Amma dropped the bundle into his hand without touching him.
He noticed her caution and smiled. “You island women are all the same, practicin’ the art to ward against my magic. But your herbs and powders are no match for the hand of a bokor.”
The art. Voodoo. I’d heard it called that before. And if women like Amma provided protection from his magic, that could mean only one thing. He performed black magic.
He opened the bundle and held up a single feather. He examined it closely, turning it over in his hands. “I see you’re not a trespasser, so what do you require?”
Amma tossed a handkerchief onto the desk. “I’m not a trespasser, or one a the island women you’re used to seein’.”
The bokor lifted the delicate fabric, examining the embroidery. I knew what the design was, even though I couldn’t see it from here—a sparrow.
The bokor looked at the handkerchief, then back at Amma. “The mark a Sulla the Prophet. So you’re a Seer, one a her descendants?” He smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Now, that makes this little visit even more unexpected. What would bring a Seer to my workshop?”
Amma watched him closely, as if he was one of the snakes slithering around in the shop’s terrarium. “This was a mistake. Got no business with your kind. I’ll be seein’ myself out.” She shoved her purse into the crook of her arm and turned on her heel to go.
“Leaving so soon? Don’t you want to know how to change the cards?” His menacing laughter echoed through the room.
Amma stopped in her tracks. “I do.” Her voice was quiet.
“Yet you know the answer yourself, Seer. That’s why you’re here.”
She spun around to face him. “You think this is a social visit?”
“You can’t change the cards once they’re dealt. Not the cards we’re talkin’ about. Fate is a wheel that turns without our hand.”
Amma slammed her hand down on the table. “Don’t try to sell me the silver linin’ from a cloud as black as your soul. I know it can be done.”
The bokor tapped on a bottle of crushed eggshells near the edge of the table. Again, his white teeth shone in the darkness. “Anything can be done for a price, Seer. Question is, what are you willin’ to pay?”
“Whatever it takes.”
I shuddered. There was something about the way Amma said it, even the shifting sound of her voice, that made it seem like an invisible line between the two of them was disappearing. I wondered if that line ran deeper than the one she crossed the night of the Sixteenth Moon, when she and Lena used The Book of Moons to bring me back from the dead. I shook my head. We had all crossed too many lines already.
The bokor watched Amma intently. “Let me see the cards. I need to know what we’re dealin’ with.”
Amma took a stack of what looked like tarot cards out of her purse, but the images on the cards weren’t right. They weren’t tarot cards—these were something else. She arranged them on the table carefully, re-creating a spread. The bokor watched, flipping the feather between his fingers.
Amma dropped the last card. “There it is.”
He balked, muttering in a language I didn’t understand. But I could tell he wasn’t happy. The bokor swept clean his rickety wooden table, bottles and vials shattering on the ground. He leaned as close to Amma as I’d ever seen anyone dare to get. “The Angry Queen. The Unbalanced Scale. The Child of Darkness. The Storm. The Sacrifice. The Split Twins. The Bleeding Blade. The Fractured Soul.”
He spit, shaking the feather at her, his version of the One-Eyed Menace. “A Seer from the line a Sulla the Prophet is smart enough to know this is not just any spread.”
“Are you sayin’ you can’t do it?” It was a challenge. “That I’ve come all this way for cracked eggshells and dead swamp frogs? Can get those from any fortune-teller.”
“I’m sayin’ you can’t pay the price, old woman!” His voice rose, and I stiffened. Amma was the only mother I had left. I couldn’t stand to hear anyone talk to her that way.
Amma looked up at the ceiling, muttering. I was willing to bet she was talking to the Greats. “Not a bone in my body wanted to come to this godforsaken nest a evil—”
The bokor picked up a long staff wrapped in the crisp skin of a snake, and circled Amma like an animal waiting to strike. “And yet you came. Because your little dolls and herbs can’t save the ti-bon-age. Can they?”
Amma stared at him defiantly. “Someone is gonna die if you don’t help me.”
“And someone will die if I do.”
“That’s a discussion for another day.” She tapped one of the cards. “This here is the death I care about.”
He examined the card, stroking it with his feather. “Interestin’ you would choose the one who is already lost. Even more interestin’ you would come to me instead a your precious Casters. This concerns them, does it not?”
The Casters.
My stomach dropped. Who was already lost? Was he talking about Lena?