Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 13

Lena knew I was there. It was hard to drag myself away, but she had figured out the truth. That
was the main thing. Amma and Lena. I was two for two. It was a start.
And I was exhausted.
Now I had to find my way back to her for good. I crossed back in about ten seconds flat. If
only the rest of the way was that easy.
I knew I should go home and tell my mom everything, but I also knew how worried she’d be
about me going to the Far Keep. From what Genevieve and my mom and Aunt Prue and Obidias
Trueblood had said, the Far Keep seemed like the last place a person would voluntarily go.
Especially a person with a mother.
I cataloged everything I needed to do, everywhere I needed to go. The river. The book. The
river eyes—two smooth black stones. That’s what Obidias Trueblood said I needed. My mind kept
going back to it, over and over.
How many smooth black stones could there be in the world? And how was I going to know
which ones happened to be the eyes of the river, whatever that even meant?
Maybe I’d find them on the way. Or maybe I’d already found them, and I didn’t even know it.
A magical black rock, the eye of the river.
It sounded strangely familiar. Had I heard it before?
I thought back to Amma, to all the charms, every tiny bone, every bit of graveyard dirt and
salt, every piece of string she’d given me to wear.
Then I remembered.
It wasn’t one of Amma’s charms. It was from the vision I saw when I opened the bottle in her
room.
I had seen the stone hanging around Sulla’s neck. Sulla the Prophet. In the vision Amma had
called it “the eye.”
The river’s eye.
Which meant I knew where to find it and how to get there—as long as I could figure out how
to find my way to Wader’s Creek on this side.
It couldn’t be avoided, intimidating as it was. It was time to pay a visit to the Greats.
I unfolded Aunt Prue’s map. Now that I knew how to read the map, it wasn’t that hard to see
where the Doorwells were marked. I found the red X on the Doorwell that led to Obidias’ place—
the one at the Snow family crypt—so after that I went looking for every red mark I could find.
There were plenty of red Xs, but which of those Doorwells would take me to Wader’s Creek?
Their destinations weren’t exactly marked like exits on the interstate—and I didn’t want to stumble
into any of the surprises that could be waiting for a guy behind Otherworld door number three.
Snakes for fingers might be getting off easy.
There had to be some kind of logic. I didn’t know what connected the Doorwell behind the
Snow family plot to the rocky path that had taken me to Obidias Trueblood, but there had to be
something. Seeing as we were all related to one another around here, that something was probably
blood. What would connect one of these plots in His Garden of Perpetual Peace to the Greats? If there
was a liquor store in the graveyard—or a buried coffin full of Uncle Abner’s Wild Turkey, or the
ruins of a haunted bakery known for lemon meringue pie—he wouldn’t have been far behind me.
But Wader’s Creek had its own graveyard. There wasn’t a crypt or a plot for Ivy, Abner, Sulla,
or Delilah in Perpetual Peace.
Then I found a red X behind what my mom had said was one of the oldest tribute markers in
the graveyard, and I knew it had to be the one.
So I folded up the map and decided to check it out.
Minutes later, I found myself staring at a white marble obelisk.
Sure enough, the word SACRED was carved into the crumbling veined stone, right above a
gloomy-looking skull with empty eyes that stared at you straight on. I never understood why a
single creepy skull marked a handful of Gatlin’s oldest graves. But we all knew about this particular
tribute, even though it was tucked away on the far edge of Perpetual Peace, where the heart of the
old graveyard sat, long before the new one was built up around it.
The Confederate Needle—that’s what folks around Gatlin called it, not because of its pointed
shape but because of the ladies who had put it there. Katherine Cooper Sewell, who founded the
Gatlin chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution—probably not long after the Revolution
itself—had seen to it that the DAR raised enough money for the obelisk before she died.
She had married Samuel Sewell.
Samuel Sewell had built and run the Palmetto Brewery, the first distillery in Gatlin County.
Palmetto Brewery made one thing and one thing only.
Wild Turkey.
“Pretty smart,” I said, circling to the back of the obelisk, where the twisted wrought iron
fencing bowed and broke into pieces. I didn’t know if I would’ve been able to see it back home, but
here in the Otherworld, the trapdoor of a Doorwell cut into the base of the rock was plain as day.
The rectangular outline of the entrance snaked between rows of engraved shells and angels.
I pressed my hand against the soft stone and felt it give way beneath me, swinging from
sunlight into shadow.
A dozen uneven stone steps later, I found myself on what sounded like a gravel pathway. I
made my way around a turn in the passage and caught sight of light pooling in the distance. As I got
closer, I smelled swamp grass and waterlogged palmettos. There was no mistaking that smell.
This was the right place.
I reached a warped wooden door, propped halfway open. Nothing could keep out the light now
—or the hot, sticky air, which only got hotter and stickier as I climbed the steps on the other side
of the door.
Wader’s Creek was waiting for me. I couldn’t see past the first fringe of tall cypress trees, but
I knew it was there. If I followed the muddy path in front of me, I would find my way to Amma’s
home away from home.
I pushed through the palmetto branches and saw a row of tiny houses, just off the edge of the
water.
The Greats. It had to be.
As I made my way down the path, I heard voices. On the nearest veranda, three women were
crowded around a table with a deck of cards. They were fussing and swatting at one another the
way the Sisters did when they played Scrabble.
I recognized Twyla from a distance. I suspected she was going to join the Greats when she
died on the night of the Seventeenth Moon. Still, it was strange to see her here, hanging out on the
porch and playing cards with them.
“Now, you can’t throw that card, Twyla, and you know it. You think I can’t see you
cheatin’?” A woman in a colorful shawl pushed the card back toward Twyla.
“Now, Sulla. You may be a Seer, cher. But there’s nothin’ there to see,” Twyla responded.
Sulla. That’s who she was. Now I recognized her from the vision—Sulla the Prophet, Amma’s
most famous ancestor of all.
“Well, I think you’re both cheatin’.” The third woman tossed her cards down and adjusted her
round glasses. Her shawl was bright yellow. “And I don’t want ta play with either one a you.” I
tried not to laugh, but the scene was too familiar; I might as well be home.
“Don’t you be such a sourpuss, Delilah.” Sulla wagged her head.
Delilah. She was the one in the glasses.
A fourth woman was sitting in a rocking chair at the edge of the porch, with a hoop in one
hand and a needle in the other. “Why don’t you go on in and cut your old Aunt Ivy a slice a pie?
I’m busy with my stitchin’.”
Ivy. It was weird to finally see her in person after the visions.
“Pie? Ha!” An old man laughed from his rocking chair—a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand
and a pipe in the other.
Uncle Abner.
I felt like I knew the man personally, though we’d never met. After all, I’d been in the kitchen
when Amma made him more than a hundred pies over the years—maybe a thousand.
The giant crow flew down and landed on Uncle Abner’s shoulder. “Won’t find any pie in there,
Delilah. We’re runnin’ low.”
Delilah stopped, one hand on the screen door. “Why would we be runnin’ low, Abner?”
He nodded in my direction. “I’m guessin’ Amarie’s busy bakin’ for him now.” He emptied his
pipe, tapping the old tobacco over the side of the porch railing.
“Who, me?” I couldn’t believe Uncle Abner was actually talking to me. I took a step closer to
all of them. “I mean, hello, sir.”
He ignored me. “I’m guessin’ I won’t be seein’ another lemon meringue unless it’s the boy’s
favorite, too.”
“Are you gonna stand there starin’ or come on over here already?” Sulla had her back to me,
but she still knew I was there.
Twyla squinted into the sunlight. “Ethan? That you, cher?”
I walked toward the house, as much as I felt like staying where I was. I don’t know why I
was so nervous. I hadn’t expected the Greats to seem so regular. They could’ve been any group of
old folks, hanging out on the porch on a sunny afternoon. Except that they were all dead.
“Yeah. I mean, yes, ma’am. It’s me.”
Uncle Abner stood up and walked over to the railing to get a better look. The enormous crow
was still perched on his shoulder. It flapped its wings, and he didn’t even flinch. “Like I said, we
won’t be gettin’ any pie—or much else—now that the boy’s up here with us.”
Twyla waved me over. “Maybe he’ll share a bit a his with you.”
I climbed up the scuffed wooden steps, and the wind chimes tapped against one another. There
wasn’t so much as a breeze.
“He’s a spirit, all right,” Sulla said. There was a tiny brown bird hopping around the table. A
sparrow.
“ ’Course he is.” Ivy sniffed. “Wouldn’t be up here otherwise.”
I gave Uncle Abner and his scavenger a wide berth.
When I was close enough, Twyla jumped up and threw her arms around me. “Can’t say I’m
happy you’re here, but I am happy to see you.”
I hugged her back. “Yeah, well, I’m not all that happy to be here either.”
Uncle Abner took a swig of whiskey. “Then why’d you go and jump off that fool tower?”
I didn’t know what to say, but Sulla answered before I had to think of anything. “You know
the answer to that, Abner, about as well as you know your own name. Now stop givin’ the boy a
hard time.”
The crow flapped its wings again. “Somebody should,” Uncle Abner said.
Sulla turned and gave Uncle Abner the look. I wondered if that was where Amma had learned
it. “Unless you were strong enough to stop the Wheel a Fate yourself, you know the boy didn’t
have a choice.”
Delilah brought a wicker chair over for me. “Now, you come on and sit down here with us.”
Sulla was still flipping cards, but these were ordinary playing cards.
“Can you read those, too?” It wouldn’t have surprised me.
She laughed, and the sparrow chirped. “No, we’re just playin’ gin.” Sulla slapped down her
cards. “Speakin’ a that—gin.”
Delilah pouted. “You always win.”
“Well, I’ve won again,” Sulla said. “So why don’t you sit down here, Ethan, and tell us what
brings you ’round our way.”
“I’m not sure how much you know.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“Okay, so you probably already know that I went to see Obidias Trueblood, this old—”
“Mmm hmm.” She nodded.
