“Aren't you going to help me?”
“I can't leave Olivia alone for long, or she'll reshelve the entire collection, and then we'll all have to learn Chinese.” She paused for a moment, watching me, looking so much like my mom. “I think you can handle this one on your own. At least the beginning.”
“I don't have a choice, do I? You can't really help me since you're a Keeper.” I was still bitter about Marian's revelation that she had known my mother was involved with the Caster world, but she would never explain why or how. There were so many things about my mother and her death that Marian had never told me. It always came back to the endless rules that Bound Marian to her job as a Keeper.
“I can only help you help yourself. I can't determine the course of events, the unraveling of Darkness and Light, the Order of Things.”
“That's such a load of crap.”
“What?”
“It's like the prime directive on Star Trek. You have to let the planet evolve at its own pace. You can't introduce hyperspace or warp speed until they discover it for themselves. But Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise always end up breaking the rule.”
“Unlike Captain Kirk, there is no choice in my case. A Keeper is powerfully Bound to act neither for the Dark nor the Light. I couldn't change my destiny, even if I wanted to. I have my own place in the natural order of the Caster world, in the Order of Things.”
“Whatever.”
“It's not a choice. I don't have the authority to change the way things work. If I so much as tried, I might destroy not only myself but the very people I was trying to help.”
“But my mom still ended up dead.” I don't know why I said it, but I couldn't understand the logic. Marian had to remain uninvolved to protect the people she cared about, but the person she cared about most died anyway.
“Are you asking me if I could've prevented your mother's death?” She knew I was. I looked down at my sneakers. I wasn't sure I was ready to hear the answer.
Marian put her hand under my chin and pulled my face up to meet hers. “I didn't know your mother was in danger, Ethan. But she knew the risks.” Her voice was uneven, and I knew I had gone too far, but I couldn't help it. I'd been trying to get up the courage to have this conversation for months now. “I would have gladly taken her place in that car. Don't you think I have wondered a thousand times if there was something I knew or could have done that might have saved Lila …” Her voice trailed off.
I feel the same way. You're just holding on to a different edge of the same jagged hole. We're both lost. That's what I wanted to say. Instead, I let her put her arm around my shoulder and pull me into a rough hug. I barely felt it when the arm slipped away and the door closed behind her.
I stared at the stacks of paper. Lucille jumped down from the chair and onto the table. “Be careful. These are a lot older than you.” She tilted her head and looked at me with her blue eyes. Then she froze.
She was staring at my mother's chair, eyes wide, fixated. There was nothing there, but I remembered what Amma told me. “Cats can see the dead. That's why they stare at things the way they do for so long, like they're just lookin’ into thin air. But they're not. They're lookin’ through it.”
I stepped closer to the chair. “Mom?” She didn't answer, or maybe she did, because there was a book lying on the chair that wasn't there a minute ago. Darkness and Light: The Origins of Magic. It was one of Macon's books. I had seen it in his library at Ravenwood. I lifted it up, and a gum wrapper fell out — one of my mother's bookmarks, no doubt. I bent down to pick up the wrapper, and the room began to sway, the lights and colors swirling around me. I tried to focus on something, anything, to keep from falling, but I was too dizzy. The wood floor rushed up to meet me, and as I hit the ground the smoke burned my eyes —
By the time Abraham returned to Ravenwood, the ash had already made its way inside the house. The charred remnants of Gatlin's great houses wafted down from the open windows on the second floor like black snowflakes. As he ascended the staircase, Abraham's footsteps left impressions in the thin black layer already coating the floor. He secured the upstairs windows, without putting The Book of Moons down for a second. But he couldn't have put it down even if he had wanted to. Ivy, the old cook from Greenbrier, was right; the Book was calling him, a whisper only he could hear.
When he reached the study, Abraham rested the Book on the polished mahogany desk. He knew exactly which page to turn to, as if the Book was flipping the pages itself. As if it knew what he wanted. Even though he had never seen the Book before, Abraham knew the answer was in those pages, an answer that would guarantee Ravenwood's survival.
The Book was offering him the one thing he wanted above all else. But it wanted something in return.