“Ridley, I said that’s enough.” Macon was losing his patience. I recognized his tone as the same one he’d had after I took the locket out of my pocket, during my first visit.
“Why are you taking her side, Uncle M? I spent just as much time with you as Lena did, growing up.
How did she suddenly become your favorite?” For a moment, she almost sounded hurt.
“You know it has nothing to do with favorites. You have been Claimed. It’s out of my hands.”
Claimed? By what? What was he talking about? The suffocating haze around me was getting thicker. I couldn’t be sure I was hearing everything correctly.
“But you and I are the same.” She was pleading with Macon, like a spoiled child.
The table began to shake almost imperceptibly, the black liquid in the wine glasses gently sloshing from side to side. Then I heard a rhythmic tapping on the roof. Rain.
Lena was gripping the edge of the table, her knuckles white. “You are NOT the same,” she hissed.
I felt Ridley’s body stiffen against my arm, which she was still wrapped around like a snake. “You think you are so much better than me, Lena… is it? You don’t even know your real name. You don’t even realize this relationship of yours is doomed. Just wait until you’re Claimed and you find out how things really work.” She laughed, a sinister, painful sort of sound. “You have no idea if we are the same or not. In a few months, you could end up exactly like me.”
Lena looked at me, panicked. The table began to shake harder, the plates rattling against the wood.
There was a crackle of lightning outside, and rain began pouring down the windows like tears. “Shut up!”
“Tell him, Lena. Don’t you think Short Straw here deserves to know everything? That you have no idea if you’re Light or Dark? That you have no choice?”
Lena leapt to her feet, knocking her chair over behind her. “I said, shut up!”
Ridley was relaxed again, enjoying herself. “Tell him how we lived together, in the same room, like sisters, that I was exactly like you a year ago and now…”
Macon stood at the head of the table, gripping it with both hands. His pale face seemed even whiter than usual. “Ridley, that’s enough! I will Cast you out of this house if you say another word.”
“You can’t Cast me out, Uncle. You aren’t strong enough for that.”
“Don’t overestimate your skills. No Dark Caster on Earth is powerful enough to enter Ravenwood on their own. I Bound the place myself. We all did.”
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!”