Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

HE RIGHTEOUS IN HEAVEN. The sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up, his shirt wrinkled and untucked. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

He was holding a bullhorn—not that he needed it. He called out into the crowd of people, who were waving their own cardboard signs and crosses as if he was Elvis back from the dead. “The Bi-ah-ble”—he always gave the word three syllables—“tells us there will be signs. Seven seals to mark the End a Days.”

“Amen! Praise the Lord!” the crowd shouted back. One voice stood out above the rest, of course. Mrs. Lincoln was standing at the base of the steps, her DAR lackeys huddled around her, arm in arm. She was carrying her own homemade sign, with the words THE END IS NEAR written in bloodred marker.

I pulled over next to the curb, the heat smacking me in the face the second the car stopped moving. The crooked oak shading the church was swarming with lubbers, the sun shining off the armor of their black backs.

“Conflict! Drought! Pestilence!” Reverend Blackwell paused, looking up at the pathetic, dying oak. “ ‘Fearful sights and great signs from heaven.’ That’s the Gospel a Luke.” He bowed his head respectfully for a second, then lifted it with a renewed sense of determination in his eyes. “Now, I have seen some fearful sights!”

The crowd nodded in agreement.

“A few nights ago, a tornado came down from the heavens like the finger a God! And it touched us, crushed the very framework a this fair town! A fine family lost their home. Our town library, home to the words a God and man, burned to the ground. You think that was an accident?” The reverend defending the library? That was a first. I wished my mom was here to see it.

“No!” Folks were shaking their heads, at rapt attention.

He pointed out into the crowd, moving his finger across the sea of faces as if he was speaking to each person individually. “Then I ask you, was it a great sign from heaven?”

“Amen!”

“It was a sign!” someone else shouted.

Reverend Blackwell clutched the Bible to his chest like a life preserver. “The Beast is at the gates, with his army a deeemons!” I couldn’t help but remember what John Breed had called himself. A Demon Soldier. “And he’s comin’ for us. Will you be ready?”

Mrs. Lincoln thrust her flimsy sign into the air, and the other disturbingly distinguished ladies of the DAR did the same in a show of solidarity. THE END IS NEAR knocked into HONK FOR THE HOLY GHOST and nearly ripped I BRAKE FOR REDEMPTION right off its taped-up yardstick handle.

“I’ll be ready to fight the Devil back to his own door with my bare hands if I have to!” she shouted. I believed her. If we were actually dealing with the Devil, we may have stood a chance with Mrs. Lincoln leading the charge.

The reverend held the Bible over his head. “The Bi-ah-ble promises there will be more signs. Earthquakes. Persecution an’ tortures a the e-lect.” He closed his eyes in rapture, a sign of his own. “ ‘And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, an’ lift up your heads, for your re-demption draweth nigh.’ Luke 21:28.” He dropped his head dramatically, his message delivered.

Mrs. Lincoln couldn’t contain herself any longer. She grabbed the bullhorn in one hand, waving her sign in the other. “The demons are comin’, and we have to be ready! I’ve been sayin’ it for years! Lift your heads up and watch for them. They may be standin’ at your back door! They may be walkin’ among us now!”

It was ironic. For once, Link’s mom was right. The Demons were coming, but the folks in Gatlin weren’t prepared for this kind of fight.

Even Amma—with her dolls that weren’t dolls and her tarot cards that weren’t tarot cards, her salt-lined windowsills and bottle trees—she wasn’t ready for this fight. Abraham and Sarafine, with an army of Vexes? Hunting and his Blood Pack? John Breed, who was nowhere and everywhere?

Because of him, the end was near, and Demons were walking among us. It was all about him. He was the one to blame.

And if there was one thing I had become so intimately acquainted with that I could feel it crawling around under my skin, the way lubbers were crawling all over that oak, it was blame.

9.28

Jeopardy

It was getting late when I finally made it home. Lucille was waiting on the front porch, her head tilted to the side as if she was waiting to see what I was going to do. When I opened the door and headed down the hall toward Amma’s room, I finally knew. I wasn’t ready to confront her, but I needed her help. John Breed’s Eighteenth Moon was too big for me to face on my own, and if anyone would know what to do, it was Amma.

Her bedroom door was closed, but I could hear her rummaging around in there. She was muttering, too, but her voice was too soft for me to make out anything she was saying.

I knocked on the door lightly, my head pressed against the cool wood.

Please let her be okay. Just tonight.

She opened the door far enough for her to peek through the crack. She was still wearing her apron, and she held a threaded needle in one hand. I looked past her into the dim light of her bedroom. Her bed was covered with scrap material, spools of thread, and herbs. She was making her dolls, no doubt. But something was off. It was the smell—that awful combination of gasoline and licorice I remembered from the bokor’s shop.

“Amma, what’s going on?”

“Nothin’ you need to worry about. Why don’t you get on upstairs and do some a your schoolwork?” She didn’t look me in the eye, and she didn’t ask where I’d been.

“What’s that smell?” I searched the room, looking for the source. There was a thick black candle on her dresser. It looked exactly like the one the bokor had been burning. There were tiny hand-sewn bundles piled up around it. “What are you making in there?”