I braced myself for the sight of Amma armed with her beads and her dolls and maybe the Bible, too. But when I turned around, my eyes fell on the tangled braids and snakeskin-wrapped staff of the bokor.
The bokor smiled back at me. “I see you haven’t found your ti-bon-age. Or have you? It’s easier to find than to capture, isn’t it now?”
“Don’t you talk to him,” Amma snapped. Whatever the bokor was here for, it obviously wasn’t to talk me down off the ledge.
“Amma!” I called her name, and she turned back to face me. For the first time, I could see how lost she was. Her sharp brown eyes were confused and nervous, her proud posture bent and broken. “I don’t know why you brought that guy here, but you shouldn’t be mixed up with someone like him.”
The bokor threw his head back and laughed. “We have a deal, the Seer and me. And I intend to fulfill my end a the bargain.”
“What deal?” I asked.
But Amma shot the bokor a look that said Keep your mouth shut. Then she waved me over, the way she used to when I was a kid. “That’s nobody’s business except mine and my Maker’s. You come on home, and he’ll go back to where he belongs.”
“I don’t think she’s asking,” John said. He looked over at Amma. “What if Ethan doesn’t want to go?”
Amma’s eyes narrowed. “I knew you’d be here, the devil on my boy’s shoulder. I can still see a thing or two. And you’re Dark as a piece a coal in the snow—no matter what color your eyes are. That’s why I brought some Darkness a my own.”
The bokor wasn’t here for me or my Fractured Soul. He was here to make sure John didn’t get in Amma’s way.
John put his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not trying to make Ethan do anything. I came as a friend.”
I heard the sound of bottles clinking. That’s when I noticed the string of bottles tied to the bokor’s belt, like the kind you found on bottle trees.
The bokor held one in front of him, his hand on the corked stopper. “I brought some friends, too.” He uncorked the bottle, and a thin trail of dark mist escaped. It swirled slowly, almost hypnotically, until it formed the body of a man.
But this Sheer didn’t look like the others I’d seen. His limbs were mangled and awkwardly bent in unnatural positions. His facial features were grotesque, and whole pieces were missing where they seemed to have rotted away. He looked like a zombie from a horror movie—torn and broken. His eyes were unfocused and vacant.
John took a step back. “You Mortals are even more screwed up than Supernaturals.”
“What the hell is that?” I couldn’t stop staring at it.
The bokor threw some kind of powder on the ground around him. “One a the souls a the Unclaimed. When families don’t tend to their dead, I come for them.” Smiling, he shook the bottle in front of him.
I felt sick. I thought trapping evil spirits in bottles was one of Amma’s crazy superstitions. I didn’t know there were evil voodoo practitioners trolling graveyards with old Coke bottles.
The tortured spirit moved toward John, its expression frozen in a terrifying and silent scream. John opened his hands in front of him, the way Lena always did. “Back up, Ethan. I don’t know what this thing’s gonna do.”
I stumbled back as flames surged from John’s hands. He didn’t pack as much power as Lena or Sarafine did, but there was still plenty of fire. The flames hit the spirit, enveloping it. I could see the outline of its limbs and body in the center of the blaze, its face frozen in an eternal scream. Then the mist dissipated, and the form vanished. Within seconds, the dark mist was spiraling in front of the fire, until the spirit was hovering a few feet away.
“Guess that didn’t work.” John rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I haven’t—”
The Unclaimed flew at John, but it didn’t stop when it reached him. The dark mist flew inside him, almost disappearing completely when John ripped. The spirit was forced out violently, like it was being sucked backward into a vacuum.
John materialized a few feet away, shocked. He ran his hands over his body, like he was trying to see if anything was missing. The spirit was spiraling up through the mist, unfazed.
“What did that thing do to you?”
John was still trying to shake it off. “It was trying to get inside me. Dark spirits need a body to posses if they’re gonna do any real damage.”
I heard the sound of clinking glass again. The bokor was opening the bottles, and a shadowy mist rose slowly from each one. “Look. He’s got more of them.”
“We’re screwed,” John said.
“Amma, stop it!” I yelled. But it didn’t matter. Amma’s arms were crossed, and she looked more determined and crazy than I’d ever seen her. “You come on home with me, and he’ll fill those bottles back up faster than you can spill a glass a milk.” This time, Amma had gone so dark that I didn’t know how to find her—or bring her back.
I looked at John. “Can’t you make them disappear, or turn them into something?”