The sun began to rise over the magnolias in front of my mom's grave. It didn't bother me anymore, because I knew she wasn't there. She was somewhere, everywhere else, still watching out for me. Macon's hidden room. Marian's archive. Our study at Wate's Landing.

"Come on, L." I pulled Lena by the arm. "I'm sick of the dark. Let's go watch the sunrise." We took off, running down the grassy hill like kids -- past the graves and magnolias, past the palmettos and oaks tangled in Spanish moss, past the uneven rows of grave markers and weeping angels and the old stone bench. I could feel her shivering in the early morning air, but neither of us wanted to stop. So we didn't, and by the time we reached the bottom of the hill, we were almost falling, almost flying. Almost happy.

We didn't see the eerie golden glow pierce through small cracks and fissures in the dirt shoveled over Macon's grave.

And I didn't check the iPod in my pocket, where I might have noticed a new song in the playlist.

Eighteen Moons.

But I didn't check, because I didn't care. No one was listening. No one was watching. No one existed in the world but the two of us --

The two of us, and the old man in the white suit and string tie, who stood at the crest of the hill until the sun began to rise and the shadows fell back into their crypts.

We didn't see him. We only saw the fading night and the rising blue sky. Not the blue sky in my bedroom, but the real one. Even though it might look different to each of us. Only now I wasn't so sure the sky looked the same to any two people, no matter what universe they lived in.

I mean, how could you be sure?

The old man walked away.

We didn't hear the familiar sound of space and time rearranging as he ripped into the last possible moment of night -- the darkness before the dawn.

Eighteen Moons, eighteen spheres,

From the world beyond the years,

One Unchosen, death or birth,

A Broken Day awaits the Earth ...

After

Siren's Tears

Ridley stood in her room at Ravenwood, the room that used to belong to Macon. But nothing remained the same except the four walls, a ceiling, and a floor, and possibly the paneled bedroom door.

Which she shut, with a heavy click, and bolted. She turned to face her room, her back against the door. Macon had decided to take another room at Ravenwood, though he spent most of his time in his study in the Tunnels. So this room belonged to Ridley now, and she was careful to keep the trapdoor leading down into the Tunnels locked under thick pink shag carpeting. The walls were covered with spray painted graffiti, black and neon pink mostly, with shots of electric green, yellow, and orange. They weren't words, exactly -- more like shapes, slashes, emotions. Anger, bottled in a can of cheap spray paint from the Wal-Mart in Summerville. Lena had offered to do it for her, but Ridley insisted on doing it herself, Mortal-style. The reeking fumes made her head ache, and the splattering paint made a huge mess of everything. It was exactly what she wanted and exactly how she felt.

She'd made a mess of everything.

No words. Ridley hated words. Mostly, they were lies. Her two-week incarceration in Lena's room had been enough to make her hate poetry for a lifetime.

Mybeatingheartbleedingneedsyou --

Whatever.

Ridley shuddered. There was no accounting for taste in the family gene pool. She pushed herself away from the door and walked over to the wardrobe. With the slightest touch, she opened the white wooden doors, revealing a lifetime's careful collection of clothing, the hallmark of a Siren.

Which, she reminded herself, she wasn't.

She dragged a pink footstool to the shelves and climbed up on it, her pink platform shoes slipping back and forth over her pink striped knee socks. It had been a Harajuku kind of a day, not often seen around Gatlin. The looks she got at the Dar-ee Keen were priceless. At least it had passed the afternoon.

One afternoon. Out of how many?

She felt along the top of the shelf until she found it, a shoe box from Paris. She smiled and pulled it down. Purple velvet four-inch peep-toes, if she remembered. Of course she remembered. She'd had some damn fine times in those shoes.

She dumped the contents of the box onto her black and white bedspread. There it was, half-shrouded in silk, still covered with crumbling dirt.

Ridley slumped down on the floor next to her bed, resting her arms on the edge. She wasn't stupid. She just wanted to look, as she had every night for the past two weeks. She wanted to feel the power of something magical, a power she would never have again.

Ridley wasn't a bad girl. Not really. Besides, even if she was, what did it matter? She was powerless to do anything about it. She'd been tossed aside like last year's mascara.

Her cell phone rang, and she picked it up from her nightstand. A picture of Link popped up on the screen. She clicked it off and tossed it into the endless pink shag.

Not now, Hot Rod.

She had another Incubus on her mind.

John Breed.

Ridley settled back into place, tilting her head to the side as she watched the sphere begin to glow a subtle shade of pink.

"What am I going to do with you?" She smiled because, for once, it was her decision to make, and because she had yet to make it.

three

The light grew brighter and brighter until the room was bathed in a wash of rose-colored light, which made almost everything else disappear like thin pencil lines that had been only partly rubbed out.

two

Ridley closed her eyes -- a little girl blowing out a birthday candle, to make a wish --

one