Beautiful Redemption (23 page)

There were only about a thousand other ifs in between. I tried not to think about them, and all the people they involved. Or the danger that always surrounded
The Book of Moons
.

I couldn’t afford to think like that. I’d come this far, right?

She would find it, and I would find her.

It was the only Order of Things I cared about now.

BOOK TWO

Lena

CHAPTER 19

Mortal Problems

S
ometimes Link could be a real idiot.

“
Libro
what?
Book of Moons
? What does that mean?” Link looked from me to
The Stars and Stripes
, scratching his head. You would have thought I was bringing up the subject for the first time.

“Three words. It’s a book, Link. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” It was only the book that had destroyed our lives, and the lives of all the Casters in my family before me on our sixteenth birthdays.

“That’s not what I meant.” He looked hurt.

I knew what Link meant.

But I didn’t know why Ethan was asking for
The Book of Moons
any more than Link did. So I just kept staring at the newspaper in the middle of the kitchen.

Amma was behind me, and she didn’t say a word. She’d been that way for a while now—since Ethan. The silence was as wrong as everything else. It was strange to not hear her banging around in her kitchen. Even stranger that we were sitting around Ethan’s kitchen table trying to figure out the message he’d left in today’s crossword puzzle. I wondered if he could see us or knew we were here.

surrounded by strangers who love me

(un)strangers made strange

by pain

I felt my fingers twitch, looking for the pen that wasn’t there. I fought the poetry off. It was a new habit. It hurt too much to write now. Three days after Ethan left, the word NO appeared, inked in black Sharpie on my left hand. WORDS appeared on my right.

I hadn’t written a word since, not on paper. Not in my notebook. Not even on my walls. It seemed like forever since I had.

How long had Ethan been gone? Weeks? Months? It was all one long blur, as if time had stopped when he left.

Everything had stopped.

Link stared up at me from where he was sitting on the kitchen floor. When he unfolded his new quarter-Incubus
body like that, he took up most of the kitchen. There were arms and legs everywhere, like a praying mantis, only with muscles.

Liv studied her own copy of the puzzle from the table—clipped and taped into her trusty red notebook, covered in her neatly penciled analysis—while John leaned over her shoulder. The way they moved together, you would think it hurt them
not
to touch.

Unlike Casters and Mortals.

A human and a hybrid Incubus. They don’t know how good they have it. Nothing catches fire when they kiss.

I sighed, resisting the urge to Cast a
Discordia
on them. We were all here. You would have thought nothing had changed. Only one person was missing.

Which made everything different.

I folded up the morning paper, sinking into the chair next to Liv. “
Book of Moons.
That’s all it says. I don’t know why I keep reading it. If I read this thing any more times, I’m going to burn a hole in it with my eyes.”

“You can do that?” Link looked interested.

I wriggled my fingers in front of him. “Maybe I can burn more than just paper. So don’t tempt me.”

Liv smiled at me sympathetically. As if the situation called for anything like a smile. “Well then, I suppose we have to think. Those are three rather specific words. So it seems the messages are changing.” She sounded precise and logical, like a British version of Marian, as she always did.

“And?” Link sounded irritated, like he always did lately.

“So what’s going on… over there?”
Where Ethan is.
Liv didn’t say it. Nobody wanted to. Liv pulled the three crossword puzzles out of her notebook. “At first, it seems like he just wants you to know he is…”

“Alive? Hate to break it to you—” Link said, but John kicked him under the table. Amma dropped a pan behind me, sending it clattering toward where Link sat on the floor. “Oww. You know what I meant.”

“Around,” John corrected him, looking from Amma to me. I nodded, feeling Amma’s hands slip down to rest on my shoulders.

I touched her hand with mine; her fingers curled tightly around it. Neither one of us wanted to let go. Especially now that it was possible Ethan wasn’t gone forever. It had been weeks since Ethan had started sending me messages through
The Stars and Stripes
. It didn’t matter what they said. They all said the same thing to me.

I’m here.

I’m still here.

You’re not alone.

I wished there was a way I could say it to him.

I squeezed Amma’s fingers harder. I tried to talk to her about it right after I found the first message, but she just muttered something about a fair trade and how it was her mess to sort out. How it was what she aimed to do, sooner or later.

