“Isn’t she?”
Macon closed his book. “I can’t see the future. I’m not a Seer. All I know is Ethan did what needed to be done. The whole realm—Dark and Light—will always be grateful to him.”
Lena stood up, ripping the ink-stained page from her notebook. “Well, I’m not. I understand he was very brave and noble and whatever, but he left me here, and I’m not sure it was worth it. I don’t care about the universe and the realm and saving the world, not anymore. Not without Ethan.”
She tossed the ripped page into the fire. The orange flames leaped up around it.
Uncle Macon spoke as he watched the fire. “I understand.”
“Really?” Lena didn’t seem to believe him.
“There was a time when I put my heart above all else.”
“And what happened?”
“I don’t know. I got older, I suppose. And I learned that things often are more complicated than we think.”
Leaning against the mantel, Lena stared into the fire.
“Maybe you just forgot what it feels like.”
“Perhaps.”
“I won’t.” She looked at her uncle. “I won’t ever forget.”
She twisted her hand, and the smoke rose up until it curled around her and took shape. It was a face. It was my face.
“Lena.”
My face disappeared at the sound of Macon’s voice, fading away into streaks of gray cloud.
“Leave me alone. Let me have what little I can, what I have left of him.” She sounded fierce, and I loved her for it.
“Those are only memories.” There was sadness in Macon’s voice. “You have to move on. Trust me.”
“Why? You never did.”
He smiled sadly, staring past her into the fire. “That’s how I know.”
I followed Lena up the stairs. Though the ice and snow had melted away since my last visit to Ravenwood, a thick gray fog hung throughout the house, and the air was colder.
Lena didn’t seem to notice or care what was going on around her, even though her breath was curling up toward her face in a quiet white cloud. I noticed the dark rings under her eyes, the way she looked as thin and as frail as she had when Macon died. She wasn’t the same person she had been then, though—she was someone much stronger.
She had believed Macon was gone forever, and we found a way to bring him back. I knew deep down she couldn’t hold out for any less of a fate for me.
Maybe Lena didn’t know I was here, but she knew I wasn’t gone. She wasn’t giving up on me yet. She couldn’t.
I knew, because if I was the one left behind, I couldn’t have either.
Lena slipped into her room, past the pile of suitcases, and crawled into bed without even taking off her clothes. She waved her fingers, and her door slammed shut. I lay down next to her, my face on the edge of her pillow. We were only inches apart.
The tears began to roll down her face, and I thought my heart would break, just watching her.
I love you, L. I always will.
I closed my eyes and reached for her. I wished, desperately, that there was something I could do. There had to be some way I could let her know I was still here.
I love you, Ethan. I won’t forget you. I’ll never forget you, and I’ll never stop loving you.
I heard her voice uncurl inside my head. When I opened my eyes, she was staring right through me.
“Never,” she whispered.
“Never,” I said.
I wrapped my fingers in the curls of black hair and waited until she fell asleep. I could feel her nestled up next to me.
I had to make sure she found that newspaper.
As I followed Lena down the stairs the next morning, I was starting to feel a) like some kind of stalker and b) like I was losing my mind. Kitchen sent out as big a breakfast as ever—but thankfully, now that the Order wasn’t broken and the world wasn’t about to end, the food wasn’t so raw that the sight of it made you want to throw up.
Macon was waiting for Lena at the table, and he was already digging in. I still wasn’t used to the sight of him eating. There were biscuits this morning, baked with so much butter it came bubbling up through cracks in the dough. Thick slices of bacon crowded against an Amma-sized mountain of scrambled eggs. Berries piled inside a big piece of pastry crust that Link, before his Linkubus days, would have swallowed whole in one bite.
Then I saw it. The Stars and Stripes was folded at the bottom of a whole stack of newspapers—from about as many countries as I could name.
I reached for the paper just as Macon reached for the coffeepot, shoving his hand right through my chest. It felt cold and strange, like I’d swallowed a piece of ice. Maybe like brain freeze from an ICEE, only in my heart rather than in my head.
I grabbed the paper with both hands and pulled on it as hard as I could. One edge slowly peeked out from beneath the pile.
Not good enough.
I looked up at Macon and Lena. Macon had his head buried in a newspaper called L’Express, which looked like it was written in French. Lena had her eyes glued to her plate, like the eggs were going to reveal an important truth.
Come on, L. It’s right here. I’m right here.
I yanked the paper harder, and it slid all the way out from the pile and fluttered onto the floor.
Neither one of them looked up.
Lena stirred milk into her tea. I reached for her hand with mine, squeezing it until she dropped the spoon, splashing tea onto the tablecloth.
Lena stared at her teacup, flexing her fingers. She leaned down to blot the tablecloth with her napkin. Then she noticed the paper on the floor, where it had landed next to her foot.
“What’s this?” She picked up The Stars and Stripes. “I didn’t know you subscribed to this paper, Uncle M.”
