Did you forget I can hear you?
I raised an eyebrow. There she was again. Back in my mind, twice in one day, as if she’d never left. One minute she was barely speaking to me, and the next she acted like nothing had changed between us at all. I knew we should talk about it, but I didn’t want to fight anymore.
Not like there’d be anything forgettable about you in a bikini, L.
She leaned closer, pulling my faded shirt over my head. I could feel a few stray curls of her hair brushing against my shoulders. She slid her arm around my neck and pulled me closer. Face to face, I could see the sun glinting gold in her eyes. I didn’t remember them looking so gold.
She tossed my shirt in my face and took off running for the water, laughing like a little kid as she jumped into the lake, still wearing her clothes. I hadn’t seen her laugh or joke around in months. It was like I had her back for an afternoon, even if I didn’t know why. I pushed it out of my mind and chased her, running into the water and across the shallow edge of the lake.
“Stop it!” Lena splashed me, and I splashed her back. Her clothes were dripping, and my shorts were dripping, but it felt good to be out in the sun. In the distance, Link was swimming out to the dock. We were really alone.
“L, wait up.” She smiled over her shoulder and dove under the water.
“You’re not getting away that easy.” I grabbed her leg before it disappeared and yanked her toward me. She laughed and kicked, twisting until I fell into the water next to her.
“I think I felt a fish,” she squealed.
I pulled her waist into mine. We were face to face, nothing but sun, and water, and the two of us. There was no avoiding each other now.
“I don’t want you to leave. I want things to be like they were. Can’t we go back, you know, to how it used to—”
Lena reached out and touched my lips with her hand. “Shh.” Warmth spread from the tip of her finger down across my shoulders and into my body. I had almost forgotten that feeling, the heat and the electricity. She moved her hands down my arms and clenched them behind my back, laying her head against my chest. It felt like steam was rising off my skin, prickling where she touched me. I hadn’t been this close to her in weeks. I inhaled deeply. Lemons and rosemary… and something else. Something different.
I love you, L.
I know.
Lena lifted her face to mine, and I kissed her. Within seconds, she disappeared into my arms, in a way she hadn’t in months. The kiss began to move us involuntarily, as if we were under some kind of Cast all our own. I picked her up and lifted her out of the water, her legs dangling over my arms, the water pouring off us. I carried her back to the towel, and we were rolling in the dirty sand. Our warmth turned into fire. I knew we were out of control, and we had to stop.
L.
Lena gasped under the weight of my body, and we rolled again. I tried to catch my breath. She threw her head back and laughed, and a chill ran up my back. I remembered that laugh, straight out of my dream. It was Sarafine’s laugh. Lena sounded exactly like her.
Lena.
Was I imagining it? Before I could make sense of it, she was on top of me and I couldn’t think about anything else. I was lost in seconds, tangled up in her. My chest tightened, and I felt my breath growing short. I knew if we didn’t stop soon, I’d end up in the emergency room, or worse.
Lena!
I felt a searing pain cut through my lip. I pushed her off and rolled over, stunned. Lena slid away from me in the dirt, backing onto her heels. Her eyes were glowing, gold and huge. Barely a trace of green. She was breathing hard. I doubled over, trying to catch my breath. Every raw nerve in my body had been lit on fire, one match at a time. Lena raised her head, and I could hardly see her face through the wild mess of dirt and hair. Just the strange golden glow.
“Get away from me.” She spoke slowly, as if each word was coming from a deep, untouchable place within her.
Link was out of the water, rubbing a towel on his spiky hair. He looked ridiculous in the same plastic goggles his mom made him wear when we were little. “Did I miss somethin’?”
I touched my lip, wincing, and looked at my fingers. Blood.
Lena rose to her feet, backing away from us.
I could have killed you.
She turned and bolted into the trees.
“Lena!” I took off after her.
