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spoon high above the both of us.
“Now you listen. I don’t take kindly to you stickin’ your nose inta my kitchen, uninvited. You either get outta my house, or you make yourself known,
you hear? I won’t have you intrudin’ on this family. Been through nearabout enough already.”
I didn’t have much time. The smell from Amma’s charm bag was making me kind of sick, to tell the truth, and I didn’t have a whole lot of
experience at haunting—if this even qualified. I was completely out of my league.
I stared at the Tunnel of Fudge cake. I didn’t want to eat it, but I knew I had to do something with it. Something to make Amma understand—just
like Lena and the silver button.
The more I thought about that cake, the more I knew what I had to do.
I took a step toward Amma and her cake, ducking around the defensive spoon—and stuck my hand into the fudge, as far as I could. It wasn’t
easy—it felt like I was trying to grab a handful of cement minutes before it hardened into actual pavement.
But I did it anyway.
I scooped out a big piece of chocolate cake, letting it topple off the side and slide onto the burner. I might as well have taken a bite out of it—
that’s pretty much what the gaping hole in the side of the cake looked like.
One giant ghostly bite.
“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.