And the words she did say were lies.
I knocked on her bedroom door before I had time to change my mind. She opened it right away, as if she’d been waiting for me. She was wearing her white robe with the pink roses on it, the one I gave her on her birthday last year.
Amma didn’t look at me. She looked past me, as if she could see something more than the wall behind me. Maybe she could. Maybe there were pieces of me scattered all over the place, like a broken bottle.
“Been waitin’ on you.” Her voice sounded small and tired, and she stepped out of the doorway so I could come in.
Amma’s room still looked ransacked, but one thing was different. There were cards spread out on the little round table under the window. I walked over to the table and picked one up. The Bleeding Blade. They weren’t tarot cards. “Reading cards again? What are they saying tonight, Amma?”
She crossed the room and started pushing the cards into a stack. “Don’t have much to say. Think I’ve seen all there is to see.”
Another card caught my eye. I held it up in front of her. “What about this one? The Fractured Soul. What does this one have to say?”
Her hands were shaking so hard that it took her three tries to grab the card from me. “You think you know somethin’, but a piece a somethin’ is the same as nothin’. Neither one gets you much a anything.”
“You mean like a piece of my soul? Is that the same as nothing?” I said it to hurt her, to bust up her soul, so she could see how it felt.
“Where did you hear that?” Her voice was shaky. She grabbed the chain around her neck and rubbed the worn gold charm hanging from it.
“From your friend in New Orleans.”
Amma’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed the back of the chair to steady herself. I knew from her reaction that whatever she’d seen tonight, it wasn’t me raising souls with the bokor. “Are you tellin’ me the truth, Ethan Wate? Did you go to see that devil?”
“I went because you lied to me. I didn’t have a choice.”
But Amma wasn’t listening to me. She was flipping the cards madly, pushing them around under her tiny palms. “Aunt Ivy, show me somethin’. Tell me what this means.”
“Amma!”
She was muttering to herself, rearranging the cards over and over again. “I can’t see anything. Has to be a way. There’s always a way. Just have to keep lookin’.”
I grabbed her shoulders, gently. “Amma. Put the cards down. Talk to me.”
She held up a card. On the front was a picture of a sparrow with a broken wing. “The Forgotten Future. Know what these cards are called? Cards a Providence, because they tell more than just your future. They tell your fate. Know the difference?” I shook my head. I was afraid to say anything. She was coming unhinged. “Your future can change.”
I looked into her dark eyes, which were filling with tears. “Maybe you can change fate, too.”
The tears started falling, and she was shaking her head back and forth hysterically. “The Wheel a Fate crushes us all.”
I couldn’t stand to hear it again. Amma wasn’t just going dark. She was going crazy, and I was watching it happen.
She pulled away, gathered up her robe, and dropped to her knees. Her eyes were shut tight, but her chin was turned up to her blue ceiling. “Uncle Abner, Aunt Ivy, Grandmamma Sulla, I’m in need a your intercession. Forgive me a my trespasses, as the Good Lord forgives us all.” I watched as she waited, mumbling the words over and over. It was a good hour before she gave up, exhausted and defeated.
The Greats never came.
When I was little, my mother used to say that everything you needed to know about the South could be found in either Savannah or New Orleans. Apparently, the same was true about my life.
Lena didn’t agree. The next morning, we were arguing about it in the back of history class. And I wasn’t winning. “A Fractured Soul isn’t two things, L. It’s one thing split in half.”
When I said “two souls,” all Lena heard was “two” and assumed I was offering myself up as the One Who Is Two. “It could be any of us. I’m the One Who Is Two, if anyone is. Take a look at my eyes!” I could feel her rising panic.
“I’m not saying I’m the One Who Is Two, L. I’m just a Mortal. If it took a Caster to break the Order, it’s going to take more than a Mortal to restore it, don’t you think?” She didn’t look convinced, but deep down she had to know I was right.
For better or worse, that’s all I was—a Mortal. It was the source of the whole problem between us. The reason we could barely touch, and couldn’t really be together. How could I save the Caster world, when I could barely live in it?
Lena lowered her voice. “Link. He’s two things, an Incubus and a Mortal.”
“Shh.” I glanced at Link, but he was oblivious, trying to carve LINKUBUS into his desk with a pen. “I’m pretty sure he barely qualifies as either one.”