“You don’t understand what you are yet, do you? Are you hearing the call? The voices?” He looked into the flames. “I can see you’ve already found your gift.”
“It’s not a gift. It’s a curse.”
His head snapped back in her direction, and she could see his black eyes. “Now, who’s been telling you that? Casters, I imagine.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t surprise me. Casters are liars, only one step removed from Mortals. But not you. A Cataclyst is the most powerful Caster in our world, and born from the Dark Fire. Too powerful to be considered a Caster at all, the way I see it.”
Was it possible? Could she possess the most powerful gift in the Caster world? Part of her yearned for it to be true—to be special, rather than cast aside. A part of her that wanted to give in to the urges.
To burn everything in her path.
To make all the people who had hurt her pay.
No!
She forced the thoughts from her mind. John. She focused on John and his beautiful green eyes.
Sarafine was shaking. “I don’t want to be Dark.”
“Too late for that. You can’t fight what you are.” Abraham laughed, a sinister sound. “Now let’s see those pretty yellow eyes of yours.”
Abraham had been right. Sarafine couldn’t fight what she was, but she could hide it. She had no other choice. She was two souls, battling for the same body. Right and wrong. Good and evil. Light and Dark.
John was the only thing that tethered her to the Light. She loved him, although sometimes that love was starting to feel more like a memory. Something far away she could see but never reach.
Still, she reached.
The memory was easiest to see when they were lying in bed, tangled up in each other.
“Do you know how much I love you?” John whispered, his lips barely grazing her ear.
Sarafine moved closer, as if his warmth could somehow soak into her cold skin and change her from the outside in. “How much?”
“More than anything or anyone. More than myself.”
“I feel the same way.” Liar. She could hear the voice even now.
John leaned down until their foreheads were touching. “I’m never going to feel this way about anyone else. It will always be you.” His voice was low and raspy. “You’re eighteen now. Marry me.”
Sarafine could hear another voice in the back of her mind, a voice that came into her thoughts and dreams late at night. Abraham. You think you love him, but you don’t. You can’t love someone who doesn’t know who you are. You’re not really a Caster; you’re one of us.
“Izabel?” John was staring back at her, searching in her eyes for the girl he’d fallen in love with. A girl who was being consumed little by little.
How much of her was left?
“Yes.” Sarafine wrapped her arms around John’s neck, tethering herself once more. “I’ll marry you.”
Lena opened her eyes. She was lying on the dirty concrete floor next to me, the toes of our sneakers almost touching. “Oh my God, Ethan. It started when she met Abraham.”
“Your mom was already going Dark.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe she could have fought it, like Uncle Macon.”
I knew how badly Lena wanted to believe there was some good in her mother. That she wasn’t destined to be the murderous monster we both knew.
Maybe.
We stood up as Marian turned the corner. “It’s getting late. As much as I’ve missed having you lounge around on the floor, I really need you to leave. This isn’t pleasant business, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Council is paying me a visit.”
“The Council?” I wasn’t sure which one she was talking about.
“The Council of the Far Keep.”
Lena nodded, and smiled sympathetically. “Uncle Macon told me. Is there anything we can do? Write letters or sign a petition? Hand out flyers?”
Marian smiled, looking tired. “No. They’re just doing their job.”
“Which is?”
“Making sure the rest of us follow the rules. I think this falls into the category of taking one’s lumps. I am prepared to take responsibility for anything I’ve done. But nothing more. ‘The price of greatness is responsibility.’ ” She looked at me expectantly.
“Um, Plato?” I guessed hopefully.
“Winston Churchill.” She sighed. “That’s all they can ask of me, and all I can ask of myself. Now it’s time for you to go.”
Now that Mrs. English and my dad were gone, I noticed that Marian was dressed in clothes that were very un-Marian. Instead of a brightly colored dress, she was wearing a black robe over a black dress. As if she was going to a funeral. Which was just about the last place I was going to let Marian go without me.
“We’re not going anywhere.”
She shook her head. “Except home.”
“No.”
“Ethan, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“When Lena and I were the ones in front of the firing squad, you walked right into the line of fire—you and Macon. There’s no way I’m going anywhere.”
Lena dropped down into one of the few remaining chairs and made herself comfortable. “Me neither.”
“You’re very kind, both of you. But I intend to keep you all out of this. I think it’s better for everyone.”
“Haven’t you noticed whenever someone says that, it’s never better for anyone, especially not the person saying it?” I looked at Lena.
Go get Macon. I’ll stay here with Marian. I don’t want her to go through this alone.
