10.09

The Greats

It had made sense when a beautiful girl was saying it. Now that I was back home, alone, and in my own bed, I was finally losing it. Even Link wouldn’t believe any of this. I tried to think about how the conversation would go—the girl I like, whose real name I don’t know, is a witch—-excuse me, a Caster, from a whole family of Casters, and in five months she’s going to find out essentially if she’s good or evil. And she can cause hurricanes indoors and break the glass out of windows. And I can see into the past when I touch the crazy locket Amma and Macon Ravenwood, who isn’t actually a shut-in at all, want me to bury. A locket that materialized on the neck of a woman in a painting at Ravenwood, which by the way, is not a haunted mansion, but a perfectly restored house that changes completely every time I go there, to see a girl who burns me and shocks me and shatters me with a single touch.

And I kissed her. And she kissed me back.

It was too unbelievable, even for me. I rolled over.

Tearing.

The wind was tearing at my body.

I held onto the tree as it pounded me, the sound of its scream piercing my ears. All around me, the winds swirled, fighting each other, their speed and force multiplying by the second. The hail rained down like Heaven itself had opened up. I had to get out of here.

But there was nowhere to go.

“Let me go, Ethan. Save yourself!”

I couldn’t see her. The wind was too strong, but I could feel her. I was holding her wrist so tightly, I was sure it would break. But I didn’t care, I wouldn’t let go. The wind changed direction, lifting me off the ground. I held the tree tighter, held her wrist tighter. But I could feel the strength of the wind ripping us apart.

Pulling me away from the tree, away from her. I felt her wrist sliding through my fingers.

I couldn’t hold on any longer.

I woke up coughing. I could still feel the windburn on my skin. As if my near-death experience at Ravenwood wasn’t enough, now the dreams were back. It was too much for one night, even for me. My bedroom door was wide open, which was weird, considering I had been locking my door at night lately. The last thing I needed was Amma planting some crazy voodoo charm on me in my sleep. I was sure I’d closed it.

I stared up at my ceiling. Sleep was not in my future. I sighed and felt around under the bed. I flipped on the old storm lamp next to my bed and pulled the bookmark out from where I’d left off in Snow Crash when I heard something. Footsteps? It was coming from the kitchen, faint, but I still heard it. Maybe my dad was taking a break from writing. Maybe this would give us a chance to talk. Maybe.

But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I knew it wasn’t him. The door to his study was shut and light was coming from the crack under the door. It had to be Amma. Just as I ducked under the kitchen doorway, I saw her scampering down the hall toward her room, to the extent that Amma could scamper. I heard the screen door in the back of the house squeak shut. Someone was coming or going. After everything that had happened tonight, it was an important distinction.

I walked around to the front of the house. There was an old, beat-up pickup truck, a fifties Studebaker, idling by the curb. Amma was leaning in the window talking to the driver. She handed the driver her bag and climbed into the truck. Where was she going in the middle of the night?

I had to follow her. And following the woman who may as well have been my mother when she got into a car at night, with a strange man driving a junker, was a hard thing to do if you didn’t have a car. I had no choice. I had to take the Volvo. It was the car my mom had been driving when she had the accident; that was the first thing I thought every time I saw it.

I slid behind the wheel. It smelled of old paper and Windex, just like it always had.

♦  ♦  ♦

Driving without the headlights on was trickier than I’d thought it would be, but I could tell the pickup was heading toward Wader’s Creek. Amma must have been going home. The truck turned off Route 9, toward the back country. When it finally slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road, I cut the engine and guided the Volvo onto the shoulder.

Amma opened the door and the interior light went on. I squinted in the darkness. I recognized the driver; it was Carlton Eaton, the postmaster. Why would Amma ask Carlton Eaton for a ride in the middle of the night? I’d never even seen them speak to each other before.

Amma said something to Carlton and shut the door. The truck pulled back onto the road without her. I got out of the car and followed her. Amma was a creature of habit. If something had gotten her so worked up that she was creeping out to the swamp in the middle of the night, I could guess it involved more than one of her usual clients.

She disappeared into the brush, along a gravel path someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make. She walked along the path in the dark, the gravel crunching under her feet. I walked in the grass beside the path to avoid that same crunching sound, which would’ve given me away for sure. I told myself it was because I wanted to see why Amma was sneaking home in the middle of the night, but mostly I was scared she would catch me following her.

