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Beautiful Creatures
By Kami Garcia
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of
this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission
of
the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
www.twitter.com/littlebrown
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: December 2009
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real
persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors. To the extent
any
real names of individuals, locations, or organizations are included in the book, they are
used fictitiously and not intended to be taken otherwise.
STRENGTH TO LOVE and LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL speeches by DR.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. copyright © 1963 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.;
copyright renewed © 1991 by Coretta Scott King. Reprinted by arrangement with the
heirs to the estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House New York, NY.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07128-4
Contents
Copyright
Before: The Middle of Nowhere
9.02: Dream On
9.02: New Girl
9.02: A Hole in the Sky
9.11: Collision
9.12: Broken Glass
9.12: Greenbrier
9.12: The Sisters
9.14: The Real Boo Radley
9.15: A Fork in the Road
9.24: The Last Three Rows
10.09: Gathering Days
10.09: A Crack in the Plaster
10.09: The Greats
10.10: Red Sweater
10.13: Marian the Librarian
10.31: Hallow E‘en
11.01: The Writing on the Wall
11.27: Just Your Average American Holiday
11.28: Domus Lunae Libri
12.01: It Rhymes with Witch
12.06: Lost and Found
12.07: Grave Digging
12.08: Waist Deep
12.13: Melting
12.16: When the Saints Go Marching In
12.19: White Christmas
1.12: Promise
2.04: The Sandman or Something Like Him
2.05: The Battle of Honey Hill
2.11: Sweet Sixteen
2.11: Lollipop Girl
2.11: Family Reunion
2.11: The Claiming
2.12: Silver Lining
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
For
Nick & Stella
Emma, May & Kate
and
all our casters & outcasters, everywhere.
There are more of us than you think.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
—M
ARTIN
L
UTHER
K
ING
J
R
.
BEFORE
The Middle of Nowhere
There were only two kinds of people in our town. ―The stupid and the stuck,‖ my father
had affectionately classified our neighbors. ―The ones who are bound to stay or too
dumb
to go. Everyone else finds a way out.‖ There was no question which one he was, but I‘d
never had the courage to ask why. My father was a writer, and we lived in Gatlin, South
Carolina, because the Wates always had, since my great-great-great-great-granddad,
Ellis
Wate, fought and died on the other side of the Santee River during the Civil War.
Only folks down here didn‘t call it the Civil War. Everyone under the age of sixty called
it the War Between the States, while everyone over sixty called it the War of Northern
Aggression, as if somehow the North had baited the South into war over a bad bale of
cotton. Everyone, that is, except my family. We called it the Civil War.
Just another reason I couldn‘t wait to get out of here.
Gatlin wasn‘t like the small towns you saw in the movies, unless it was a movie from
about fifty years ago. We were too far from Charleston to have a Starbucks or a
McDonald‘s. All we had was a Dar-ee Keen, since the Gentrys were too cheap to buy all
new letters when they bought the Dairy King. The library still had a card catalog, the
high
school still had chalkboards, and our community pool was Lake Moultrie, warm brown
water and all. You could see a movie at the Cineplex about the same time it came out
on
DVD, but you had to hitch a ride over to Summerville, by the community college. The
shops were on Main, the good houses were on River, and everyone else lived south of
Route 9, where the pavement disintegrated into chunky concrete stubble—terrible for
walking, but perfect for throwing at angry possums, the meanest animals alive. You
never
saw that in the movies.
Gatlin wasn‘t a complicated place; Gatlin was Gatlin. The neighbors kept watch from
their porches in the unbearable heat, sweltering in plain sight. But there was no point.
Nothing ever changed. Tomorrow would be the first day of school, my sophomore year
at
Stonewall Jackson High, and I already knew everything that was going to happen—
where I would sit, who I would talk to, the jokes, the girls, who would park where.
There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicenter of the
middle of nowhere.
At least, that‘s what I thought, when I closed my battered copy of
Slaughterhouse-Five
,
clicked off my iPod, and turned out the light on the last night of summer.
Turns out, I couldn‘t have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.
I never even saw it coming.
9.02
Dream On
Falling.
I was free falling, tumbling through the air.
―Ethan!‖
She called to me, and just the sound of her voice made my heart race.
―Help me!‖
She was falling, too. I stretched out my arm, trying to catch her. I reached out, but all I
caught was air. There was no ground beneath my feet, and I was clawing at mud. We
touched fingertips and I saw green sparks in the darkness.
Then she slipped through my fingers, and all I could feel was loss.
Lemons and rosemary. I could smell her, even then.
But I couldn‘t catch her.
And I couldn‘t live without her.
I sat up with a jerk, trying to catch my breath.
―Ethan Wate! Wake up! I won‘t have you bein‘ late on the first day a school.‖ I could
hear Amma‘s voice calling from downstairs.
My eyes focused on a patch of dim light in the darkness. I could hear the distant drum of
the rain against our old plantation shutters. It must be raining. It must be morning. I must
be in my room.
My room was hot and damp, from the rain. Why was my window open?
My head was throbbing. I fell back down on the bed, and the dream receded as it
always
did. I was safe in my room, in our ancient house, in the same creaking mahogany bed
where six generations of Wates had probably slept before me, where people didn‘t fall
through black holes made of mud, and nothing ever actually happened.
I stared up at my plaster ceiling, painted the color of the sky to keep the carpenter bees
from nesting. What was wrong with me?
I‘d been having the dream for months now. Even though I couldn‘t remember all of it,
the
part I remembered was always the same. The girl was falling. I was falling. I had to hold
on, but I couldn‘t. If I let go, something terrible would happen to her. But that‘s the thing.
I couldn‘t let go. I couldn‘t lose her. It was like I was in love with her, even though I
didn‘t know her. Kind of like love
before
first sight.
Which seemed crazy because she was just a girl in a dream. I didn‘t even know what
she
looked like. I had been having the dream for months, but in all that time I had never
seen
her face, or I couldn‘t remember it. All I knew was that I had the same sick feeling inside
every time I lost her. She slipped through my fingers, and my stomach dropped right out
of me—the way you feel when you‘re on a roller coaster and the car takes a big drop.
Butterflies in your stomach. That was such a crappy metaphor. More like killer bees.
Maybe I was losing it, or maybe I just needed a shower. My earphones were still around
my neck, and when I glanced down at my iPod, I saw a song I didn‘t recognize.
Sixteen Moons.
What was that? I clicked on it. The melody was haunting. I couldn‘t place the voice, but I
felt like I‘d heard it before.
Sixteen moons, sixteen years
Sixteen of your deepest fears
Sixteen times you dreamed my tears
Falling, falling through the years…
It was moody, creepy—almost hypnotic.
―Ethan Lawson Wate!‖ I could hear Amma calling up over the music.
I switched it off and sat up in bed, yanking back the covers. My sheets felt like they were
full of sand, but I knew better.
It was dirt. And my fingernails were caked with black mud, just like the last time I had
the dream.
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