Lena was at the door, the lock unbolting itself, before Marian could say a word.
I’m on it.
I put my arm around Marian’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Isn’t this one of those times when we should pull out a book that magically tells us everything is going to be okay?”
She laughed, and for a second she sounded like the old Marian, the Marian who wasn’t on trial for things she didn’t do, who wasn’t worrying about things she couldn’t help. “I don’t recall the books we’ve found lately saying anything of the sort.”
“Yeah. Let’s stay away from the Ps. No Edgar Allan Poe for you today.”
She smiled. “The Ps aren’t all bad. There is always, for example, Plato.” She patted my arm. ‘Courage is a kind of salvation,’ Ethan.” She rummaged in a box and pulled out a blackened book. “And you’ll be happy to know, Plato survived the Gatlin County Library’s own Great Burning.”
Things might be bad, but for the first time in weeks, I actually felt better.
10.09
Reckoning
We were sitting in the archive, in the flickering candlelight. The room was relatively undamaged, which was a miracle. The archive had been soaked, not burned—thanks to the automatic sprinklers in the ceiling. The three of us waited at the long table in the center of the room, having tea from a Thermos.
I stirred mine absentmindedly. “Shouldn’t the Council be visiting you in the Lunae Libri?”
Marian shook her head. “I’m not even sure if they want me back there. This is the only place they’ll speak to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Lena said.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I only hope—”
The cracking sound of lightning filled the room, then the rumble of thunder, and blinding flashes of light. Not the ripping sound of Traveling, but something new. The book appeared first.
The Caster Chronicles.
That was the name inscribed on the front. It landed on the table between us. The book was so massive that the table groaned under its weight.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Marian put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”
Three cloaked figures appeared, one after the next. The first, a tall man with a shaved head, held up his hand. The thunder and lightning stopped instantly. The second, a woman, flung a hood back over her shoulder to reveal an unnatural and overwhelming whiteness. White hair, white skin, and irises so white she appeared to be made of nothing at all. The last, a man the size of a linebacker, appeared between the table and my mother’s old desk, disrupting her papers and books in the process. He was holding a large brass hourglass. But it was empty. There wasn’t a single grain of sand inside.
The only thing the three of them had in common was what they had on. Each wore a heavy, hooded black robe and a strange pair of glasses, as if it was some kind of uniform.
I looked at the glasses more closely. They seemed to be made of gold, silver, and bronze, twisted together into one thick braid. The glass in the lenses was cut into facets, like the diamond in my mother’s engagement ring. I wondered how they could see.
“Salve, Marian of the Lunae Libri, Keeper of the Word, the Truth, and the World Without End.” I almost jumped out of my skin, because they spoke in perfect unison, as if they were one person. Lena grabbed my hand.
Marian stepped forward. “Salve, Great Council of the Far Keep. Council of the Wise, the Known, and That Which Cannot Be Known.”
“You know for what purpose we have come to this place?”
“Yes.”
“Have you anything to say other than that which we know?”
Marian shook her head. “I do not.”
“You admit to taking action inside the Order of Things, in violation of your sacred oath?”
“I allowed one who was in my charge to do so, yes.”
I wanted to explain, but between the perfectly hollow sound of their choral voices and the white eyes of the woman, I could barely breathe.
“Where is the one?”
Marian pulled her own robe tighter around her body. “She isn’t here. I sent her away.”
“Why?”
“To keep her from harm,” Marian answered.
“From us.” They said it without even the slightest hint of emotion.
“Yes.”
“You are wise, Marian of the Lunae Libri.”
Marian didn’t look as wise right now. She looked terrified. “I have read about The Caster Chronicles— the stories and records of the Casters you keep. And I know what you’ve done to Mortals who have transgressed as she has. And to Casters.”
They studied Marian like an insect under glass. “You care for this one? The Keeper who is not to be? A girl child?”
“Yes. She is like a daughter to me. And she is not for you to judge.”
The voices rose. “You do not speak to us of our powers. We speak to you of yours.”
Then I heard another voice, one I had heard so many times before when I’d felt this helpless. “Now, gentlemen, madam, that’s not the way we speak to ladies of good report here in the South.” Macon was standing behind us, with Boo Radley at his feet. “I’m going to have to ask you to conduct yourselves with a little more respect for Dr. Ashcroft. She is a beloved Keeper of this community. Beloved by many, who possess great power in the Caster and Incubus worlds alike.”
Macon was impeccably dressed. I was pretty sure he was in the same suit he wore to the Disciplinary Committee Meeting, when he showed up to rescue Lena from Mrs. Lincoln and her lynch mob.