Beautiful Creatures
Page 99

The familiar drawl came out of the dark hallway, accompanied by a single silver candlestick. “Budapest, not Paris. Other than that, guilty as charged.” Macon emerged in a smoking jacket over neat black pants and a white dress shirt. The silver studs in his shirt caught the glint of the candlelight.
“Ethan, I would appreciate it greatly if you could take every precaution with my niece tonight. As you know, I prefer her home in the evenings.” He handed me a corsage for Lena, a small wreath of Confederate jasmine. “Every possible precaution.”
“Uncle M!” Lena sounded annoyed.
I looked at the corsage more closely. A silver ring dangled from the pin that held the flowers. It had an inscription in a language I didn’t understand, but recognized from The Book of Moons. I didn’t have to look too closely to see it was the ring he had worn night and day, until now. I pulled out Amma’s nearly identical corsage. Between the hundred Casters probably Bound to the ring, and all of Amma’s extended Greats, there wasn’t a spirit in town that would mess with us. I hoped.
“I think, between you and Amma, sir, Lena will survive the Jackson High winter formal all right.” I smiled.
Macon didn’t. “It’s not the formal I worry about, but I’m grateful to Amarie just the same.”
Lena frowned, looking from her uncle to me. Maybe we didn’t look like the two happiest guys in town. “Your turn.” She picked up a boutonniere from the hall table, a plain white rose with a tiny sprig of jasmine, and pinned it on my jacket. “I wish you would all stop worrying for one minute. This is getting embarrassing. I can take care of myself.”
Macon looked unconvinced. “In any event, I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
I didn’t know if he was referring to the witches of Jackson High, or the powerful Dark Caster, Sarafine. Either way, I’d seen enough in the last few months to take a warning like that seriously.
“And have her back by midnight.”
“Is that some powerful Caster hour?”
“No. It’s her curfew.”
I stifled a smile.
Lena seemed anxious on the way to school. She sat stiffly in the front seat, fiddling with the radio, her dress, her seatbelt.
“Relax.”
“Is it crazy that we’re going tonight?” Lena looked at me expectantly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean everyone hates me.” She looked down at her hands.
“You mean everyone hates us.”
“Okay, everyone hates us.”
“We don’t have to go.”
“No, I want to go. That’s the thing…” She twisted the corsage around her wrist a few times “Last year, Ridley and I had planned to go together. But then…”
I couldn’t hear her answer, not even in my head.
“Things had already gone wrong by then. Ridley turned sixteen. Then she was gone, and I had to leave school.”
“Well, this isn’t last year. It’s just a dance. Nothing’s gone wrong.”
She frowned and shut the mirror.
Not yet.
When we walked into the gym, even I was impressed by how hard Student Council must have worked all weekend. Jackson had gone all the way with the whole Midwinter Night’s Dream concept. Hundreds of tiny paper snowflakes—some white, some shimmering with tinfoil, glitter, sequins, and anything else that could be made to sparkle—hung on fishing wire from the ceiling of the gym. Powdery soap flake “snow” drifted into the corners of the gym, and twinkling white lights fell in strands from the risers.
“Hi, Ethan. Lena, you look lovely.” Coach Cross handed us both cups of Gatlin Peach Punch. She was in a black dress that showed just a little too much leg, I thought, for Link’s sake.
I looked at Lena, thinking of the silver snowflakes floating through the air at Ravenwood, without fishing wire or silver tinfoil. Still, her eyes were shining and she clung to my hand tightly, like she was a kid at her first birthday party. I had never believed Link when he claimed school dances had some sort of inexplicable effect on girls. But it was clear it was true of all girls, even Caster girls.
“It’s beautiful.” Honestly, it wasn’t. What it was, was a plain old Jackson High dance, but I guess to Lena, that was something beautiful. Maybe magic wasn’t the magic thing, when you grew up with it.
Then I heard a familiar voice. It couldn’t be.
“Let’s get this party started!”
Ethan, look—
I turned around and almost choked on my punch. Link grinned at me, wearing what looked like a silver sharkskin tuxedo. He had one of those black T-shirts with a picture of the front of a tuxedo shirt screened on it underneath, and his black high-tops. He looked like a Charleston street performer.
“Hey, Short Straw! Hey, Cuz!” I heard that unmistakable voice again, over the crowd, over the DJ, over the thumping of pounding bass, and the couples on the dance floor. Honey, sugar, molasses, and cherry lollipops, all rolled into one. It was the only time in my life I’d ever thought something was too sweet.
Lena’s hand tightened on mine. On Link’s arm, unbelievably, in the smallest splash of silver sequins ever worn to a Jackson High formal, maybe any formal, was Ridley. I didn’t even know where to look; she was all legs and curves and blond hair spilling everywhere. I could feel the temperature in the room rising just by looking at her. From the number of guys who had stopped dancing with their wedding cake–topper dates, who were fuming, it was obvious I wasn’t the only one. In a world where all the prom dresses came from one of two stores, Ridley had out–Little Missed even the Little Misses. She made Coach Cross look like the Reverend Mother. In other words, Link was doomed.