In the morning, I had no idea where I was. Then I saw the words covering the walls and the iron bed and the windows and the mirrors, all scrawled with Sharpie in Jack's handwriting, and I remembered.
I lifted my head up, and wiped the drool off my cheek. Jack was still sacked out; I could just see the edge of his foot hanging over the side of the bed. I pushed myself up, my back stiff from sleeping on the floor. I wondered who had brought us down from the attic, or how.
My cell phone went off; my default alarm clock, so Anna would only have to yell up the stairs three times to get me up. Only today, it wasn't blaring "Bohemian Rasphody." It was the song. Jack sat up, startled, groggy.
"What happ-"
"Shh. Listen."
The song had changed.
Sixteen moons, sixteen years,
Sixteen times you dreamed my fears,
Sixteen will try to Bind the spheres,
Sixteen screams but just one hears . . .
"Stop it!" He grabbed my cell and turned off, but the song kept playing.
"It's about you, I think. But what's the Binding the spheres?"
"I almost died last night. I'm sick of everything being about me. I'm sick of all these weird things happening to me. Maybe the stupid song is about you, for a change. You're actually the only sixteen-year-old here." Frustrated, Jack flung his hand up in the air and opened it. He closed it into a fist, and banged it against the floor like he was killing a spider.
The music stopped. There was no messing with Jack today. I couldn't blame him, to be honest. He looked green and wobbly, like Mark did the morning after the morning Savannah had dared him to drink the old bottle of peppermint schnapps out of her mom's pantry, on the last day of school before winder break. Three years later and he still wouldn't eat a candy cane.
Jack's hair was sticking out in about fifteen different directions, and his eyes were puffy from crying. So this was what he looked like in the morning. I tried not to think about Anna and what the hell I was going to pay when I got home.
I crawled up onto the bed and pulled Jack into my lap, running my hand through his crazy hair. "Are you okay?"
He shut his eyes and buried his face in my sweatshirt. I knew I must reek like a wild possum by now. "I think so."
"I could hear you screaming, all the way from my house."
"Who knew Kelting would save my life."
I had missed something, as usual. "What's Kelting?"
"That's what it's called, the way we're able to communicate with each other no matter where we are. Some Casters can Kelt, some can't. Ridley and I used to be able to talk to each other in school that way, but-"
"I thought you said it had never happened to you before?"
"It's never happened to me before with a Mortal. Uncle Macon says it's really rare."
I like the sound of that.
Jack nudged me. "It's from the Celtic side of my family. It's how Casters used to get messages to each other, during the Trials. In the States, they used to call it 'The Whispering.' "
"But I'm not a Caster."
"I know, it's really weird. It's not supposed to work with Mortals." Of course it wasn't.
"Don't you think it's a little more than weird? We can do this Kelting thing, Ridley got into Ravenwood because of me, even your uncle said I can protect you somehow. How is that possible? I mean, I'm not a Caster. My parents are different, but they're not that different."
He leaned into my shoulder. "Maybe you don't have to be a Caster to have power."
I pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Maybe you just have to fall for one."
I said it, just like that. No stupid jokes, no changing the subject. For once, I wasn't embarrassed, because it was the truth. I had fallen. I think I had always been falling. And he might as well know, if he didn't already, because there was no going back now. Not for me.
He looked up at me, and the whole world disappeared. Like there was just us, like there would always be just us, and we didn't need magic for that. It was sort of happy and sad, all at the same time. I couldn't be around him without feeling things, without feeling everything.
What are you thinking?
He smiled.
I think you can figure it out. You can read the writing on the wall.
And as he said it, there was writing on the wall. It appeared slowly, one word at a time.
You're
not
the
only
one
falling.
It wrote itself out, in the same curling black script as the rest of the room. Jacks cheeks flushed a little, and he covered his face with his hands. "It's going to be really embarrassing if everything I think starts showing up on the walls."
"You didn't mean to do that?"
"No."
You don't need to be embarrassed, Jack.
I pulled his hands away.
Because I feel the same way about you.
His eyes were closed, and I leaned in to kiss him. It was a tiny kiss, a nothing of a kiss. But it made my heart race just the same.
He opened his eyes and smiled. "I want to hear the rest. I want to hear how you saved my life."
"I don't even remember how I got here, and then I couldn't find you, your house was full of all these creepy people who looked like they were at a costume party."
"They weren't."
"I figured."
"Then you found me?" He laid his head in my lap, looking up at me with a smile. "You rode into the room on your white stallion and saved me from certain death at the hands of a Dark Caster?"
