by Kami Garcia
Lena and I sat in the middle of the circle of the books, moving from book to book, while my father banged on the door outside. I ignored him, just like he had been ignoring me. I wasn’t going to answer to him, or give him an explanation. Let him see how it felt for a change.
“3, 12, 1, 9, 13…”
“Ethan! What are you doin’ in there? What was all that racket?”
“25, 15, 21, 18, 19, 5, 12, 6.”
I looked at Lena, and held out the paper. I was already a step ahead. “I think—it’s meant for you.”
It was as clear as if my mom was standing in the study, telling us in her own words, with her own voice.
CLAIMYOURSELF
It was a message for Lena.
My mom was there, in some form, in some sense, in some universe. My mom was still my mom, even if she only lived in books and door locks and the smell of fried tomatoes and old paper.
She lived.
When I finally opened the door, my dad was standing there in his bathrobe. He stared past me, into the study, where the pages of his imaginary novel were scattered all over the floor and the painting of Ethan Carter Wate was resting against the sofa, uncovered.
“Ethan, I—”
“What? Were going to tell me that you’ve been locked in your study for months doing this?” I held up one of the crumpled pages in my hand.
He looked down at the floor. My dad may have been crazy, but he was still sane enough to know that I had figured out the truth. Lena sat down on the sofa, looking uncomfortable.
“Why? That’s all I want to know. Was there ever a book or were you just trying to avoid me?”
My dad raised his head slowly, his eyes tired and bloodshot. He looked old, like life had worn him down one disappointment at a time. “I just wanted to be close to her. When I’m in there, with her books and her things, it feels like she isn’t really gone. I can still smell her. Fried tomatoes…” His voice trailed off, as if he was lost in his own mind again and the rare moment of clarity was gone.
He walked past me, back into the study, and bent down to pick up one of the pages covered with circles. His hand was shaking. “I was tryin’ to write.” He looked over at my mom’s chair. “I just don’t know what to write anymore.”
It wasn’t about me. It had never been about me. It was about my mom. A few hours ago I had felt the same way in the library, sitting among her things, trying to feel her there with me. But now I knew she wasn’t gone, and everything was different. My dad didn’t know. She wasn’t unlocking doors for him and leaving him messages. He didn’t even have that.
The next week, on Christmas Eve, the weathered and warped cardboard town didn’t seem so small. The lopsided steeple stayed on the church, and the farmhouse even stood up by itself, if you set it just right. The white glitter glue sparkled and the same old piece of cotton snow secured the town, constant as time.
I lay on my stomach on the floor, with my head tucked under the lowest branches of the fat white pine, just as I always had. The blue-green needles scratched my neck as I carefully pushed a string of tiny white lights, one by one, into the circular holes in the back of the broken village. I sat back to take a look, the soft white light turning colors through the painted paper windows of the town. We never found the people, and the tin cars and animals were still gone. The town was empty, but for the first time it didn’t seem deserted, and I didn’t feel alone.
As I sat there, listening to Amma’s pencil scratching, and my dad’s scratchy old holiday record, something caught my eye. It was small and dark, and snagged in a fold, between layers of the cotton snow. It was a star, about the size of a penny, painted silver and gold, and surrounded by a twisted halo made of what looked like a paper clip. It was from the town’s pipe-cleaner Christmas tree, which we hadn’t been able to find in years. My mom had made it in school, as a little girl in Savannah.
I put it in my pocket. I’d give it to Lena next time I saw her, for her charm necklace, for safekeeping. So it didn’t get lost again. So I didn’t get lost again.
My mom would have liked that. Would like that. Just like she would have liked Lena—or maybe even, did.
Claim yourself.
The answer had been in front of us, all along. It was just locked away with all the books in my father’s study, stuck between the pages of my mother’s cookbook.
Snagged a little in the dusty snow.
1.12
Promise
There was something in the air. Usually, when you heard that, there wasn’t really something in the air. But the closer it got to Lena’s birthday, the more I had to wonder. When we came back from winter break, the halls had been tagged with spray paint, covering the lockers and walls. Only it wasn’t the usual graffiti; the words didn’t even look like English. You wouldn’t have thought they were words at all, unless you had seen The Book of Moons.
A week later, every window in our English classroom was busted out. Again, it could have been the wind, except there wasn’t even a breeze. How could the wind target a single classroom, anyway?
Now that I wasn’t playing basketball, I had to take P.E. for the rest of the year, by far the worst class at Jackson. After an hour of timed sprints and rope burn from climbing a knotted rope to the gym ceiling, I got back to my locker to find the door open and my papers scattered all over the hall. My backpack was gone. Though Link found it a few hours later, dumped in a trashcan outside the gym, I had learned my lesson. Jackson High was no place for The Book of Moons.
From then on, we kept the Book in my closet. I waited for Amma to discover it, to say something, to cover my room with salt, but she never did. I had pored over the old leather book, with and without Lena, using my mom’s battered Latin dictionary, for the past six weeks. Amma’s oven mitts helped me keep the burns to a minimum. There were hundreds of Casts, and only a few of them were in English. The rest were written in languages I couldn’t read, and the Caster language we couldn’t hope to decipher. As we grew more familiar with the pages, Lena grew more restless.
