Then it was over, and the moonlight became moonlight again, and the night faded back into night. I looked behind Reece, at Genevieve’s headstone. Genevieve was gone, as if she had never been there at all.
Reece shifted her weight, and her usual sanctimonious expression returned. “If you think for a minute I’m not goin’ to tell Uncle Macon you dragged us out to a graveyard for no good reason, because of some stupid school project you didn’t even end up doin’—” What the hell was she talking about? But Reece was dead serious. She didn’t remember what had just happened, any more than I understood it.
What did you just do?
Uncle Macon and I have been practicing.
Lena zipped up my duffel bag, with the Book inside. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just this place is really creepy at night. Let’s get out of here.”
Reece turned back toward Ravenwood, dragging Aunt Del behind her. “You’re such a baby.”
Lena winked at me.
Practicing what? Mind control?
Little things. Teletossing Pebbles. Interior Illusions. Time Binds, but those are hard.
That was easy?
I Shifted the Book out of their minds. I guess you could say I erased it. They won’t remember it, because in their reality, it never happened.
I knew we needed the Book. I knew why Lena did it. But somehow it felt like a line had been crossed, and now I didn’t know where we stood, or if she could ever cross back over to where I was. Where she used to be.
Reece and Aunt Del were already back in the garden. I didn’t need to be a Sybil to tell Reece wanted to get the hell out of there. Lena started to follow them, but something stopped me.
L, wait.
I walked back over to the hole and reached into my pocket. I opened the handkerchief with the familiar initials, and lifted the locket up by its chain. Nothing. No visions, and something told me there weren’t going to be any more. The locket had led us here, showed us what we needed to see.
I held the locket over the grave. It seemed only right, a fair trade. I was about to drop it when I heard Genevieve’s voice again, softer this time.
No. It doesn’t belong with me.
I looked back at the headstone. Genevieve was there again, what was left of her breaking into nothingness each time the wind blew through her. She didn’t look as terrifying.
She looked broken. The way you would look if you lost the only person you ever loved.
I understood.
12.08
Waist Deep
There was only so much trouble you could get into before the threat of more trouble wasn’t even a threat anymore. At some point, you’d waded so far in you had no choice but to paddle through the middle, if you had any chance of making it to the other side. It was classic Link logic, but I was starting to see the genius in it. Maybe you can’t really understand it yourself until you’re waist deep in it.
By the next day, that’s where we were, Lena and me. Waist deep. It started with forging a note with one of Amma’s #2 pencils, then cutting school to read a stolen book we weren’t supposed to have in the first place, and ended with a pack of lies about an extra-credit “project” we were working on together. I was pretty sure Amma was going to catch on about two seconds after I said the words extra credit, but she had been on the phone with my Aunt Caroline discussing my dad’s “condition.”
I felt guilty about all the lying, not to mention the stealing, forging, and mind erasing, but we didn’t have time for school; we had too much actual studying to do.
Because we had The Book of Moons. It was real. I could hold it in my hands— “Ouch!” It burned my hand, like I had touched a hot stove. The Book dropped to the floor of Lena’s bedroom. Boo Radley barked from somewhere in the house. I could hear his paws click their way up the stairs, toward us.
“Door.” Lena spoke without looking up from an old Latin dictionary. Her bedroom door slammed shut, just as Boo reached the landing. He protested with a resentful bark. “Stay out of my room, Boo. We’re not doing anything. I’m about to start practicing.”
I stared at the door, surprised. Another lesson from Macon, I guessed. Lena didn’t even react, as if she’d done it a thousand times. It was like the stunt she had pulled on Reece and Aunt Del last night. I was starting to think the closer we got to her birthday, the more the Caster was coming out in the girl.
I was trying not to notice. But the more I tried, the more I noticed.
She looked over at me, rubbing my hands on my jeans. They still hurt. “What part about ‘you can’t touch it if you’re not a Caster’ are you not getting?”
“Right. That part.”
She opened a battered black case and pulled out her viola. “It’s almost five. I’ve got to start practicing or Uncle Macon will know when he gets up. He always knows.”