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CHAPTER 11<br />
Darker Things<br />
The room went quiet, so quiet you could hear the house creak as the wind pushed against it. So quiet you could hear the snakes hiss almost as<br />
loudly as Aunt Prue’s asthma and my pounding heart. Even the Harlon Jameses slunk away, whimpering behind a chair.<br />
For a second, I couldn’t think. My mind was completely blank.<br />
There was no way to process this—to understand why a man I had never met would change the course of my life, so irreparably and violently.<br />
What the hell did I do to this guy?<br />
I finally found the words, at least some of them. There were others I couldn’t say in front of Aunt Prue, or she’d wash my mouth out with more than<br />
soap and probably make me suck down a bottle of Tabasco, too. “Why? You don’t even know me.”<br />
“It’s complicated—”<br />
“Complicated?” My voice started rising, and I pulled myself up out of my chair. “You ruined my life. You forced me to choose between saving the<br />
people I loved and sacrificing myself. I hurt everyone I care about. They had to put a Cast on my own father to keep him from going crazy!”<br />
“I’m sorry, Ethan. I wouldn’t have wished this on my worst enemy.”<br />
“No. You just wished it on some seventeen-year-old kid you’d never met.” This guy wasn’t going to help me. He was the reason I was stuck in this<br />
nightmare in the first place.<br />
Aunt Prue reached out and took my hand. “I know you’re angry, and you’ve got more right than anyone ta be. But Obidias can help us get you<br />
back home. So you need ta sit down here and listen ta what he’s got ta say.”<br />
“How do you know we can trust him, Aunt Prue? Every word that comes out of his mouth is probably a lie.” I pulled my hand away.<br />
“You listen here, and you listen good.” She yanked on my arm harder than I would’ve expected, and I sank back down into the chair next to her.<br />
She wanted me to look her in the eye. “I’ve known Obidias Trueblood since before he was Light or Dark, before he’d done wrong or right. Spent the<br />
better part a my days walkin’ the Caster Tunnels with the True bloods and my daddy.” Aunt Prue paused and glanced at Obidias. “And he saved me<br />
a time or two down there. Even if he wasn’t smart enough ta save himself.”<br />
I didn’t know what to think. Maybe my aunt had charted the Tunnels with Obidias. Maybe she could trust him.<br />
But that didn’t mean I could.<br />
Obidias seemed to know what I was thinking. “Ethan, you may find this hard to believe, but I know what it’s like to feel helpless—to be at the<br />
mercy of decisions that you didn’t make.”<br />
“You have no idea how I feel.” I heard the anger in my voice, but I didn’t try to hide it. I wanted Obidias Trueblood to know I hated him for what he’d<br />
done to me and the people I loved.<br />
I thought about Lena leaving the button on my grave. He didn’t know what that felt like—for me or Lena.<br />
“Ethan, I know you don’t trust him, and I don’t blame you.” Aunt Prue was playing hardball now. This meant something to her. “But I’m askin’ you ta<br />
trust me and hear him out.”<br />
I locked eyes with Obidias. “Start talking. How do I get back?”<br />
Obidias took a long breath. “As I said, the only way to get your life back is to erase your death.”<br />
“So if I destroy the page, I go home—right?” I wanted to be sure there were no loopholes.<br />
No calling a moon out of time, no splitting the moon in half. No curses that kept me from leaving, once the page was gone.<br />
He nodded. “Yes. But first you have to get to the book.”<br />
“You mean from the Far Keep? The Keepers had it with them when they came for my Aunt Marian.”<br />
“That’s right.” He looked at me, startled. I guess he hadn’t expected me to know anything about The Caster Chronicles.<br />
“So what are we doing sitting around here talking? Let’s get on with it.” I was halfway out of my chair before I realized Obidias wasn’t moving.<br />
“And you think you’ll just walk in there and take the page?” he asked. “It’s not that easy.”<br />
“Who’s going to stop me? A bunch of Keepers? What do I have to lose?” I tried not to think about how terrifying they had seemed when they<br />
came for Marian.<br />
Obidias pulled the hood off his hand, and the snakes hissed and struck one another. “Do you know who did this to me? A ‘bunch of Keepers’ who<br />
caught me trying to steal my page from the Chronicles.”<br />
“Lord have mercy,” Aunt Prue said, fanning herself with her handkerchief.<br />
For a second, I didn’t know if I believed him. But I recognized the emotion playing out on his face, because I was feeling it myself.<br />
Fear.<br />
“Keepers did that to you?”<br />
He nodded. “Angelus and Adriel. On one of their more generous days.” I wondered if Adriel was the big one who had shown up in the archive with<br />
Angelus and the albino woman. They were the three strangest-looking people I’d seen in the Caster world. At least until today.<br />
I looked at Obidias and his snakes.<br />
“Like I said, what can they do to me now? I’m already dead.” I tried to smile, even though it wasn’t funny. It was the opposite of funny.<br />
Obidias held out his hand, the snakes jerking and stretching as they tried to reach me. “There are things worse than death, Ethan. Things that are<br />
darker than the Dark Casters. I should know. If you are caught, the Keepers will never let you leave the library at the Far Keep. You will be their<br />
scribe and their slave, forced to rewrite the futures of innocent Casters… and Mortal Waywards who are Bound to them.”<br />
“Waywards are supposed to be pretty rare. How many can there be to write about?” I had never met another one, and I’d met Vexes and<br />
Incubuses and more kinds of Casters than I ever wanted to.<br />
Obidias leaned forward in his chair, cloaking his cruelly deformed hand once again. “Perhaps they aren’t as rare as you think. Maybe they just<br />
don’t live long enough for the Casters to find them.”<br />
There was an undeniable truth in his words that I couldn’t explain. I guess there was some part of me that knew a lie would have sounded<br />
different. Another part knew I’d always been in danger, one way or another—with or without Lena.