“Claim yourself. That doesn’t even mean anything.”
“Of course it does.”
“None of the chapters say anything about it. It’s not in any description of the Claiming in the Book.”
“We just have to keep looking. It’s not like we’re going to read it in the Cliff Notes.” The Book of Moons had to have the answer, if we could just find it. We couldn’t think about anything else, except the fact that a month from now we could lose it all.
At night, we stayed up late talking, from our respective beds, because even now, every night seemed closer to the night that could be our last.
What are you thinking, L?
Do you really want to know?
I always want to know.
Did I? I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green line connecting all the places I had read about. There they were, all the cities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker and pins. In six months, a lot had changed. There was no thin green line that could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.
But now, her voice was small, and I had to strain to hear her.
There’s a part of me that wishes we’d never met.
You’re kidding, right?
She didn’t answer. Not right away.
It just makes everything so much harder. I thought I had a lot to lose before, but now I have you.
I know what you mean.
I knocked the shade off the lamp next to my bed and stared straight into the bulb. If I stared right at it, the brightness would sting my eyes and keep me from crying.
And I could lose you.
That’s not gonna happen, L.
She was quiet. My eyes were temporarily blinded by swirls and streaks of light. I couldn’t even see the blue of my bedroom ceiling, though I was staring right at it.
Promise?
I promise.
It was a promise she knew I might not be able to keep. But I made it anyway be
cause I was going to find a way to make it true.
I burned my hand as I tried to turn out the light.
2.04
The Sandman or Something Like Him
Lena’s birthday was in a week.
Seven days.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours.
Ten thousand and eight seconds.
Claim yourself.
Lena and I were exhausted, but we ditched school anyway to spend the day with The Book of Moons. I had become an expert at Amma’s signature, and Miss Hester wouldn’t dare to ask Lena for a note from Macon Ravenwood. It was a cold, clear day, and we curled together in the freezing garden at Greenbrier, huddled under the old sleeping bag from the Beater, trying to figure out for the thousandth time if anything in the Book could help.
I could tell Lena was starting to give up. Her ceiling was completely covered in Sharpie, wallpapered with the words she couldn’t say and thoughts she was too scared to express.
darkfire, lightdark / dark matter, what matters? the great darkness swallows the great light, as they swallow my life / caster/girl super/natural before/first sight seven days seven days seven days 777777777777777.
I couldn’t blame her. It did seem pretty hopeless, but I wasn’t ready to give up. I never would be. Lena slumped against the old stone wall, crumbling like what little chance we had left. “This is impossible. There are too many Casts. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
There were Casts for every conceivable purpose: Blinding the Unfaithful, Bringing Forth Water from the Sea, Binding the Runes.
But nothing that said Cast to Uncurse Your Family from a Dark Binding, or Cast to Undo the Act of Trying to Bring Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Genevieve’s War Hero Back to Life, or Cast to Avoid Going Dark at Your Claiming. Or the one I was really looking for—Cast to Save Your Girlfriend (Now That You Finally Have One) Before It’s Too Late.
I turned back to the Table of Contents: OBSECRATIONES, INCANTAMINA, NECTENTES, MALEDICENTES, MALEFICIA.
“Don’t worry, L. We’ll figure it out.” But even as I said it, I wasn’t so sure.
The longer the Book stayed on the top shelf of my closet, the more I felt like my room was becoming haunted. It was happening to both of us, every night; the dreams, which felt more like nightmares, were getting worse. I hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours in days. Every time I closed my eyes, every time I fell asleep, they were there. Waiting. But even worse, it was the same nightmare replayed again and again in a constant loop. Every night, I lost Lena over and over again, and it was killing me.
My only strategy was to stay awake. Jacked up on sugar and caffeine from drinking Coke and Red Bull, playing video games. Reading everything from Heart of Darkness to my favorite issue of Silver Surfer, the one where Galactus swallows the universe, over and over. But as anyone who hasn’t slept in days knows, by the third or fourth night you’re so tired you could fall asleep standing up.
Even Galactus didn’t stand a chance.
Burning.
There was fire everywhere.
And smoke. I choked on the smoke and ash. It was pitch-black, impossible to see. And the heat was like sandpaper scraping against my skin.
I couldn’t hear anything except the roar of the fire.
I couldn’t even hear Lena screaming, except in my head.
Let go! You have to get out!
I could feel the bones in my wrist snapping, like tiny guitar strings breaking one by one. She let go of my wrist like she was preparing for me to release her, but I’d never let go.
Don’t do that, L! Don’t you let go!
Let me go! Please… save yourself!
I’d never let go.
But I could feel her sliding through my fingers. I tried to hold on tighter, but she was slipping….
I bolted upright in bed, coughing. It was so real, I could taste the smoke. But my room wasn’t hot; it was cold. My window was open again. The moonlight allowed my eyes to adjust more quickly than usual to the darkness.
