Beautiful Creatures (11 page)

Don’t try.

I was pretty sure my grave would say something different.

9.12

T
he kitchen table was still set when I got home, lucky for me, because Amma would have killed me if I’d missed dinner. What
I hadn’t considered was the phone tree that had been activated the minute I walked out of English class. No less than half
the town must have called Amma by the time I got home.

“Ethan Wate? Is that you? Because if it is, you are in for a world a trouble.”

I heard a familiar banging sound. Things were worse than I thought. I ducked under the doorway and into the kitchen. Amma
was standing at the counter in her industrial denim tool apron, which had fourteen pockets for nails and could hold up to
four power tools. She was holding her Chinese cleaver, the counter piled high with carrots, cabbage, and other vegetables
I couldn’t identify. Spring rolls required more chopping than any other recipe in Amma’s blue plastic box. If she was making
spring rolls, it only meant one thing, and it wasn’t just that she liked Chinese food.

I tried to come up with an acceptable explanation, but I had nothing.

“Coach called this afternoon, and Mrs. English, and Principal Harper, and Link’s mamma, and half the ladies from the DAR.
And you know how I hate talkin’ to those women. Evil as sin, every one a them.”

Gatlin was full of ladies’ auxiliaries, but the DAR was the mother of them all. True to its name, the Daughters of the American
Revolution, you had to prove you were related to an actual patriot from the American Revolution to be eligible for membership.
Being a member apparently entitled you to tell your River Street neighbors what colors to paint their houses and generally
boss, pester, and judge everyone in town. Unless you were Amma. That I’d like to see.

“They all said the same thing. That you ran out a school, in the middle a class, chasin’ after that Duchannes girl.” Another
carrot rolled across the cutting board.

“I know, Amma, but—”

The cabbage split in half. “So I said, ‘No, my boy wouldn’t leave school without permission and skip practice. There must
be some mistake. Must be some other boy disrepectin’ his teacher and sullyin’ his family name. Can’t be a boy I raised, livin’
in this house.’” Green onions flew across the counter.

I’d committed the worst of crimes, embarrassing her. Worst of all, in the eyes of Mrs. Lincoln and the women of the DAR, her
sworn enemies.

“What do you have to say for yourself? What would make you run out a school like your tail was on fire? And I
don’t
wanna hear it was some girl.”

I took a deep breath. What could I say? I had been dreaming about some mystery girl for months, who showed up in town and
just happened to be Macon Ravenwood’s niece? That, in addition to terrifying dreams about this girl, I had a vision of some
other woman, who I definitely didn’t know, who lived during the Civil War?

Yeah, that would get me out of trouble, around the same time the sun exploded and the solar system died.

“It’s not what you think. The kids in our class were giving Lena a hard time, teasing her about her uncle, saying he hauls
dead bodies around in his hearse, and she got really upset and ran out of class.”

“I’m waitin’ for the part that explains what any a this has to do with you.”

“Aren’t you the one always telling me to ‘walk in the steps of our Lord?’ Don’t you think He’d want me to stick up for someone
who was being picked on?” Now I’d done it. I could see it in her eyes.

“Don’t you dare use the Word a the Lord to justify breakin’ the rules at school, or I swear I will go outside and get a switch
and burn some sense into your backside. I don’t care how old you are. You hear me?” Amma had never hit me with anything in
my life, although she had chased me with a switch a few times to make a point. But this wasn’t the moment to bring that up.

The situation was quickly going from bad to worse; I needed a distraction. The locket was still burning a hole in my back
pocket. Amma loved mysteries. She had taught me to read when I was four using crime novels and the crossword over her shoulder.
I was the only kid in kindergarten who could read
examination
on the blackboard because it looked so much like
medical examiner
. As for mysteries, the locket was a good one. I’d just leave out the part about touching it and seeing a Civil War vision.

“You’re right, Amma. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left school. I was just trying to make sure Lena was okay. A window broke
in the classroom right behind her, and she was bleeding. I just went to her house to see if she was all right.”

“You were up at that house?”

“Yeah, but she was outside. Her uncle is really shy, I guess.”

“You don’t need to tell me about Macon Ravenwood, like you know anything I don’t already know.” The Look.

“H. E. B. E. T. U. D. I. N. O. U. S.”

“What?”

“As in, you don’t have a lick a sense, Ethan Wate.”

I fished the locket out of my pocket and walked over to where she was still standing by the stove. “We were out back, behind
the house, and we found something,” I said, opening my hand so she could take a look. “It has an inscription inside.”

The expression on Amma’s face stopped me cold. She looked like something had knocked the wind right out of her.

“Amma, are you okay?” I reached for her elbow, to steady her in case she was about to faint. But she pulled her arm away before
I could touch her, like she’d burned her hand on the handle of a pot.

“Where did you get that?” Her voice was a whisper.

“We found it in the dirt, at Ravenwood.”

“You didn’t find that at Ravenwood Plantation.”