“And if he’s telling the truth, there’s a way I can get back home.” I was stumbling over my
words. “I mean, to the home where I was alive.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“I have to get my page from—”
“The Caster Chronicles,” she finished for me. “I know all that. So why don’t you go on and
say what you need from us.”
I was sure she knew, but she wanted me to ask anyway. It was only proper.
“I need a stone.” I thought about the best way to describe it. “This will probably sound strange,
but I saw you wearing it once, in kind of a dream. It’s shiny and black….”
“This one?” Sulla held out her palm. There it was. The black stone I saw in my vision.
I nodded, relieved.
“Darn right you do.” She pressed the rock into my hand, closing my fingers around it. It pulsed
with a kind of strange warmth that seemed to come from inside.
Delilah looked at me. “You know what that is?”
I nodded. “Obidias said it’s called a river’s eye, and I need two of them to get across the
river.”
“Then I reckon you’re one short,” Uncle Abner said. He hadn’t moved from the railing. He was
busy packing his pipe with dry leaf tobacco.
“Oh, there’s another one.” Sulla smiled knowingly. “Don’t you know?”
I shook my head.
Twyla reached over and took my hand. A smile spread across her face, her long braids slipping
over her shoulder as she nodded. “Un cadeau. A gift. I remember when I gave it to Lena,” she said
in her heavy French Creole accent. “River’s eye is a powerful stone. Brings luck and a safe
journey.” As she spoke, I saw the charm from Lena’s necklace. The smooth black rock she always
wore hanging from the chain.
Of course.
Lena had the second stone I needed.
“You know how to get to the river and get on your way?” Twyla asked, dropping my hand.
I pulled Aunt Prue’s map out of my back pocket. “I have a map. My aunt gave it to me.”
“Maps are good,” Sulla said, looking it over. “But birds are better.” She made a clicking noise
with her tongue, and the sparrow fluttered onto her shoulder. “A map can lead you astray if you
don’t read it right. A bird always knows the way.”
“I wouldn’t want to take your bird.” She had already given me the stone. It felt like I was
taking too much. Plus, birds made me nervous. They were like old ladies but with sharper beaks.
Uncle Abner took a long puff of his pipe and walked toward us. Even though he wasn’t
looming over me from the sky, he was still taller than me. He had a slight limp, and I couldn’t help
but wonder what caused it.
He hooked his finger around one of the suspenders attached to his loose brown pants. “Then
take mine.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“My bird.” He cocked his shoulder, and the huge crow’s feathers ruffled. “If you don’t wanna
take Sulla’s bird—which I understand, since it’s not much bigger than a field mouse—then take
mine.”
I was scared to stand next to that vulture-sized crow. I definitely didn’t want to take it
anywhere with me. But I had to be careful, because he was offering me something he valued, and I
didn’t want to insult him.
I really didn’t want to insult him.
“I appreciate it, sir. But I don’t want to take your bird either. It seems…” The crow squawked
loudly. “Really attached to you.”
The old man waved off my concern. “Nonsense. Exu is smart, named for the god of the
crossroads. He watches the doors between worlds and knows the way. Don’t you, boy?”
The bird sat proudly on the man’s shoulder as if he knew Uncle Abner was singing his praises.
Delilah walked over and held out her arm. Exu flapped his wings once, dropping down to land
on her. “The crow is also the only bird that can cross between the worlds—the veils between life
and death, and places far worse. That old heap a feathers is a powerful ally, and a better teacher,
Ethan.”
“Are you saying he can cross over to the Mortal realm?” Was that really possible?
Uncle Abner blew the thick pipe smoke in my face as he spoke. “ ’Course he can. There and
back, there and back again. Only place that bird can’t go is underwater. And that’s only ’cause I
never taught him to swim.”
“So he can show me the way to the river?”
“He can show you a lot more than that if you pay attention.” Uncle Abner nodded at the bird,
and it took off into the sky, circling above our heads. “He behaves best if you give a gift every now
and again, just like the god I named him after.”
I had no idea what kinds of gifts to offer a crow, a voodoo god, or a crow named after one. I
got the feeling regular birdseed wasn’t going to cut it.
But I didn’t have to worry, because Uncle Abner made sure I knew. “Take some a this.” He
poured whiskey into a dented flask and handed me a small tin. It was the same one he had opened
to fill his pipe.
“Your bird drinks whiskey and eats tobacco?”
The old man frowned. “Just be glad he doesn’t like eatin’ scrawny boys that don’t know their
way ’round the Otherworld.”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded.
“Now you get outta here and take my bird and that stone.” Uncle Abner shooed me away. “I
won’t get any a Amarie’s pie with you hangin’ ’round here.”
“Yes, sir.” I put the tobacco tin and the flask in my pocket with the map. “And thank you.”
I started down the stairs and stepped off the porch. I turned back to take one last look at the
Greats, gathered around a card table, sewing and fussing, scowling and drinking whiskey,
depending on which one of them you were talking about. I wanted to remember them this way, like
regular people who were great for reasons that had nothing to do with seeing the future or scaring
the hell out of Dark Casters.
They reminded me of Amma and everything I loved about her. The way she always had the
answers and sent me off with something strange in my pocket. The way she scowled at me when
she was worried, and reminded me of all the things I still didn’t know.
Sulla stood up and leaned over the porch rail. “When you see the River Master, you be sure to
say I sent ya, you hear?”
She said it like I should know what she was talking about. “River Master? Who is that,
ma’am?”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” I started to turn away.
“Ethan,” Uncle Abner called, “when you get home, tell Amarie I’m expectin’ a lemon meringue
and a basket a fried chicken. Two big, fat drumsticks…. Make that four.”
I smiled. “I will.”
“And don’t forget to send my bird back. He gets ornery after a while.”
The crow circled above me as I made my way down the stairs. I had no idea where I was
going, not even with a map and a tobacco-eating bird that could cross over between worlds.
It didn’t matter if I had my mom, Aunt Prue, a Dark Caster who had escaped from the very
place I was trying to break into, and all the Greats, with Twyla thrown in for good measure.
I had one stone now, and the more I thought about Lena, the more I realized I’d always known
where to find the other one. She never took it off her charm necklace. Maybe that’s why Twyla
had given it to her when she was a little girl—for some kind of protection. Or for me.
After all, Twyla was a powerful Necromancer. Maybe she’d known that I’d need it.
I’m coming, L. As soon as I can.
I knew she couldn’t hear me Kelting, but I listened for her voice in the back of my mind
anyway. As if the memory of it could somehow replace hearing her.
I love you.
I imagined her black hair and her green and gold eyes, her beat-up Chucks and her chipped
black nail polish.
There was only one thing left to do, and it was time for me to do it.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 11

The room went quiet, so quiet you could hear the house creak as the wind pushed against it. So
quiet you could hear the snakes hiss almost as loudly as Aunt Prue’s asthma and my pounding
heart. Even the Harlon Jameses slunk away, whimpering behind a chair.
For a second, I couldn’t think. My mind was completely blank.
There was no way to process this—to understand why a man I had never met would change
the course of my life, so irreparably and violently.
What the hell did I do to this guy?
I finally found the words, at least some of them. There were others I couldn’t say in front of
Aunt Prue, or she’d wash my mouth out with more than soap and probably make me suck down a
bottle of Tabasco, too. “Why? You don’t even know me.”
“It’s complicated—”
“Complicated?” My voice started rising, and I pulled myself up out of my chair. “You ruined
my life. You forced me to choose between saving the people I loved and sacrificing myself. I hurt
everyone I care about. They had to put a Cast on my own father to keep him from going crazy!”
“I’m sorry, Ethan. I wouldn’t have wished this on my worst enemy.”
“No. You just wished it on some seventeen-year-old kid you’d never met.” This guy wasn’t
going to help me. He was the reason I was stuck in this nightmare in the first place.
Aunt Prue reached out and took my hand. “I know you’re angry, and you’ve got more right
than anyone ta be. But Obidias can help us get you back home. So you need ta sit down here and
listen ta what he’s got ta say.”
“How do you know we can trust him, Aunt Prue? Every word that comes out of his mouth is
probably a lie.” I pulled my hand away.
“You listen here, and you listen good.” She yanked on my arm harder than I would’ve
expected, and I sank back down into the chair next to her. She wanted me to look her in the eye.
“I’ve known Obidias Trueblood since before he was Light or Dark, before he’d done wrong or
right. Spent the better part a my days walkin’ the Caster Tunnels with the True bloods and my
daddy.” Aunt Prue paused and glanced at Obidias. “And he saved me a time or two down there.
Even if he wasn’t smart enough ta save himself.”
I didn’t know what to think. Maybe my aunt had charted the Tunnels with Obidias. Maybe she
could trust him.
But that didn’t mean I could.
Obidias seemed to know what I was thinking. “Ethan, you may find this hard to believe, but I
know what it’s like to feel helpless—to be at the mercy of decisions that you didn’t make.”
“You have no idea how I feel.” I heard the anger in my voice, but I didn’t try to hide it. I
wanted Obidias Trueblood to know I hated him for what he’d done to me and the people I loved.
I thought about Lena leaving the button on my grave. He didn’t know what that felt like—for
me or Lena.
“Ethan, I know you don’t trust him, and I don’t blame you.” Aunt Prue was playing hardball
now. This meant something to her. “But I’m askin’ you ta trust me and hear him out.”
I locked eyes with Obidias. “Start talking. How do I get back?”
Obidias took a long breath. “As I said, the only way to get your life back is to erase your
death.”
“So if I destroy the page, I go home—right?” I wanted to be sure there were no loopholes.
No calling a moon out of time, no splitting the moon in half. No curses that kept me from
leaving, once the page was gone.
He nodded. “Yes. But first you have to get to the book.”
“You mean from the Far Keep? The Keepers had it with them when they came for my Aunt
Marian.”
“That’s right.” He looked at me, startled. I guess he hadn’t expected me to know anything
about The Caster Chronicles.
