Beautiful Redemption (Caster Chronicles 4)

Sixty-two plastic buttons. Eleven broken strands of between fourteen and thirty-six pearls each. One hundred and nine old baseball cards. Nine AA batteries. Twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-four dollars and three cents in coins, from six countries. Or maybe just six centuries.

More or less.

I didn’t know how to count the doubloons.

This morning I counted grains of rice falling through the split seam of a stuffed frog. I don’t know where Xavier finds this stuff. I made it to nine hundred ninety-nine, and then I lost my place and had to start over again.

That was how I spent today.

Like I said, a person could go crazy trying to pass the time in a place with no time. When you find The Book of Moons, L, I’ll know. I’ll be out of here the second I can. I keep my stuff ready to go, by the mouth of the cave. Aunt Prue’s map. An empty flask of whiskey and a tobacco tin.

Don’t ask.

Can you believe, after everything, that the Book is still coming between us? I know you’re going to find it. One day. You will.

And I’ll be waiting.

I’m not sure if thinking about Lena makes the time pass faster or slower. But it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t stop thinking about her if I tried. Which I have—playing chess with these creepy figures Xavier collects. Helping him catalog everything from bottle caps and marbles to ancient Caster volumes. Today it’s stones. Xavier must have hundreds of them, ranging from raw diamonds as big as strawberries to chunks of quartz and plain old rocks.

“It’s important to keep careful records of everything I have.” Xavier added three hunks of coal to the list.

I stared at the rocks in front of me. Gravel, Amma would say. Just the right shade of gray for Dean Wilks’ driveway. I wondered what Amma was doing right now. And my mom. The two women who raised me were in two totally different worlds, and I couldn’t see either of them.

I held up a handful of dusty driveway gravel. “Why do you collect these, anyway? They’re just rocks.”

Xavier looked shocked. “Stones have power. They absorb people’s feelings and their fears. Even their memories.”

I didn’t need anyone else’s fears. I had enough of my own.

I reached into my pocket and took out the black stone. I rubbed the smooth surface between my fingers. This one was Sulla’s. It was shaped like a thick teardrop, while Lena’s was rounder.

“Here.” I held it out to Xavier. “You can add it to your collection.”

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need it to cross the river again. I would either find my way back home or I would never leave here. Somehow I knew that, even if I didn’t know anything else.

Xavier stared at the stone for a long minute. “You keep it, dead man. Those aren’t—”

After that, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. My vision started to blur, Xavier’s leathery black skin and the stone in my palm shifting until they started to bleed together into a single dark shadow.

Sulla sat at an old wicker table, an oil lamp illum

inating the small room. A spread was laid out in front of her, the Cards of Providence lined up in two neat rows, each stamped with a black sparrow in the corner—Sulla’s mark. A tall man sat across from her, his smooth head gleaming in the light.

“The Bleeding Blade. Blind Man’s Rage. Liar’s Promise. The Stolen Heart.” She frowned and shook her head. “Can tell you, none a this is good. What you’re chasin’, you ain’t never gonna find. And it’ll be worse if you do.”

The man ran his huge hands over his scalp nervously. “What’s that supposed to mean, Sulla? Stop talking in circles.”

“It means they’re never gonna give you what you want, Angelus. The Far Keep doesn’t need a spread to know you’ve been breakin’ their rules all along.”

Angelus pushed away from the table violently. “I don’t need them to give me what I want. I have other Keepers behind me. Keepers who want to be more than scribes. Why should we be forced to record history when we can be the ones who make it!”

“Can’t change the cards—that’s all I know.”

Angelus stared at the beautiful woman with the golden skin and delicate braids. “Words can change things, Seer. You just have to put them in the right book.”

Something caught Sulla’s eye, and she was distracted for a moment. Her granddaughter crouched behind the door, listening. On any other night, Sulla wouldn’t have minded. Amarie was seventeen, older than Sulla was when she learned to read cards. Sulla didn’t want the girl to see this man. There was something evil inside him. She didn’t need the cards to see that much.

Angelus started to stand, his huge hands clenched into fists.