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.”