Read Online Beautiful Darkness by Kami García, Margaret Stohl - Free Book Online Page A

around with her wherever she went. If she had stopped scribbling every fifth word into it, things
     were worse than I thought.
    She was worse than I thought.
    “Ethan! What are you doing?”
    I pulled my hand away, and Lena grabbed the book.
    “I’m sorry, L.”
    She was furious.
    “I thought it was just a book. I mean, it looks like a book. I didn’t think you would leave your notebook lying around where
     anyone could read it.”
    She wouldn’t look at me, clutching the book to her chest.
    “Why aren’t you writing anymore? I thought you loved to write.”
    She rolled her eyes and opened the notebook to show me. “I do.”
    She fluttered the blank pages, and now they were covered with line upon line of tiny scribbled words, crossed out again and
     again, revised and rewritten and revisited a thousand times.
    “You Charmed it?”
    “I Shifted the words out of Mortal reality. Unless I choose to show them to someone, only a Caster can read them.”
    “That’s brilliant. Since Reece, the person most likely to read it, happens to be one.” Reece was as nosy as she was bossy.
    “She doesn’t need to. She can read everything in my face.” It was true. As a Sybil, Reece could see your thoughts and secrets,
     even things you were planning to do, just by looking you in the eye. Which was why I generally avoided her.
    “So, what’s with all the secrecy?” I flopped down on Lena’s futon. She sat next to me, balancing on her crisscrossed legs.
     Things were less comfortable than I was pretending they were.
    “I don’t know. I still feel like writing all the time. Maybe I just feel less like being understood, or less like I can be.”
    My jaw tightened. “By me.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “What other Mortals would be reading your notebook?”
    “You don’t understand.”
    “I think I do.”
    “Some of it, maybe.”
    “I would understand all of it if you’d let me.”
    “There’s no letting, Ethan. I can’t explain it.”
    “Let me see it.” I held out my hand for her notebook.
    She raised an eyebrow, handing it to me. “You won’t be able to read it.”
    I opened it and looked at it. I didn’t know if it was Lena, or the book itself, but the words appeared on the page in front
     of me slowly, one at a time. It wasn’t one of Lena’s poems, and it wasn’t song lyrics. There weren’t many words, just strange
     drawings, shapes and swirls snaking up and down the page like some collection of tribal designs.
    At the bottom of the page, there was a list.
    what i remember
    mother
    ethan
    macon
    hunting
    the fire
    the wind
    the rain
    the crypt
    the me who is not me
    the me who would kill
    two bodies
    the rain
    the book
    the ring
    amma’s charm
    the moon
    Lena grabbed the book out of my hand. There were a few more lines on the page, but I never got to read them. “Stop it!”
    I looked at her. “What was that?”
    “Nothing, it’s private. You shouldn’t have been able to see that.”
    “Then why could I?”
    “I must have done the
Verbum Celatum
Cast wrong. The Hidden Word.” She looked at me anxiously, her eyes softening. “It doesn’t matter. I was trying to remember
     that night. The night Macon… disappeared.”
    “Died, L. The night Macon died.”
    “I know he died. Of course he died. I just don’t feel like talking about it.”
    “I know you’re probably depressed. It’s normal.”
    “What?”
    “It’s the next stage.”
    Lena’s eyes flashed. “I know your mom died, and my uncle died. But I have my own stages of grief. This isn’t my feelings journal.
     I’m not your dad, and I’m not you, Ethan. We aren’t as much alike as you think.”
    We looked at each other in a way we hadn’t in a long time, maybe ever. There was a nameless moment. I realized we’d been speaking
     out loud since I got there, without Kelting a word. For the first time, I didn’t know what she was thinking, and it was pretty
     clear she didn’t know how I felt either.
    But then she