Running through the South Carolina woods barefoot is not something I recommend. We’d been in a drought, and the shoreline around the lake was littered with dry cypress needles, which bit into my feet like a thousand tiny knives. But I kept running. I could hear Lena more than see her, as she crashed through the trees in front of me.
Get away from me!
A heavy pine branch splintered and cracked without warning, smashing across the trail a few feet in front of me. I could already hear another branch groaning ahead.
L, are you crazy?
Branches were falling around me, missing me by inches. Far enough away so they didn’t hit me, but close enough to make a point.
Stop it!
Don’t follow me, Ethan! Leave me alone!
As the gap between us widened, I sped up. Tree trunks and scrub brush flashed past me. Lena was swerving around the trees, not following any distinct path. She was heading for the highway.
Another tree fell in front of me, catching horizontally on the trunks of the trees on either side of me. I was momentarily trapped. There was an osprey nest upside down in the broken tree. Something Lena, in her right mind, would never have dreamed of hurting. I touched the twigs, checking for broken eggs.
I heard the sound of a motorcycle, and my stomach caved in on itself. I shoved my way under the branches. My face was scratched and bloody, but I made it out to the highway in time to see Lena climb on the back of a Harley.
What are you doing, L?
She looked back at me for a second. Then she disappeared down the highway, black hair flying behind her.
Getting away from here.
Her pale arms were clinging to the biker from the Jackson High parking lot, the tire slasher.
The motorcycle. I finally remembered. It had been in one of Lena’s graveyard pictures, the one that vanished from her wall right after I asked about it.
She wouldn’t jump on the back of some random guy’s bike.
Not unless she knew him.
Right then, I didn’t know which was worse.
6.12
Caster Boy
Link and I didn’t talk much on the way back from the lake. We had to take Lena’s car, but I was in no shape to drive. My feet were cut up, and I had messed up my ankle trying to climb over that last tree.
Link didn’t mind. He was enjoying his turn behind the wheel of the Fastback. “Man, this thing can haul. Pony power, Baby.” Link’s usual worship of the Fastback was annoying today. My head was spinning and I didn’t want to hear about Lena’s car for the hundredth time.
“Then speed it up, man. We have to find her. She’s hitchhiking on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.” I couldn’t tell him the odds were she knew the guy. When had she taken that picture of the Harley in the graveyard? I punched the door in frustration.
Link didn’t state the obvious. Lena ran away from me. It was pretty clear she didn’t want to be found. He just drove, and I stared out the window of the passenger’s seat as the hot wind stung the hundreds of tiny cuts on my face.
Something had been wrong for a while now. I just didn’t want to face it. I wasn’t sure if it was something that had been done to us, I had done to her, or she had done to me. Maybe it was something she was doing to herself. Her birthday was when it all started, her birthday and Macon’s death. I wondered if it was Sarafine.
All this time, I’d been thinking this was about those stupid stages of grief. I thought about the gold in her eyes and the laugh from the dream. What if this was about different kinds of stages, stages of something else? Something supernatural? Something Dark?
/> What if this was what we’d been afraid of all along?
I hit the door again.
“I’m sure Lena’s okay. She probably needs some space. Girls are always talkin’ about needin’ space.” Link turned on the radio, then turned it off again. “Killer stereo.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, we should go by the Dar-ee Keen and see if Charlotte’s workin’. Maybe she can hook us up. Especially if we show up in this sweet ride.” Link was trying to distract me, but it wasn’t going to happen.
“Like there’s a person in town who doesn’t know whose car this is? We should drop it off, anyway. Aunt Del will be worried.” It would also give me an excuse to see if the Harley was at Lena’s house.
Link persisted. “You’re goin’ to show up with Lena’s car without Lena? Like that won’t worry Aunt Del? Let’s stop and get a freeze and figure this out. Who knows, maybe Lena’s at the Dar-ee Keen. It’s right off the highway.”