“So what are we doing sitting around here talking? Let’s get on with it.” I was halfway out of
my chair before I realized Obidias wasn’t moving.
“And you think you’ll just walk in there and take the page?” he asked. “It’s not that easy.”
“Who’s going to stop me? A bunch of Keepers? What do I have to lose?” I tried not to think
about how terrifying they had seemed when they came for Marian.
Obidias pulled the hood off his hand, and the snakes hissed and struck one another. “Do you
know who did this to me? A ‘bunch of Keepers’ who caught me trying to steal my page from the
Chronicles.”
“Lord have mercy,” Aunt Prue said, fanning herself with her handkerchief.
For a second, I didn’t know if I believed him. But I recognized the emotion playing out on his
face, because I was feeling it myself.
Fear.
“Keepers did that to you?”
He nodded. “Angelus and Adriel. On one of their more generous days.” I wondered if Adriel
was the big one who had shown up in the archive with Angelus and the albino woman. They were
the three strangest-looking people I’d seen in the Caster world. At least until today.
I looked at Obidias and his snakes.
“Like I said, what can they do to me now? I’m already dead.” I tried to smile, even though it
wasn’t funny. It was the opposite of funny.
Obidias held out his hand, the snakes jerking and stretching as they tried to reach me. “There
are things worse than death, Ethan. Things that are darker than the Dark Casters. I should know. If
you are caught, the Keepers will never let you leave the library at the Far Keep. You will be their
scribe and their slave, forced to rewrite the futures of innocent Casters… and Mortal Waywards
who are Bound to them.”
“Waywards are supposed to be pretty rare. How many can there be to write about?” I had
never met another one, and I’d met Vexes and Incubuses and more kinds of Casters than I ever
wanted to.
Obidias leaned forward in his chair, cloaking his cruelly deformed hand once again. “Perhaps
they aren’t as rare as you think. Maybe they just don’t live long enough for the Casters to find
them.”
There was an undeniable truth in his words that I couldn’t explain. I guess there was some part
of me that knew a lie would have sounded different. Another part knew I’d always been in danger,
one way or another—with or without Lena.
Whether I was meant to jump off a water tower or not.
Either way, the fear in his voice should’ve been proof enough.
“Okay. So I won’t get caught.”
Aunt Prue’s face was filled with concern. “Maybe this isn’t the best idea. We should go on
back ta my house and think on it. Talk ta your mamma about it. She’s waitin’ on us, I reckon.”
I squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Aunt Prue. I know a way in. There’s a Temporis Porta in
an old tunnel beneath Wate’s Landing. I can get in and out before the Keepers ever realize I was
there.”
If I could walk through walls in the Mortal realm, I was pretty sure I could step through the
Temporis Porta, too.
Obidias broke the end off a thick cigar. His hand was shaking as he lit the match and held it up.
He took a few puffs, until it glowed a steady orange. “You can’t enter the library at the Far Keep
through the Mortal realm. You have to enter through the seam.” He delivered the news as calmly as
if he was giving me directions to the local Stop & Steal, to pick up some milk.
“You mean the Great Barrier?” It seemed like a strange place for a door to the Far Keep’s inner
sanctum. “I can handle it. I did it once, and I can do it again.”
“What you’ve done is nothing compared to what you’re about to do. The Great Barrier is just
one place you can get to from the seam,” Obidias explained. “You can cross into other worlds from
there that will make the Barrier feel like home.”
“Just tell me how to get there.” We were wasting time, and every second we sat around talking
was another second away from Lena.
“You have to cross the Great River. It runs through the Great Barrier, all the way to the seam.
It forms the border between the realms.”
“Like the River Styx?”
He ignored me. “And you can’t cross unless you have the river eyes—two smooth black
stones.”
“Are you kidding?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. They’re very rare and hard to come by.”
“River eyes. Got it. I can find a couple rocks.”
“If you get across the river, and that’s a big if, you’ll still have to make it past the Gatekeeper
before you can get into the library.”
“How do I do that?”
Obidias took a puff from the cigar. “You have to offer him something he can’t refuse.”
“What exactly would that be?” Aunt Prue asked, as though she might have whatever it was
tucked in her pocketbook. Like the Gatekeeper would be interested in three linty breath mints, some
nondairy creamer, and a wad of folded-up Kleenex.
“It’s always different. You’ll have to figure it out when you get there,” Obidias said. “He has…
eclectic taste.” He didn’t say any more on the subject.
An offering. Eclectic taste. Whatever the hell that meant.
“Okay. So I have to find the black stones and get across the Great River,” I said. “Figure out
what the Gatekeeper guy wants and give it to him to get inside the library. Then find The Caster
Chronicles and destroy my page.” I paused, because the question I was about to ask was the most
important detail, and I wanted to get it straight. “If I do all that and don’t get caught, I’ll get back
home—my real home? How do I do that? What happens after I destroy the page?”
Obidias looked at Aunt Prue and back to me. “I’m not sure. It’s never happened, as far as I
know.” He shook his head. “It’s a chance, nothing more. And not even a good one…”
“Nothin’s certain, Ethan Wate, ’cept for that you had a shot at a life a your own, and the
Keepers stole it from you.”
I stood up before they could finish talking.
Lena was waiting, in my room or hers, by the crooked cross stuck in the grass at my gravesite
or somewhere else. But she was waiting—that’s what mattered.
If I had a chance in hell to get back home, I’d take it.
I’m trying, L. Don’t give up on me.
“I need to get going, Mr. Trueblood. I have a river to cross.”
Aunt Prue opened her pocketbook and pulled out a faded map, covered with shapes that didn’t
represent any continent, country, or state I’d ever seen. This was more than a doodle on the back
of an old church program. I knew what Aunt Prue’s maps were like, and I knew how important
they had been to me before—the last time I found my way to the seam, for Lena’s Seventeenth
Moon.
“I’ve been workin’ on it since I got here, jus’ a little bit here and there. Obidias told me you’d
be needin’ it.” She shrugged. “Reckoned it was the least I could do.”
I leaned down and hugged her. “Thanks, Aunt Prue. And don’t be worried.”
“I’m not,” she lied. But she didn’t need to be.
I was worried enough for both of us.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 12

After we got back to our side of the Otherworld—Harlon Jameses and all—I didn’t go home. I left
Aunt Prue at her house and walked the streets—more like the rows—of His Garden of Perpetual
Peace.
Peace wasn’t exactly what I was feeling.
I stopped in front of Wate’s Landing. It looked every bit the same as when I left, and I knew
my mom was inside. I wanted to talk to her. But there were other things I had to do first.
I sat down on the front steps, closing my eyes.
“Carry me home.”
What was it?
To remember. And be remembered.
Ducite me domum.
Ut meminissem.
Ut in memoria tenear.
I remember Lena.
Not the water tower.
What came before.
I remember Ravenwood.
Let Ravenwood remember me.
Let Ravenwood—
Carry me—
I was lying in the dirt in front of Ravenwood, half-stuck beneath a rosebush and an overgrown
camellia hedge. I had crossed again—and this time, all on my own.
“I’ll be damned.” I laughed, relieved. I was getting pretty good at this whole being-dead thing.
Then I practically ran up the old veranda steps. I had to see if Lena had gotten the message—
my message. My only problem was that no one bothered to do the crossword in The Stars and
Stripes, not even Amma. I had to find a way to get them to look at that paper, if they hadn’t already.
Lena wasn’t in her room, and she wasn’t at my grave either. She wasn’t in any of the usual
places we used to go.
Not in the lemon grove or the crypt, where I’d died the first time.
I even looked in Ridley’s old room, where Liv was asleep in Ridley’s creaking four-poster bed.
I was hoping she’d be able to sense that I was there with her Ethan Wate–ometer. No such luck.
That’s when I realized it was nighttime in Gatlin, the real Gatlin, and there was absolutely no
correlation between time that passed in the Otherworld and Mortal time. I felt like I’d only been
gone a few hours—and here it was, the middle of the night.
I didn’t even know what day it was, come to think of it.
Worse yet, when I leaned over Liv’s face in the moonlight, it looked like she had been crying. I
felt guilty, since there was a strong possibility I was the reason for the tears, unless she and John
had had a fight.
But that was unlikely, because when I looked down, I was standing right in the middle of John
Breed’s chest. He was curled up next to the bed, on the worn pink shag carpeting.
Poor guy. As many times as he had screwed up in the past, he was good to Liv, and for a
while he believed he was the One Who Is Two. It’s hard to hold a grudge against a guy who tried
to give his life to save the world. If anyone understood that, it was me.
It wasn’t his fault the world wouldn’t have him.
So I stepped off his chest as quickly as I could, and vowed to be a little more careful where I
put my feet in the future. Not that he’d ever know.
As I moved through the rest of the house it seemed completely vacant. Then I heard the
crackling of a fireplace and followed the sound. At the bottom of the stairs, straight off the front
hall, I found Macon sitting in his cracked leather chair by the fire. True to form, where there was
Macon, there was also Lena. She was sitting at his feet, leaning against the ottoman. I could smell
the Sharpie she was writing with. Her notebook lay open on her lap, but she was barely looking at
it. Drawing circles over and over, until the page looked like it was ripping apart.
She wasn’t crying—far from it.
She was plotting.
“It was Ethan. It had to be. I could feel him there with us, like he was standing right next to his
grave.”
Had she seen the crossword? Maybe that was why she was so fired up. I looked around the
study, but if she’d read the paper, there was no sign of it. A stack of old newspapers filled a brass
bin next to the fireplace; Macon used them for kindling. I tried to lift a single page of newsprint, and
I could barely make a corner flutter.
I wondered if I would’ve been able to figure out the crossword without a more experienced
Sheer like my mom helping me.
Amma didn’t need to worry so much about the haint blue and the salt and the charms. This
whole haunting thing wasn’t as easy as it was cracked up to be.
Then I noticed how sad Macon looked, studying Lena’s face. I gave up on the newspaper and
focused harder on their conversation.