"Don't joke. It was really scary. And there was no stallion, it was more like a dog."
"The last thing I remember was Uncle Macon talking about the Binding." Jack said, thinking.
"What was the Circle thing?"
"The Sanguinis Circle. The Circle of Blood."
I tried not to look freaked out. I could barely stomach the idea of Anna and the chicken bones. I didn't think I could handle real chicken blood; at least, I hoped it was just chicken blood. "I didn't see the blood."
"Not actual blood, you idiot. Blood as in kin, family. My whole family is here for the holiday, remember?"
"Right. Sorry."
"I told you. Halloween is a powerful night for Casting."
"So that's what you were all doing up here? In that Circle?"
"Macon wanted to Bind Ravenwood. It's always been Bound, but he Binds it again every Halloween for the New Year."
"But something went wrong."
"I guess so, because we were in the circle, and then I could hear Uncle Macon talking to Aunt Del, and then everyone was shouting, and they were all talking about a woman. Sara something."
"Sarafine. I heard it, too."
"Sarafine. Was that the name? I've never heard it before."
"She must be a Dark Caster. They all seemed, I don't know, scared. I've never heard your uncle talk like that before. Do you know what was happening? Was she really trying to kill you?" I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.
"I don't know. I don't remember much, except this voice, like someone was talking to me from really far away. But I can't remember what they were saying." He squirmed into lap, awkwardly leaning against my chest. It almost seemed like I could feel his heart beating on top of mine, like a little fluttering bird in a cage. We were as close as two people could be, without looking at each other. Which was, this morning, the way I think we both needed to be. "Ethan. We're running out of time. It's no use. Whatever it was, whatever she was, don't you think she was coming for me, because in four months I'm going to go Dark?"
"No."
"No? That's all you have to say about the worst night of my whole life, when I almost died?" Jack pulled back.
"Think about it. Would this Sarafine, whoever she is, be hunting you down if you were one of the bad guys? No, the good guys would be coming after you. Look at Ridley. Nobody in your family was exactly pulling out the welcome mat for her."
"Except you. Jerk." He jabbed me playfully in the ribs.
"Exactly. Because I'm not a Caster, I'm a puny Mortal. And you said yourself, if she told me to jump off a cliff, I'd do it."
"Didn't your mamma ever as you, Ethan Nestor, if your friends were about to jump right off a cliff, would you jump, too?"
I drew my arms around him, feeling happier than I should've, given last night. Or maybe it was Jack who was feeling better, and I was just picking up on it. These days, such a strong current flowed between us that it was hard to sort out what was me, and what was him.
All I knew was, I wanted to kiss him.
You're going Light.
And so I did.
Definitely, Light.
I kissed him again, pulling him up into my arms. Kissing him was like breathing. I had to do it. I couldn't help myself. I pressed my body against his. I could hear his breathing, feel his heart against my chest. My whole nervous system started firing at once. My hair was standing on end, and he relaxed into my body. Every touch of him was like a prick of electricity. I had been waiting to do this since I had first met him, since I had first dreamed of him.
It was like the lightning striking. We were one thing.
Ethan.
Even in my head, I could hear the urgency in his voice. I felt it too, like I couldn't get close enough to him. His skin was soft and hot. I could feel the pinpricks intensifying. Our lips were raw; we couldn't kiss each other any harder. The bed started to shake, then lift. I could feel it swaying underneath us. I felt like my lungs were collapsing. My skin went cold. The lights in the room flashed on and off, and the room was spinning, or maybe growing dark, only I couldn't tell and I didn't know if it was me, or if it was the light in the room.
Ethan!
The bed crashed to the floor. I heard the sound of splintering glass, in the distance, as if a window had shattered. I heard Jack crying.
Then the voice of a child. "What's wrong Jack? Why are you so sad?"
I felt a small, warm hand on my chest. The warmth radiated out from the hand, through my body, and the room stopped spinning, and I could breath again, and I opened my eyes.
Ryan.
I sat up, my head pounding. Jack was next to me, his head pressed against my chest, just like he had been an hour before. Only this time, his windows were broken, his bed had collapsed, and a little blond ten-year-old was standing in front of me with her hand on my chest. Jack sniffling, tried to push part of a broken mirror away from me, and what was left on his bed.
"I think we figured out what Ryan is."
Jack smiled, wiping his eyes. He pulled Ryan close. "A Thaumaturge. We've never had one in our family."
"I'm guessing that's a fancy Caster name for a healer," I said, rubbing my head.
Jack nodded and kissed Ryan's cheek.
"Something like that."