I reached into my pocket. Lena put her hand on my arm, and I hesitated. Marian was my mom’s closest friend, and she was like family. I knew I shouldn’t question her motives, but then I had just followed Amma into the swamp to meet Macon Ravenwood, and I would never have seen that coming. “How do we know we can trust you?” I asked, feeling sick even asking the question.
“‘The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.’”
“Elton John?”
“Close. Ernest Hemingway. In his own way, sort of the rock star of his time.”
I smiled, but Lena was not so willing to have her doubts charmed away. “Why should we trust you when everyone else has been hiding things from us?”
Marian grew serious. “Precisely because I’m not Amma, and I’m not Uncle Macon. I’m not your Gramma or your Aunt Delphine. I’m Mortal. I’m neutral. Between Black magic and White magic, Light and Dark, there has to be something in between—something to resist the pull—and that something is me.”
Lena backed away from her. It was inconceivable, to both of us. How did Marian know so much about Lena’s family?
“What are you?” In Lena’s family, that was a loaded question.
“I’m the Gatlin County Head Librarian, same as I’ve been since I moved here, same as I always will be. I’m not a Caster. I just keep the records. I just keep the books.” Marian smoothed her hair. “I’m the Keeper, just one in a long line of Mortals entrusted with the history and the secrets of a world we can never entirely be a part of. There must always be one, and now that one is me.”
“Aunt Marian? What are you talking about?” I was lost.
“Let’s just say, there are libraries, and then there are libraries. I serve all the good citizens of Gatlin, whether they are Casters or Mortals. Which works out just fine since the other branch is more of a night job, really.”
“You mean—?”
“The Gatlin County Caster Library. I am, of course, the Caster Librarian. The Head
Caster Librarian.”
I stared at Marian as if I was seeing her for the first time. She looked back at me with the same brown eyes, the same knowing smile. She looked the same, but somehow she was completely different. I had always wondered why Marian stayed in Gatlin all these years.
I thought it was because of my mom. Now I realized there was another reason.
I didn’t know what I was feeling, but whatever it was, Lena was feeling the opposite.
“Then you can help us. We have to find out what happened to Ethan and Genevieve, and what it has to do with Ethan and me, and we have to find out before my birthday.” Lena looked at her expectantly. “The Caster Library must have records. Maybe The Book of
Moons is there. Do you think it could have the answers?”
Marian looked away. “Maybe, maybe not. I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m so sorry.”
“What are you talking about?” She wasn’t making sense. I’d never seen Marian refuse help to anyone, especially me.
“I can’t get involved, even if I want to. It’s part of the job description. I don’t write the books, or the rules, I just keep them. I can’t interfere.”
“Is this job more important than helping us?” I stepped in front of her, so she had to look me in the eye when she answered. “More important than me?”
“It’s not that simple, Ethan. There’s a balance between the Mortal world and the Caster world, between Light and Dark. The Keeper is part of that balance, part of the Order of
Things. If I defy the laws by which I’m Bound, that balance is jeopardized.” She looked back at me, her voice shaky. “I can’t interfere, even if it kills me. Even if it hurts the people I love.”
I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but I knew Marian loved me, like she had loved my mom. If she couldn’t help us, there had to be a reason. “Fine. You can’t help us. Just take me to this Caster Library, and I’ll figure it out myself.”
“You’re not a Caster, Ethan. This isn’t your decision to make.”
Lena stepped next to me, and took my hand. “It’s mine. And I want to go.”
Marian nodded. “All right, I’ll take you, the next time it’s open. The Caster Library doesn’t operate on the same schedule as the Gatlin County Library. It’s a bit more irregular.”
Of course it was.
10.31
Hallow E’en
The only days of the year that the Gatlin County Library was closed were bank holidays —like Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Easter. As a result, these were the only days the Gatlin County Caster Library was open, which apparently wasn’t something Marian could control.
“Take it up with the county. Like I said, I don’t make the rules.” I wondered what county she was talking about—the one I had lived in my whole life, or the one that had been hidden from me for just as long.
Still, Lena seemed almost hopeful. For the first time, it was as if she actually believed there might be a way to prevent what she had considered the inevitable. Marian couldn’t give us any answers, but she anchored us in the absence of the two people we relied on most, who hadn’t gone anywhere, but seemed far away just the same. I didn’t say anything to Lena, but without Amma I was lost. And without Macon, I knew Lena couldn’t even find her way to lost.
Marian did give us something, Ethan and Genevieve’s letters, so old and delicate they were almost transparent, and everything she and my mother had collected about the two of them. A whole stack of papers in a dusty brown box, with cardboard printed to look like wood paneling on the sides. Although Lena loved poring over the prose—“the days without you bleed together until time is nothing more than another obstacle we must overcome,”—all it seemed to amount to was a love story with a really bad, and really
Black ending. But it was all we had.
Now all we had to do was figure out what we were looking for. The needle in the haystack, or in this case, the cardboard box. So we did the only thing we could do. We started looking.
After two weeks, I’d spent more time with Lena on the locket papers than I would have thought possible. The more we read through the papers, the more it seemed like we were reading about ourselves. At night, we stayed up late trying to solve the mystery of Ethan and Genevieve, a Mortal and a Caster, desperate to find a way to be together, against impossible odds. At school, we faced some steep odds ourselves, just getting through another eight hours at Jackson, and it was only getting harder. Every day, there was another scheme to drive Lena away, or us apart. Especially if that day was Halloween.
Halloween was generally a pretty loaded holiday at Jackson. For a guy, anything involving costumes was an accident waiting to happen. And then, there was always the stress of whether or not you made the guest list to Savannah Snow’s annual blowout. But
Halloween took on a whole new level of stress when the girl you were crazy about was a
Caster.
I had no idea what to expect when Lena picked me up for school, a couple of blocks from my house, safely around the corner from the eyes in the back of Amma’s head.
“You’re not dressed up,” I said, surprised.
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought you’d be wearing a costume or something.” I knew I sounded like an idiot the second the words came out of my mouth.
“Oh, you think Casters dress up on Halloween and fly around on brooms?” She laughed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Sorry to disappoint you. We just dress for dinner like we do on any other holiday.”