Eighteen Moons, eighteen Sheers,
Feeding off your deepest fears,
Vexed to find as Darkness nears,
Secret eyes and hidden ears…
“Ethan?” I opened my eyes to see Marian looming over me.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s never nothing. Not with you, EW.” She smiled a little sadly at me.
“I heard the song.” I was still tapping my fingers against the sides of my jeans, the melody stuck in my head.
“Your Shadowing Song?”
I nodded.
“And?”
I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn’t see how I was going to get out of it, and I couldn’t manage to make up another version in the space of three seconds. “Nothing good. The usual. A Sheer, a Vex, secrets and darkness.”
I tried not to feel anything, not the lurching in my stomach or the chill spreading through my body while I said it. My mom was trying to tell me something. And if she was sending the song, it meant it was something important. And dangerous.
“Ethan. This is serious.”
“Everything’s serious, Aunt Marian. It’s hard to figure out what I’m supposed to do.”
“Talk to me.”
“I will, but right now I don’t even know what to tell you.” I stood up to leave. I shouldn’t have said anything. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, and the more Marian pushed, the faster I wanted to get away. “I’d better get going.”
She followed me to the door of the archive. “Don’t be gone so long this time, Ethan. I’ve missed you.”
I smiled and hugged her, looking over her shoulder into the Gatlin County Library—and almost jumped out of my skin.
“What happened?”
Marian looked as surprised as I did. The library was a catastrophic, floor-to-ceiling disaster. It looked like a tornado had struck while we were in the archive. Stacks were leveled, and books were thrown open everywhere, along the tabletops, the checkout counter, even the floor. I’d only seen something like this once before, last Christmas, when every book in the library opened to a quote that had to do with Lena and me.
“This is worse than last time,” Marian said quietly. We were thinking the same thing. It was a message meant for me. Just as it had been then.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well. There we go. Are you feeling Vexed yet?” Marian reached for a book sitting on top of the card catalog. “Because I certainly am.”
“I’m starting to.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “Wish I knew the Cast for reshelving books without actually having to pick them all up.”
Marian bent and handed me the first. “Emily Dickinson.”
I opened it as slowly as a person can open a book, and found a random page.
“ ‘Much Madness is divinest Sense…’ ”
“Madness. Great.” What did it mean? And, more important, what did it mean for me? I looked at Marian. “What do you think?”
“I think the Disorder of Things has finally reached my stacks. Go on.” She opened another book and handed it to me. “Leonardo da Vinci.”
Great. Another famous crazy person. I handed it back to her. “You do it.”
“ ‘While I thought that I was learning how to live, I’ve been learning how to die.’ ” She closed the book softly.
“Madness and now death. Things are looking up.”
She put one hand around my neck and let the book slide from her other. I’m here with you. That’s what her hands said. My hands didn’t say anything except that I was terrified, which I was pretty sure she could tell from how hard they were shaking. “We’ll take turns. One reads while the other cleans.”
“I call cleaning.”
Marian gave me a look, handing me another book. “You’re calling the shots in my library now?”
“No, ma’am. That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly.” I looked down at the title. “Oh, come on.” Edgar Allan Poe. He was so dark he’d make the other two look cheerful in comparison. “Whatever he has to say, I don’t want to know.”
“Open it.”
“ ‘Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before…’ ”
I snapped the book shut. “I get it. I’m losing it. I’m going crazy. This whole town is cracked. The universe is one big nuthouse.”
“You know what Leonard Cohen says about cracks, Ethan?”
“No, I don’t. But I get the feeling I could open a few more books in this library and tell you.”
“ ‘There is a crack in everything.’ ”
“That’s helpful.”
“It is, actually.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “ ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ ”
She was pretty much exactly right—or at least the Leonard Cohen guy was. I felt happy and sad at the same time, and I didn’t know what to say. So I dropped to my knees on the carpet and started stacking books.
“Better get going on this mess.”
Marian understood. “Never thought I’d hear you say that, EW.” She was right. The universe really must be cracked, and me right along with it.
I hoped somehow the light was finding a way in.
9.19
The Devil You Know
I was dreaming. Not in a dream—so real I could feel the wind as I fell, or smell the metallic stench of blood in the Santee—but actually dreaming. I watched as whole scenes played out in my mind, only something was wrong. The dream felt wrong—or didn’t, because I couldn’t feel anything. I might as well have been sitting on the curb watching everything as it passed by….
The night Sarafine had called the Seventeenth Moon.
The moon splitting in the sky above Lena, its two halves forming the wings of a butterfly—one green, one gold.
