Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

“Left it behind where?”

“In the Otherworld. When you died.” He sounded almost bored.

When I died.

He was talking about the night Lena and Amma brought me back, on the Sixteenth Moon.

“How?”

The bokor flicked his wrist, and the match went out. “If you come back too fast, the soul can be fractured. Divided. One part a the soul goes back with the livin’, and the other half stays with the dead. Caught between this world and the Other, bound to the missin’ half until they’re brought back together.”

Divided.

He couldn’t be explaining it right. That would mean I only had half a soul. It didn’t even seem possible.

How could a person only have half a soul? What happened to the rest of it? Where did it—

Bound to the missing half.

I knew what had been following me all this time, lurking in the shadows.

Me—the other me.

It was the reason I was changing, losing more and more of myself every day.

The reason I didn’t like chocolate milk anymore, or Amma’s scrambled eggs. The reason I couldn’t remember what was in the shoe boxes in my bedroom, or my phone number. The reason I was suddenly left-handed.

My knees buckled, and I felt myself pitch forward. I could see the floor rising up to meet me. A hand grabbed my arm and hauled me back to my feet. Link.

“So, how do you get the two halves back together? Is there a spell or somethin’?” Link sounded impatient, like he was ready to throw me over his shoulder and run home.

The bokor threw his head back and laughed. When he spoke, it felt like he was looking right through me. “Takes more than a spell. That’s why your Seer came to me. But don’t you worry, we have an agreement.”

I felt like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on me. “What kind of agreement?”

I remembered what he had said to Amma, the night we followed her here. There is only one price.

“What’s the price?” I was yelling, my voice echoing in my ears.

The bokor lifted his skin-covered staff and pointed it at me. “I’ve told you more than your share a secrets tonight.” He smiled, all the darkness and evil within him twisting itself into a human face.

“How come we don’t have to pay you?” Link asked.

“Your Seer will pay enough for you all.”

I would have asked him again, but I knew he wouldn’t tell us. And if there were deeper secrets than this, I didn’t want to know.

12.07

Cards of Providence

When I got home, it was way past midnight. Everyone in my house was asleep—except one person. Amma’s light was on, her room glowing between the two haint blue shutters. I wondered if she knew I was gone, and where I’d been. I almost hoped she did. It would make what I was about to do a hundred times easier.

Amma wasn’t the kind of person you confronted. She was a confrontation all on her own. She lived by her rules, her law—the things she believed, which to her were as sure as the sun rising. She was also the only mother I

had left. And, most days, the only parent. The idea of fighting with her made me feel hollow and sick inside.

But not as hollow as it made me feel to know I was only half of myself. Half the person I’d always been. Amma knew, and she had never said a word.