Lena finally said something, from the Good-Eye Side. “Why do you think we have to find this One Who Is Two?” She was more upset than I was, maybe because she had just found out about it. Or maybe because it involved her mother.
“Did you miss the whole Crucible speech?” I’d told her everything I could remember.
“No. I mean, what is this ‘One’ going to do that we can’t? To forge the New Order, or whatever.” She left her seat and sat on the edge of Mrs. English’s desk, her legs dangling. The New Order. No wonder she was thinking about it. Lena knew the Lilum said that she would be the one to Bind it.
“How do you Bind a New Order, anyway?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “No clue.”
There had to be some way to find out. “Maybe there’s something in the Lunae Libri about it.”
Lena looked frustrated. “Sure. Look under N, for New Order. Or B, for Binding. Or P, for psycho, which is how I’m starting to feel.”
“Tell me about it.”
She sighed, swinging her legs harder. “Even if I knew how to do it, the bigger question is, why me? I broke the last one.” She looked tired, her black T-shirt damp with sweat and her charm necklace tangled in her long hair.
“Maybe it needed to be broken. Sometimes things have to break before you can fix them.”
“Or maybe it didn’t need fixing.”
“You want to get out of here? I’ve had enough Crucible talk for today.”
She nodded, grateful. “Me, too.”
We walked down the hall, holding hands, and I watched as Lena’s hair began to curl. The Casting Breeze. So I wasn’t surprised when Miss Hester didn’t even look up from painting her long purple nails as we passed by, leaving the Demon and the Mortal worlds behind us.
Lake Moultrie really was as hot and brown as Link said. There wasn’t a drop of water in sight. Nobody was around, though there were a few souvenirs from Mrs. Lincoln and her friends, stuck in the cracked mud of the sloping shore.
COMMUNITY WATCH HOTLINE
REPORT ALL APOCALYPTIC BEHAVIOR
She’d even written her home phone number across the bottom.
“What, exactly, constitutes apocalyptic behavior?” Lena tried not to smile.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure if we asked Mrs. Lincoln to post a clarification, she’d have it up here tomorrow.” I thought about it. “No fishing. No dumping. No calling up the Devil. No plagues of heat and lubbers, or Vexes.”
Lena kicked the dry dirt. “No rivers of blood.” I’d told her about my dream—that one, anyway. “And no human sacrifice.”
“Don’t give Abraham any ideas.”
Lena put her head on my shoulder.
“Do you remember last time we were here?” I poked her with a dry piece of river grass. “You ran away on the back of John’s Harley.”
“I don’t want to remember that part. I want to remember the good part,” she whispered.
“There are a lot of good parts.”
She smiled, and I knew I would always remember this day. Like the day I found her crying in the garden at Greenbrier. There were times when I looked at her and everything stopped. When the world fell away and I knew nothing could ever come between us.
I pulled her against me and kissed her harder, in a dead lake where no one could see us and no one cared. With every passing second, the pain was building in my body, the pressure of my pounding heart, but I didn’t stop. Nothing else mattered but this. I wanted to feel her hands on my skin, her mouth tugging on my bottom lip. I wanted to feel her body against mine until I couldn’t feel anything else.
Because unless we found whoever it was, and convinced the One Who Is Two to do whatever had to be done by the Eighteenth Moon, I had a sinking feeling it didn’t matter what happened to either of us.
She closed her eyes, and I closed mine, and even though we weren’t holding hands, it felt like we were.
Because what we had, we knew.
11.20
The Next Generation
Back off, Boy Scout. I’ve told you everything I know. Why would I hide anything now?” John smiled and looked over at Liv. “I only wear the pants around here. She’s the one wearing the belt.”
It was true. His scorpion belt was slung around Liv’s waist. Lena had given it to Liv, since she seemed to be John’s babysitter when Macon wasn’t with him. They never left him alone. At night, Macon even Bound the study with Concealment and Confinement Casts.
But if John was telling the truth about his abilities, he would only have to touch Macon to gain some of his powers. The question was, why didn’t he? I was beginning to think he didn’t want to leave, but it made no sense.
Lately, nothing did.
Since my conversation with the Lilum—Wheel of Fate, Demon Queen, Mrs. English Who Was Not Mrs. English—I had more questions than answers. I had no idea how to find the One Who Is Two, and I didn’t know how much time we had left.
I needed to figure when the Eighteenth Moon was coming. I couldn’t give up on the idea that it had something to do with John Breed, ever since the John in County Care scribbled that message.
This John didn’t seem to care. He was lounging around on a cot against the wall, alternating between sleeping and pissing me off.
Lena was frustrated. John’s charm didn’t get him anywhere with her. “Abraham must have said something to you about the Eighteenth Moon.”
He shrugged, looking bored. “Your boyfriend’s the one who can’t shut up about it.”