It was easy to see how Wader’s Creek got its name; you actually had to wade through black water ponds to get there, at least the way Amma was taking us. If there hadn’t been a full moon, I’d have broken my neck trying to follow her through the maze of moss-covered oaks and scrub brush. We were close to the water. I could feel the swamp in the air, hot and sticky like a second skin.

The edge of the swamp was lined with flat wooden platforms made from cypress logs tied together with rope, poor man’s ferries. They were lined up along the bank like taxis waiting to carry people across the water. I could see Amma in the moonlight, balanced expertly atop one of the platforms, pushing out from the bank with a long stick she used like an oar to skate it across to the other side.

I hadn’t been to Amma’s house in years, but I would’ve remembered this. We must have come another way back then, but it was impossible to tell in the dark. The one thing I could see was how rotted the logs on the platforms were; each one looked as unstable as the next. So I just picked one.

Maneuvering the platform was a lot harder than Amma made it look. Every few minutes, there was a splash, when a gator’s tail hit the water as it slid into the swamp. I was glad I hadn’t considered wading across.

I pushed into the floor of the swamp with my own long stick one last time, and the edge of the platform hit the bank. When I stepped onto the sand, I could see Amma’s house, small and modest, with a single light in the window. The window frames were painted the same shade of haint blue as the ones at Wate’s Landing. The house was made of cypress, like it was part of the swamp itself.

There was something else, something in the air. Strong and overpowering, like the lemons and rosemary. And just as unlikely, for two reasons. Confederate jasmine doesn’t flower in the fall, only in the spring, and it doesn’t grow in the swamp. Yet, there it was. The smell was unmistakable. There was something impossible about it, like everything else about this night.

I watched the house. Nothing. Maybe she had just decided to go home. Maybe my dad knew she was leaving, and I was wandering around in the middle of the night, risking being eaten by gators for nothing.

I was about to head back through the swamp, wishing I’d dropped breadcrumbs on my way out here, when the door opened again. Amma stood in the light of the doorway, putting things I couldn’t see into her good white patent leather pocketbook. She was wearing her best lavender church dress, white gloves, and a fancy matching hat with flowers all around it.

She was on the move again, heading back toward the swamp. Was she going into the swamp wearing that? As much as I didn’t enjoy the trek to Amma’s house, slogging through the swamp in my jeans was worse. The mud was so thick it felt like I was pulling my feet out of cement every time I took a step. I didn’t know how Amma was able to get through it, in her dress, at her age.

Amma seemed to know exactly where she was going, stopping in a clearing of tall grass and mud weeds. The branches of the cypress trees tangled with weeping willows, creating a canopy overhead. A chill ran up my back, though it was still seventy degrees out here. Even after everything I’d seen tonight, there was something creepy about this place. There was a mist coming off the water, seeping up from the sides, like steam pushing out of the lid of a boiling pot. I edged my way closer. She was pulling something out of her bag, the white patent leather shining in the moonlight.

Bones. They looked like chicken bones.

She whispered something over the bones, and put them into a small pouch, not much different from the pouch she had given me to subdue the power of the locket. Fishing around in the bag again, she pulled out a fancy hand towel, the kind you’d find in a powder room, and used it to wipe the mud from her skirt. There were faint white lights in the distance, like fireflies blinking in the dark, and music, slow, sultry music and laughter. Somewhere, not that far away, people were drinking and dancing out in the swamp.

She looked up. Something had caught her attention, but I didn’t hear anything.

“May as well show yourself. I know you’re out there.”

I froze, panicked. She had seen me.

But it wasn’t me she was talking to. Out from the sweltering mist stepped Macon Ravenwood, smoking a cigar. He looked relaxed, like he’d just stepped out of a chauffeured car, instead of wading through filthy black water. He was impeccably dressed, as usual, in one of his crisp white shirts.

And he was spotless. Amma and I were covered in mud and swamp grass up to our knees, and Macon Ravenwood was standing there without so much as a speck of dirt on him.

“About time. You know I don’t have all night, Melchizedek. I got to get back. And I don’t take kindly to bein’ summoned out here all the way from town. It’s just rude. Not to mention, inconvenient.” She sniffed. “Incommodious, you might say.”

I. N. C. O. M. M. O. D. I. O. U. S. Twelve down. I spelled it out in my head.

“I’ve had quite an eventful evening myself, Amarie, but this matter requires our immediate attention.” Macon took a few steps forward.

