Dark Caster? That didn’t sound good.
“Ah, Uncle Macon. You’re forgetting that famous Southern hospitality. I didn’t break in. I was invited in, on the arm of the handsomest gent in Gat-dung.” Ridley turned to me and smiled, pulling her shades from her eyes. They were just wrong, glowing gold, as if they were on fire. They were shaped like a cat’s, with black slits in the middle. Light shone from her eyes, and in that light, everything changed.
She looked over at me, with that sinister smile, and her face was twisted into darkness and shadows. The features that had been so feminine and enticing were now sharp and hard, morphing before my eyes. Her skin seemed to be tightening around her bones, accentuating every vein until you could almost see the blood pumping through them. She looked like a monster.
I had brought a monster into the house, into Lena’s house.
Almost immediately, the house began to shake violently. The crystal chandeliers were swinging, the lights flickering. The plantation shutters banged open and shut again and again as the rain battered the roof. The sound was so loud, it was almost impossible to hear anything else, like the night I almost hit Lena when she was standing in the road.
Ridley tightened her ice-cold grip on my arm. I tried to shake her loose, but I could barely move. The coldness was spreading; my whole arm was starting to feel numb.
Lena looked up from the table, in horror. “Ethan!”
Aunt Del stamped her foot across the room. The floorboards seemed to roll beneath her feet.
The coldness had spread throughout my body. My throat was frozen. My legs were paralyzed; I couldn’t move. I couldn’t pull away from Ridley’s arm, and I couldn’t tell anyone what was happening. In another few minutes, I wouldn’t be able to breathe.
A woman’s voice floated across the table. Aunt Del. “Ridley. I told you to stay away, child. There’s nothing we can do for you now. I’m so sorry.”
Macon’s voice was harsh. “Ridley, a year can make all the difference in the world. You’re Claimed now. You’ve found your place in the Order of Things. You don’t belong here anymore. You have to go.”
A second later, he was standing right in front of her. Either that, or I was losing track of what was happening. The voices and faces were starting to spin around me. I could barely catch my breath. I was so cold, my frozen jaw wouldn’t even move enough to chatter. “Go!” he shouted.
“No!”
“Ridley! Behave! You must leave this place. Ravenwood is not a place of Dark magic. This is a Bound place, a place of Light. You can’t survive here, not for long.” Aunt Del’s voice was firm.
Ridley answered with a snarl. “I’m not leaving, Mother, and you can’t make me.”
Macon’s voice interrupted her tantrum. “You know that’s not true.”
“I’m stronger now, Uncle Macon. You can’t control me.”
“True, your strength is growing, but you are not ready to take me on, and I will do whatever is necessary to protect Lena. Even if that means hurting you, or worse.”
The weight of his threat was too much for Ridley. “You would do that to me? Ravenwood’s a Dark place of power. It always has been, since Abraham. He was one of us. Ravenwood should be ours. Why are you Binding it to the Light?”
“Ravenwood is Lena’s home now.”
“You belong with me, Uncle M. With Her.”
Ridley stood up, dragging me to my feet. The three of them were standing now—Lena, Macon, and Ridley, the three points of a really frightening triangle. “I’m not scared of your kind.”
“That may be, but you have no power here. Not against all of us, and a Natural.”
Ridley cackled. “Lena, a Natural? That’s the funniest thing you’ve said all night. I’ve seen what a Natural can do. Lena could never be one.”
“A Cataclyst and a Natural aren’t the same.”
“Aren’t they, though? A Cataclyst is a Natural gone Dark, two sides of the same coin.”
What was she talking about? I was in over my head.
And then I felt my body seize up, and I knew I was blacking out—that I was probably going to die. It was like all the life had been sucked out of me, with the warmth of my blood. I could hear the sound of thunder. One—then lightning and the crash of a tree branch just outside the window. The storm was here. It was right on us.
“You’re wrong, Uncle M. Lena isn’t worth protecting, and she’s certainly not a Natural. You won’t know her fate until her birthday. You think that just because she’s sweet and innocent now, she’ll be Claimed by the Light? That means nothing. Wasn’t I the same a year ago? And from what Short Straw here has been telling me, she’s closer to going Dark than Light. Lightning storms? Terrorizing the high school?”
The wind grew stronger, and Lena was getting angrier. I could see the rage in her eyes. A window shattered, just like in English class. I knew where this was going.
“Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Rain came pouring into the dining room. Wind followed, sending glasses and plates crashing to the floor, black liquid staining the floor in long streaks. No one moved.
Ridley turned back to Macon. “You’ve always given her too much credit. She’s nothing.”
I wanted to break free from Ridley’s hold, to grab her and drag her out of the house myself, but I couldn’t move.
A second window shattered, then another, and another. Glass was breaking everywhere. China, wineglasses, the glass on every picture frame. Furniture was banging against the walls. And the wind, it was like a tornado had been sucked into the room with us. The sound was so loud, I couldn’t hear anything else. The tablecloth blew right off the table, with every candle, platter, and plate still on it, throwing everything against the wall. The room was spinning, I think. Everything was being sucked out into the foyer, toward the front door. Boo Radley screamed, that horrible human scream. Ridley’s grip seemed to loosen around my arm. I blinked hard, trying not to pass out.
And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Lena. She was perfectly still, her hair whipping in the wind around her. What was happening?
I felt my legs buckle. Just as I lost consciousness, I felt the wind, a surge of power that literally ripped my arm out of Ridley’s hand, as she was sucked out of the room, toward the front door. I collapsed to the floor, as I heard Lena’s voice, or thought I did.
“Get the hell away from my boyfriend, witch.”
Boyfriend.
Was that what I was?
I tried to smile. Instead, I blacked out.
A Crack in the Plaster
When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I tried to focus on the first few things that came into view. Words. Phrases handwritten in what looked like carefully scripted Sharpie, right on the ceiling over the bed.
moments bleed together, no span to time
There were hundreds of others, too, written everywhere, parts of sentences, parts of verses, random collections of words. On one closet door was scrawled fate decides. On the other, it said until challenged by the fated. Up and down the door I could see the words desperate / relentless / condemned / empowered. The mirror said open your eyes; the windowpanes said and see.