“Yeah? You want to get off your ass and shut me up?”
Ethan, calm down. Don’t let him get to you.
Liv stepped in. “Ethan, I think we can keep things a little more civil down here. For all we know, John is as much a victim of Abraham’s reign of terror as the rest of us.” She sounded sympathetic—too sympathetic.
“Did he bite any of your best friends lately?” I snapped.
Liv looked embarrassed.
“Then I don’t want to hear about being civil.”
John pushed himself up from the cot. “You don’t have to talk to her like that. You’re pissed at me. Don’t take it out on Olivia. She’s busting her ass to help you.”
I looked at Liv. She was blushing as she checked the dials on her selenometer. I wondered if John’s Incubus magnetism was having an effect on her. “No offense, but shut the hell up.”
“Ethan!” Lena gave me her version of the Look. Now I was getting it from all sides.
John was amused. “You want me to talk, you want me to shut up. Let me know when you make up your mind.”
I didn’t want to talk to him at all. I wanted him to disappear. “Liv, what’s the point of keeping him around? He hasn’t told us anything. I bet he used his Caster power-sucking abilities to send a message to Abraham and Sarafine, and they’re on their way here right now.”
Liv crossed her arms, disapprovingly. “John hasn’t been sucking anyone’s powers. Most of the time, he’s alone with me. Or Macon and me.” She started to blush. “And yelling at him isn’t going to get you anywhere. John is basically a victim of torture. You can’t imagine the way Silas and Abraham treated him when he was growing up. Nothing you can say comes close to what he’s endured.”
I turned to John. “So, this is what you’ve been doing down here? Telling Liv sob stories so she’ll feel sorry for you? Man, you really are a manipulative a**hole.”
John stood up and walked over to where I was standing. “Funny, I was thinking what a charming a**hole you are.”
“Really?” I made a fist.
“No.” So did he.
“That’s enough.” Lena stepped between us. “This isn’t helping.”
“And it isn’t scientific, polite, or even remotely entertaining,” Liv added.
John wandered back to his cot. “I don’t know why everyone is so convinced this has to do with me.”
I wasn’t about to tell him about the messages from a kid who had suffered a head injury and didn’t speak. “This has something to do with the Eighteenth Moon. Lena’s isn’t until February, unless Sarafine and Abraham are pulling moons out of time again.” Lena crossed her arms, watching John.
He shrugged, revealing the black tattoo on his arm. “So you have a few months. Better get cracking.”
“I told you, she didn’t say it was Lena’s Eighteenth Moon. We may not have that much time.”
Liv whipped around to look at me. “Who didn’t say that?”
Crap. I didn’t want to tell her about the Lilum yet, especially not in front of John. Lena wasn’t the only girl I knew who was two things. Liv wasn’t a Keeper anymore, but she was still acting like one. “No one. It’s not important.”
Liv was watching me carefully. “You said a guy named John at County Care knew about the Eighteenth Moon—the one in the creepy birthday room. I thought that was the reason you’re here hounding John.”
“Hounding John? Is that what you think I’m doing?” I couldn’t believe how quickly he had gotten to her.
“Actually, I’d call it harassing.” John looked smug.
I ignored him. I was too busy trying to cover my tracks with Liv. “It was a guy named John, but he wasn’t in the Birthday—”
I stopped.
A guy named John.
Lena looked back at me.
The Birthday Room.
We were thinking the same thing.
What if we’ve been looking at this all wrong?
“John, when’s your birthday?”
He was stretched out, tossing a ball above the spot where his boots were propped against the wall. “Why, you gonna throw me a party, Mortal? I’m not big on cake.”
“Just answer the question,” Lena said.
The ball hit the wall again. “December 22nd. At least that’s what Abraham told me. But it’s probably some random day he picked. He found me, remember? It’s not like I had a note pinned to my shirt with my birthday written on it.”
He couldn’t be that stupid. “Does Abraham seem like the kind of guy who would care if you had a birthday or not?”
The ball stopped hitting the wall.
Liv was flipping through an almanac. I heard her breath catch. “Oh my God.”
John walked to the table and leaned over Liv’s shoulder. “What?”
“December 22nd is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year.”
John dropped into the chair next to her. He tried to look bored, his general expression, but I could tell he was curious. “So, it’s a long night. Who cares?”
Liv closed the almanac. “Ancient Celts considered winter solstice the most sacred day of the year. They believed the Wheel of the Year stopped turning for a short time at the moment of the solstice. It was a time of cleansing and rebirth—”
Liv was still talking, but I couldn’t hear anything but my own thoughts.
The Wheel of the Year.
The Wheel of Fate.
Cleansing and rebirth.
A sacrifice.
It’s what the Lilum was trying to tell me at Mrs. English’s house. On the Eighteenth Moon, the night of the winter solstice, the sacrifice would have to be made to bring forth the New Order.