Beautiful Creatures Read online

  It was midnight, but the sky was on fire. The flames reached into the sky, pushing forth massive fists of smoke, swallowing everything in their path. Even the moon. The ground had turned to swamp. Burned ashen ground that had been drenched by the rains that preceded the fire. If only it had rained today. Genevieve choked back the smoke that burned her throat so badly it hurt to breathe. Mud clung to the bottom of her skirts, causing her to stumble every few feet on the voluminous folds of fabric, but she forced herself to keep moving.

  It was the end of the world. Of her world.

  And she could hear the screams, mixed with gunshots and the unrelenting roar of the flames. She could hear the soldiers shouting orders of murder.

  “Burn down those houses. Let the Rebels feel the weight of their defeat. Burn it all!”

  And one by one, Union soldiers had lit the great houses of the plantations ablaze, with their own kerosene-laden bed sheets and curtains. One by one, Genevieve watched the homes of her neighbors, of her friends and family, surrender to the flames. And in the worst of circumstances, many of those friends and relatives surrendered as well, eaten alive by the flames in the very homes where they were born.

  That’s why she was running, into the smoke, toward the fire—right into the mouth of the beast. She had to get to Greenbrier before the soldiers. And she didn’t have much time. The soldiers were methodical, working their way down the Santee burning the houses one by one. They had already burned Blackwell; Dove’s Crossing would be next, then Greenbrier and Ravenwood. General Sherman and his army had started the burning campaign hundreds of miles before they reached Gatlin. They had burned Columbia to the ground, and continued marching east, burning everything in their path. When they reached the outskirts of Gatlin the Confederate flag was still waving, the second wind they needed.

  It was the smell that told her she was too late. Lemons. The tart smell of lemons mixed with ash. They were burning the lemon trees.

  Genevieve’s mother loved lemons. So when her father had visited a plantation in Georgia when she was a girl, he had brought her mother two lemon trees. Everyone said they wouldn’t grow, that the cold South Carolina winter nights would kill them. But Genevieve’s mother didn’t listen. She planted those trees right in front of the cotton field, tending them herself. On those cold winter nights, she had covered the trees with wool blankets and piled dirt along the edges to keep the moisture out. And those trees grew. They grew so well that over the years, Genevieve’s father had bought her twenty-eight more trees. Some of the other ladies in town asked their husbands for lemon trees, and a few of them even got a tree or two. But none of them could figure out how to keep their trees alive. The trees only seemed to flourish at Greenbrier, at her mother’s hand.

  Nothing had ever been able to kill those trees. Until today.

  “What just happened?” I felt Lena pull her hand away from mine, and opened my eyes. She was shaking. I looked down and opened my hand to reveal the object I had inadvertently grabbed from under the stone.

  “I think it had something to do with this.” My hand had been curled around a battered old cameo, black and oval, with a woman’s face etched in ivory and mother of pearl. The work on the face of it was intricate with detail. On the side, I noticed a small bump. “Look. I think it’s a locket.”

  I pushed on the spring, and the cameo front opened to reveal a tiny inscription. “It just says greenbrier. And a date.”

  She sat up. “What’s Greenbrier?”

  “This must be it. This isn’t Ravenwood. It’s Greenbrier. The next plantation over.”

  “And that vision, the fires, did you see it, too?”

  I nodded. It was almost too horrible to talk about. “This has to be Greenbrier, what’s left of it, anyway.”

  “Let me see the locket.” I handed it to her carefully. It looked like something that had survived a lot—maybe even the fire from the vision. She turned it over in her hands. “february 11th, 1865.” She dropped the locket, turning pale.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She stared down at it in the grass. “February eleventh is my birthday.”

  “So it’s a coincidence. An early birthday present.”

  “Nothing in my life is a coincidence.”

  I picked up the locket and flipped it over. On the back were two sets of engraved initials. “ECW & GKD. This locket must have belonged to one of them.” I paused. “That’s weird. My initials are ELW.”

  “My birthday, your initials. Don’t you think that’s a little more than weird?” Maybe she was right. Still—

  “We should try it again, so we can find out.” It was like an itch that had to be scratched.

  “I don’t know. It could be dangerous. It really felt like we were there. My eyes are still burning from the smoke.” She was right. We hadn’t left the garden, but it had felt like we had been right there in the middle of the fires. I could feel the smoke in my lungs, but it didn’t matter. I had to know.

  I held out the locket, and my hand. “Come on, aren’t you braver than that?” It was a dare. She rolled her eyes, but reached toward it all the same. Her fingers brushed against mine, and I felt the warmth of her hand spreading into mine. Electric goosebumps. I don’t know any other way to describe it.

  I closed my eyes and waited—nothing. I opened my eyes. “Maybe we just imagined it. Maybe it’s just out of batteries.”

  Lena looked at me like I was Earl Petty in Algebra, the second time around. “Maybe you can’t tell something like that what to do, or when to do it.” She got up and brushed herself off. “I’ve gotta go.”

  She paused, looking down at me. “You know, you’re not what I expected.” She turned her back on me and began to weave her way through the lemon trees, to the outer edge of the garden.