Amma recoiled and pointed a bony finger in his direction. “You stay where you are. I don’t like bein’ out here with your kind on this sorta night. Don’t like it one bit. You keep to yourself, and I’ll keep to mine.”

He stepped back casually, blowing smoke rings into the air. “As I was saying, certain developments require our immediate attention.” He exhaled, a smoky sigh. “‘The moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun.’ To quote our good friends, the Clergy.”

“Don’t talk your high and mighty with me, Melchizedek. What’s so important you need to call me outta bed in the middle a the night?”

“Among other things, Genevieve’s locket.”

Amma nearly howled, holding her scarf over her nose. She clearly couldn’t stand to even hear the word locket. “What about that thing? I told you I Bound it, and I told him to take it back to Greenbrier and bury it. It can’t cause any harm if it’s back in the ground.”

“Wrong on the first count. Wrong on the second. He still has it. He showed it to me in the sanctity of my own home. Aside from which, I’m not sure anything can Bind such a dark talisman.”

“At your house… when was he at your house? I told him to stay clear a Ravenwood.” Now she was noticeably agitated. Great, Amma would find some way to make me pay for this later.

“Well, perhaps you might consider shortening his leash. Clearly, he isn’t very obedient. I warned you that this friendship would be dangerous, that it could develop into something more. A future between the two of them is an impossibility.”

Amma was mumbling under her breath the way she always did when I didn’t listen to her. “He’s always minded me till he met your niece. And don’t you blame me. We wouldn’t be in this fix if you hadn’t brought her down here in the first place. I’ll take care a this. I’ll tell him he can’t see her anymore.”

“Don’t be absurd. They’re teenagers. The more we try to keep them apart, the more they will try to be together. This won’t be an issue once she is Claimed, if we make it that far. Until then, control the boy, Amarie. It’s only a few more months. Things are dangerous enough, without him making an even greater mess of the situation.”

“Don’t talk to me about messes, Melchizedek Ravenwood. My family’s been cleanin’ up your family’s messes for over a hundred years. I’ve kept your secrets, just like you’ve kept mine.”

“I’m not the Seer who failed to foresee them finding the locket. How do you explain that? How did your spirit friends manage to miss that?” He gestured around them, with a sarcastic flick of his cigar.

She spun around, eyes wild. “Don’t you insult the Greats. Not here, not in this place. They have their reasons. There must’ve been a reason they didn’t reveal it.”

She turned away from Macon. “Now don’t you listen to him. I brought you some shrimp ’n’ grits and lemon meringue pie.” She clearly wasn’t talking to Macon anymore. “Your favorite,” she said, taking the food out of little Tupperware containers and arranging it on a plate. She laid the plate on the ground. There was a small headstone next to the plate, and several others scattered nearby.

“This is our Great House, the great house a my family, you hear? My great-aunt Sissy. My great-great-uncle Abner. My great-great-great-great-grandmamma Sulla. Don’t you disrespect the Greats in their House. You want answers, you show some respect.”

“I apologize.”

She waited.

“Truly.”

She sniffed. “And watch your ash. There’s no ashtray in this house. Nasty habit.”

He flicked his cigar into the moss. “Now, let’s get on with it. We don’t have much time. We need to know the whereabouts of Saraf—”

“Shh,” she hissed. “Don’t say Her name—not tonight. We shouldn’t be out here. Half-moon’s for workin’ White magic and full moon’s for workin’ Black. We’re out here on the wrong night.”

“We have no choice. There was a quite an unpleasant episode this evening, I’m afraid. My niece, who Turned on her Claiming Day, showed up for the Gathering tonight.”

“Del’s child? That Dark drink a danger?”

“Ridley. Uninvited, obviously. She crossed my threshold with the boy. I need to know if it was a coincidence.”

“No good. No good. This is no good.” Amma rocked back and forth on her heels, furiously.

“Well?”

“There are no coincidences. You know that.”

“At least we can agree on that.”

I couldn’t get my mind around any of this. Macon Ravenwood never set foot outside of his house, but there he was, in the middle of the swamp, arguing with Amma—who I had no idea he even knew—about me and Lena and the locket.

Amma rummaged around in her pocketbook again. “Did you bring the whiskey? Uncle Abner loves his Wild Turkey.”