“I do. I find it’s helpful to know what’s going on in town. You wouldn’t want to miss, I don’t know, the latest diabolical plan of Mrs. Lincoln and the Ladies Auxiliary.” He smiled. “Where would the fun be in that?”
I held my breath.
She tossed it over, facedown on the table.
The crossword was on the back. The Sunday edition, just like I’d planned it back in the office of The Stars and Stripes.
She smiled to herself. “Amma would do this crossword in about five minutes.”
Macon looked up. “Less than that, I’m sure. I believe I could do it in three.”
“Really?”
“Try me.”
“Eleven across,” she said. “Apparition or phantasm. A spectral being. A spirit from another world. A ghost.”
Macon looked at her, his eyes narrowing.
Lena leaned over the paper, holding her tea. I watched as she began to read.
Figure it out, L. Please.
It was only when the teacup began to shake and fell to the carpet that I knew she’d gotten it—not the crossword but the message behind it.
“Ethan?” She looked up. I leaned closer, holding my cheek against hers. I knew she couldn’t feel it; I wasn’t back with her, not yet. But I knew she believed I was there, and for now that’s all that mattered.
Macon stared at her, surprised.
The chandelier above the table began to sway. The room brightened until it was blindingly white. The enormous dining room windows began to crack into hundreds of glass spiderwebs. Heavy drapes flew against the walls like feathers in the wind.
“Darling,” Macon began.
Lena’s hair curled in every direction. I closed my eyes as window after window began to shatter like fireworks.
Ethan?
I’m here.
Above everything, that was all I needed her to know.
Finally.
CHAPTER 13
Where the Crow Carries You
Lena knew I was there. It was hard to drag myself away, but she had figured out the truth. That was the main thing. Amma and Lena. I was two for two. It was a start.
And I was exhausted.
Now I had to find my way back to her for good. I crossed back in about ten seconds flat. If only the rest of the way was that easy.
I knew I should go home and tell my mom everything, but I also knew how worried she’d be about me going to the Far Keep. From what Genevieve and my mom and Aunt Prue and Obidias Trueblood had said, the Far Keep seemed like the last place a person would voluntarily go.
Especially a person with a mother.
I cataloged everything I needed to do, everywhere I needed to go. The river. The book. The river eyes—two smooth black stones. That’s what Obidias Trueblood said I needed. My mind kept going back to it, over and over.
How many smooth black stones could there be in the world? And how was I going to know which ones happened to be the eyes of the river, whatever that even meant?
Maybe I’d find them on the way. Or maybe I’d already found them, and I didn’t even know it.
A magical black rock, the eye of the river.
It sounded strangely familiar. Had I heard it before?
I thought back to Amma, to all the charms, every tiny bone, every bit of graveyard dirt and salt, every piece of string she’d given me to wear.
Then I remembered.
It wasn’t one of Amma’s charms. It was from the vision I saw when I opened the bottle in her room.
I had seen the stone hanging around Sulla’s neck. Sulla the Prophet. In the vision Amma had called it “the eye.”
The river’s eye.
Which meant I knew where to find it and how to get there—as long as I could figure out how to find my way to Wader’s Creek on this side.
It couldn’t be avoided, intimidating as it was. It was time to pay a visit to the Greats.
I unfolded Aunt Prue’s map. Now that I knew how to read the map, it wasn’t that hard to see where the Doorwells were marked. I found the red X on the Doorwell that led to Obidias’ place—the one at the Snow family crypt—so after that I went looking for every red mark I could find.
There were plenty of red Xs, but which of those Doorwells would take me to Wader’s Creek? Their destinations weren’t exactly marked like exits on the interstate—and I didn’t want to stumble into any of the surprises that could be waiting for a guy behind Otherworld door number three.
Snakes for fingers might be getting off easy.
There had to be some kind of logic. I didn’t know what connected the Doorwell behind the Snow family plot to the rocky path that had taken me to Obidias Trueblood, but there had to be something. Seeing as we were all related to one another around here, that something was probably blood.
What would connect one of these plots in His Garden of Perpetual Peace to the Greats? If there was a liquor store in the graveyard—or a buried coffin full of Uncle Abner’s Wild Turkey, or the ruins of a haunted bakery known for lemon meringue pie—he wouldn’t have been far behind me.
But Wader’s Creek had its own graveyard. There wasn’t a crypt or a plot for Ivy, Abner, Sulla, or Delilah in Perpetual Peace.
Then I found a red X behind what my mom had said was one of the oldest tribute markers in the graveyard, and I knew it had to be the one.
So I folded up the map and decided to check it out.
Minutes later, I found myself staring at a white marble obelisk.
Sure enough, the word SACRED was carved into the crumbling veined stone, right above a gloomy-looking skull with empty eyes that stared at you straight on. I never understood why a single creepy skull marked a handful of Gatlin’s oldest graves. But we all knew about this particular tribute, even though it was tucked away on the far edge of Perpetual Peace, where the heart of the old graveyard sat, long before the new one was built up around it.