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“Right.”
“It didn’t used to be that way. But when my gramma’s sister, Althea, went Dark, their mother couldn’t send Althea away. Back then, if a Caster
went Dark, they were supposed to leave their home and their family, for obvious reasons. Althea’s mother thought she could help her fight it, but she
couldn’t, and terrible things started happening in the town where they lived.”
“And that monster downstairs, that—witch, who almost killed you? Believe it or not, she used to be my best friend. Ridley and I grew up together
living with my gramma. We moved around so much we shared the same suitcase.”
“That’s why you guys don’t have much of an accent. Most people would never believe you had lived in the South.”
“What’s your excuse?”
“Professor parents, and a jar full of quarters every time I dropped a G.” I rolled my eyes. “So Ridley didn’t live with Aunt Del?”
“No. Aunt Del just visits on the holidays. In my family, you don’t live with your parents. It’s too dangerous.” I stopped myself from asking my next
fifty questions while Lena raced on, as if she’d been waiting to tell this story for about a hundred years. “Ridley and I were like sisters. We slept in
the same room and we were home-schooled together. When we moved to Virginia, we convinced my gramma to let us to go to a regular school.
We wanted to make friends, be normal. The only time we ever spoke to Mortals was when Gramma took us on one of her outings to museums, the
opera, or lunch at Olde Pink House.”
“So what happened when you went to school?”
“It was a disaster. Our clothes were wrong, we didn’t have a TV, we turned in all our homework. We were total losers.”
“But you got to hang out with Mortals.”
She wouldn’t look at me. “I’ve never had a Mortal friend until I met you.”
“Really?”
“I only had Ridley. Things were just as bad for her, but she didn’t care. She was too busy making sure no one bothered me.”
I had a hard time imagining Ridley protecting anyone.
People change, Ethan.
Not that much. Not even Casters.
Especially Casters. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
She pulled her hand away from me. “Ridley started acting strange, and then the same guys who had ignored her started following her
everywhere, waiting for her after school, fighting over who would walk her home.”
“Yeah, well. Some girls are just like that.”
“Ridley isn’t some girl. I told you, she’s a Siren. She could make people do things, things they wouldn’t normally want to do. And those boys were
jumping off the cliff, one by one.” She twisted her necklace around her fingers and kept talking. “The night before Ridley’s sixteenth birthday, I
followed her to the train station. She was scared out of her mind. She said she could tell she was going Dark, and she had to get away before she
hurt someone she loved. Before she hurt me. I’m the only person Ridley ever really loved. She disappeared that night, and I never saw her again
until today. I think after what you saw tonight, it’s pretty obvious she went Dark.”
“Wait a second, what are you talking about? What do you mean going Dark?”
Lena took a deep breath and hesitated, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell me the answer.
“You have to tell me, Lena.”
“In my family, when you turn sixteen, you’re Claimed. Your fate is chosen for you, and you become Light, like Aunt Del and Reece, or you become
Dark, like Ridley. Dark or Light, Black or White. There’s no gray in my family. We can’t choose, and we can’t undo it once we’re Claimed.”
“What do you mean, you can’t choose?”
“We can’t decide if we want to be Light or Dark, good or evil, like Mortals and other Casters can. In my family, there’s no free will. It’s decided for
us, on our sixteenth birthday.”
I tried to understand what she was saying, but it was too crazy. I’d lived with Amma long enough to know there was White and Black magic, but it
was hard to believe that Lena had no choice about which one she was.
Who she was.
She was still talking. “That’s why we can’t live with our parents.”
“What does that have to do with it?”