Macon held out the bottle.

“Just put it right there,” she said, pointing at the ground, “and step back yonder.”

“I see you’re still afraid to touch me after all these years.”

“I’m not afraid of anything. You just keep to yourself. I don’t ask you about your business, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”

He set the bottle on the ground a few feet from Amma. She picked it up, poured the whiskey into a shot glass, and drank it. I had never seen Amma drink anything stronger than sweet tea in my whole life. Then she poured some of the liquor in the grass, covering the grave. “Uncle Abner, we are in need a your intercession. I call your spirit to this place.”

Macon coughed.

“You’re testin’ my patience, Melchizedek.” Amma closed her eyes and opened her arms to the sky, her head thrown back as if she was talking to the moon itself. She bent down and shook the small pouch she had taken from her pocketbook. The contents spilled out onto the grave. Tiny chicken bones. I hoped they weren’t the bones from the basket of fried chicken I’d put away this afternoon, but I had a feeling they might have been.

“What do they say?” Macon asked.

She ran her fingers over the bones, fanning them out over the grass. “I’m not gettin’ an answer.”

His perfect composure began to crack. “We don’t have time for this! What good is a Seer if you can’t see anything? We have less than five months before she turns sixteen. If she Turns, she will damn us all, Mortals and Casters alike. We have a responsibility, a responsibility we both took on willingly, a long time ago. You to your Mortals, and me to my Casters.”

“I don’t need you remindin’ me about my responsibilities. And you keep your voice down, you hear me? I don’t need any a my clients comin’ out here and seein’ us together. How would that look? A fine upstanding member a the community like myself? Don’t mess with my business, Melchizedek.”

“If we don’t find out where Saraf—where She is—and what she’s planning, we’ll have bigger problems on our hands than your failing business ventures, Amarie.”

“She’s a Dark one. Never know which way the wind will blow with that one. It’s like tryin’ to see where a twister’ll hit.”

“Even so. I need to know if she’s going to try to make contact with Lena.”

“Not if. When.” Amma closed her eyes again, touching the charm on the necklace she never took off. It was a disc, engraved with what looked like a heart with some kind of cross coming out from the top. The image was worn from the thousands of times Amma must have rubbed it, as she was doing now. She was whispering some sort of chant in a language I didn’t understand, but I’d heard somewhere before.

Macon paced impatiently. I shifted in the weeds, trying not to make a sound.

“I can’t get a read tonight. It’s murky. I think Uncle Abner is in a mood. I’m sure it was somethin’ you said.”

This must have been his breaking point, because Macon’s face changed, his pale skin glowing in the shadows. When he stepped forward, the sharp angles of his face became frightening in the moonlight. “Enough of these games. A Dark Caster entered my house tonight; that in itself is impossible. She arrived with your boy, Ethan, which can mean only one thing. He has power, and you have been hiding it from me.”

“Nonsense. That boy doesn’t have power any more than I have a tail.”

“You’re wrong, Amarie. Ask the Greats. Consult the bones. There is no other explanation. It had to be Ethan. Ravenwood is protected. A Dark Caster could never circumvent that sort of protection, not without some powerful form of help.”

“You’ve lost your mind. He doesn’t have any kind a power. I raised that child. Don’t you think I’d know it?”

“You’re wrong this time. You’re too close to him; it’s clouding your vision. And there is too much at stake now for errors. We both have our talents. I’m warning you, there is more to the boy than either of us realized.”

“I’ll ask the Greats. If there’s somethin’ to know they’ll be sure I know it. Don’t you forget, Melchizedek, we have to contend with both the dead and the livin’ and that’s no easy task.” She rummaged around in her pocketbook, and pulled out a dirty-looking string with a row of tiny beads on it.

“Graveyard Bone. Take it. The Greats want you to have it. Protects spirit from spirit, and dead from dead. It’s no use for us Mortal folk. Give it to your niece, Macon. It won’t hurt her, but it might keep a Dark Caster away.”

Macon took the string, holding it gingerly between two fingers, then dropping it into his handkerchief, as if he was pocketing a particularly nasty worm. “I’m obliged.”

Amma coughed.

“Please. Tell them, I’m obliged. Much.” He looked up at the moon as if he were checking his watch. And then he turned and disappeared. Dissolved into the swamp mist as if he had blown away in the breeze.