“You may have felt the essence of him, Lena. A burial site is a powerful place, no doubt.”
“I don’t mean I felt something, Uncle Macon. I felt him. Ethan, the Sheer. I’m sure of it.”
The smoke from the fire curled out from the grating. Boo lay with his head in Lena’s lap, the
flames reflecting in his dark eyes.
“Because a button fell onto his grave?” Macon’s voice didn’t change, but he sounded tired. I
wondered how many of these conversations he’d endured since I died.
“No. Because he moved it.” Lena didn’t give up.
“What about the wind? What about someone else? Wesley could have bumped it off,
considering he is not the most graceful of creatures.”
“It was only a week ago. I remember it perfectly. I know it happened.” She was even more
stubborn than he was.
A week ago?
Had that much time passed in Gatlin?
Lena hadn’t seen the paper. She couldn’t prove I was still here, not to herself or my family or
even my best friend. There was no way to explain about Obidias Trueblood and all the
complications in my life, not while she didn’t even know I was in the room with her.
“What about since then?” Macon asked.
She looked troubled. “Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he’s up to something. I don’t know how it
works in the Otherworld.” Lena stared into the fire as if she was looking for something. “It’s not
just me. I went to see Amma. She said she felt him in the house.”
“Amma’s feelings are not to be trusted when it comes to Ethan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course Amma can be trusted. She’s the most trustworthy
person I know.” Lena looked furious, and I wondered how much she actually knew about that night
at the water tower.
He didn’t say a word.
“Isn’t she?”
Macon closed his book. “I can’t see the future. I’m not a Seer. All I know is Ethan did what
needed to be done. The whole realm—Dark and Light—will always be grateful to him.”
Lena stood up, ripping the ink-stained page from her notebook. “Well, I’m not. I understand he
was very brave and noble and whatever, but he left me here, and I’m not sure it was worth it. I
don’t care about the universe and the realm and saving the world, not anymore. Not without Ethan.”
She tossed the ripped page into the fire. The orange flames leaped up around it.
Uncle Macon spoke as he watched the fire. “I understand.”
“Really?” Lena didn’t seem to believe him.
“There was a time when I put my heart above all else.”
“And what happened?”
“I don’t know. I got older, I suppose. And I learned that things often are more complicated
than we think.”
Leaning against the mantel, Lena stared into the fire.
“Maybe you just forgot what it feels like.”
“Perhaps.”
“I won’t.” She looked at her uncle. “I won’t ever forget.”
She twisted her hand, and the smoke rose up until it curled around her and took shape. It was a
face. It was my face.
“Lena.”
My face disappeared at the sound of Macon’s voice, fading away into streaks of gray cloud.
“Leave me alone. Let me have what little I can, what I have left of him.” She sounded fierce,
and I loved her for it.
“Those are only memories.” There was sadness in Macon’s voice. “You have to move on.
Trust me.”
“Why? You never did.”
He smiled sadly, staring past her into the fire. “That’s how I know.”
I followed Lena up the stairs. Though the ice and snow had melted away since my last visit to
Ravenwood, a thick gray fog hung throughout the house, and the air was colder.
Lena didn’t seem to notice or care what was going on around her, even though her breath was
curling up toward her face in a quiet white cloud. I noticed the dark rings under her eyes, the way
she looked as thin and as frail as she had when Macon died. She wasn’t the same person she had
been then, though—she was someone much stronger.
She had believed Macon was gone forever, and we found a way to bring him back. I knew
deep down she couldn’t hold out for any less of a fate for me.
Maybe Lena didn’t know I was here, but she knew I wasn’t gone. She wasn’t giving up on me
yet. She couldn’t.
I knew, because if I was the one left behind, I couldn’t have either.
Lena slipped into her room, past the pile of suitcases, and crawled into bed without even taking
off her clothes. She waved her fingers, and her door slammed shut. I lay down next to her, my face
on the edge of her pillow. We were only inches apart.
The tears began to roll down her face, and I thought my heart would break, just watching her.
I love you, L. I always will.
I closed my eyes and reached for her. I wished, desperately, that there was something I could
do. There had to be some way I could let her know I was still here.
I love you, Ethan. I won’t forget you. I’ll never forget you, and I’ll never stop loving you.
I heard her voice uncurl inside my head. When I opened my eyes, she was staring right
through me.
“Never,” she whispered.
“Never,” I said.
I wrapped my fingers in the curls of black hair and waited until she fell asleep. I could feel her
nestled up next to me.
I had to make sure she found that newspaper.
As I followed Lena down the stairs the next morning, I was starting to feel a) like some kind of
stalker and b) like I was losing my mind. Kitchen sent out as big a breakfast as ever—but
thankfully, now that the Order wasn’t broken and the world wasn’t about to end, the food wasn’t
so raw that the sight of it made you want to throw up.
Macon was waiting for Lena at the table, and he was already digging in. I still wasn’t used to
the sight of him eating. There were biscuits this morning, baked with so much butter it came
bubbling up through cracks in the dough. Thick slices of bacon crowded against an Amma-sized
mountain of scrambled eggs. Berries piled inside a big piece of pastry crust that Link, before his
Linkubus days, would have swallowed whole in one bite.
Then I saw it. The Stars and Stripes was folded at the bottom of a whole stack of newspapers
—from about as many countries as I could name.
I reached for the paper just as Macon reached for the coffeepot, shoving his hand right through
my chest. It felt cold and strange, like I’d swallowed a piece of ice. Maybe like brain freeze from an
ICEE, only in my heart rather than in my head.
I grabbed the paper with both hands and pulled on it as hard as I could. One edge slowly
peeked out from beneath the pile.
Not good enough.
I looked up at Macon and Lena. Macon had his head buried in a newspaper called L’Express,
which looked like it was written in French. Lena had her eyes glued to her plate, like the eggs were
going to reveal an important truth.
Come on, L. It’s right here. I’m right here.
I yanked the paper harder, and it slid all the way out from the pile and fluttered onto the floor.
Neither one of them looked up.
Lena stirred milk into her tea. I reached for her hand with mine, squeezing it until she dropped
the spoon, splashing tea onto the tablecloth.
Lena stared at her teacup, flexing her fingers. She leaned down to blot the tablecloth with her
napkin. Then she noticed the paper on the floor, where it had landed next to her foot.
“What’s this?” She picked up The Stars and Stripes. “I didn’t know you subscribed to this
paper, Uncle M.”
“I do. I find it’s helpful to know what’s going on in town. You wouldn’t want to miss, I don’t
know, the latest diabolical plan of Mrs. Lincoln and the Ladies Auxiliary.” He smiled. “Where would
the fun be in that?”
I held my breath.
She tossed it over, facedown on the table.
The crossword was on the back. The Sunday edition, just like I’d planned it back in the office
of The Stars and Stripes.
She smiled to herself. “Amma would do this crossword in about five minutes.”
Macon looked up. “Less than that, I’m sure. I believe I could do it in three.”
“Really?”
“Try me.”
“Eleven across,” she said. “Apparition or phantasm. A spectral being. A spirit from another
world. A ghost.”
Macon looked at her, his eyes narrowing.
Lena leaned over the paper, holding her tea. I watched as she began to read.
Figure it out, L. Please.
It was only when the teacup began to shake and fell to the carpet that I knew she’d gotten it—
not the crossword but the message behind it.
“Ethan?” She looked up. I leaned closer, holding my cheek against hers. I knew she couldn’t
feel it; I wasn’t back with her, not yet. But I knew she believed I was there, and for now that’s all
that mattered.
Macon stared at her, surprised.
The chandelier above the table began to sway. The room brightened until it was blindingly
white. The enormous dining room windows began to crack into hundreds of glass spiderwebs.
Heavy drapes flew against the walls like feathers in the wind.
“Darling,” Macon began.
Lena’s hair curled in every direction. I closed my eyes as window after window began to
shatter like fireworks.
Ethan?
I’m here.
Above everything, that was all I needed her to know.
Finally.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 9

Leaving Amma behind was like stepping away from a fire on the coldest night of winter. She felt
like home, safe and familiar. Like every scolding and every supper I’d ever had, everything that had
been me. The closer I was to her, the warmer I felt—but in the end, it made the cold feel that much
colder when I walked away.
Was it worth it? Feeling better for a minute or two, knowing that the cold would still be out
there waiting?
I wasn’t sure, but for me it wasn’t a choice. I couldn’t stay away from Amma or Lena—and
deep down, I didn’t think either one of them wanted me to.
Still, there was a silver lining, even if it was a little tarnished. If Lucille could see me, that was
something. I guess it was true what people said about cats seeing spirits. I just never figured I
would be the one to prove it.
And then there was Amma. She hadn’t exactly seen me, but she’d known I was there. It
wasn’t much, but it was something. I had been able to show her, just like I’d been able to show
Lena I was at my grave.
It was exhausting, taking a chunk out of a cake or moving a button a few inches. But it had
gotten the message across.
In a way, I was still here in Gatlin, where I belonged. Everything had changed, and I didn’t
have the answers for how to fix that. But I hadn’t gone anywhere, not really.
I was here.
I existed.
If only I could find a way to say what I really wanted to say. There was just so much I could
do with a Tunnel of Fudge cake and an old cat and a random charm on Lena’s necklace.
To tell you the truth, I was feeling downright woebegone. As in, stuck in the doldrums without
a map, Ethan Wate.
W. O. E. B. E. G. O. N. E.
Nine across.
That’s when it came to me. Not so much an idea as a memory—of Amma sitting at our kitchen
table, all hunched over her crossword puzzles with a bowl of Red Hots and a pile of extra-sharp #2
pencils. Those puzzles were how she kept things right, figured things out.
In that moment it all came together. The way I saw an opening on the basketball court or
figured out the plot at the beginning of a movie.
I knew what I had to do, and I knew where I had to go. It was going to require a little more
than scooping out a cake or pushing around a button, but not much more.
More like a few strokes of a pencil.
It was time I paid a visit to the office of The Stars and Stripes, the best and only newspaper in
Gatlin County.
