A red sticker.

The cat was meant for me. The cat, the rubble, the fire—all of it was meant for me. I stuck the broken green glass in my pocket and watched helplessly as my aunts were wheeled toward the only other ambulance in town.

Amma shot me a look, and I knew what it meant. Don’t say a word and don’t do a thing. It meant go home, lock the doors, and stay out of it. But she knew I couldn’t.

One word kept fighting its way back into my mind. Unresponsive. Aunt Grace and Aunt Mercy wouldn’t understand what it meant when the doctors told them Aunt Prue was unresponsive. They would hear what I heard when Link said it.

Unresponsive.

As good as dead.

And it was my fault. Because I couldn’t tell Abraham how to find John Breed.

John Breed.

Everything snapped into focus.

The mutant Incubus who had led us into Sarafine and Abraham’s trap—who had tried to steal the girl I loved, and had Turned my best friend—was destroying my life one more time. My life and the people I loved.

Because of him, Abraham had unleashed the Vexes. Because of him, my town was destroyed and my aunt was nearly dead. Books were burning, and for the first time, it wasn’t because of small minds or small people.

Macon and Liv were right. It was all about him.

John Breed was the one to blame.

I made a fist. It wasn’t a giant fist, but it was mine. So was this. My problem. I was a Wayward. If I was supposed to find the way—to be there for some great and terrible purpose, or whatever it was Marian and Liv had said the Casters would need me to lead them into or out of—I had found it. And now I had to find John Breed.

There was no going back, not after today.

One ambulance pulled away. Then another. The sirens echoed down the street, and as they disappeared in front of me, I started to run. I thought about Lena. I ran faster. I thought about my mom and Amma and Aunt Prue and Marian. I ran until I couldn’t catch my breath, until the fire trucks were so far behind me that I couldn’t hear the sirens anymore.

I stopped when I reached the library, and stood there. The flames were gone, for the most part. Smoke was still streaming into the sky. The way the ash swirled in the air, it looked like snow. Boxes of books, some black, others soaking wet, were piled in front of the building.

It was still standing, a good half of it. But it didn’t matter, not to me. It would never smell the same again. My mother, what was left of her in Gatlin, was finally gone. You couldn’t unburn the books. You could only buy new ones. And those pages would never have been touched by her hands, or bookmarked with a spoon.

A part of her had died tonight, all over again.

I didn’t know much about Leonardo da Vinci. What had the book said? Maybe I was learning how to live, or maybe I was learning how to die. After today, it could go either way. Maybe I should listen to Emily Dickinson and let the madness begin to make sense. Either way, it was Poe who stuck with me.

Because I had the feeling I was deep into that darkness peering, about as deep as a person could be.

I pulled the piece of green glass out of my pocket and stared at it, as if it could tell me what I needed to know.

9.25

Ladies of the House

Ethan Wate, can you fetch me some sweet tea?” Aunt Mercy called from the living room.

Aunt Grace didn’t miss a beat. “Ethan, don’t you be gettin’ her any sweet tea. She’ll have ta use the powder room if she drinks any more.”

“Ethan, don’t you listen ta Grace. She’s got a mean streak a mile long and ten powder rooms wide.”

I looked at Lena, who was holding a plastic pitcher of sweet tea in her hand. “Was that a yes or a no?”

Amma slammed the door shut and held out her hand for the pitcher. “Don’t you two have some homework to do?” Lena arched an eyebrow and smiled back, relieved. Since Aunt Prue had gone to County Care and the Sisters had moved in with us, I felt like I hadn’t been alone with Lena in weeks.

I took Lena’s hand and pulled her toward the kitchen door.

You ready to make a run for it?

I’m ready.

We rushed into the hall as fast as we could, trying to make it to the stairs. Aunt Grace was bundled up on the couch, her fingers hooked through the holes of her favorite crocheted afghan, which was about ten different shades of brown. It matched our living room perfectly, now stacked floor to ceiling with brown cardboard boxes full of everything the Sisters had made my dad and me haul out of their house last week.

They hadn’t been satisfied with the things that had actually survived: almost everything from Aunt Grace and Aunt Mercy’s bedroom, a brass spittoon that all five of Aunt Prue’s husbands had used (and never cleaned), four of the spoons from Aunt Grace’s Southern spoon collection and the wooden display rack, a stack of dusty photo albums, two mismatched dining room chairs, the plastic fawn from their front yard, and hundreds of unopened miniature jelly jars they had swiped from Millie’s Breakfast ’n’ Biscuits. But the things that had survived weren’t enough. They had henpecked us until we dragged the broken stuff out, too.

Most of it had stayed in the boxes, but Aunt Grace had insisted that decorating would help ease their “sufferin’,” so Amma let them put some of their things around the house. Which was the reason Harlon James I, Harlon James II, and Harlon James III—all preserved thanks to what Aunt Prue called the delicate Southern art of taxidermy—were staring at me right now. Harlon James I sitting, Harlon James II standing, and Harlon James III sleeping. It was the sleeping Harlon James that really disturbed me; Aunt Grace kept it—him—next to the couch, and one way or another, someone stubbed a toe on him every time they walked by.