Beautiful Creatures Read Online Free PDF Page A

in. Out of sync, our usual
     timing. Come to think of it, that had been my timing with most people lately.
    My dad pulled out the earplug, sighed, and pulled out the other. “What?” He was already walking back to his study. The meter
     on our conversation was running out.
    “Macon Ravenwood, what do you know about him?”
    “Same as everyone else, I guess. He’s a recluse. He hasn’t left Ravenwood Manor in years, as far as I know.” He pushed open
     the study door and stepped over the threshold, but I didn’t follow him. I just stood in the doorway.
    I never set foot in there. Once, just once, when I was seven years old, my dad had caught me reading his novel before he had
     finished revising it. His study was a dark, frightening place. There was a painting that he always kept covered with a sheet
     over the threadbare Victorian sofa. I knew never to ask what was underneath the sheet. Past the sofa, close to the window,
     my father’s desk was carved mahogany, another antique that had been handed down along with our house, from generation to generation.
     And books, old leather-bound books that were so heavy they rested on a huge wooden stand when they were open. Those were the
     things that kept us bound to Gatlin, and bound to Wate’s Landing, just as they had bound my ancestors for more than a hundred
     years.
    On the desk was his manuscript. It had been sitting there, in an open cardboard box, and I just had to know what was in it.
     My dad wrote gothic horror, so there wasn’t much he wrote that was okay for a seven-year-old to read. But every house in Gatlin
     was full of secrets, just like the South itself, and my house was no exception, even back then.
    My dad had found me, curled up on the couch in his study, pages spread all around me like a bottle rocket had exploded in
     the box. I didn’t know enough to cover my tracks, something I learned pretty quickly after that. I just remember him yelling
     at me, and my mom coming out to find me crying in the old magnolia tree in our backyard. “Some things are private, Ethan.
     Even for grown-ups.”
    I had just wanted to know. That had always been my problem. Even now. I wanted to know why my dad never came out of his study.
     I wanted to know why we couldn’t leave this worthless old house just because a million Wates had lived here before us, especially
     now that my mom was gone.
    But not tonight. Tonight I just wanted to remember chicken salad sandwiches and ten and two and a time when my dad ate his
     Shredded Wheat in the kitchen, joking around with me. I fell asleep remembering.

    Before the bell even rang the next day, Lena Duchannes was all everyone at Jackson could talk about. Somehow between storms
     and power outages, Loretta Snow and Eugenie Asher, Savannah’s and Emily’s mothers, had managed to get supper on the table
     and call just about everyone in town to let them know that crazy Macon Ravenwood’s “relation” was driving around Gatlin in
     his hearse, which they were sure he used to transport dead bodies in when no one was watching. From there it just got wilder.
    There are two things you can always count on in Gatlin. One, you can be different, even crazy, as long as you come out of
     the house every now and then, so folks don’t think you’re an axe murderer. Two, if there’s a story to tell, you can be sure
     there’ll be someone to tell it. A new girl in town, moving into the Haunted Mansion with the town shut-in, that’s a story,
     probably the biggest story to hit Gatlin since my mom’s accident. So I don’t know why I was surprised when everyone was talking
     about her—everyone except the guys. They had business to attend to first.
    “So, what’ve we got, Em?” Link slammed his locker door.
    “Countin’ cheerleadin’ tryouts, looks like four 8’s, three 7’s, and a handful a 4’s.” Emory didn’t bother to count the freshman
     girls he rated below a four.
    I slammed my locker door. “This is news?