I had a crossword puzzle to write.
There wasn’t a single grain of salt lining any window at The Stars and Stripes office, any more than
there was a single grain of truth in the paper itself. There were, however, swamp coolers in every
window. More swamp coolers than I had ever seen in one building. They were all that remained of
a summer so hot that the whole town had almost dried up and blown away, like dead leaves on a
magnolia tree.
Still, no charms, no salt, no Bindings or Casts or even a cat. I slipped in as easy as the heat
had. A guy could get used to this kind of access.
Inside the office, there wasn’t much more than a few plastic plants, a reenactment calendar
that hung crookedly on the wall, and a high linoleum counter. That’s where you stood with your ten
dollars when you wanted to put an ad in the paper to hawk your piano lessons or new puppies or
the old plaid couch that had been sitting in your basement since 1972.
That was about it until you got behind the counter, where three little desks stood in a row.
They were covered with papers—exactly the papers I was looking for. This was what The Stars
and Stripes looked like before it became an actual newspaper—when it was still something closer to
the town gossip.
“What are you doing in here, Ethan?”
I turned around, startled, my hands up at my sides as if I’d just been busted for breaking and
entering—which, in a way, I had.
“Mom?”
She was standing behind me in the empty office, on the other side of the counter.
“Nothing.” It was all I could say. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew how to cross.
After all, she was the one who’d helped me find my way back to the Mortal realm.
Still, I hadn’t expected to find her here.
“You’re not doing ‘nothing,’ unless you’ve decided to become a journalist and report on life
from the Great Beyond. Which, considering how many times I tried to get you to join the staff of
The Jackson Stonewaller, doesn’t seem likely.”
Yeah, okay. I had never wanted to eat my lunch in there with the school newspaper staff. Not
when I could be in the lunchroom with Link and the guys from the basketball team. The things I
thought were important back then seemed so stupid now.
“No, ma’am.”
“Ethan, please. Why are you here?”
“I guess I could ask you the same question.” My mom shot me a look. “I’m not looking for a
job at the paper. I just want to help out on one little section.”
“That’s not a good idea.” She spread her hands on the counter in front of me.
“Why not? You were the one sending me all those Shadowing Songs. It’s practically the same
thing. This is just a little more—direct.”
“What are you planning to do? Write Lena a want ad and publish it in the paper? ‘Wanted, one
Caster girlfriend. Preferably named Lena Duchannes’?”
I shrugged. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it could work.”
“You can’t. You can barely pick up a pencil in this realm. You don’t have physics working on
your behalf as a Sheer. Around here, picking up a feather is harder than dragging a two-by-four
down the street with your pinkie.”
“Can you do it?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
I looked at her meaningfully. “Mom, I want her to know I’m all right. I want her to know I’m
here—like you wanted to let me know when you left the code in the books in the study. Now I have
to find a way to tell her.”
My mom walked around the counter slowly, without saying a word for a long minute. She
watched as I moved across the room toward the piles of newsprint.
“Are you sure about this?” She sounded hesitant.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
She came and stood next to me, which was her way of answering. We began to read the next
issue of The Stars and Stripes, laid out all over every surface. I leaned over the papers on the
nearest desk. “Apparently, the Ladies Auxiliary of Gatlin County is starting a book club called the
Read & Giggle.”
“Your Aunt Marian is going to be thrilled to hear that; the last time she tried to start a book
club, nobody could agree on a book, and they had to disband after the first meeting.” My mom had
a wicked glint in her eye. “But not until they voted to spike the lemonade with a big box of wine.
Just about everyone agreed on that.”
I kept going. “Well, I hope the Read & Giggle doesn’t end up the same way, but if it does,
don’t worry. They’re also starting a table tennis club called the Hit & Giggle.”
“And look at that.” She pointed over my arm. “Their supper club is called the Dine & Giggle.”
I stifled a laugh, pointing. “You missed the best one. They’re renaming the Gatlin Cotillion to—
wait for it—the Wiggle & Giggle.”
We went through the rest of the paper, having about as good a time as two Sheers stuck in a
small-town newspaper office could ask for. It was like a scrapbook of our life together, all glued
onto a whole bunch of newsprint. The Kiwanis Club was getting ready for its annual pancake
breakfast, where the pancakes were raw and liquid in the middle, the way my dad liked them best.
Gardens of Eden had won Main Street Window of the Month, which it did pretty much every
month, since there weren’t all that many windows on Main anymore.
It only got better as we read on. A wild hen was roosting in the Santa’s sled that Mr. Asher had
put up as part of his light-up lawn display, which was awesome, because the Ashers’ holiday
displays were infamous. One year Mrs. Asher even put lipstick on Emily’s Baby Cuddles Jesus
because she didn’t think his mouth showed up well enough in the dark. When my mom tried to ask
her about it with a straight face, Mrs. Asher said, “You can’t just expect to shout hosannas and
have everyone get the message, Lila. Lord have mercy, half the folks around here don’t even know
what hosanna means.” When my mom pressed her further, it was obvious Mrs. Asher didn’t either.
After that, she never invited us to her house again.
The rest of it was the news you’d expect around here, the kind that never changed even when
it always changed. Animal Control had picked up a lost cat; Bud Clayton had won the Carolina
Duck-Calling Contest. The Summerville Pawnshop was running a special, Big B’s Vinyl Siding and
Windows was shutting down, and the Quik-Chik Leadership Scholarship competition was heating
up.
Life goes on, I guess.
Then I saw the page for the crossword puzzle and slid it toward me as quickly as I could.
“There.”
“You want to do the crossword puzzle?”
“I don’t want to do it. I want to write one for Amma. If she saw it, she’d tell Lena.”
My mom shook her head. “Even if you could manage to get the letters the way you want them
on the page, Amma won’t see it. She doesn’t take the paper anymore. Not since you—left. She
hasn’t touched one of her puzzles in months.”
I winced. How could I have forgotten? Amma had said it herself while I was standing in the
kitchen at Wate’s Landing.
“What about a letter, then?”
“I’ve tried it a hundred times, but it’s nearly impossible. You can only use what’s already on
the page.” She studied the paper in front of us. “Actually, it might work because you can drag the
letters around on the draft. See, how they’re laying it out on the table?”
She was right. The way the puzzle worked, the letters were cut into a thousand tiles, like a
Scrabble board. All I had to do was move the paper around.
If I was even strong enough to do that.
I looked at my mom, more determined than ever. “Then we’ll use the crossword, and I’ll make
Lena see it.”
Moving the letters into place was like digging up a rock from the Sisters’ garden, but my mom
helped me. She shook her head as we stared at the page. “A crossword puzzle. I don’t know why I
didn’t think of that.”
I shrugged. “I’m just not very good at writing songs.”
In its current state, the crossword was barely half-finished, but the staff around here probably
wouldn’t mind too much if I helped them along. After all, it looked like the Sunday edition, the
biggest day for The Stars and Stripes—at least for the crossword. Between the three of them,
they’d probably be relieved that someone else had taken it on this week. I was surprised they didn’t
have Amma in here writing the puzzles for them already.
The only hard part would be getting Lena to take an interest in this puzzle at all.
Eleven across.
P. O. L. T. E. R. G. E. I. S. T.
As in, apparition or phantasm. A spectral being. A spirit from another world. A ghost. The
vaguest shadow of a person, the thing that comes to you in the night when you think no one is
looking.
In other words, the thing you are, Ethan Wate.
Six down.
G. A. T. L. I. N.
As in, parochial. Local. Insular. The place we’re stuck, whether in the Otherworld or the
Mortal one.
E. T. E. R. N. A. L.
As in, endless, without stopping, forever. The way you feel about a certain girl, whether you’re
dead or alive.
L. O. V. E.
As in, how I feel about you, Lena Duchannes.
T. R. Y.
As in, as hard as I can, every minute of every day.
As in, I got your message, L.
Then I felt overwhelmed by the thought of how much I’d lost, of everything that stupid fall off
the water tower had cost me, and I lost control and loosened my grip on Gatlin. First my eyes filled,
and then the letters blurred away, drifting into nothing as the world vanished beneath my feet and I
was gone.
I was crossing back. I tried to remember the words from the scroll—the ones that had brought
me here—but my mind couldn’t focus on anything at all.
It was too late.
Darkness surrounded me, and I felt something like wind whipping across my face, howling in
my ears. Then I heard my mother’s voice—steady as the grip of her cool hand on mine.
“Ethan, hold on. I’ve got you.”

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 10

I felt my feet touch something solid, like I had just stepped off a train and onto the platform at the
station. I saw the floorboards of our front porch, then my Chucks standing on them. We’d crossed
back, leaving the living world behind us. We were back where we belonged, with the dead.
I didn’t want to think about it like that.
“Well, it’s ’bout time, seein’ as I finished watchin’ all your mamma’s paint dry more than an
hour ago.”
Aunt Prue was waiting for us in the Otherworld, on the front porch of Wate’s Landing—the
one in the middle of the cemetery.
I still wasn’t used to the sight of my house here instead of the mausoleums and weeping angel
statues that dominated Perpetual Peace. But standing by the railing, with all three Harlon Jameses
sitting at attention around her feet, Aunt Prue looked pretty dominant, too.
More like mad as a hornet.
“Ma’am,” I said, scratching my neck uncomfortably.
“Ethan Wate, I’ve been waitin’ on you. Thought you’d only be gone a minute.” The three dogs
looked just as irritated. Aunt Prue nodded at my mother. “Lila.”
“Aunt Prudence.” They regarded each other warily, which seemed strange to me. They had
always gotten along when I was growing up.
I smiled at my aunt, changing the subject. “I did it, Aunt Prue. I crossed. I was… you know,
on the other side.”
“You might a let a person know, so they didn’t wait on your porch for the best part a the day.”
My aunt waved her handkerchief in my general direction.
“I went to Ravenwood and Greenbrier and Wate’s Landing and The Stars and Stripes.” Aunt
Prue raised an eyebrow at me, as if she didn’t believe it.
