Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

But I was alone. I wanted it this way. No friends, no family. No talking, no Kelting. Not even Lena.

I wanted to let things feel the way they really were.

The way things felt was terrible. The way things were was worse.

I could feel it now. My fate was coming for me—my fate, and something else.

The sky ripped open a few feet from where I was standing. I expected Link to step out of the darkness with a pack of Twinkies or something, but it was John Breed.

“What’s going on? Are Macon and Liv okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Everyone’s fine, all things considered.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

He shrugged, flipping the top of his lighter open and closed. “I thought you might need a wingman.”

“Why? To push me over the edge?” I was only half kidding.

He snapped the lighter shut. “Let’s just say it’s harder than you think when you’re up there. Besides, you were there with me, right?” It was twisted logic, but things were pretty twisted.

I didn’t know what to say. It was hard to believe he was the same dirtbag who’d kicked my ass at the fair and tried to steal my girlfriend. He was a halfway decent guy now. Falling in love can do that to you. “Thanks, man. What’s it like? I mean, on the way down.”

John shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”

We walked toward the water tower. An enormous white moon blocked the light of the real one. The white metal ladder was only a few feet away.

I knew she was behind me before John sensed her and spun around.

Amma.

Nobody else smelled like pencil lead and Red Hots. “Ethan Wate! I was there the day you were born, and I’ll be there the day you die, from this side or the other.”

I kept walking.

Her voice grew louder. “Either way, it won’t be today.”

John sounded amused. “Damn, Wate. You sure have a creepy family, for a Mortal.”

I braced myself for the sight of Amma armed with her beads and her dolls and maybe the Bible, too. But when I turned around, my eyes fell on the tangled braids and snakeskin-wrapped staff of the bokor.

The bokor smiled back at me. “I see you haven’t found your ti-bon-age. Or have you? It’s easier to find than to capture, isn’t it now?”

“Don’t you talk to him,” Amma snapped. Whatever the bokor was here for, it obviously wasn’t to talk me down off the ledge.

“Amma!” I called her name, and she turned back to face me. For the first time, I could see how lost she was. Her sharp brown eyes were confused and nervous, her proud posture bent and broken. “I don’t know why you brought that guy here, but you shouldn’t be mixed up with someone like him.”

The bokor threw his head back and laughed. “We have a deal, the Seer and me. And I intend to fulfill my end a the bargain.”

“What deal?” I asked.

But Amma shot the bokor a look that said Keep your mouth shut. Then she waved me over, the way she used to when I was a kid. “That’s nobody’s business except mine and my Maker’s. You come on home, and he’ll go back to where he belongs.”

“I don’t think she’s asking,” John said. He looked over at Amma. “What if Ethan doesn’t want to go?”

Amma’s eyes narrowed. “I knew you’d be here, the devil on my boy’s shoulder. I can still see a thing or two. And you’re Dark as a piece a coal in the snow—no matter what color your eyes are. That’s why I brought some Darkness a my own.”

The bokor wasn’t here for me or my Fractured Soul. He was here to make sure John didn’t get in Amma’s way.