Amma drew a heavy breath. “The Casters can’t help me. They can barely help themselves.”
Link looked at me, confused. But I didn’t understand any more than he did. How could the bokor help Amma with something the Casters couldn’t?
The images crashed down on me before I could stop them. The unbearable heat. The plague of insects infesting every inch of town. The nightmares and the panic. Casters who couldn’t control their powers, or use them all. A river of blood. Abraham’s voice echoing through the cavern after Lena Claimed herself.
There will be consequences.
The bokor circled around to face Amma, measuring her expression. “You mean the Light Casters can’t.”
“No other kind I’d ask for help.”
He seemed pleased with her answer, but not for the reason I thought. “Yet you came to me. Because I can do something they can’t—the old magic our people carried across the ocean with us. Magic that can be controlled by Mortals and Casters alike.” He was talking about voodoo, a religion born in Africa and the Caribbean. “They don’t understand the ti-bon-age.”
Amma stared at him like she wished she could turn him to stone, but she didn’t leave.
She needed him, even if I didn’t know why.
“Name your price.” Her voice wavered.
I watched as he calculated the cost of both Amma’s request and her integrity. They were opposing forces, working the extremes of a shared mysticism that was as black and white as the Light and Darkness in the Caster world. “Where is it now? Do you know where they’ve hidden it?”
“Hidden what?” Link mouthed silently. I shook my head. I had no idea what they were talking about.
“It’s not hidden.” For the first time, Amma met his eyes. “It’s free.”
At first he didn’t react, as if she might have misspoken. But when the bokor realized Amma was serious, he circled back to the table and pored over the spread. I could hear broken bits of French Creole in his gnarled voice. “If what you say is true, old woman, there is only one price.”
Amma ran her hand over the cards, pushing them into a pile. “I know. I’ll pay it.”
“You understand, there is no turnin’ back? No way to undo what will be done. If you tamper with the Wheel a Fate, it will continue to turn until it crushes you in its path.”
Amma stacked the cards and put them back in her purse. I could see her hand shaking, jerking in and out of shadow.
“Do what you need to do, and I’ll do the same.” She snapped shut her purse and turned to go. “In the end, the Wheel crushes us all.”
9.19
The Far Keep
And then Link and I bolted like Amma was chasing us with the One-Eyed Menace. I was so scared she would know we’d followed her, I didn’t get out of bed until morning.” I left out the part where I woke up on the floor, the same way I always did after one of the dreams.
By the time I finished telling Marian the story, her tea was cold. “What about Amma?”
“I heard the screen door close as the sun was coming up. By the time I came downstairs, she was making breakfast as if nothing happened. Same old cheese grits, same old eggs.” Except neither one tasted right anymore.
We were in the archive in the Gatlin County Library. It was Marian’s private sanctuary, one she had shared with my mom. It was also the place where Marian looked for answers to questions that most folks in Gatlin didn’t even know to ask, which was why I was here. Marian Ashcroft had been my mom’s best friend, but she had always felt more like my aunt than my real one. Which I guess was the other reason I was here.
Amma was the closest thing I had left to a mother. I wasn’t ready to assume the worst of her, and I didn’t want anyone else to either. But still, I didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the idea of her running around with a guy who was on the wrong side of everything Amma believed in. I had to tell someone.
Marian stirred her tea, distracted. “You’re absolutely sure of what you heard?”
I nodded. “It wasn’t really the kind of conversation you forget.” I’d been trying to wipe the image of Amma and the bokor out of my mind ever since I saw them. “I’ve watched Amma freak out before when she didn’t like what the cards were telling her. When she knew Sam Turley was going to drive off the bridge at Wader’s Creek, she locked herself in her room and didn’t say a word for a week. This was different.”
“A Seer never tries to change the cards. Especially not the great-great-great-granddaughter of Sulla the Prophet.” Marian stared into her teacup, thinking. “Why would she try now?”
“I don’t know. The bokor said he could do it, but it would cost her. Amma said she’d pay the price. No matter what. It didn’t make any sense, but it has something to do with the Casters.”
“If he was a bokor, that’s not idle talk. They use voodoo to hurt and destroy rather than enlighten and heal.”