“Really?”
“Well, not by myself. I mean, with my mom. She might have helped some. Ma’am.”
My mom looked amused. Aunt Prue did not.
“Well, if you want a preacher’s chance in Heaven ta get yourself back there, we need ta talk.”
“Prudence,” my mom said in a strange tone. It sounded like a warning.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept talking. “You mean about crossing? Because I think
I’m starting to get the hang—”
“Stop yappin’ and start listenin’, Ethan Wate. I’m not talkin’ ’bout practicin’ any crossin’. I’m
talkin’ ’bout crossin’ back. For good, ta the old world.”
For a second, I thought she was teasing me. But her expression didn’t change. She was serious
—at least as serious as my crazy great-aunt ever was. “What are you talking about, Aunt Prue?”
“Prudence.” My mom said it again. “Don’t do this.”
Don’t do what? Give me a chance to get back there?
Aunt Prue glared at my mother, easing herself down the stairs one orthopedic shoe at a time. I
reached out to help her, but she waved me off, stubborn as ever. When she finally made it to the
carpet of grass at the base of the stairs, Aunt Prue stepped in front of me. “There’s been a mistake,
Ethan. A mighty big one. This wasn’t supposed ta happen.”
A tremor of hope washed over me. “What?”
The color drained out of my mom’s face. “Stop.” I thought she was going to pass out. I could
barely breathe.
“I won’t,” said Aunt Prue, narrowing her eyes behind her spectacles.
“I thought we decided not to tell him, Prudence.”
“You decided, Lila Jane. I’m too old not ta do as I please.”
“I’m his mother.” My mom wasn’t giving up.
“What’s going on?” I tried to wedge myself between them, but neither one of them would look
my way.
Aunt Prue raised her chin. “The boy’s old enough ta decide somethin’ that big on his own,
don’tcha think?”
“It’s not safe.” My mom folded her arms. “I don’t mean to be firm with you, but I’m going to
have to ask you to go.”
I’d never heard my mother talk to any of the Sisters like that. She might as well have declared
World War III for the Wate family. It didn’t seem to stop Aunt Prue, though.
She just laughed. “Can’t put the molasses back in the jar, Lila Jane. You know it’s the truth,
and you know you got no right keepin’ it from your boy.” Aunt Prue looked me right in the eye. “I
need you ta come on with me. There’s someone you need ta meet.”
My mom just looked at her. “Prudence…”
Aunt Prue gave her the kind of look that could wilt and wither a whole flower bed. “Don’t you
Prudence me. You can’t stop this thing. And where we’re goin’ you can’t come, Lila Jane. You
know well as I do that we both got nothin’ but the boy’s best interest at heart.”
It was a classic Sisters’ face-off, the kind where before you blinked, you were already past the
point where nobody came out ahead.
A second later, my mom backed off. I would never know what happened in that silent
exchange between them, and it was probably better that way.
“I’ll wait for you here, Ethan.” My mom looked at me. “But you be careful.”
Aunt Prue smiled, victorious.
One of the Harlon Jameses began to growl. Then we took off down the sidewalk so fast I
could barely keep up.
I followed Aunt Prue and the yipping dogs to the outer limits of Perpetual Peace—past the Snows’
perfectly restored Federal-style manor house, which was situated in exactly the same spot their
massive mausoleum occupied in the cemetery of the living.
“Who died?” I asked, looking at my aunt. Seeing as there wasn’t anything on earth powerful
enough to take down Savannah Snow.
“Great-great-grandpappy Snow, ’fore you were even halfway inta diapers. Been here a long
time now. Oldest plot in the row.” She picked her way down the stone path that led around back,
and I followed.
We headed toward an old shed behind the house, the rotted planks barely holding up the
crooked roof. I could see tiny flecks of faded paint clinging to the wood where someone had
scraped it clean. There was no amount of scraping that could disguise the shade that trimmed my
own house in Gatlin—haint blue. The one shade of blue meant to keep the spirits away.
I guess Amma was right about the haints not caring much for the color. As I looked around, I
could already see the difference. There wasn’t a graveyard neighbor in sight.
“Aunt Prue, where are we going? I’ve had enough of the Snows to last more than one
lifetime.”
She glowered at me. “I told you. We’re goin’ ta call on someone who knows more than me
’bout this mess.” She reached for the splintered handle of the shed. “You just be thankful I’m a
Statham, and Stathams get on with all kinds a folks, or we wouldn’t have a soul ta help us sort
things out.” I couldn’t look at my aunt. I was too scared I would start laughing, considering she got
along with just about no kinds of folks, at least not in the Gatlin I was from.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stepped inside the shed, which didn’t look like anything more than an ordinary shed. But if
I’d learned anything from Lena and my experiences in her world, it was that things aren’t always
what they seem.
I followed Aunt Prue—and the Harlon Jameses—inside and closed the door behind us. The
cracks in the wood let in just enough light for me to see her turn around in the shed. She reached
for something in the dim light, and I realized it was another handle.
A hidden Doorwell, like the ones in the Caster Tunnels.
“Where are we going?”
Aunt Prue paused, her hand still resting on the iron pull. “Not all folks are lucky enough ta be
buried in His Garden of Perpetual Peace, Ethan Wate. The Casters, I reckon they got as much right
ta the Otherworld as we do, don’tcha think?”
Aunt Prue pushed the door open easily, and we stepped out onto a rocky coastline.
There was a house balancing dangerously on the edge of a cliff. The weathered wood was the
same sad shade of gray as the rocks, as if it had been painstakingly carved from them. It was small
and simple and hidden in plain sight, like so many things in the world I’d left behind.
I watched as the waves crashed against the face of the cliff, reaching toward the house but
ultimately failing. This place had stood the test of time, defying nature in a way that seemed
impossible.
“Whose house is that?” I offered Aunt Prue my arm, helping her navigate the uneven ground.
“You know what they say about curiosity and cats. May not kill ya, but it’ll get ya inta a heap a
trouble around here, too. Though trouble seems ta find you even when you ain’t lookin’ for it.” She
gathered her long flowered skirt in her other hand. “You’ll see soon enough.”
She wouldn’t say another word after that.
We climbed a treacherous stairway carved into the side of the cliff. Where the rock wasn’t
reinforced with splintering boards, it crumbled away under my feet, and I almost lost my footing. I
tried to remind myself that I wasn’t about to go plummeting to my death, seeing as I was already
dead. Still, it didn’t help as much as you’d think it would. That was another thing I’d learned from
the Caster world: There always seemed to be something worse around the next corner. There was
always something to be afraid of, even if you hadn’t figured out exactly what it was yet.
When we reached the house, all I could think was how much it reminded me of Ravenwood
Manor, though the two buildings didn’t resemble each other in any way. Ravenwood was a Greek
Revival–style mansion, and this was a single-story clapboard. But the house seemed aware of us as
we approached, alive with power and magic, like Ravenwood. It was surrounded by crooked trees
with slanted branches that had been beaten into submission by the wind. It looked like the kind of
twisted drawing you’d find in a book meant to terrify children into having nightmares. The kind of
book where kids were trapped by more than just witches and devoured by more than wolves.
I was thinking it was a good thing I no longer needed to sleep, when my aunt marched up the
walk. Aunt Prue didn’t hesitate. She walked right up to the door and pounded the oxidized brass
ring three times. There was writing carved around the doorframe. It was Niadic, the ancient
language of Casters.
I backed up, letting all the Harlon Jameses go in front of me. They growled their tiny dog
growls at the door. Before I had a chance to examine the writing more closely, the door creaked
open. An old man stood in front of us. I assumed he was a Sheer, but that wasn’t a distinction worth
making here—we were all spirits of one kind or another. His head was shaved and scarred, faint
lines overlapping in a vicious pattern. His white beard was cut short, his eyes covered by dark
wraparound glasses.
A black sweater hung from his skinny frame, which was partially hidden behind the door.
There was something frail and worn out about him, like he had escaped from a work camp, or
worse.
“Prudence.” He nodded. “Is this the boy?”
“ ’Course it is.” Aunt Prue shoved me forward. “Ethan, this here is Obidias Trueblood. Go on
in.”
I extended my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
Obidias held up his right hand, which had been hidden behind the door. “I’m sure you’ll
understand if we don’t shake.” His hand was severed at the wrist, a black line marking the place
where it had been cut. Above the mark, his wrist was severely scarred, as if it had been punctured
over and over again.
Which it had.
Five writhing black snakes extended from his wrist to the point where his fingers would
normally have reached. They were hissing and striking at the air, curling around one another.
“Don’t worry,” Obidias said. “They won’t hurt you. It’s me they enjoy tormenting.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to run.
The Harlon Jameses growled even more loudly, and the snakes hissed back. Aunt Prue scowled
at all of them. “Puh-lease. Not you, too.”
I stared at the snake hand. Something about it was familiar. How many guys with snakes for
fingers could there be? Why did I feel like I knew him?
It hit me, and I realized who Obidias was—the guy Macon had sent Link to see in the Tunnels.
Last summer, right after the Seventeenth Moon. The guy who’d died right in front of Link after
Hunting bit him, in his house, this house—at least the Otherworld version of it. Back then I thought
Link was exaggerating, but he wasn’t.
Not even Link could have made this up.
The snake that replaced Obidias’ thumb wrapped itself around his wrist, stretching its head
toward me. Its tongue flicked in and out, the little fork flying.
Aunt Prue pushed me across the threshold, and I went stumbling, only inches from the snakes.
“Go on in. You aren’t afraid of a few itty-bitty little garden snakes, are you?”
Was she kidding? They looked like pit vipers.
I turned awkwardly toward Obidias. “I’m sorry, sir. It—they just caught me off guard.”
“Don’t give it another thought.” He waved off the apology with a twist of the wrist on his good
hand. “It’s not something you see every day.”
Aunt Prue sniffed. “I’ve seen a stranger thing or two.” I stared at my aunt, who looked as
smug as if she shook a new snake hand every day of her life.
