One of the cars caught Link in the shin. “There’s no one in here. Where could they have gone?”
“They couldn’t have disappeared.” I remembered the way John Breed ripped out of Macon’s funeral. Maybe he could, but Ridley and Lena couldn’t Travel.
Link ran his hands along the walls. “You think there’s some kinda secret Caster door in here, or somethin’?”
The only Caster doors I knew about led to the Tunnels, the underground labyrinth of passageways that slept quietly under Gatlin and the rest of the Mortal world. It was a world within a world, so different from ours that it altered both time and distance. But, as far as I knew, all the entrances to the Tunnels were inside buildings—Ravenwood, the Lunae Libri, the crypt at Greenbrier. A few sheets of painted plywood didn’t qualify as a building, and there was nothing under the Tunnel of Love except dirt. “A door leading where? This thing is sitting in the middle of the fair. They just set it up a couple of days ago
.”
Link inched his way back out of the tunnel. “Where else could they have gone?”
If John and Ridley were using their powers to control Lena, I had to find out. It wouldn’t explain away the last few months or her golden eyes, but maybe it would explain what she was doing with John. “I’ve gotta get down there.”
Link had already pulled the keys out of his back pocket. “How’d I know you were gonna say that?”
He followed me to the Beater, the gravel crunching under his sneakers as he jogged to keep up. He yanked the rusty door open and slid behind the wheel. “Where are we goin’? Or am I better off—” He was still talking when I heard it, the tiny words tugging at the bottom of my heart.
Good-bye, Ethan.
They were gone, the voice and the girl. Like a soap bubble, or cotton candy, or the last silvery sliver of a dream.
6.15
Unmistakable
The Beater skidded to a stop in front of the Historical Society, the front tires halfway up the curb, the engine dying out on the empty street.
“Can you take it down a notch? Someone’s gonna hear us.” Not that Link ever drove any differently. Still, we were parked only a few feet from the building that served as the DAR headquarters. I noticed the roof had finally been rebuilt—it had blown off in Hurricane Lena, a few days before her birthday. Though Jackson High had been hit by the same storm, I guess those repairs could wait. We had our priorities around here.
Almost everyone in South Carolina was related to a Confederate, so joining the Sisters of the Confederacy was easy. But to join the DAR, you needed a bloodline going back to someone who fought in the war for American independence. The problem was the proof. Unless you were an actual signer of the Declaration of Independence, you had to establish a paper trail a mile long. Even then you had to be invited, which required sucking up to Link’s mom and signing whatever petition she happened to be passing around. Maybe it was a bigger deal down here than up North, like we needed to prove we had all fought for the same side in a war once. The Mortal part of our town was just as confusing as the Caster one.
Tonight the building looked empty.
“It’s not like there’s anyone around to hear us. Until the Demolition Derby ends, everyone we know is at the fairgrounds.” Link was right. Gatlin may as well have been a ghost town. Most folks were still at the fair, or at home on the phone reporting the details of a certain Southern Crusty bake-off that would go down in history for decades to come. I was pretty sure Mrs. Lincoln wouldn’t have let any of the DAR members miss watching her try to beat Amma out of first place in Pies. Although, right about now, I bet Link’s mom was wishing she had stuck to pickled okra this year.
“Not everyone.” I was out of ideas and explanations, but I knew where we could get some of both.
“You sure this is a good idea? What if Marian’s not here?” Link was jumpy. The sight of Ridley hanging out with some kind of mutant Incubus wasn’t bringing out the best in him. Not that he had anything to worry about. It was pretty clear who John Breed was after, and it wasn’t Ridley.
I checked my cell. It was almost eleven. “It’s a bank holiday in Gatlin. You know what that means. Marian should be in the Lunae Libri by now.” That’s how it worked around here. Marian was the Gatlin County Head Librarian from nine in the morning until six at night every weekday. But on bank holidays, she was the Head Caster Librarian from nine at night until six in the morning. The Gatlin Library was closed, which meant the Caster Library was open. And the Lunae Libri had a door leading into the Tunnels.
I slammed the door of the Beater as Link pulled a Maglite out of his glove box. “I know, I know. The Gatlin Library’s closed and the Caster Library’s open all night long, on account a most a Marian’s clients don’t come around durin’ the day.” Link waved the flashlight across the building in front of us. A brass placard read DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. “Still, if my mom or Mrs. Asher or Mrs. Snow found out what was in the basement a their buildin’…” He was holding the heavy metal flashlight like he was brandishing a weapon.
“You planning to take someone out with that thing?”
Link shrugged. “Never know what we’re gonna find down there.”
I knew what he was thinking. Neither one of us had been back to the Lunae Libri since Lena’s birthday. Our last visit had been more about danger than dictionaries.
Danger and death. We did something wrong that night, and some of it had happened right here. If I had gotten to Ravenwood earlier, if I had found The Book of Moons, if I could have helped Lena fight Sarafine—if we had done one thing differently, would Macon be alive right now?
We made our way around to the back of the old red brick building, in the moonlight. Link shined his flashlight on the grating near the ground, and I crouched down next to it. “Ready, man?”
The light was shaking in his hand. “Whenever you are.”
I reached through the familiar grating built into the back of the building. My hand disappeared, as always, into the illusionary entrance of the Lunae Libri. Nothing much in Gatlin was what it first appeared to be—at least not where Casters were concerned.
“I’m surprised that spell still works.” Link watched as I pulled my hand back out of the grate, as good as new.