I repeated the words to myself, the pieces snapping together so fast I could barely make sense of them. Instead, they made sense of me --
the dream that wasn't a dream, but a memory of not breathing and not feeling and not thinking and not seeing --
the dirt and flames that carried my body away as my life flowed out --
"Ethan! You all right?" I could hear Amma, but she was far away, as far as she was that night when I was on the ground.
I could be in the ground now, like my mom and Macon.
I should be.
"Ethan?" Link was shaking me.
My body filled with sensations I couldn't control and didn't want to remember. Blood in my mouth, blood roaring into my ears --
"He's passing out." Liv was holding my head.
There had been pain and noise and something else. Voices. Shapes. People.
I had died.
I reached under my shirt, running my hand over the scar on my stomach. The scar from where Sarafine had stabbed me with a real knife. I barely noticed it anymore, but now it would be a constant reminder of the night I died. I remembered how Lena reacted when she saw it.
"You're still the same person, and Lena still loves you. Her love is the reason you're here now." Arelia's voice was gentle, knowing. I opened my eyes, letting the blur of shapes become people as I settled back into myself again.
My thoughts were so jumbled. Even now, nothing was making any sense. "What do you mean, her love is the reason I'm here now?"
Amma spoke quietly, and I had to strain to hear her. "Lena's the one who brought you back. I helped her, me and your mamma."
The words didn't fit together, so I tried unrolling them out again for myself. Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead, together. And together they had kept it from me until now. I rubbed the scar on my skin. It felt like the truth.
"Since when does Lena know how to raise the dead? If she did, don't you think she would've brought Macon back by now?"
Amma looked at me. I had never seen her so scared. "She didn't do it on her own. She used the Binding Spell from The Book a Moons. Binds death to life."
Lena had used The Book of Moons .
The Book that had cursed Genevieve and Lena's whole family for generations, Claiming all the children in Lena's family for Light or Dark on their sixteenth birthdays. The Book Genevieve had used to bring Ethan Carter Wate back from the dead for only a second -- an act she spent the rest of her life paying for.
I couldn't think. My mind started caving in on itself again, and I couldn't follow my own thoughts. Genevieve. Lena. The price.
"How could you?" I pushed myself away from them, out of their Circle of Sight. I'd seen enough.
"I didn't have a choice. She couldn't let you go." Amma looked at me, ashamed. "I couldn't either."
I scrambled to my feet, shaking my head. "It's a lie. She wouldn't do it." But I knew she would. They both would. It was exactly what they would have done. I knew, because I would've done it, too.
It didn't matter now.
In my whole life, I had never been so angry with Amma, or so disappointed. "You knew the Book wouldn't give anything without taking something in return. You told me that yourself."
"I know."
"Lena will have to pay a price for this, because of me. You both will." My head felt like it was going to split in half, or explode.
A renegade tear caught on Amma's cheek. She put two fingers on her forehead and closed her eyes, Amma's version of making the sign of the cross, a silent prayer. "She's payin' it right now."
I couldn't breathe.
Lena's eyes. The stunt at the fair. Running away with John Breed. The words found their way out, even as I tried to hold them in.
"She's going Dark because of me."
"If Lena's going Dark, it's not because a that Book. The Book made a different kinda trade." Amma stopped, as if she couldn't bear to tell me the rest.
"What kind of trade?"
"It gave one life but took another. We knew there'd be consequences." The words caught in her throat. "We just didn't know it would be Melchizedek."
Macon.
It couldn't be true.
It gave one life but took another. A different kind of trade.
My life for Macon's.
It all made sense. The way Lena had been acting the past few months. The way she had been pulling away from me, from everyone. The way she had been blaming herself for Macon's death.
It was true. She had killed him.
To save me.
I thought about her notebook and the Charmed page I'd found. What had the words said? Amma? Sarafine? Macon? The Book? It was the real story of that night. I remembered the poems written on her wall. Nobody the Dead and
Nobody the Living. Two sides of the same coin. Macon and me.
Nothing green can stay. Months ago, I believed she'd gotten the Frost poem wrong. But of course, she hadn't. She was talking about herself.
I thought about how it seemed painful for her to look at me. No wonder she felt guilty. No wonder she ran. I wondered if she could ever stand to look at me again. Lena had done it all because of me. It wasn't her fault.
It was mine.
No one said anything. There was no turning back now, not for any of us. What Lena and Amma had done that night couldn't be undone. I shouldn't be here, but I was.
"It's da Order, and you can't stop da Order." Twyla closed her eyes, as if she could hear something I couldn't.