But she didn’t doubt me. Neither did my uncle, not anymore.
In fact, Uncle Macon and Amma were the only ones who really believed me. They understood what I was going through, because they had gone through it themselves. I didn’t know if Uncle Macon would ever get over losing Lila. And Amma seemed to be having as hard a time without Ethan as I was. They had seen the proof, too. Uncle Macon was there when I saw Ethan’s crossword for the first time. And Amma had all but seen Ethan standing in the kitchen of Wate’s Landing.

I said it out loud again to everyone, for the tenth time. “Of course he’s around. I told you, he’s going somewhere. He’s got some kind of plan. He’s not just sitting there, waiting in a grave full of dirt. He’s trying to get back to us. I’m sure of it.”

“How sure?” Link asked. “You’re not sure, Lena. Nothin’s sure, except death an’ taxes. And when they said it, I think they were talkin’ more about stayin’ dead, not comin’ back again.”

I didn’t know why Link was having so much trouble believing that Ethan was still there, that he could come home again. Wasn’t Link the one who was part Incubus? He knew as well as anyone that strange things happened around here all the time. Why was it so hard for him to believe that this particular strange thing could be happening?

Maybe losing Ethan was harder on Link than it was for the rest of them. Maybe he couldn’t let himself risk losing his best friend all over again, even if it was only the idea of him. No one knew what Link was going through.

Except me.

While Link and Liv returned to arguing about whether or not Ethan was actually gone, I felt myself slipping into the fog of nagging doubts that I worked so hard to push out of my mind.

They just kept coming.

What if this whole thing really was my imagination, like Reece and Gramma kept saying? What if they were right, and it was just too hard for me to accept my life without him? And it wasn’t just them—Uncle Macon wouldn’t try anything to bring him back either.

And if it was real—if Ethan could hear me—what would I say?

Come home.

I’m waiting.

I love you.

Nothing he didn’t already know.

Why bother?

I refused to write, but the words were hard to even think now.

words same as always

same as nothing

when nothing is the same

There was no point in saying it to myself.

John kicked Link again, and I tried to focus on the present. The kitchen and the conversation. All the things I could do for Ethan, rather than all the things I felt about him.

“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Ethan is—around.” Liv looked at Link, who kept quiet this time. “Like I said, it seemed he spent all his energy trying to convince us of that a few weeks ago.”

“Right around the time you measured the energy spiking at Ravenwood,” John reminded her. Liv nodded, flipping pages in her notebook.

“Or maybe Reece was just usin’ the microwave,” Link muttered.

“Which was the same time Ethan moved the button at his grave,” I said obstinately.

“Or maybe it was just windy.” Link sighed.

“Something was definitely going on.” John moved his foot closer to Link, the threat of another good kick shutting Link up for a while. I thought about slapping a
Silentium
Cast on him, but it didn’t seem right. Plus, knowing Link, it would take more than magic to shut him up.

Liv went back to examining the papers in front of her. “But then, quite soon, his messages began to change. It’s like he figured something out. What he needed to do.”

“To come home,” I said.

“Lena, I know you want to think that’s what’s happenin’.” Amma’s voice was bleak. “And I felt my boy here, same as you. But we don’t know which end is up. There are no easy answers, not when it comes to gettin’ someone in or outta the Otherworld. Believe me, if there was an easy way, I would’ve already done it.”

She sounded so haggard and tired. I knew she had been working on getting Ethan home as hard as I had. And I’d tried everything at first—everything and everyone. The problem was trying to get Light Casters to talk about raising the dead. And I didn’t have quite the access to the Dark Casters that I used to. Uncle Macon had come for me the moment I’d set foot in Exile. I suspected he made some kind of deal with the bartender, a shifty-looking Blood Incubus who looked like he’d do anything if he was thirsty enough.

“But we don’t know that’s not it,” I said, looking at Liv.

“True. The logical assumption would be that wherever Ethan was, he would be trying to get back.” Liv carefully erased a small mark in the margin. “To where you are.” She didn’t look at me, but I knew what she meant. Liv and Ethan had a history of their own, and even though Liv had found something better for her with John, she was always very careful of how she spoke about Ethan, especially to me.