You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
The bokor tapped on a bottle of crushed eggshells near the edge of the table. Again, his white teeth shone in the darkness. “Anything can be<br />
done for a price, Seer. Question is, what are you willin’ to pay?”<br />
“Whatever it takes.”<br />
I shuddered. There was something about the way Amma said it, even the shifting sound of her voice, that made it seem like an invisible line<br />
between the two of them was disappearing. I wondered if that line ran deeper than the one she crossed the night of the Sixteenth Moon, when she<br />
and Lena used The Book of Moons to bring me back from the dead. I shook my head. We had all crossed too many lines already.<br />
The bokor watched Amma intently. “Let me see the cards. I need to know what we’re dealin’ with.”<br />
Amma took a stack of what looked like tarot cards out of her purse, but the images on the cards weren’t right. They weren’t tarot cards—these<br />
were something else. She arranged them on the table carefully, re-creating a spread. The bokor watched, flipping the feather between his fingers.<br />
Amma dropped the last card. “There it is.”<br />
He balked, muttering in a language I didn’t understand. But I could tell he wasn’t happy. The bokor swept clean his rickety wooden table, bottles<br />
and vials shattering on the ground. He leaned as close to Amma as I’d ever seen anyone dare to get. “The Angry Queen. The Unbalanced Scale.<br />
The Child of Darkness. The Storm. The Sacrifice. The Split Twins. The Bleeding Blade. The Fractured Soul.”<br />
He spit, shaking the feather at her, his version of the One-Eyed Menace. “A Seer from the line a Sulla the Prophet is smart enough to know this is<br />
not just any spread.”<br />
“Are you sayin’ you can’t do it?” It was a challenge. “That I’ve come all this way for cracked eggshells and dead swamp frogs? Can get those from<br />
any fortune-teller.”<br />
“I’m sayin’ you can’t pay the price, old woman!” His voice rose, and I stiffened. Amma was the only mother I had left. I couldn’t stand to hear<br />
anyone talk to her that way.<br />
Amma looked up at the ceiling, muttering. I was willing to bet she was talking to the Greats. “Not a bone in my body wanted to come to this<br />
godforsaken nest a evil—”<br />
The bokor picked up a long staff wrapped in the crisp skin of a snake, and circled Amma like an animal waiting to strike. “And yet you came.<br />
Because your little dolls and herbs can’t save the ti-bon-age. Can they?”<br />
Amma stared at him defiantly. “Someone is gonna die if you don’t help me.”<br />
“And someone will die if I do.”<br />
“That’s a discussion for another day.” She tapped one of the cards. “This here is the death I care about.”<br />
He examined the card, stroking it with his feather. “Interestin’ you would choose the one who is already lost. Even more interestin’ you would<br />
come to me instead a your precious Casters. This concerns them, does it not?”<br />
The Casters.<br />
My stomach dropped. Who was already lost? Was he talking about Lena?<br />
Amma drew a heavy breath. “The Casters can’t help me. They can barely help themselves.”<br />
Link looked at me, confused. But I didn’t understand any more than he did. How could the bokor help Amma with something the Casters couldn’t?<br />
The images crashed down on me before I could stop them. The unbearable heat. The plague of insects infesting every inch of town. The<br />
nightmares and the panic. Casters who couldn’t control their powers, or use them all. A river of blood. Abraham’s voice echoing through the cavern<br />
after Lena Claimed herself.<br />
There will be consequences.<br />
The bokor circled around to face Amma, measuring her expression. “You mean the Light Casters can’t.”<br />
“No other kind I’d ask for help.”<br />
He seemed pleased with her answer, but not for the reason I thought. “Yet you came to me. Because I can do something they can’t—the old<br />
magic our people carried across the ocean with us. Magic that can be controlled by Mortals and Casters alike.” He was talking about voodoo, a<br />
religion born in Africa and the Caribbean. “They don’t understand the ti-bon-age.”<br />
Amma stared at him like she wished she could turn him to stone, but she didn’t leave.<br />
She needed him, even if I didn’t know why.<br />
“Name your price.” Her voice wavered.<br />
I watched as he calculated the cost of both Amma’s request and her integrity. They were opposing forces, working the extremes of a shared<br />
mysticism that was as black and white as the Light and Darkness in the Caster world. “Where is it now? Do you know where they’ve hidden it?”<br />
“Hidden what?” Link mouthed silently. I shook my head. I had no idea what they were talking about.<br />
“It’s not hidden.” For the first time, Amma met his eyes. “It’s free.”<br />
At first he didn’t react, as if she might have misspoken. But when the bokor realized Amma was serious, he circled back to the table and pored<br />
over the spread. I could hear broken bits of French Creole in his gnarled voice. “If what you say is true, old woman, there is only one price.”<br />
Amma ran her hand over the cards, pushing them into a pile. “I know. I’ll pay it.”<br />
“You understand, there is no turnin’ back? No way to undo what will be done. If you tamper with the Wheel a Fate, it will continue to turn until it<br />
crushes you in its path.”<br />
Amma stacked the cards and put them back in her purse. I could see her hand shaking, jerking in and out of shadow.<br />
“Do what you need to do, and I’ll do the same.” She snapped shut her purse and turned to go. “In the end, the Wheel crushes us all.”