You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
CHAPTER 7<br />
Crosswords<br />
As I watched Link and Lena disappear toward Ravenwood, I knew there was one more place I needed to go, one person I had to see before I went<br />
back. She owned Wate’s Landing more than any Wate ever would. She haunted that place even in full flesh and blood.<br />
Part of me was dreading it, imagining how torn up she must be. But I needed to see her, all the same.<br />
Bad things had happened.<br />
I couldn’t change that, no matter how much I wanted to.<br />
Everything felt wrong, and even seeing Lena didn’t make it feel right.<br />
As Aunt Prue would say, things had gone cattywampus.<br />
Whether in this realm or any other, Amma was always the one person who could set me straight.<br />
I sat on the curb across the street, waiting for the sun to go down. I couldn’t get myself to move. I didn’t want to. I wanted to watch the sun dip behind<br />
the house, behind the clotheslines and the old trees and the hedge. I wanted to watch the sunlight fade and the lights in the house go on. I watched<br />
for the familiar glow in my dad’s study, but it was still dark. He must be teaching at the university, as if nothing had happened. That was probably<br />
good, better even. I wondered if he was still working on his book about the Eighteenth Moon, unless restoring the Order had brought an end to that,<br />
too.<br />
There was a light in the kitchen bay window, though.<br />
Amma.<br />
A second light flickered through the small square window next to it. The Sisters were watching one of their shows.<br />
Then, in the dwindling light, I noticed something strange. There were no bottles on our old crepe myrtle. The one where Amma hung empty,<br />
cracked glass bottles to trap any evil spirits that happened to float our way and to keep them from getting in our house.<br />
Where could the bottles have gone? Why wouldn’t she need them now?<br />
I stood up and walked a little closer. I could see through the kitchen window to where Amma sat at our old wooden table, probably doing a<br />
crossword. I could imagine the #2 pencils scratching, could almost hear them.<br />
I crossed the lawn and stood in the driveway, just outside the window. For once I figured it was a good thing no one could see me, because<br />
peeping in windows at night in Gatlin is what made even decent folks want to get out their shotguns. Then again, there were lots of things that made<br />
folks around here want to get out their shotguns.<br />
Amma looked up and out into the darkness, like a deer in the headlights. I could have sworn she saw me. Then real headlights flashed behind<br />
me, and I realized it wasn’t me Amma was looking at.<br />
It was my dad, driving my mom’s old Volvo. Pulling right through me and into the driveway. As if I wasn’t there.<br />
Which, in a whole lot of ways, I wasn’t.<br />
I stood in front of the house that I had spent so many summers repainting, and reached out to touch the brushstrokes next to the door. My hand<br />
slipped partway through the wall.<br />
It disappeared inside, kind of like when I shoved it through the Charmed door of the Lunae Libri, the one that only looked like a regular old<br />
grating.<br />
I pulled my hand out and stared at it.<br />
Looked fine to me.<br />
I stepped closer, into the side wall of the house, and found myself trapped. It kind of burned, like walking into a lit fireplace. I guess slipping my<br />
hand through was one thing, but getting my body into the house was another.<br />
I went around to the front door. Nothing. I couldn’t even kick a foot partway through. I tried the window above the kitchen table, and the one over<br />
the sink. I tried the back windows and the side windows and even the cat door that Amma had installed for Lucille.<br />
No luck.<br />
Then I figured out what was going on, because I went back to the kitchen window and saw what Amma was doing. It wasn’t the New York Times<br />
crossword puzzle, or even The Stars and Stripes one. She had a needle, not a pencil, in one hand, and a square of cloth instead of paper in the<br />
other. She was doing something I’d seen her do a thousand times, and it wasn’t going to improve anyone’s vocabulary or keep anyone’s mind New<br />
York City sharp.<br />
It had to do with keeping people’s souls safe—Gatlin County safe.<br />
Because Amma was sewing a little bundle of ingredients into one of her infamous charm bags, the kind I had found in my drawers and beneath<br />
my mattress and sometimes even in my own pockets. Considering that I couldn’t step foot in the house, she must have been sewing them nonstop<br />
since I jumped off the water tower.<br />
As usual, she was using her charms to protect Wate’s Landing, and there was no getting past any one of them. The salt snaking its way across<br />
the windowsill was even thicker than usual. For the first time, there was no doubt that her crazy protections kept our house haint-free. For the first<br />
time, I noticed the strange glow of the salt, as if whatever powered it leaked into the air around the windowsills.<br />
Great.<br />
I was rattling the screen out back, when I caught a glimpse of the stairwell leading down to Amma’s canning pantry. I thought about the secret<br />
door at the back of that little room of storage shelves, the one that had probably been used for the Underground Railroad. I tried to remember where<br />
the tunnel came out—the one where we’d found the Temporis Porta, the magical door that opened into the Far Keep. Then I remembered the