He was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better. It made me feel worse. “If you like the Dar-ee Keen so much, you should have gotten a job there. Oh wait, you couldn’t, because you’ll be in summer school dissecting frogs with the other Lifers who failed bio.” Lifers were the super seniors, the ones who always seemed to be at school and yet somehow never graduated. The guys who wore their letterman jackets years later, when they were working at the Stop & Steal.
“You should talk. Could you have a lamer summer job? The library?”
“I could hook you up with a book, but you’d have to learn to read.”
Link was baffled by my summer plans to work at the library with Marian, but I didn’t mind. I was still full of questions about Lena, her family, and Light and Dark Casters. Why didn’t Lena have to Claim herself on her sixteenth birthday? It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you could get out of. Could she really choose to be Light or Dark? Was it that easy? Since The Book of Moons was destroyed in the fire, the Lunae Libri was the only place that might have the answers.
Then there were the other questions. I tried not to think about my mother. I tried not to think about strangers on motorcycles and nightmares and bloody lips and golden eyes. Instead, I stared out the window and watched the trees pass by in a blur.
The Dar-ee Keen was packed. Not a big surprise, since it was one of the only places within walking distance of Jackson High. In the summer, you could pretty much follow the trail of flies and you would eventually find your way here. Formerly the Dairy King, the place had gotten a new name after the Gentrys bought it but didn’t want to fork up the money to pay to put all new letters on the sign. Today everyone looked even sweatier and more pissed off than usual. Walking a mile in the South Carolina heat and missing the first day of hooking up and drinking warm beer at the lake wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. It was like canceling a national holiday.
Emily, Savannah, and Eden were hanging out at the good table in the corner with the basketball team. They were barefoot, in their bikini tops and supershort jean skirts—the kind with one button left open, offering up a powerful flash of bikini bottoms without ever completely falling off. Nobody was in a very good mood. There wasn’t a tire left in Gatlin, so half the cars were still sitting in the school parking lot. All the same, there was plenty of loud giggling and hair flipping. Emily was spilling out of her string bikini top, and Emory, her latest victim, was loving it.
Link shook his head. “Man, those two wanna be the bride at the weddin’ and the corpse at the funeral.”
“Just so long as I’m not invited to either.”
“Dude. You need some sugar. I’m gonna get in line. You want somethin’?”
“No, thanks. You need some money?” Link never had any money.
“Naw, I’m gonna get Charlotte to hook me up.”
Link could talk his way into and out of almost anything. I pushed my way through the crowd, as far away from Emily and Savannah as I could get. I slumped down at the bad corner table, beneath the shelves of soda cans and bottles from around the country. Some of the sodas had been there since my dad was little, and you could see the different levels of brown and orange and red syrup, disappearing to the bottom of the bottles from years of evaporation. It was pretty disgusting, I guess, that and the fifties soda bottle wallpaper and the flies. After a while, you didn’t even notice it anymore.
I sat down and looked at the disappearing dark syrup, my mood in a bottle. What happened to Lena back at the lake? One minute we were kissing, the next she was running away from me. All that gold in her eyes. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what it meant. Light Casters had green eyes. Dark Casters had gold. Lena’s weren’t completely gold, but what I’d seen at the lake was enough to make me wonder.
A fly landed on the shiny red table, and I stared at it. I recognized the familiar churning in my stomach. Dread and panic, all turning into a dull anger. I was so mad at Lena, I wanted to kick out the glass window next to our booth. But at the same time, I wanted to know what was going on and who that guy on the Harley was. Then I’d have to kick his ass.
Link slid into the booth across from me with the biggest freeze I’d ever seen. The ice cream rose about four inches above where the plastic cup ended. “Charlotte has some real potential.” Link licked the straw.
Even the sugary smell of the freeze was making me sick. I felt like the sweat and the grease and the flies and the Emorys and Emilys were closing in on me.
“Lena’s not here. We should go.” I couldn’t sit around like everything was normal. Link, on the other hand, could. Rain or shine.
