the darkness. I could feel the moisture seeping through the canvas, then my socks, until my skin was numb with cold. I was standing in some kind of water. I could hear it moving, not so much rushing as rippling. Something brushed against my ankle and then moved away. A leaf. A twig.
A river.
I could smell the rot, mixed with mud. Maybe I was in the swamp near Wader’s Creek. The dark fringe in the distance could be swamp grass, and the tall forms, cypress trees. I reached up with one hand. Fluttering feathers, tickling long and light. Spanish moss. This was definitely the swamp.
I crouched low and felt the water with my hand. It felt thick and heavy. I scooped a handful and held it to my nose, letting it trickle through my fingers. I listened.
It didn’t sound right.
Despite everything I knew about pond rot and bacteria and larvae, I stuck one of my fingers in my mouth.
I knew the taste. I’d know it anywhere. Like sucking on the handful of coins I’d stolen from the fountain in Forsyth Park when I was nine.
It wasn’t water.
It was blood.
Then I heard the familiar whispering and felt the pressure of another body knocking into mine.
It was him again. The me who wasn’t me.
I’M WAITING.
I heard the words as I fell. I tried to respond, but when I opened my mouth, I began to choke on the river. So I thought the words, though I could barely even think.
What are you waiting for?
I felt myself sinking to the bottom. Only there was no bottom, and I kept falling and falling—
I woke up thrashing. I could still feel his hands around my neck, and the dizziness—the overwhelming feeling that the room was closing in on me. I tried to catch my breath, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. My sheets were smeared with blood, and my mouth still tasted like dirty pennies. I wadded up the top sheet and hid it under my bed. I’d have to throw it away. I couldn’t let Amma find a blood-soaked sheet in my hamper.
Lucille jumped onto the bed, her head cocked to one side. Siamese cats had a way of looking at you like they were disappointed. Lucille had it down.
“What are you staring at?” I pushed my sweaty hair out of my eyes, the salt from my sweat mixing with the salt from the blood.
I couldn’t make sense of the dreams, but I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep.
So I called the one person I knew who would be awake.
Link climbed through my window twenty minutes later. He hadn’t worked up the nerve to try Traveling yet, ripping through space and materializing wherever he wanted, but he was still pretty stealth.
“Man, what’s with all the salt?” A trail of white crystals fell from the windowsill as Link swung his leg over. He scratched his hands. “Is that supposed to hurt me or somethin’? ’Cause it’s really annoyin’.”
“Amma’s been crazier than usual.” An understatement. The last time I found this many bundles of herbs and tiny handmade dolls around, she was trying to keep Macon out of my room. I wondered who she was trying to keep out this time.
“Everyone’s crazier than usual. My mom started talkin’ about buildin’ a bunker again. She’s buyin’ up every can at the Stop & Steal, like we’re gonna hole up in the basement until the Devil gives up or somethin’.” He dropped into the swivel chair next to my desk. “I’m glad you called. I usually run outta stuff to do by one or two in the morning.”
“What do you do all night?” I’d never asked him before.
Link shrugged. “Read comics, watch movies on my computer, hang out in Savannah’s room. But tonight I sat around listenin’ to my mom on the phone with the pastor and Mrs. Snow all night.”
“Is your mom really upset about what happened to Savannah?”
Link shook his head. “Not as upset as she is about the lake dryin’ up. She’s been cryin’ and prayin’ and tyin’ up the phone lines tellin’ everyone it’s one a the seven signs. I’ll be in church all day after this.”
I thought about the dream and the bloody sheets. “What do you mean, the lake dried up?”
“Lake Moultrie. Dean Wilks went out there to go fishin’ this afternoon, and the lake was dry. He said it looked like a crater, and he walked right out to the middle.”
I grabbed a T-shirt. “Lakes don’t just dry up.” It was getting worse—the heat and bugs and crazy Caster power surges. And now this. What was next?
“I know, dude. But I can’t tell my mom that your girlfriend broke the whole universe.” He picked up an empty bottle of unsweetened tea that was sitting on my desk. “Since when do you drink tea? And where did you get the unsweet kind?”