John Breed on his Harley, Lena’s arms wrapped around him.
Macon’s empty grave in the cemetery.
Ridley holding a black bundle, light escaping from beneath the fabric.
The Arclight resting on the muddy ground.
A single silver button, lost in the front seat of the Beater, one night in the rain.
The images floated on the periphery of my mind, just out of reach. The dream was soothing. Maybe my every subconscious thought wasn’t a prophecy, a warped piece of the puzzle that would form my destiny as a Wayward. Maybe that was the dream. I relaxed into the gentle tug-of-war as I drifted on the edge of sleep and wakefulness. My mind groped for more concrete thoughts, trying to sift through the haze the way Amma sifted flour for a cake. Again and again, I kept coming back to the image of the Arclight.
The Arclight in my hands.
The Arclight in the grave.
The Arclight and Macon, in the sea cave at the Great Barrier.
Macon turning to look at me. “Ethan, this isn’t a dream. Wake up. Now!”
Then Macon caught fire and my mind seized up and I couldn’t see anything, because the pain was so intense I couldn’t think or dream anymore.
A shrill sound cut through the rhythmic buzz of the lubbers outside my window. I bolted upright, and the sound intensified as I fought myself awake.
It was Lucille. She was on my bed hissing, the hair on her arched back standing up in a stiff line. Her ears were flattened against her head, and for a second I thought she was hissing at me. I followed her eyes across my room, through the darkness. There was someone standing at the foot of my bed. The polished handle of his cane caught the light.
My mind hadn’t been groping for concrete thoughts.
Abraham Ravenwood had.
“Holy crap!”
I scrambled backward, slamming into the wooden headboard behind me. There was nowhere to go, but all I wanted to do was get away. Instinct took over—fight or flight. And there was no way I was going to try to fight Abraham Ravenwood.
“Get out. Now.” I pressed my hands against my temples, as if he could still reach me through the dull ache in my head.
He watched me intently, measuring my reactions. “Evening, boy. I see, like my grandson, you haven’t learned your place yet.” Abraham shook his head. “Little Macon Ravenwood. Always such a disappointing child.” Involuntarily, my hands slid into fists. Abraham looked amused and flicked his finger.
I dropped to the floor in front of him, gasping. My face smashed against rough floorboards, and all I could see were his cracked leather boots. I struggled to raise my head.
“That’s better.” Abraham smiled, his white beard framing even whiter canines. He looked different from the last time I’d seen him, at the Great Barrier. His white Sunday suit was gone, replaced by a darker, more imposing one, his signature black string tie fastened neatly under his shirt collar. The illusion of the friendly Southern gentleman was gone. This thing standing in front of me was nothing like a man, and even less like Macon. Abraham Ravenwood, father of every Ravenwood Incubus who came after, was a monster.
“I wouldn’t say monster. But then, I don’t see as how it matters much what you think of me, boy.”
Lucille hissed more loudly.
I tried to push myself up from the floor and keep my voice from shaking. “What the hell were you doing in my head?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Ah, you sensed me feeding. Not bad for a Mortal.” He leaned forward. “Tell me, what does it feel like? I’ve always wondered. Is it more like a blade or a bite? When I cut loose the thoughts you hold most dear? Your secrets and your dreams?”
I staggered to my feet slowly, but I could barely carry my own weight. “It feels like you should stay out of my mind, Psycho.”
Abraham laughed. “I would be happy to. There’s not much to see in there. Seventeen years and you’ve barely lived. Aside from a few meaningless trysts with trifling Caster trash.”
I flinched. I wanted to grab him by the collar and hurl him out my window. Which I would’ve, if I could have moved my arms.
“Yeah? If my brain’s so useless, why are you creeping into my room fishing around in it?” My whole body was shaking. I could talk a good game, but I was concentrating on trying not to pass out in front of the most powerful Incubus any of us had ever known.
Abraham walked over to the window and ran his finger along the ledge and the trail of salt Amma had dutifully left there. He licked the crystals off his finger. “I can never get enough salt. Gives the blood a savory note.” He paused, looking out my window at the scorched lawn. “But I do have a question for you. Something of mine has been taken from me. And I think you know where to find it.”
He flicked his finger against the window, and the glass shattered in the panes.
I took a slow step toward him. It was like dragging my feet through cement. “What makes you think I’d tell you anything?”
“Let’s see. Fear, for starters. Take a look.” He leaned out the window, looking down into my front yard. “Hunting and his dogs didn’t come all this way for nothing. They love a midnight snack.”
My heart pounded in my ears. They were outside—Hunting and his Blood Pack.