Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

Because the kitchen smelled like Heaven, or the way Heaven should smell—since I was thinking about it a lot more these days. The two greatest smells on earth. Pulled pork with Carolina Gold, that was one of them. I’d know Amma’s famous golden mustard barbeque sauce anywhere, not to mention the slow-cooked pork that gave up and fell to pieces at the first touch of a fork.

The other smell was chocolate. Not just chocolate, but the densest, darkest chocolate around, which meant the inside of Amma’s Tunnel of Fudge cake, my favorite of all her desserts. The one she never made for any contest or fair or family in need—just for me, on my birthday or when I got a good report card or had a rotten day.

It was my cake, like lemon meringue was Uncle Abner’s pie.

I sank into the nearest chair at the kitchen table, my head in my hands. The cake wasn’t for me to eat. It was for her to give, an offering. Something to take out to Greenbrier and leave on my grave.

The thought of that Tunnel of Fudge cake laid out on the fresh dirt by the little wooden cross made me want to throw up.

I was worse than dead.

I was one of the Greats, but a whole lot less great.

The egg timer went off, and Amma pushed back her chair, spearing the charm bag with her needle one last time and letting it drop to the table.

“Don’t want your cake to dry out now, do we, Ethan Wate?” Amma yanked open the oven door, and a blast of heat and chocolate shot out. She stuck her quilted mitts in so far I worried she was going to catch fire herself. Then she yanked out the cake with a sigh, almost hurling it onto the burner.

“Best let it cool a bit. Don’t want my boy burnin’ his mouth.”

Lucille smelled the food and came wandering into the kitchen. She leaped onto the table, just like always, getting the best vantage point possible.

When she saw me sitting there, she let out a horrible howl. Her eyes caught me in a fixed glare, as if I’d done something deeply and personally offensive.

Come on, Lucille. You and me, we go way back.

Amma looked at Lucille. “What’s that, old girl? You got somethin’ to say?”

Lucille yowled again. She was ratting me out to Amma. At first I thought she was just trying to be difficult. Then I realized she was doing me a favor.

Amma was listening. More than listening—she was scowling and looking around the room. “Who’s there?”

I looked back at Lucille and smiled, reaching out to scratch her on the top of her head. She twitched beneath my hand.

Amma swept the kitchen with her eagle eye. “Don’t you be comin’ in my house. Don’t need you spirits comin’ around. There’s nothin’ here left to take. Just a lot a broken-down old ladies and broken hearts.” She reached slowly toward the jar sitting on the counter and took hold of the One-Eyed Menace.

There it was. Her death-defying, all-powerful wooden spoon of justice. The hole in the middle looked even more like an all-seeing eye tonight. And I had no doubt it could see, maybe as well as Amma. In this state—wherever I was—I could see plain as day that the thing was strangely powerful. Like the salt, it practically glowed, leaving a trail of light where she waved it in the air. I guess things of power came in all shapes and sizes. And when it came to the One-Eyed Menace, I’d be the last one to doubt anything it could do.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Lucille shot me another look, hissing. Now she was getting bratty. I wanted to hiss right back at her.

Stupid cat. This is still my house, Lucille Ball.

Amma looked my way, as if she was seeing straight into my eyes. It was eerie, how close she came to knowing right where I was. She raised the spoon high above the both of us.

“Now you listen. I don’t take kindly to you stickin’ your nose inta my kitchen, uninvited. You either get outta my house, or you make yourself known, you hear? I won’t have you intrudin’ on this family. Been through nearabout enough already.”

I didn’t have much time. The smell from Amma’s charm bag was making me kind of sick, to tell the truth, and I didn’t have a whole lot of experience at haunting—if this even qualified. I was completely out of my league.

I stared at the Tunnel of Fudge cake. I didn’t want to eat it, but I knew I had to do something with it. Something to make Amma understand—just like Lena and the silver button.

The more I thought about that cake, the more I knew what I had to do.

I took a step toward Amma and her cake, ducking around the defensive spoon—and stuck my hand into the fudge, as far as I could. It wasn’t easy—it felt like I was trying to grab a handful of cement minutes before it hardened into actual pavement.

But I did it anyway.

I scooped out a big piece of chocolate cake, letting it topple off the side and slide onto the burner. I might as well have taken a bite out of it—that’s pretty much what the gaping hole in the side of the cake looked like.

One giant ghostly bite.