"What? A Sheer? A Vex, perhaps?"
Link shivered. "You tell me, sir."
Macon extended his arm. "Go ahead, then. Be my guest."
Link stuck out his hand tentatively, as if he was about to hold it over a candle on a birthday dare. His finger came within a millimeter of Macon's ragged jacket and stopped.
Macon sighed, rolling his eyes, and tapped Link's hand against his chest. "See? Flesh and blood. Something we have in common now, Mr. Lincoln."
"Uncle Macon?" Ridley crept up to him, finally ready to face him. "Is it really you?"
He looked deep into her blue eyes. "You've lost your powers."
She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. "So have you."
"Some of them, yes, but I suspect I've gained others." He reached for her hand, but she pulled away. "It's impossible to tell. I'm still in the midst of it." He smiled. "Sort of like being a teenager. Twice."
"But your eyes are green."
Macon shook his head, flexing his hands. "True. My life as an Incubus is over, but the Transition is not complete. Although my eyes are those of a Light Caster, I can still feel Darkness within me. It has not been fully exorcised, yet."
"I'm not Transitioning. I'm nothing, a Mortal." She said the word like it was a curse, and the sadness in her voice was real. "I don't have a place in the Order of Things anymore."
"You're alive."
"I don't feel like myself. I'm powerless."
Macon weighed this in his mind, as if he was trying to determine her present state as much as she was. "You may be in the midst of a Transition of your own, unless this is one of my sister's more impressive tricks."
Ridley's eyes lit up. "Does that mean my powers might come back?"
Macon studied her blue eyes. "I think Sarafine is too cruel for that. I only meant that you might not be fully Mortal yet. Darkness does not leave us as easily as we would hope." Macon pulled her awkwardly to his chest, and she buried her face in his jacket, like a twelve-year-old. "It's not easy to be Light when you've been Dark. It's almost too much to ask of anyone."
I tried to quiet the torrent of questions racing through my mind, and settled for the first. "How?"
Macon turned from Ridley, his green eyes burning into me with their newfound light. "Could you be more specific, Mr. Wate? How am I not resting in twenty-seven thousand distinct fragments of ash in an urn within the Ravenwood family vault? How am I not rotting under a lemon tree in the sodden prestige of His Garden of Perpetual Peace? How did I come to find myself imprisoned in a small crystalline ball in your grimy pocket?"
"Two," I said without thinking.
"I beg your pardon?"
"There are two lemon trees over your grave."
"How very generous. One would have sufficed." Macon smiled tiredly, which was pretty remarkable, considering he'd spent four months in a supernatural prison the size of an egg. "Or are you perhaps wondering how is it that I died and you lived? Because I have to tell you, as far as hows go, that's a story your neighbors on Cotton Bend would be talking about for a lifetime."
"Except you didn't, sir. Die, I mean."
"You are correct, Mr. Wate. I am, and have always been, very much alive. In a manner of speaking."
Liv stepped forward tentatively. Even though she would probably never become a Keeper now, there was still a Keeper inside her seeking answers. "Mr. Ravenwood, may I ask you a question, sir?"
Macon tilted his head slightly. "Who might you be, dear? I imagine it was your voice I heard calling me from the Arclight."
Liv blushed. "It was, sir. My name is Olivia Durand, and I was training with Professor Ashcroft. Before ..." Her voice dwindled.
"Before you Cast the Ob Lucem Libertas?"
Liv nodded, ashamed. Macon looked pained, then smiled at her. "Then you gave up a great deal to save me, Miss Olivia Durand. I am in your debt, and, as I always repay my debts, I would be honored to answer a question. At the very least." Even after being trapped all those months, Macon was still a gentleman.
"Obviously, I know how you got out of the Arclight, but how did you get in? It's impossible for an Incubus to imprison himself, especially when, by all accounts, you were dead." Liv was right. He couldn't have done it alone. Someone had to have helped him, and the minute the ball released him, I knew who it was.
It was the one person we both loved as much as Lena, even in death.
My mother -- who had loved books and old things, nonconformity and history and complexity. Who had loved Macon so much she walked away when he asked her to, even though she couldn't bear to leave him. Even though a part of her never had.
"It was her, wasn't it?"
Macon nodded. "Your mother was the only one who knew about the Arclight. I gave it to her. Any Incubus would have killed her to destroy it. It was our secret, one of our last."
"Did you see her?" I looked out at the sea, blinking hard.
Macon's expression changed. I could see the pain in his face. "Yes."
"Did she seem ..." What? Happy? Dead? Herself?
"Beautiful as ever, your mother. Beautiful as the day she left us."
"I saw her, too." I thought about Bonaventure Cemetery and felt the familiar knot in my throat.
"But how is that possible?" Liv wasn't trying to challenge him, but she didn't understand. None of us did.
Macon's face was full of grief. It wasn't any easier for him to talk about my mom than it was for me. "I think you'll find the impossible is possible more often than we think, particularly in the Caster world. But if you would care to take one last trip with me, I can show you." He opened his hand to me, offering Liv the other. Ridley stepped forward and closed her hand around mine, and hesitantly Link limped over, completing the circle.
Macon looked over at me, and before I could read his expression, the air was filled with smoke --
Macon tried to hold on, but he was blacking out. He could see the ebony sky above him, streaked with orange flames. He couldn't see Hunting as he fed, but he could feel his brother's teeth in his shoulder. When Hunting had his fill, he let Macon's body drop to the ground.
When Macon opened his eyes again, Lena's grandmother, Emmaline, was kneeling over him. He could feel the heat of her healing power as it coursed through his body. Ethan was there, too. Macon tried to speak, but he didn't know if they could hear him. Find Lena, that's what he wanted to say. Ethan must have heard him, because he took off into the smoke and fire.
The boy was so much like Amarie, so stubborn and fearless. He was so much like his mother, loyal and honest, and bound for the heartbreak that came from loving a Caster. Macon was still thinking about Jane when his mind faded.
When Macon opened his eyes again, the fire was gone. The smoke, the roaring of flames and ammunition -- it was all gone. He felt himself drifting in the darkness. It wasn't like Traveling. This void had weight. It was pulling him through. Yet when he reached out, he could see that his hand was hazy, only partially materialized.
He was dead.
Lena must have made the Choice. She had chosen to go Light. Even in the darkness, knowing the fate of an Incubus in the Otherworld, a sense of calm washed over him. It was finished.
"Not yet. Not for you."
Macon turned, recognizing her voice immediately. Lila Jane. She was luminous in the abyss, shimmering and beautiful. "Janie. There's so much I have to tell you."
Jane shook her head, her brown hair falling over her shoulder. "There's no time."
"There's nothing but time."
Jane stretched out her hand, her fingers glimmering. "Take my hand."
As soon as Macon touched her, the darkness began to bleed into colors and light. He could see images, familiar shapes and forms swimming around him, but he couldn't anchor them. Then he realized where they were. The archive, Jane's special place.