“But he’s not wrong, Lena.” Macon looked at her, exasperated.

“You’re not Ridley. And you’re not your mother,” I said, as convincingly as I could.

“How do you know? You’ve never even met my mother. And by the way, neither have I, except in psychic attacks that no one can seem to prevent.”

Macon tried to sound reassuring. “We were unprepared for these sorts of attacks. I didn’t know she could Travel. I didn’t know she shared some of my powers. It is not a gift afforded to Casters.”

“Nobody seems to know anything about my mother, or me.”

“That’s why we need the Book.” This time, I looked right at Macon as I said it.

“What is this book you keep talking about?” Macon was losing his patience.

Don’t tell him, Ethan.

We have to.

“The Book that cursed Genevieve.” Macon and Amma looked at each other. They already knew what I was going to say. “The Book of Moons. If that’s how the curse was Cast, something in it should tell us how to break it. Right?” The room fell silent.

Marian looked at Macon. “Macon—”

“Marian. Stay out of this. You’ve interfered more than enough already, and the sun will rise just minutes from now.” Marian knew. She knew where to find The Book of Moons, and Macon wanted to make sure she kept her mouth shut.

“Aunt Marian, where’s the Book?” I looked her in the eye. “You have to help us. My mom would’ve helped us, and you’re not supposed to take sides, right?” I wasn’t playing fair, but it was true.

Amma raised her hands, then dropped them into her lap. A rare sign of surrender. “What’s done is done. They’ve already started pullin’ the thread, Melchizedek. That old sweater’s bound to unravel, anyhow.”

“Macon, there are protocols. If they ask, I’m Bound to tell them,” Marian said. Then she looked up at me. “The Book of Moons isn’t in the Lunae Libri.”

“How do you know?”

Macon stood to leave, turning to both of us. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark and angry. When he finally spoke, his voice echoed over the chamber, over all of us. “Because that’s the book for which this archive was named. It is the most powerful book from here to the Otherworld. It is also the book that cursed our family, for eternity. And it’s been missing for over a hundred years.”

12.01

It Rhymes with Witch

On Monday morning, Link and I drove down Route 9, stopping at the fork in the road to pick up Lena. Link liked Lena, but there was no way he was driving up to Ravenwood Manor. It was still the Haunted Mansion to him.

If he only knew. Thanksgiving break had only been a long weekend, but it felt a lot longer, considering that Twilight Zone of a Thanksgiving dinner, the vases flying between Macon and Lena, and our journey to the center of the earth, all without leaving the Gatlin city limits. Unlike Link, who had spent the weekend watching football, beating up his cousins, and trying to determine whether or not the cheese ball had onions in it this year.

But according to Link, there was trouble of another kind brewing, and this morning it sounded equally dangerous. Link’s mom had been burning up the lines for the last twenty-four hours, whispering on the phone with the long cord and the kitchen door closed. Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Asher had shown up after dinner, and the three of them had disappeared into the kitchen—the War Room. When Link went in, pretending to grab a Mountain Dew, he didn’t catch much. But it was enough to figure out his mom’s end game. “We’ll get her outta our school, one way or another.” And her little dog, too.

It wasn’t much, but if I knew Mrs. Lincoln, I knew enough to be worried. You could never underestimate the lengths women like Mrs. Lincoln would go to protect their children and their town from the one thing they hated most—anyone different from them. I should know. My mom had told me the stories about the first few years she’d lived here. The way she told it, she was such a criminal even the most God-fearing church ladies got bored of reporting on her; she did the marketing on Sunday, dropped by any church she liked or none at all, was a feminist (which Mrs. Asher sometimes confused with communist), a Democrat (which Mrs. Lincoln pointed out practically had “demon” in the word itself), and worst of all, a vegetarian (which ruled out any dinner invitations from Mrs. Snow). Beyond that, beyond not being a member of the right church or the DAR or the National Rifle Association, was the fact that my mom was an outsider.

But my dad had grown up here and was considered one of Gatlin’s sons. So when my mom died, all the same women who had been so judgmental of her when she was alive dropped off cream-of-something casseroles and crock pot roasts and chili-ghetti with a vengeance. Like they were finally getting the last word. My mom would have hated it, and they knew it. That was the first time my dad went into his study and locked the door for days. Amma and I had let the casseroles pile up on the porch until they took them away and went back to judging us, like they always had.

They always got the last word. Link and I both knew it, even if Lena didn’t.

Lena was sandwiched between Link and me in the front seat of the Beater, writing on her hand. I could just make out the words shattered like everything else. She wrote all the time, the way some people chewed gum or twirled their hair; I don’t even think she realized it. I wondered if she would ever let me read one of her poems, if any of them were about me.

Link glanced down. “When are you gonna write me a song?”