She spun around, eyes wild. “Don’t you insult the Greats. Not here, not in this place. They have their reasons. There must’ve been a reason they didn’t reveal it.”
She turned away from Macon. “Now don’t you listen to him. I brought you some shrimp ’n’ grits and lemon meringue pie.” She clearly wasn’t talking to Macon anymore. “Your favorite,” she said, taking the food out of little Tupperware containers and arranging it on a plate. She laid the plate on the ground. There was a small headstone next to the plate, and several others scattered nearby.
“This is our Great House, the great house a my family, you hear? My great-aunt Sissy. My great-greatuncle Abner. My greatgreat-greatgreat-grandmamma Sulla. Don’t you disrespect the Greats in their House. You want answers, you show some respect.”
“I apologize.”
She waited.
“Truly.”
She sniffed. “And watch your ash. There’s no ashtray in this house. Nasty habit.”
He flicked his cigar into the moss. “Now, let’s get on with it. We don’t have much time. We need to know the whereabouts of Saraf—”
“Shh,” she hissed. “Don’t say Her name—not tonight. We shouldn’t be out here. Half-moon’s for workin’ White magic and full moon’s for workin’ Black. We’re out here on the wrong night.”
“We have no choice. There was a quite an unpleasant episode this evening, I’m afraid. My niece, who Turned on her Claiming Day, showed up for the Gathering tonight.”
“Del’s child? That Dark drink a danger?”
“Ridley. Uninvited, obviously. She crossed my threshold with the boy. I need to know if it was a coincidence.”
“No good. No good. This is no good.” Amma rocked back and forth on her heels, furiously.
“Well?”
“There are no coincidences. You know that.”
“At least we can agree on that.”
I couldn’t get my mind around any of this. Macon Ravenwood never set foot outside of his house, but there he was, in the middle of the swamp, arguing with Amma—who I had no idea he even knew— about me and Lena and the locket.
Amma rummaged around in her pocketbook again. “Did you bring the whiskey? Uncle Abner loves his Wild Turkey.”
Macon held out the bottle.
“Just put it right there,” she said, pointing at the ground, “and step back yonder.”
“I see you’re still afraid to touch me after all these years.”
“I’m not afraid of anything. You just keep to yourself. I don’t ask you about your business, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”
He set the bottle on the ground a few feet from Amma. She picked it up, poured the whiskey into a shot glass, and drank it. I had never seen Amma drink anything stronger than sweet tea in my whole life.
Then she poured some of the liquor in the grass, covering the grave. “Uncle Abner, we are in need a your intercession. I call your spirit to this place.”
Macon coughed.
“You’re testin’ my patience, Melchizedek.” Amma closed her eyes and opened her arms to the sky, her head thrown back as if she was talking to the moon itself. She bent down and shook the small pouch she had taken from her pocketbook. The contents spilled out onto the grave. Tiny chicken bones. I hoped they weren’t the bones from the basket of fried chicken I’d put away this afternoon, but I had a feeling they might have been.
“What do they say?” Macon asked.
She ran her fingers over the bones, fanning them out over the grass. “I’m not gettin’ an answer.”
His perfect composure began to crack. “We don’t have time for this! What good is a Seer if you can’t see anything? We have less than five months before she turns sixteen. If she Turns, she will damn us all, Mortals and Casters alike. We have a responsibility, a responsibility we both took on willingly, a long time ago. You to your Mortals, and me to my Casters.”
“I don’t need you remindin’ me about my responsibilities. And you keep your voice down, you hear me? I don’t need any a my clients comin’ out here and seein’ us together. How would that look? A fine upstanding member a the community like myself? Don’t mess with my business, Melchizedek.”
“If we don’t find out where Saraf—where She is—and what she’s planning, we’ll have bigger problems on our hands than your failing business ventures, Amarie.”
“She’s a Dark one. Never know which way the wind will blow with that one. It’s like tryin’ to see where a twister’ll hit.”
“Even so. I need to know if she’s going to try to make contact with Lena.”
“Not if. When.” Amma closed her eyes again, touching the charm on the necklace she never took off. It was a disc, engraved with what looked like a heart with some kind of cross coming out from the top.
The image was worn from the thousands of times Amma must have rubbed it, as she was doing now.
She was whispering some sort of chant in a language I didn’t understand, but I’d heard somewhere before.
Macon paced impatiently. I shifted in the weeds, trying not to make a sound.