I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Something was moving, in the shadows.
There was someone in my room.
“Holy crap!”
He tried to get out before I noticed him, but he wasn’t fast enough. He knew I’d seen him. So he did the only thing he could do. He turned to face me.
“Although I myself don’t consider it particularly holy, who am I to correct you after such an ungraceful exit?” Macon smiled his Cary Grant smile and approached the end of my bed. He was wearing a long black coat and dark slacks. He looked like he was dressed for some kind of turn-of-the-century night on the town, instead of a modern-day breaking and entering. “Hello, Ethan.”
“What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”
He seemed at a loss, for Macon, which just meant he didn’t have an immediate and charming explanation on the tip of his tongue. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, uncomplicate it. Because you climbed in my window in the middle of the night, so either you’re some kind of vampire or some kind of perv, or both. Which is it?”
“Mortals, everything is so black and white to you. I’m not a Hunter, nor a Harmer. You would be confusing me with my brother, Hunting. Blood doesn’t interest me.” He shud-dered at the thought. “Neither blood nor flesh.” He lit a cigar, rolling it between his fingers. Amma was going to have a fit when she smelled that tomorrow. “In fact, it all makes me a bit squeamish.”
I was losing my patience. I hadn’t slept in days and I was tired of everyone dodging my questions all the time. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. “I’ve had enough of your riddles. Answer the question. What are you doing in my room?”
He walked over to the cheap swivel chair next to my desk and sat down in one sweeping movement. “Let’s just say I was eavesdropping.”
I picked up the old Jackson High basketball T-shirt balled up on the floor and pulled it over my head. “Eavesdropping on what, exactly? There’s no one here. I was sleeping.”
“No, actually you were dreaming.”
“How do you know that? Is that one of your Caster powers?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m not a Caster, not technically.”
My breath caught in my throat. Macon Ravenwood never left his house during the day; he could make himself appear out of nowhere, watch people through the eyes of his wolf that masqueraded as a dog, and nearly squeeze the life out of a Dark Caster without flinching. If he wasn’t a Caster, then there was only one explanation.
“So you are a vampire.”
“I most certainly am not.” He looked annoyed. “That’s such a common phrase, such a cliché, and so unflattering. There are no such things as vampires. I suppose you believe in werewolves and aliens, too. I blame television.” He inhaled deeply from his cigar. “I hate to disappoint you. I’m an Incubus. I’m sure it was just a matter of time before Amarie told you herself, since she seems so intent on revealing all my secrets.”
An Incubus? I didn’t even know if I should be scared. I must have looked confused, because Macon felt compelled to elaborate. “By nature, gentlemen like myself do have certain powers, but those powers are only relative to our strength, which we must replenish regularly.” There was something disturbing about the way he said replenish.
“What do you mean by replenish?”
“We feed, for lack of a better word, on Mortals to replenish our strength.”
The room started to sway. Or maybe Macon was swaying.
“Ethan, sit down. You look absolutely pallid.” Macon strode over and guided me to the edge of the bed. “As I said, I use the word ‘feed’ for lack of a better term. Only a Blood Incubus feeds on Mortal blood, and I am not a Blood Incubus. Although we are both Lilum—those who dwell in the Absolute Darkness—I am something entirely more evolved. I take something you Mortals have in abundance, something you don’t even need.”
“What?”
“Dreams. Fragmented bits and pieces. Ideas, desire
s, fears, memories—nothing you miss.” The words came rolling out of his mouth as if he was speaking a charm. I found myself struggling to process them, trying to understand what he was saying. My mind felt like it was wrapped in thick wool.
But then, I understood. I could feel the pieces clicking together like a puzzle in my mind. “The dreams—you’ve been taking part of them? Sucking them out of my head? That’s the reason I can’t remember the whole dream?”
He smiled and stubbed his cigar out on an empty Coke can on my desk. “Guilty as charged. Except for the ‘sucking.’ Not the most polite phraseology.”
“If you’re the one sucking—stealing my dreams, then you know the rest. You know what happens, in the end. You can tell us, so we can stop it.”
“I’m afraid not. I selected the bits and pieces I took rather intentionally.”
“Why don’t you want us to know what happens? If we know the rest of the dream, maybe we can stop it from happening.”
“It seems you know too much already, not that I understand it completely myself.”
“Stop talking in riddles for once. You keep saying I can protect Lena, that I have power. Why don’t you tell me what the hell is really going on, Mr. Ravenwood, because I’m tired, and I’m sick of being jerked around.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know, son. You’re a bit of a mystery.”
“I’m not your son.”
“Melchizedek Ravenwood!” Amma’s voice rang out like a bell.
Macon started losing his composure.
“How dare you come into this house without my permission!” She was standing in her bathrobe holding a long rope of beads. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought it was a necklace. Amma shook the beaded charm angrily in her fist. “We have an agreement. This house is off-limits. You find somewhere else to do your dirty business.”
“It’s not that simple, Amarie. The boy is seeing things in his dreams, things that are dangerous for both of them.”