Obidias closed the door behind us, but not before checking the horizon in every direction. “You
came alone? You weren’t followed?”
Aunt Prue shook her head. “Me? Nobody can follow me.” She wasn’t kidding.
I looked back to Obidias. “Can I ask you something, sir?” I had to know for sure if he’d met
Link, if he was the same guy.
“Of course.”
I cleared my throat. “I think you met a friend of mine. When you were alive, I mean. He told
me about someone who looked like you.”
Obidias held out his hand. “You mean a man with five snakes for a hand? There probably aren’t
many of us.”
I wasn’t sure how to say the next part. “If it was my friend, he was there when you—you
know. Died. I’m not sure it matters, but if it does, I’d like to know.”
Aunt Prue looked at me, confused. She didn’t know any of this. Link had never told anyone but
me, as far as I knew.
Obidias was watching me, too. “Did this friend of yours happen to know Macon Ravenwood?”
I nodded. “He did, sir.”
“Then I remember him well.” He smiled. “I saw him deliver my message to Macon after I
passed. You can see a great deal from this side.”
“I guess so.” He was right. Because we were dead, we could see everything. And because we
were dead, it didn’t matter what we could see. So the whole seeing-things-from-the-grave concept?
Majorly overrated. All you ended up seeing was more than you wanted to in the first place.
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the first guy who would’ve traded seeing a little less for living a little
more. I didn’t say that to Edward Snakehands, though. I didn’t want to think about how much I
had in common with a guy whose fingers had fangs.
“Why don’t we make ourselves more comfortable? We have a lot to talk about.” Obidias
ushered us further into the living room—really the only room I could see, except for a small kitchen
and a lone door at the end of the hall, which must have led to the bedroom.
It was basically one gigantic library. Shelves extended from the floor to the ceiling, a battered
brass library ladder attached to the highest shelf. A polished wooden stand held a huge leather
volume, like the dictionary we had in the Gatlin County Library. Marian would’ve loved this place.
There was nothing else in the room aside from four threadbare armchairs. Obidias waited for
Aunt Prue and me to sit down before he chose a chair opposite ours. He removed the dark glasses
he was wearing, and his eyes locked on mine.
I should have known.
Yellow eyes.
He was a Dark Caster. Of course.
That made sense, if he really was the guy from Link’s story. But still, now that I thought about
it, what was Aunt Prue doing, taking me to see a Dark Caster?
Obidias must have realized what I was thinking. “You didn’t think there were Dark Casters
here, did you?”
I shook my head. “No, sir. I guess I didn’t.”
“Surprise.” Obidias smiled grimly.
Aunt Prue swooped in to save me. “The Otherworld’s a place for unfinished business. For
folks like me and you and Obidias here, who aren’t ready ta move on just yet.”
“And my mom?”
She nodded. “Lila Jane more than anyone. She’s been kickin’ around here longer than the
whole lot a us.”
“Some can cross freely between this world and others,” Obidias explained. “We all eventually
get to our destination. But those of us whose lives were cut short before we could right the wrongs
haunting us, we remain here until we find that moment of peace.”
He didn’t have to tell me. I already knew it for myself—crossing was complicated business.
And I hadn’t felt anything remotely peaceful. Not yet.
I turned to Aunt Prue. “So you’re stuck here, too? I mean, when you aren’t crossing back to
visit the Sisters? Because of me?”
“I can leave if I set my mind ta it.” She patted my hand, as if to remind me I was silly to think
there was ever anyone or anything that could keep my aunt from a place she wanted to go. “But
I’m not goin’ anywhere till you’re back home, where you belong. You’re a part a my unfinished
business now, Ethan, and I ’cept that. I mean ta make things right.” She patted my cheek. “Besides,
what else am I gonna do? I got myself Mercy and Grace ta wait for, don’t I?”
“Back home? You mean to Gatlin?”
“Ta Miss Amma, and Lena, and all our kin,” she answered.
“Aunt Prue, I could barely cross to visit Gatlin, and even then nobody could see me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, boy.” Obidias spoke up, and one of his angry-looking snakes
sank its fangs into his wrist. He winced, pulling a piece of black material shaped like a mitten out of
his pocket. He dropped the hood over the hissing snakes, using two pieces of cord at the bottom to
tighten it. The snakes shifted and thrashed beneath the fabric. “Now, where was I?”
“Are you okay?” I was a little distracted. It’s not every day that a guy, or even a Sheer, gets
bitten by his own hand. At least I hoped it wasn’t.
But Obidias didn’t want to talk about himself. “When I heard about the circumstances that
brought you to this side of the veil, I sent word to your aunt immediately. Your aunt and your
mother.”
My Aunt Prue clicked her tongue impatiently.
That explained my aunt wanting to bring me here—and my mother not wanting her to. Just
because you told any two people in my family the same piece of news, that didn’t mean they’d
agree about what they’d heard. My mom used to say the people in the Evers family were about the
most hog-minded, mule-stuck bloodline you could find—and the Wates were worse. A pack of
wasps fighting over the nest—that’s what my dad called the Wate family reunions.
“How did you hear about what happened?” I tried not to stare at the snakes twisting beneath
the black hood.
“News travels fast in the Otherworld,” he said, hesitating. “More importantly, I knew it was a
mistake.”
“I told you, Ethan Wate.” Aunt Prue looked mighty satisfied.
If it was a mistake—if I wasn’t supposed to be here—maybe there was a way to fix it. Maybe
I really could go home.
I wanted so badly for it to be true, the same way I had wanted this to be a dream I could wake
up from. But I knew better.
Nothing was ever how you wanted it to be. Not anymore. Not for me.
They just didn’t understand.
“It wasn’t a mistake. I chose to come, Mr. Trueblood. I worked it out with the Lilum. If I
didn’t, the people I loved, and lots of others, were going to die.”
Obidias nodded. “I know all of that, Ethan. Just like I know about the Lilum and the Order of
Things. I’m not questioning what you did. What I’m saying is that you never should’ve had to
make that choice. It wasn’t in the Chronicles.”
“The Caster Chronicles?” I had only seen the book once, in the archive when the Council of the
Far Keep came to question Marian, yet it was the second time I’d heard the subject come up since I
got here. How did Obidias know about it? And whatever any of it meant, my mom hadn’t exactly
wanted to elaborate.
“Yes.” Obidias nodded.
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”
He was silent for a moment.
“Go on, tell him.” Aunt Prue was giving Obidias Trueblood the same forceful look she always
gave me right before she made me do something crazy, like bury acorns in her yard for baby
squirrels. “He deserves ta know. Set it right.”
Obidias nodded at Aunt Prue and looked back at me with those golden-yellow eyes that made
my skin crawl almost as much as his snake hand did. “As you know, The Caster Chronicles is a
record of everything that has happened in the world. But it is also a record of what might be—
possible futures that have not come to pass.”
“The past, the present, and the future. I remember.” The three weird-looking Keepers I saw in
the library and during Marian’s trial. How could I forget?
“Yes. In the Far Keep, those futures can be altered, transforming them from possible futures to
actual ones.”
“Are you saying the book can change the future?” I was stunned. Marian had never mentioned
any of this.
“It can,” Obidias answered. “If a page is altered, or one is added. A page that was never
intended to be there.”
A shiver moved up my back. “What are you saying, Mr. Trueblood?”
“The page that tells the story of your death was never part of the original Chronicles. It was
added.” He looked up at me, haunted.
“Why would someone do that?”
“There are more reasons for people’s actions than the number of actions that are actually set in
motion.” His voice was distant, full of regret and sorrow I would never have expected from a Dark
Caster. “The important thing is that your fate—this fate—can be changed.”
Changed? Could you save a life once it was over?
I was terrified to ask the next question, to believe there was a way I could get back to
everything I lost. To Gatlin. To Amma.
Lena.
All I wanted was to feel her in my arms and hear her voice in my head. I wanted to find a way
back to the Caster girl I loved more than anything in this world, or any world.
“How?” The answer didn’t actually matter. I would do whatever I had to, and Obidias
Trueblood knew it.
“It’s dangerous.” Obidias’ expression was a warning. “More dangerous than anything in the
Mortal world.”
I heard the words, but I couldn’t believe them. There was nothing more terrifying than staying
here. “What do I have to do?”
“You’ll have to destroy your own page in The Caster Chronicles. The one that describes your
death.”
I had a thousand questions, but only one mattered. “What if you’re wrong, and my page was
there all along?”
Obidias stared down at what was left of his hand, the snakes rearing and striking even under
the cloth. A shadow passed across his face.
He raised his eyes to meet mine.
“I know it wasn’t there, Ethan. Because I’m the one who wrote it.”

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 7

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 back. She owned Wate’s Landing more than
any Wate ever would. She haunted that place even in full flesh and blood.
Part of me was dreading it, imagining how torn up she must be. But I needed to see her, all the
same. Bad things had happened.
I couldn’t change that, no matter how much I wanted to.
Everything felt wrong, and even seeing Lena didn’t make it feel right.
As Aunt Prue would say, things had gone cattywampus.
Whether in this realm or any other, Amma was always the one person who could set me
straight.
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 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 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 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, too.
There was a light in the kitchen bay window, though.
Amma.
A second light flickered through the small square window next to it. The Sisters were watching
one of their shows.
Then, in the dwindling light, I noticed something strange. There were no bottles on our old
crepe myrtle. The one where Amma hung empty, cracked glass bottles to trap any evil spirits that
happened to float our way and to keep them from getting in our house.
Where could the bottles have gone? Why wouldn’t she need them now?
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 crossword. I could imagine the #2 pencils scratching,
could almost hear them.
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 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
folks around here want to get out their shotguns.
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 me, and I realized it wasn’t me Amma was looking
at.
It was my dad, driving my mom’s old Volvo. Pulling right through me and into the driveway.
As if I wasn’t there.
Which, in a whole lot of ways, I wasn’t.
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 slipped partway through the wall.
