Beautiful Creatures (37 page)

T
oday? But it’s not a holiday.” When I opened the front door, Marian was the last person I had expected to see, standing on
my doorstep in her coat. Now I was sitting with Lena on the cold bench seat of Marian’s old turquoise truck, on our way to
the Caster Library.

“A promise is a promise. It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. It may not seem like a holiday, but it is a bank holiday,
and that’s all we need.” Marian was right. Amma had probably been in the line at the mall with a handful of coupons since
before dawn; it was dark out now, and she still wasn’t back. “The Gatlin County Library is closed, so the Caster Library is
open.”

“Same hours?” I asked Marian, as she turned onto Main.

She nodded. “Nine to six.” Then, winking, “Nine p.m. to six a.m. Not all my clientele can venture out in the daylight.”

“That hardly seems fair,” complained Lena. “The Mortals get so much more time, and they don’t even read around here.”

Marian shrugged. “Like I said, I do get paid by Gatlin County. Take it up with them. But think how much longer you’ll have
until your
Lunae Libri
are due back.”

I looked blank.

“
Lunae Libri
. Roughly translated, Books of the Moon. You might call them Caster Scrolls.”

I didn’t care what you called them. I couldn’t wait to see what the books in the Caster Library would tell us, or one book
in particular. Because we were short on two things: answers and time.

When we piled out of the truck, I couldn’t believe where we were. Marian’s truck was parked at the curb, not ten feet from
the Gatlin Historical Society, or, as my mom and Marian liked to say, the Gatlin Hysterical Society. The Historical Society
was also the DAR headquarters. Marian had pulled her truck forward enough to avoid the puddle of light spilling down to the
pavement from the lamppost.

Boo Radley was sitting on the sidewalk, as if he had known.

“Here? The
Lunae
whatever is at the DAR headquarters?”

“
Domus Lunae Libri
. The House of
The Book of Moons
.
Lunae Libri
, for short. And no, just the Gatlin entrance.” I burst out laughing. “You have your mother’s appreciation for irony.” We
walked up to the deserted building. We couldn’t have picked a better night.

“But it’s not a joke. The Historical Society is the oldest building in the County, next to Ravenwood itself. Nothing else
survived the Great Burning,” Marian added.

“But the DAR and the Casters? How could they have anything in common?” Lena was dumbfounded.

“I expect you’ll find they have quite a bit more in common than you think.” Marian hurried toward the old stone building,
drawing out her familiar key ring. “I, for example, am a member of both societies.” I looked at Marian in disbelief. “I’m
neutral. I thought I made myself perfectly clear. I’m not like you. You’re like Lila, you get too involved….” I could finish
that sentence for myself. And look what happened to her.

Marian froze, but the words hung in the air. There was nothing she could say or do to take them back. I felt numb, but I didn’t
say anything. Lena reached for my hand, and I could feel her pulling me out of myself.

Ethan. Are you okay?

Marian looked at her watch again. “It’s five to nine. Technically, I shouldn’t let you in yet. But I need to be downstairs
by nine, in case we have any other visitors this evening. Follow me.”

We made our way into the dark yard behind the building. She fumbled through her keys until she drew out what I had always
thought was a keychain, because it didn’t look like a key at all. It was an iron ring, with one hinged side. With an expert
hand, Marian twisted the hinge until it snapped back upon itself, turning the circle into a crescent. A Caster moon.

She pushed the key into what appeared to be an iron grating, in the foundation at the back of the building. She twisted the
key, and the grating slid open. Behind the grating was a dark stone staircase leading down into even more darkness, the basement
beneath the basement of the DAR. As she snapped the key one more rotation to the left, a row of torches lit themselves along
the sides of the wall. Now the stairwell was fully illuminated with flickering light, and I could even see a glimpse of the
words domus lunae libri etched into the stone archway of the entrance below. Marian snapped the key once more, and the stairs
disappeared, replaced by the iron grating once again.

“That’s it? We aren’t going to go in?” Lena sounded annoyed.

Marian stuck her hand through the grating. It was an illusion. “I can’t Cast, as you know, but something had to be done. Strays
kept wandering in at night. Macon had Larkin rig it for me, and he stops by to keep it intact, every now and then.”

Marian looked at us, suddenly somber. “All right, then. If you’re sure this is what you want to do, I can’t stop you. Nor
can I guide you in any way, once you’re downstairs. I can’t prevent you from taking a book, or take one back from you before
the
Lunae Libri
opens itself again.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you understand, Ethan? This isn’t a game. There are powerful books down there—Binding
books, Caster scrolls, Dark and Light talismans, objects of power. Things no Mortal has ever seen, except me, and my predecessors.
Many of the books are charmed, others are jinxed. You have to be careful. Touch nothing. Let Lena handle the books for you.”

Lena’s hair was waving. She was already feeling the magic of this place. I nodded, wary. What I was feeling was less magical,
my stomach churning like I was the one who drank too much peppermint schnapps. I wondered how often Mrs. Lincoln and her cronies
had paced back and forth on the floor above us, oblivious to what was below them.

“No matter what you find, remember we have to be out before sunrise. Nine to six. Those are the library hours, and the entrance
can only be made to open during that time. The sun will rise precisely at six; it always does, on a Library Day. If you aren’t
up the stairs by sunrise, you will be trapped until the next Library Day, and I have no way of knowing how well a Mortal could
survive that experience. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

Lena nodded, taking my hand. “Can we go in now? I can’t wait.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. Your Uncle Macon and Amma would kill me if they knew.” Marian checked her watch. “After you.”

“Marian? Have you—did my mother ever see this?” I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t think about anything else.

Marian looked at me, her eyes strangely sparkling. “Your mother was the person who gave me the job.”