“What are you talking about? Do you know who it belonged to?”

“Stand right here. Don’t you move,” she instructed, rushing out of the kitchen.

But I ignored her, following her to her room. It had always looked more like an apothecary than a bedroom, with a low white
single bed tucked beneath rows of shelves. On the shelves were neatly stacked newspapers—Amma never threw away a finished
crossword—and Mason jars full of her stock ingredients for making charms. Some were her old standards: salt, colored stones,
herbs. Then there were more unusual collections, like a jar of roots and another of abandoned bird nests. The top shelf was
just bottles of dirt. She was acting weird, even for Amma. I was only a couple of steps behind her, but she was already tearing
through her drawers by the time I got there.

“Amma, what are you—”

“Didn’t I tell you to stay in the kitchen? Don’t you bring
that
thing in here!” she shrieked, when I took a step forward.

“What are you so upset about?” She stuffed a few things I couldn’t get a look at into her tool apron, and rushed back out
of the room. I caught up with her back in the kitchen. “Amma, what’s the matter?”

“Take this.” She handed me a threadbare handkerchief, careful not to let her hand touch mine. “Now you wrap that thing up
in here. Right now, right this second.”

This was beyond going dark. She was totally losing it.

“Amma—”

“Do as I say, Ethan.” She never called me by my first name without my last.

Once the locket was safely wrapped in the handkerchief, she calmed down a little bit. She rifled through the lower pockets
of her apron, removing a small leather bag and a vial of powder. I knew enough to recognize the makings of one of her charms
when I saw them. Her hand shook slightly as she poured some of the dark powder into the leather pouch. “Did you wrap it up
tight?”

“Yeah,” I said, expecting her to correct me for answering her so informally.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Now you put it in here.” The leather pouch was warm and smooth in my hand. “Go on now.”

I dropped the offending locket into the pouch.

“Tie this around it,” she instructed, handing me a piece of what looked like ordinary twine, although I knew nothing Amma
used for her charms was ever ordinary, or what it seemed. “Now you take it back there, where you found it, and you bury it.
Take it there straightaway.”

“Amma, what’s going on?” She took a few steps forward and grabbed my chin, pushing the hair out of my eyes. For the first
time since I pulled the locket out of my pocket, she looked me in the eye. We stayed that way for what seemed like the longest
minute of my life. Her expression was an unfamiliar one, uncertain.

“You’re not ready,” she whispered, releasing her hand.

“Not ready for what?”

“Do as I say. Take that bag back to where you found it and bury it. Then you come right home. I don’t want you messin’ with
that girl anymore, you hear me?”

She had said all she planned to say, maybe more. But I’d never know because if there was one thing Amma was better at than
reading cards or solving a crossword, it was keeping secrets.

“Ethan Wate, you up?”

What time was it? Nine-thirty. Saturday. I should have been up by now, but I was exhausted. Last night I’d spent two hours
wandering around, so Amma would believe I had gone back to Greenbrier to bury the locket.

I climbed out of bed and stumbled across the room, tripping on a box of stale Oreos. My room was always a mess, crammed with
so much stuff my dad said it was a fire hazard and one day I was going to burn the whole house down, not that he’d been in
here in a while. Aside from my map, the walls and ceiling were plastered with posters of places I hoped I’d get to see one
day—Athens, Barcelona, Moscow, even Alaska. The room was lined with stacks of shoeboxes, some three or four feet high. Although
the stacks looked random, I could tell you the location of every box—from the white Adidas box with my lighter collection
from my eighth grade pyro phase, to the green New Balance box with the shell casings and a torn piece of flag I found at Fort
Sumter with my mom.

And the one I was looking for, the yellow Nike box, with the locket that had sent Amma off the deep end. I opened the box
and pulled out the smooth leather pouch. Hiding it had seemed like a good idea last night, but I put it back in my pocket,
just in case.

Amma shouted up the stairs again. “Get on down here or you’re gonna be late.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

Every Saturday, I spent half the day with the three oldest women in Gatlin, my great-aunts Mercy, Prudence, and Grace. Everyone
in town called them the Sisters, like they were a single entity, which in a way they were. Each of them was about a hundred
years old, and even they couldn’t remember who was the oldest. All three of them had been married multiple times, but they’d
outlived all their husbands and moved into Aunt Grace’s house together. And they were even crazier than they were old.

When I was about twelve, my mom started dropping me off there on Saturdays to help out, and I had been going there ever since.
The worst part was, I had to take them to church on Saturdays. The Sisters were Southern Baptist, and they went to church
on Saturdays and Sundays, and most other days, too.

But today was different. I was out of bed and into the shower before Amma could call me a third time. I couldn’t wait to get
over there. The Sisters knew just about everyone who had ever lived in Gatlin; they should, since between the three of them,
they had been related to half the town by marriage, at one time or another. After the vision, it was obvious the
G
in
GKD
stood for Genevieve. But if there was anyone who would know what the rest of the initials stood for, it would be the three
oldest women in town.