Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

“No.” Amma stared, wide-eyed, holding the spoon in one hand and her apron in the other. “Ethan Wate, is that you?”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. She must have felt something, though, because she lowered the spoon and dropped into the chair across from me, letting the tears flow like a baby in the cry room at church.

Between the tears I heard it.

Just a whisper, but I heard it as clearly as if she had shouted my name.

“My boy.”

Her hands were shaking as she held on to the edge of the old table. Amma might be one of the greatest Seers in the Lowcountry, but she was still a Mortal.

I had become something else.

I moved my hand over hers, and I could have sworn she slipped her fingers between mine. She rocked in her chair a little, the way she did when she was singing a hymn she loved or was just about to finish a particularly hard crossword.

“I miss you, Ethan Wate. More than you know. Can’t bear to do my puzzles. Can’t recall how to cook a roast.” She wiped her hand across her eyes, leaving it on her forehead like she had a headache.

I miss you, too, Amma.

“Don’t go too far from home, not just yet. You hear me? I’ve a few things to tell you, one a these days.”

I won’t.

Lucille licked her paw and rolled it over her ears. She hopped down from the table and howled one last time. She started to walk out of the kitchen, stopping only to look back at me. I could hear what she was saying, as clearly as if she was speaking to me.

Well? Come on, already. You’re wasting my time, boy.

I turned and gave Amma a hug, reaching my long arms all the way around her tiny frame, as I had so many times before.

Lucille stopped and cocked her head, waiting. So I did what I’d always done when it came to that cat. I got up from the table and followed.

CHAPTER 8

Broken Bottles

Lucille scratched at the door to Amma’s room, and it slid open. I slipped through the crack in the door right after the cat.

Amma’s room looked better and worse than it did the last time I saw it, the night I jumped off the water tower. That night, the jars of salt, river stones, and graveyard dirt—the ingredients in so many of Amma’s charms—were missing from their places on the shelves, along with at least two dozen other bottles. Her “recipe” books had been scattered across the floor, without so much as a single charm or doll in sight.

The room had been a reflection of Amma’s state of mind—lost and desperate, in a way that hurt to remember.

Today it looked completely different, but as far as I could tell, the room was still full of what she was feeling on the inside, the things she didn’t want anyone to see. The doors and windows were laden with charms, but if Amma’s old charms were as good as they come, these were even better—stones intricately arranged around the bed, bundles of hawthorn tied around the windows, strands of beads decorated with tiny silver saints and symbols looped around the bedposts.

She was working hard to keep something out.

The jars were still crowded together the way I remembered them, but the shelves weren’t bare anymore. They were lined with cracked brown, green, and blue glass bottles. I recognized them immediately.

They were from the bottle tree in our front yard.

Amma must have taken them down. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of evil spirits anymore.

Or maybe she just didn’t want to catch the wrong one.

The bottles were empty, but each one was stopped up with a cork. I touched a small bluish-green one with a long crack down one side. Slowly, and with about as much ease as if I was pushing the Beater all the way up the hill to Ravenwood on a summer day, I edged the cork out from the rim of the bottle, and the room began to fade….

The sun was hot, swamp mist rising like ghosts over the water. But the little girl with the neat braids knew better. Ghosts were made of more than steam and mist. They were as real as she was, waiting for her ancient grandmamma or her aunties to call them up. And they were just like the living.

Some were friendly, like the girls who played hopscotch and cat’s cradle with her. And others were nasty, like the old man who paced around the graveyard in Wader’s Creek whenever there was thunder. Either way, the spirits could be helpful or ornery, depending on their mood and what you had to offer. It was always a good idea to bring a gift. Her great-great-great-grandmamma had taught her that.