Beautiful Chaos (25 page)

“It sleeps for three years? Well, conchashima, Grace. I sure as sin know that one, and I ain’t tellin’ ya the answer.”
Conchashima
was Aunt Mercy’s made-up curse word, which she saved for occasions when she really wanted to irritate one of her sisters, since she refused to tell them what it meant. I was pretty sure she didn’t know either.

Aunt Grace sniffed. “Conchashima yourself, Mercy. What did all a Mercy’s husbands do when they were supposed ta be makin’ a livin’? That’s the answer they’re lookin’ for.”

“Now, Grace Ann, I think they’re really askin’ how long you slept through the sermon last Easter Sunday. Droolin’ under my good cabbage rose hat.”

“It said three years, not three hours. And if the good rev’rend didn’t like ta hear his own voice so much, maybe it’d be easier for the rest a us ta hear it. You know I can’t see anythin’ but feathers an’ flowers sittin’ behind Dot Jessup in that big old Easter bonnet, anyhow.”

“Snails.” They looked at Amma blankly. She untied her apron. “How long can a snail sleep? Three years. And how long are you girls going to make me wait to have my supper? And where on God’s green earth do you think you’re goin’, Ethan Wate?”

I froze at the door. There was no distracting Amma, ever.

True to form, Amma had no intention of letting me go out alone at night—not after Abraham and the fire at the library and Aunt Prue. She hauled me into the kitchen so fast you would’ve thought I’d sassed her.

“Don’t you think I don’t know when you’re full a blue mud.” She looked around the kitchen for the One-Eyed Menace, but I had beaten her to it and stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. She didn’t have a pencil either, so she was unarmed.

I made my move. “Amma, it’s nothing. I told Lena I’d have dinner with her family.” I wished I could tell her the truth, but I couldn’t. Not until I figured out what she was doing with that bokor in New Orleans.

She cocked a hip and let me have it. “On pulled pork night? My own three-time blue-ribbon-winnin’ Carolina Gold, and you’re expectin’ me to believe that claptrap?” She sniffed and shook her head. “You’d settle for a peacock patty on a gold plate over
my
pulled pork?” Amma didn’t think much of Kitchen’s cooking, and she had a point.

“No. I just forgot.” It was the truth, even though she had mentioned dinner this morning.

“Hmm.” She didn’t believe me. Which was understandable, considering that on a normal night this would be my idea of heaven.

“D. I. S. S. E. M. B. L. I. N. G. Eleven across. As in, you’re up to somethin’, Ethan Wate, and it’s not dinner.”

She was up to something, too. But I didn’t have a crossword for that.

I leaned down and put my arms around her. “I love you, Amma. You know that?” It was true.

“Oh, I know plenty. I know you’re about as far from the truth as Wesley’s mamma is from a bottle a whiskey, Ethan Wate.” She pushed me off, but I’d gotten to her. Amma, standing in this sweltering kitchen, scolding me whether I deserved it or not and whether she meant it or not.

“You don’t have to worry about me. You know I’ll always come home.”

She softened for a moment, putting her hand on my face, shaking her head. “That peach you’re peddlin’ sure smells sweet, but I’m still not buyin’ it.”

“Be back by eleven.” I grabbed the car keys off the counter and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Not a hair past ten or you’ll be givin’ Harlon James a bath tomorrow—and I mean all a them!” I backed out of the kitchen before she could stop me. And before she noticed I had taken the One-Eyed Menace with me.

“Check it out.” Link was hanging out the window of the Volvo, and the car started tilting in his direction. “Whoa.”

“Sit down.”

He flopped back down into his seat. “See those black ditches? It looks like someone set off napalm or shot a flamethrower all the way up the road, heading straight for Ravenwood. And then it stopped.”

Link was right. Even in the moonlight, I could see the deep grooves, at least four feet wide, on both sides of the dirt road. A few feet from the gates of Ravenwood, they disappeared.

Ravenwood was untouched, but the full scale of the attack on Lena’s house the night Abraham unleashed the Vexes must have been massive. She never said it was this bad, and I hadn’t asked. I was too worried about my own family, and my house, and my library. My town.

Now I was staring at the damage, and I hoped this was the worst of it. I pulled over to the side of the road, and we both got out. It was a given that pyrotechnics on this scale were worth a closer look.

Link squatted next to the black trail in front of the gate. “It’s thickest when you get up close to the house. Right before it disappears.”

I picked up a black branch, and it crumbled in my hand. “This isn’t what Aunt Prue’s house looked like. That was more like a tornado. This was some kind of fire, more like the library.”

“I don’t know, man. Maybe Vexes do different things to different—people, or whatever.”

“Casters are people.”

Link picked up another branch, inspecting it. “Yeah, yeah. We’re all people, right? All I know is, this thing is fried.”

“Do you think it was Sarafine? Fire is sort of her thing.” I
hated to consider it, but it was possible. Sarafine wasn’t dead. She was out there somewhere.

“Yeah, she’s hot, all right.” He noticed me staring at him like he was nuts. “What? I can’t call it like I see it?”