“Chillax. I’ll suck it down in five.”
Eden walked by on her way to refill her Diet Coke. She smiled down at us, as fake as ever. “What a cute couple. See, Ethan, you didn’t need to be wastin’ time with that lil’ tire slasher window basher. You and Link, y’all lovebirds were meant for each other.”
“She didn’t slash your tires, Eden.” I knew how this was going to look for Lena. I had to shut them down before their mothers got involved.
“Yeah. I did,” Link said, his mouth full of ice cream. “Lena’s just bummed she didn’t think of it first.” He could never resist the chance to harass the cheer squad. To them, Lena was an old joke that wasn’t funny anymore but nobody could drop. That was the thing about small towns. No one ever changed their opinion of you, even if you changed. As far as they were concerned, even when Lena was a great-grandmother, she would still be the crazy girl who busted out the window in English class. Considering most of our English class would still be living in Gatlin.
Not me. Not if things were going to stay like this. It was the first time I had really thought about leaving since Lena came to Gatlin. The box of college brochures under my bed had stayed under my bed until now. As long as I had Lena, I wasn’t counting the days until I could get out of Gatlin.
“Hell-o. Who is that?” Eden’s voice was a little too loud.
I heard the bell on the door of the Dar-ee Keen chime as it closed. It was like some kind of Clint Eastwood movie, where the hero steps into the saloon after he’s just shot up the whole town. The neck of every girl sitting near us snapped toward the door, greasy blond ponytails flying.
“I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out,” Emily purred, coming up behind Eden.
“I’ve never seen him before. Have you?” I could see Savannah filing through the yearbook in her mind.
“No way. I’d remember him.” Poor guy. Emily had him in her crosshairs, target locked and loaded. He didn’t stand a chance, whoever he was. I turned around to get a look at the guy Earl and Emory would be kicking the crap out of when they realized their girlfriends were drooling over him.
He was standing in the doorway in a faded black T-shirt, jeans, and scuffed black army boots. I couldn’t see the scuffs from where I was sitting, but I knew they were there. Because he was wearing exactly the same thing the last time I saw him, when he ripped out of Macon’s funeral.
It was the stranger, the Incubus who wasn?
??t an Incubus. The sunlight Incubus. I remembered the silver sparrow in Lena’s hand when she was sleeping in my bed.
What was he doing here?
A black tattoo wound around his arm, sort of tribal-looking, like something I’d seen before. I felt a knife in my gut, and touched my scar. It was throbbing.
Savannah and Emily walked up to the counter, trying to act like they were going to order something, as if they touched anything here other than Diet Coke.
“Who is that?” Link wasn’t one for competition, not that he was in the running these days.
“I don’t know, but he showed up at Macon’s funeral.”
Link was staring at him. “Is he one of Lena’s weird relatives?”
“I don’t know what he is, but he isn’t related to Lena.” Then again, he did come to the funeral to pay his respects to Macon. Still, there was something wrong about him. I’d sensed it since the first time I saw him.
I heard the bell chime again as the door closed.
“Hey, Angel Face, wait up.”
I froze. I would have known that voice anywhere. Link was staring at the door, too. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, or worse.…
Ridley.
Lena’s Dark Caster of a cousin was as dangerous and hot and barely dressed as always, except now it was summer, so she had on even less than usual. She was wearing a skin-tight, lacy black tank and a black skirt so small it was probably made for a ten-year-old. Ridley’s legs looked longer than ever, balancing on some kind of high, spiky sandals that could stake a vampire. Now the girls weren’t the only ones with their mouths hanging open. Most of the school had been at the winter formal, when Ridley brought down the house and still managed to look hotter than any girl there except one.
Ridley leaned back and stretched her arms over her head, as if we’d woken her from a long nap. She laced her fingers together, stretching even higher, revealing even more skin and the black tattoo encircling her navel. Her tattoo looked a lot like the one on her friend’s arm. Ridley whispered something in his ear.