  “Wait!” I called after her, but she kept going. I tried to catch up with her, stumbling back over the roots.

  When she reached the last lemon tree, she stopped. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “Just leave me alone, while everything’s still okay.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Seriously. And I’m trying, here.”

  “Forget it.”

  “You think you’re the only complicated person in the world?”

  “No. But—it’s sort of my specialty.” She turned to go. I hesitated, and put my hand on her shoulder. It was warm from the fading sun. I could feel the bone beneath her shirt, and in that moment she seemed like a fragile thing, like in the dreams. Which was weird, because when she was facing me, all I could think of was how unbreakable she seemed. Maybe it had something to do with those eyes.

  We stood like that for a moment, until finally she gave in and turned toward me. I tried again. “Look. There’s something going on here. The dreams, the song, the smell, and now the locket. It’s like we’re supposed to be friends.”

  “Did you just say, the smell?” She looked horrified. “In the same sentence as friends?”

  “Technically, I think it was a different sentence.”

  She stared at my hand, and I took it off her shoulder. But I couldn’t let it go. I looked right into her eyes, really looked, maybe for the first time. The green abyss looked like it went somewhere so far away I could never reach it, not in a whole lifetime. I wondered what Amma’s “eyes are the windows to the soul” theory would make of that.

  It’s too late, Lena. You’re already my friend.

  I can’t be.

  We’re in this together.

  Please. You have to trust me. We’re not.

  She broke her eyes away from me, leaning her head back against the lemon tree. She looked miserable. “I know you’re not like the rest of them. But there are things you can’t understand about me. I don’t know why we connect the way we do. I don’t know why we have the same dreams, any more than you.”

  “But I want to know what’s going on—”

  “I turn sixteen in five months.�
� She held up her hand, inked with a number as usual. 151. “A hundred and fifty-one days.” Her birthday. The changing number written on her hand. She was counting down to her birthday.

  “You don’t know what that means, Ethan. You don’t know anything. I may not even be here after that.”

  “You’re here now.”

  She looked past me, up toward Ravenwood. When she finally spoke, she wasn’t looking at me. “You like that poet, Bukowski?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, confused.

  “Don’t try.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what it says, on Bukowski’s grave.” She disappeared through the stone wall and was gone. Five months. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I recognized the feeling in my gut.

  Panic.

  By the time I made it through the door in the wall, she had vanished as if she was never there, leaving only the wafting breeze of lemons and rosemary behind her. Funny thing was, the more she ran, the more determined I was to follow.

  Don’t try.

  I was pretty sure my grave would say something different.

  9.12

  The Sisters

  The kitchen table was still set when I got home, lucky for me, because Amma would have killed me if I’d missed dinner. What I hadn’t considered was the phone tree that had been activated the minute I walked out of English class. No less than half the town must have called Amma by the time I got home.

  “Ethan Wate? Is that you? Because if it is, you are in for a world a trouble.”

  I heard a familiar banging sound. Things were worse than I thought. I ducked under the doorway and into the kitchen. Amma was standing at the counter in her industrial denim tool apron, which had fourteen pockets for nails and could hold up to four power tools. She was holding her Chinese cleaver, the counter piled high with carrots, cabbage, and other vegetables I couldn’t identify. Spring rolls required more chopping than any other recipe in Amma’s blue plastic box. If she was making spring rolls, it only meant one thing, and it wasn’t just that she liked Chinese food.

  I tried to come up with an acceptable explanation, but I had nothing.

  “Coach called this afternoon, and Mrs. English, and Principal Harper, and Link’s mamma, and half the ladies from the DAR. And you know how I hate talkin’ to those women. Evil as sin, every one a them.”

  Gatlin was full of ladies’ auxiliaries, but the DAR was the mother of them all. True to its name, the Daughters of the American Revolution, you had to prove you were related to an actual patriot from the American Revolution to be eligible for membership. Being a member apparently entitled you to tell your River Street neighbors what colors to paint their houses and generally boss, pester, and judge everyone in town. Unless you were Amma. That I’d like to see.

  “They all said the same thing. That you ran out a school, in the middle a class, chasin’ after that Duchannes girl.” Another carrot rolled across the cutting board.

  “I know, Amma, but—”

  The cabbage split in half. “So I said, ‘No, my boy wouldn’t leave school without permission and skip practice. There must be some mistake. Must be some other boy disrepectin’ his teacher and sullyin’ his family name. Can’t be a boy I raised, livin’ in this house.’” Green onions flew across the counter.

  I’d committed the worst of crimes, embarrassing her. Worst of all, in the eyes of Mrs. Lincoln and the women of the DAR, her sworn enemies.

  “What do you have to say for yourself? What would make you run out a school like your tail was on fire? And I don’t wanna hear it was some girl.”

  I took a deep breath. What could I say? I had been dreaming about some mystery girl for months, who showed up in town and just happened to be Macon Ravenwood’s niece? That, in addition to terrifying dreams about this girl, I had a vision of some other woman, who I definitely didn’t know, who lived during the Civil War?

  Yeah, that would get me out of trouble, around the same time the sun exploded and the solar system died.