“Sarafine’s the Queen of Darkness, dumbass.”

“Seen a movie lately? The Queen a Darkness is always totally hot. Third Degree Burns.” He wiped the ash from the crumbling branch off his hands. “Let’s get outta here. Somethin’ around here is givin’ me a headache. You hear that buzzin’ sound, like a whole bunch a chainsaws or somethin’?”

The Binding Casts. He could feel them now.

I nodded, and we started the car. The rusty, crooked gates opened into the shadows, as if they were expecting us.

You here, L?

I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked up at the great house. I could see the windows, the splintering wood shutters overgrown with ivy, as if Lena’s room hadn’t changed at all. I knew it was an illusion, and from where Lena stood in her bedroom she could see me through the glass walls.

I’m trying to get Reece to stay upstairs with Ryan, but she’s being as cooperative as usual.

Link was looking up at the portico to the window opposite Lena’s.

What happened with Ridley?

I asked her if she wanted to come. I figured she’s going to notice everyone showing up. She said she would, but who knows? She’s been acting so weird lately.

If Ravenwood had a face, Lena’s room would be one blinking eye, and Ridley’s window, the other. The ramshackle shutters were open, though they hung unevenly, and the window behind them was filthy. Before I turned away, a shadow passed behind Ridley’s window. At least I thought it was a shadow; in the moonlight it was hard to tell.

I couldn’t see who it was. They were too far away. But the window began to rattle, harder and harder, until the shutter swung off its hinge and slid down beneath the window entirely. Like someone was trying really hard to yank it open, even if it meant bringing the whole house down. For a second, I thought it was an earthquake, but the ground wasn’t moving. Only the house was.

Weird.

Ethan?

“Did you see that?” I looked at Link, but he was staring up at the chimney now.

“Look. The bricks are fallin’,” he said.

The shudder grew stronger, and some kind of energy surged through the entire house. The front door shook.

Lena!

I took off running for the door. I could hear things crashing and breaking inside. I reached up and pushed on the lintel, the Caster carving hidden above the door. Nothing happened.

Hold on, Ethan. Something’s wrong.

Are you okay?

We’re fine. Uncle Macon thinks something is trying to get in.

From out here, it looked more like someone was trying to get out.

The door opened, and Lena pulled me inside. I felt the thick
curtain of power as I moved across the threshold. Link dove in after me, and the door slammed behind us. After what I had experienced outside, I was relieved to be in the house. Until I looked around.

By now I was used to the constantly changing interior of Ravenwood Manor. I had seen everything from historic plantation antiques to classic horror-movie Gothic in this room, but I was completely unprepared for this.

It was some sort of supernatural bunker, the Caster equivalent of Mrs. Lincoln’s cellar, where she stored supplies for everything from hurricanes to the apocalypse. The walls were covered in what looked like armor—sheets of dull silver metal from floor to ceiling, and the furniture was gone. Stacks of books and velvet armchairs had been replaced by huge plastic drums and cases of candles and scotch. There was a bag of dog food that was obviously for Boo, though I had never seen him eat anything but steaks.

A row of white jugs looked suspiciously like the supply of bleach Link’s mom kept around to “prevent infection from spreading.” I walked over and picked up one of the jugs. “What’s this? Some kind of Caster disinfectant?”

Lena took it out of my hand and lined it up next to the others. “Yeah, it’s called bleach.”

Link knocked on one of the plastic drums. “My mom would love this place. It would definitely score some points for your uncle. Forget about your thirty-six-hour pack and your seventy-two-hour pack. Those are for lightweights. This is some serious disaster prep. I’d say you’ve got enough for a good three weeks here. Except you don’t have a crowbar.”

I looked at him blankly. “A crowbar?”

“For diggin’ the bodies out a the rubble.”

“Bodies?” Mrs. Lincoln was crazier than I thought.

Link looked back at Lena. “And you guys don’t have any food.”

“That is where Casters differ, Mr. Lincoln.” Macon was standing in the doorway to the dining room, looking perfectly relaxed. “Kitchen is quite capable of supplying whatever we need. But it is important to be prepared. This afternoon is certainly evidence of that.”

He gestured toward the dining room, and we followed him in. The black claw-foot table was gone, replaced by a shiny aluminum one that looked like something from a medical research lab. Link and I must have been the last to arrive, because there were only two empty seats at the table.

If I ignored the weird lab table and sheet metal on the walls, it reminded me of the Gathering, when I met Lena’s family for the first time. Back when Ridley was still Dark and had tricked me into bringing her into Ravenwood. It seemed almost funny now. A world where Ridley was the biggest threat.

“Please, take a seat, Mr. Wate and Mr. Lincoln. We’re trying to determine the origin of the tremors.”

I slipped into one of the two empty chairs beside Lena, and Link took the other. Judging from the number of people around the table, I wasn’t the only one with something on my mind, but I didn’t say that. Not to Macon.

I know. It’s like he was expecting us. When I told him you were coming, he didn’t seem surprised. And everyone started showing up.

Marian leaned forward, into the pool of light that fell to the
table from the nearest candle. “What happened out there? We could feel it inside.”