And with that, she disappeared in front of us through the illusionary grating, and down into the
Lunae Libri
below. Boo Radley barked, but it was too late to turn back now.

The steps were cold and mossy, the air dank. Wet things, scurrying things, burrowing things—it wasn’t hard to imagine them
making themselves comfortable down here.

I tried not to think about Marian’s last words. I couldn’t imagine my mother coming down these stairs. I couldn’t imagine
her knowing anything about this world I’d just stumbled onto, more like, this world that had stumbled onto me. But she had,
and I couldn’t stop wondering how. Had she stumbled onto it too, or had someone invited her in? Somehow, it made it all seem
more real, that my mother and I shared this secret, even if she wasn’t here to share it with me.

But I was the one here now, walking down the stone steps, carved and flat like the floor of an old church. Along either side
of the stairs I could see rough stone boulders, the foundations of an ancient room that had existed on the site of the DAR
building, long before the structure itself had been built. I looked down the stairs, but all I could see were rough outlines,
shapes in the dark. It didn’t look like a library. It looked like what it probably was, what it had always been. A crypt.

At the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows of the crypt, countless tiny domes curved overhead where the columns jutted up
into the vaulted ceiling, forty or fifty in all. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that each column was different,
and some of them were tilted, like crooked old oaks. Their shadows made the circular chamber seem like some kind of quiet,
dark forest. It was a terrifying room to be in. There was no way of knowing how far back it went, since every direction dissolved
into darkness.

Marian inserted her key into the first column, marked with a moon. The torches along the walls lit themselves, illuminating
the room with flickering light.

“They’re beautiful,” Lena breathed. I could see her hair still twisting, and wondered how this place must feel to her, in
ways I could never know.

Alive. Powerful. Like the truth, every truth, is here, somewhere.

“Collected from all over the world, long before my time. Istanbul.” Marian pointed to the tops of the columns, the decorated
parts, the capitals. “Taken from Babylon.” She pointed to another one, with four hawk heads poking out from each side. “Egypt,
the Eye of God.” She patted another, dramatically carved with a lion’s head. “Assyria.”

I felt along the wall with my hand. Even the stones of the walls were carved. Some were cut with faces, of men, creatures,
birds, staring from between the forest of columns, like predators. Other stones were carved with symbols I didn’t recognize,
hieroglyphs of Casters and cultures I’d never know.

We moved farther into the chamber, out of the crypt, which seemed to serve as some sort of lobby, and again torches burst
into flame, one after another, as if they were following us. I could see that the columns curved around a stone table in the
middle of the room. The stacks, or what I guessed were the stacks, radiated out from the central circle like the spokes of
a wheel, and seemed to rise up almost to the ceiling, creating a frightening maze I imagined a Mortal could get lost in. In
the room itself, there was nothing but the columns, and the circular stone table.

Marian calmly picked up a torch from an iron crescent on the wall and handed it to me. She handed another to Lena, and took
one for herself. “Have a look around. I have to check the mail. I may have a transfer request from another branch.”

“For the
Lunae Libri
?” I hadn’t considered that there might be other Caster libraries.

“Of course.” Marian turned back toward the stairs.

“Wait. How do you get mail here?”

“The same way you do. Carlton Eaton delivers it, rain or shine.” Carlton Eaton was in the know. Of course he was. That probably
explained why he’d picked Amma up in the middle of the night. I wondered if he opened the Casters’ mail, too. I wondered what
else I didn’t know about Gatlin, and the people in it. I didn’t have to ask.

“There aren’t too many of us, but more than you’d think. You have to remember, Ravenwood has been here longer than this old
building. This was a Caster county before it was ever a Mortal one.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re all so weird around here.” Lena poked me. I was still stuck back on Carlton Eaton.

Who else knew what was really going on in Gatlin, in the other Gatlin, the one with magical underground libraries and girls
who could control the weather or make you jump off a cliff? Who else was in the Caster loop, like Marian and Carlton Eaton?
Like my mom?

Fatty? Mrs. English? Mr. Lee?

Definitely not Mr. Lee.

“Don’t worry. When you need them, they’ll find you. That’s how it works, how it always has.”

“Wait.” I grabbed Marian’s arm. “Does my dad know?”

“No.” At least there was one person in my house who wasn’t living a double life, even if he was crazy.

Marian issued a final piece of advice. “Now, you’d better get started. The
Lunae Libri
is thousands of times bigger than any library you’ve ever seen. If you get lost, immediately trace your steps backward. That’s
why the stacks radiate out from this one chamber. If you only go forward or back, you have less chance of getting lost.”

“How can you get lost, if you can only go in a straight line?”

“Try it for yourself. You’ll see.”

Lena interrupted, “What’s at the end of the stacks? I mean, at the end of the aisles?”

Marian looked at her oddly. “Nobody knows. No one has ever made it far enough to find out. Some of the aisles turn into tunnels.
Parts of the
Lunae Libri
are still uncharted. There are many things down here even I’ve never seen. One day, perhaps.”

“What are you talking about? Everything ends somewhere. There can’t be rows and rows of books tunneling under the whole town.
What, do you come up for tea at Mrs. Lincoln’s house? Make a left turn and drop a book off to Aunt Del in the next town? Tunnel
to the right for a chat with Amma?” I was skeptical.

Marian smiled at me, amused. “How do you think Macon gets his books? How do you think the DAR never sees any visitors going
in or out? Gatlin is Gatlin. Folks like it fine the way it is, the way they
think
it is. Mortals only see what they want to see. There’s been a thriving Caster community in and around this county since before
the Civil War. That’s hundreds of years, Ethan, and that’s not going to change suddenly. Not just because you know about it.”