He was right. I had been drinking my weight in chocolate milk since sixth grade. But over the last few months, everything seemed sweeter, and I could barely stand more than a sip of chocolate milk. “The Stop & Steal orders it for Mrs. Honeycutt because she’s diabetic. I just can’t drink anything too sweet. Something’s going on with my taste buds.”
“You’re not lyin’. First you’re eatin’ the sloppy joes at school, and now you’re drinkin’ tea. Maybe the lake dryin’ up isn’t that crazy.”
“It’s not a—”
Lucille jumped off the bed, and Link spun the chair toward the door. “Shh. Someone’s up.”
I listened, but I didn’t hear anything. “It’s probably my dad. He has a new project.”
Link shook his head. “No. It’s comin’ from downstairs. Amma’s awake.” Hybrid Incubus or not, his hearing was pretty impressive.
“Is she in the kitchen?”
Link held up his hand so I would be quiet. “Yeah, stuff’s rattlin’ around in there.” He paused for a minute. “Now she’s by the back door. I can hear that squeaky hinge on the screen door.” What squeaky hinge?
I rubbed the rest of the blood off my arm and climbed out of bed. The last time Amma left the house in the middle of the night, it was to meet Macon and talk about Lena and me. Were they meeting again?
“I need to see where she’s going.” I put on my jeans and grabbed my sneakers. I followed Link down the stairs, hitting every creaky board. He didn’t make a sound.
The kitchen lights were off, but I could see Amma standing by the curb in the moonlight. She was wearing her pale yellow church dress and white gloves. She was definitely headed for the swamp. Just like my dream.
“She’s going to Wader’s Creek.” I looked for the keys to the Volvo, in the dish on the counter. “We have to follow her.”
“We can take the Beater.”
“We have to drive with the headlights off. It’s harder than you think.”
“Dude, I practically have X-ray vision. Let’s roll.”
We waited for the 1950s Studebaker to pull up to the curb, like I knew it would. Sure enough, five minutes later, Carlton Eaton’s truck drove down Cotton Bend.
“Why is Mr. Eaton pickin’ up Amma?” Link let the Beater roll in neutral before he turned the ignition.
“He drives her out to Wader’s Creek in the middle of the night sometimes. That’s all I know. Maybe she bakes him pies or something.”
“That’s the only thing I miss eatin’. Amma’s pie.”
Link wasn’t joking about not needing headlights. He left a few car lengths between the Beater and the pickup, but it wasn’t because he was concentrating on the road. He spent most of the ride complaining about Ridley, who he couldn’t seem to stop talking about, or playing me songs from his band’s new demo. The Holy Rollers sounded as bad as ever, but even way out here, the hum of the lubbers drowned them out. I couldn’t stand the hum.
The Holy Rollers hadn’t finished their fourth song when the truck reached the unmarked path that led to Wader’s Creek. It was the spot where Mr. Eaton had dropped Amma off the last time I had followed them. But tonight the truck didn’t stop.
“Dude, where’s he goin’?”
I had no idea, but it didn’t take long to figure it out.
Carlton Eaton’s truck practically coasted onto the mile-wide stretch of dust that had served as a parking lot only a few months before. The dusty expanse backed up to an enormous field, probably as dead and scorched as the grass in the rest of the county. But even without the heat wave, the grass here wouldn’t have recovered yet—from the carts and tent poles, cigarette butts, and the weight of the metal structures that had left black scars in the earth.
“The fairgrounds? Why’s he bringin’ Amma here?” Link pulled over near a clump of dead bushes.
“Why do you think?” There was only one thing out here now that the fair was gone. An Outer Door to the Caster Tunnels.
“I don’t get it. Why would Mr. Eaton take Amma into the Tunnels?”
“I don’t know.”
Mr. Eaton killed the engine and walked around to the passenger side to open the door for Amma. She swatted at him as he tried to help her down. He should’ve known better. Amma was barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds, but there was nothing frail about her. She followed him toward the field and the Outer Door, her white gloves glowing in the darkness.
I opened the door to the Beater as quietly as I could. “Hurry up, or we’ll lose them.”
“Are you kiddin’? I can hear them yappin’ all the way from here.”
“Seriously?” I knew Link had powers, but I guess I didn’t expect them to be so powerful.