  “It’s not what you think. The kids in our class were giving Lena a hard time, teasing her about her uncle, saying he hauls dead bodies around in his hearse, and she got really upset and ran out of class.”

  “I’m waitin’ for the part that explains what any a this has to do with you.”

  “Aren’t you the one always telling me to ‘walk in the steps of our Lord?’ Don’t you think He’d want me to stick up for someone who was being picked on?” Now I’d done it. I could see it in her eyes.

  “Don’t you dare use the Word a the Lord to justify breakin’ the rules at school, or I swear I will go outside and get a switch and burn some sense into your backside. I don’t care how old you are. You hear me?” Amma had never hit me with anything in my life, although she had chased me with a switch a few times to make a point. But this wasn’t the moment to bring that up.

  The situation was quickly going from bad to worse; I needed a distraction. The locket was still burning a hole in my back pocket. Amma loved mysteries. She had taught me to read when I was four using crime novels and the crossword over her shoulder. I was the only kid in kindergarten who could read examination on the blackboard because it looked so much like medical examiner. As for mysteries, the locket was a good one. I’d just leave out the part about touching it and seeing a Civil War vision.

  “You’re right, Amma. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left school. I was just trying to make sure Lena was okay. A window broke in the classroom right behind her, and she was bleeding. I just went to her house to see if she was all right.”

  “You were up at that house?”

  “Yeah, but she was outside. Her uncle is really shy, I guess.”

  “You don’t need to tell me about Macon Ravenwood, like you know anything I don’t already know.” The Look.

  “H. E. B. E. T. U. D. I. N. O. U. S.”

  “What?”

  “As in, you don’t have a lick a sense, Ethan Wate.”

  I fished the locket out of my pocket and walked over to where she was still standing by the stove. “We were out back, behind the house, and we found something,” I said, opening my hand so she could take a look. “It has an inscription inside.”

  The expression on Amma’s face stopped me cold. She looked like something had knocked the wind right out of her.

  “Amma, are you okay?” I reached for her elbow, to steady her in case she was about to faint. But she pulled her arm away before I could touch her, like she’d burned her hand on the handle of a pot.

  “Where did you get that?” Her voice was a whisper.

  “We found it in the dirt, at Ravenwood.”

  “You didn’t find that at Ravenwood Plantation.”

  “What are you talking about? Do you know who it belonged to?”

  “Stand right here. Don’t you move,” she instructed, rushing out of the kitchen.

  But I ignored her, following her to her room. It had always looked more like an apothecary than a bedroom, with a low white single bed tucked beneath rows of shelves. On the shelves were neatly stacked newspapers—Amma never threw away a finished crossword—and Mason jars full of her stock ingredients for making charms. Some were her old standards: salt, colored stones, herbs. Then there were more unusual collections, like a jar of roots and another of abandoned bird nests. The top shelf was just bottles of dirt. She was acting weird, even for Amma. I was only a couple of steps behind her, but she was already tearing through her drawers by the time I got there.

  “Amma, what are you—”

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the kitchen? Don’t you bring that thing in here!” she shrieked, when I took a step forward.

  “What are you so upset about?” She stuffed a few things I couldn’t get a look at into her tool apron, and rushed back out of the room. I caught up with her back in the kitchen. “Amma, what’s the matter?”

  “Take this.” She handed me a threadbare handkerchief, careful not to let her hand touch mine. “Now you wra
p that thing up in here. Right now, right this second.”

  This was beyond going dark. She was totally losing it.

  “Amma—”

  “Do as I say, Ethan.” She never called me by my first name without my last.

  Once the locket was safely wrapped in the handkerchief, she calmed down a little bit. She rifled through the lower pockets of her apron, removing a small leather bag and a vial of powder. I knew enough to recognize the makings of one of her charms when I saw them. Her hand shook slightly as she poured some of the dark powder into the leather pouch. “Did you wrap it up tight?”

  “Yeah,” I said, expecting her to correct me for answering her so informally.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you put it in here.” The leather pouch was warm and smooth in my hand. “Go on now.”

  I dropped the offending locket into the pouch.

  “Tie this around it,” she instructed, handing me a piece of what looked like ordinary twine, although I knew nothing Amma used for her charms was ever ordinary, or what it seemed. “Now you take it back there, where you found it, and you bury it. Take it there straightaway.”

  “Amma, what’s going on?” She took a few steps forward and grabbed my chin, pushing the hair out of my eyes. For the first time since I pulled the locket out of my pocket, she looked me in the eye. We stayed that way for what seemed like the longest minute of my life. Her expression was an unfamiliar one, uncertain.

  “You’re not ready,” she whispered, releasing her hand.

  “Not ready for what?”

  “Do as I say. Take that bag back to where you found it and bury it. Then you come right home. I don’t want you messin’ with that girl anymore, you hear me?”

  She had said all she planned to say, maybe more. But I’d never know because if there was one thing Amma was better at than reading cards or solving a crossword, it was keeping secrets.

  “Ethan Wate, you up?”

  What time was it? Nine-thirty. Saturday. I should have been up by now, but I was exhausted. Last night I’d spent two hours wandering around, so Amma would believe I had gone back to Greenbrier to bury the locket.