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 grating.
I pulled my hand out and stared at it.
Looked fine to me.
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 hand through was one thing, but getting my
body into the house was another.
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 the sink. I tried the back windows and the
side windows and even the cat door that Amma had installed for Lucille.
No luck.
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 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
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 York City sharp.
It had to do with keeping people’s souls safe—Gatlin County safe.
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 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 since I jumped off the water tower.
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 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
time, I noticed the strange glow of the salt, as if whatever powered it leaked into the air around the
windowsills.
Great.
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 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 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 tunnel’s trapdoor opening to the field across
Route 9. It had gotten me out of the house before; maybe it could get me in this time.
I closed my eyes and thought about that spot, as hard as I could. It didn’t work before, when
I’d tried to imagine myself somewhere. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try again. My mom said
that’s how it worked for her. Maybe all I had to do was picture myself somewhere hard enough,
and I’d find my way there. Kind of like the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz—only without the
actual slippers.
I thought about the fairgrounds.
I thought about the cigarette butts and the old weeds and the hard dirt with the imprints of
long-gone carnival booths and trailer hitches.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. Still nothing.
I wasn’t sure how your average Sheer did it. Which left me ten kinds of stuck. I almost gave
up and walked, figuring if I could make it out to Route 9, I could hitch a ride on the back of an
unsuspecting pickup truck.
Just when it seemed impossible, I thought about Amma. I thought about wanting to get inside
my house so badly I could taste it, like a whole plate of Amma’s pot roast. I thought about how
much I missed her, how I wanted to hug her, take a good scolding, and untie her apron strings, like
I had my entire life.
The minute those thoughts formed clearly in my mind, my feet started to buzz. I looked down,
but I couldn’t see them. I felt like a seltzer tablet someone had dropped into a glass of water, like
everything around me was starting to bubble and fizz.
Then I was gone.
I found myself standing in the tunnel, right across from the Temporis Porta. The ancient door
looked as forbidding to me in death as it had in life, and I was happy to leave it behind as I made my
way through the tunnel and toward Wate’s Landing. I knew where I was going, even in the dark.
I ran the whole way home.
I kept running until I shoved my way through the pantry door, up the stairs, and into the
kitchen. Once I got past the problem of the salt and the charms, the walls didn’t seem like a big deal
—or feel like much of one either.
It was like walking in front of one of the Sisters’ endless slide shows, where you step in front
of the projector during the hundredth photo of the cruise ship, and suddenly you look down and the
ship is cruising right over you. That’s what a wall felt like. Just a projection, as unreal as a
photograph from someone else’s trip to the Bahamas.
Amma didn’t look up as I approached. The floorboards didn’t squeak for the first time ever,
and I thought about all the times I would’ve appreciated that—when I was trying to sneak out of
that kitchen or my house, out from beneath Amma’s watchful eye. It required a miracle, and even
then it usually didn’t work.
I could have used a few Sheer skills back when I was alive. Now I would give anything for
someone to know I was actually here. Funny how things work out like that. Like they say, I guess
you really do have to be careful what you wish for.
Then I stopped in my tracks. Actually, the smells coming from the oven stopped me.
Because the kitchen smelled like Heaven, or the way Heaven should smell—since I was thinking
about it a lot more these days. The two greatest smells on earth. Pulled pork with Carolina Gold,
that was one of them. I’d know Amma’s famous golden mustard barbeque sauce anywhere, not to
mention the slow-cooked pork that gave up and fell to pieces at the first touch of a fork.
The other smell was chocolate. Not just chocolate, but the densest, darkest chocolate around,
which meant the inside of Amma’s Tunnel of Fudge cake, my favorite of all her desserts. The one
she never made for any contest or fair or family in need—just for me, on my birthday or when I got
a good report card or had a rotten day.
It was my cake, like lemon meringue was Uncle Abner’s pie.
I sank into the nearest chair at the kitchen table, my head in my hands. The cake wasn’t for me
to eat. It was for her to give, an offering. Something to take out to Greenbrier and leave on my
grave.The thought of that Tunnel of Fudge cake laid out on the fresh dirt by the little wooden cross
made me want to throw up.
I was worse than dead.
I was one of the Greats, but a whole lot less great.
The egg timer went off, and Amma pushed back her chair, spearing the charm bag with her
needle one last time and letting it drop to the table.
“Don’t want your cake to dry out now, do we, Ethan Wate?” Amma yanked open the oven
door, and a blast of heat and chocolate shot out. She stuck her quilted mitts in so far I worried she
was going to catch fire herself. Then she yanked out the cake with a sigh, almost hurling it onto the
burner.
“Best let it cool a bit. Don’t want my boy burnin’ his mouth.”
Lucille smelled the food and came wandering into the kitchen. She leaped onto the table, just
like always, getting the best vantage point possible.
When she saw me sitting there, she let out a horrible howl. Her eyes caught me in a fixed glare,
as if I’d done something deeply and personally offensive.
Come on, Lucille. You and me, we go way back.
Amma looked at Lucille. “What’s that, old girl? You got somethin’ to say?”
Lucille yowled again. She was ratting me out to Amma. At first I thought she was just trying to
be difficult. Then I realized she was doing me a favor.
Amma was listening. More than listening—she was scowling and looking around the room.
“Who’s there?”
I looked back at Lucille and smiled, reaching out to scratch her on the top of her head. She
twitched beneath my hand.
Amma swept the kitchen with her eagle eye. “Don’t you be comin’ in my house. Don’t need
you spirits comin’ around. There’s nothin’ here left to take. Just a lot a broken-down old ladies and
broken hearts.” She reached slowly toward the jar sitting on the counter and took hold of the One-
Eyed Menace.
There it was. Her death-defying, all-powerful wooden spoon of justice. The hole in the middle
looked even more like an all-seeing eye tonight. And I had no doubt it could see, maybe as well as
Amma. In this state—wherever I was—I could see plain as day that the thing was strangely
powerful. Like the salt, it practically glowed, leaving a trail of light where she waved it in the air. I
guess things of power came in all shapes and sizes. And when it came to the One-Eyed Menace, I’d
be the last one to doubt anything it could do.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Lucille shot me another look, hissing. Now she was
getting bratty. I wanted to hiss right back at her.
Stupid cat. This is still my house, Lucille Ball.
Amma looked my way, as if she was seeing straight into my eyes. It was eerie, how close she
came to knowing right where I was. She raised the 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.

Categories: Beautiful Redemption

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 8

Lucille scratched at the door to Amma’s room, and it slid open. I slipped through the crack in the
door right after the cat.
Amma’s room looked better and worse than it did the last time I saw it, the night I jumped off
the water tower. That night, the jars of salt, river stones, and graveyard dirt—the ingredients in so
many of Amma’s charms—were missing from their places on the shelves, along with at least two
dozen other bottles. Her “recipe” books had been scattered across the floor, without so much as a
single charm or doll in sight.
The room had been a reflection of Amma’s state of mind—lost and desperate, in a way that
hurt to remember.
Today it looked completely different, but as far as I could tell, the room was still full of what
she was feeling on the inside, the things she didn’t want anyone to see. The doors and windows
were laden with charms, but if Amma’s old charms were as good as they come, these were even
better—stones intricately arranged around the bed, bundles of hawthorn tied around the windows,
strands of beads decorated with tiny silver saints and symbols looped around the bedposts.
She was working hard to keep something out.
The jars were still crowded together the way I remembered them, but the shelves weren’t bare
anymore. They were lined with cracked brown, green, and blue glass bottles. I recognized them
immediately.
They were from the bottle tree in our front yard.
Amma must have taken them down. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of evil spirits anymore. Or
maybe she just didn’t want to catch the wrong one.
The bottles were empty, but each one was stopped up with a cork. I touched a small bluishgreen
one with a long crack down one side. Slowly, and with about as much ease as if I was
pushing the Beater all the way up the hill to Ravenwood on a summer day, I edged the cork out
from the rim of the bottle, and the room began to fade….
The sun was hot, swamp mist rising like ghosts over the water. But the little girl with the
neat braids knew better. Ghosts were made of more than steam and mist. They were as
real as she was, waiting for her ancient grandmamma or her aunties to call them up. And
they were just like the living.
Some were friendly, like the girls who played hopscotch and cat’s cradle with her.
And others were nasty, like the old man who paced around the graveyard in Wader’s
Creek whenever there was thunder. Either way, the spirits could be helpful or ornery,
depending on their mood and what you had to offer. It was always a good idea to bring
a gift. Her great-great-great-grandmamma had taught her that.
The house was just up the hill from the creek, like a weatherworn blue lighthouse,
leading both the dead and the living back home. There was always a candle in the
window after dark, wind chimes above the door, and a pecan pie on the rocker in case
someone came calling. And someone always came calling.
Folks came from miles and miles to see Sulla the Prophet. That’s what they called
her great-great-great-grandmamma, on account of how many of her readings came to
pass. Sometimes they even slept on the little patch of grass in front of the house, waiting
for the chance to see her.
But to the girl, Sulla was just the woman who told her stories and taught her to tat
lace and make a butter piecrust. The woman with a sparrow that would fly in the window
and sit right on her shoulder, like it was a branch on an old oak.
When she reached the front door, the girl stopped and smoothed her dress before she
went in.
“Grandmamma?”
“I’m in here, Amarie.” Her voice was smooth and thick—“Heaven and honey,” the
men in town called it.
The house was only two rooms and a small cooking space. The main room was
where Sulla worked, reading tarot cards and tea leaves, making charms and roots for
healing. There were glass canning jars all over, full of everything from witch hazel and
chamomile to crows’ feathers and graveyard dirt. On the bottom shelf was one jar
Amarie was allowed to open. It was full of buttery caramels, wrapped in thick waxcoated
paper. The doctor who lived in Moncks Corner brought them whenever he came
by for ointments and a reading.
“Amarie, you come on over here now.” Sulla was fanning a deck of cards out on
the table. They weren’t the tarot cards the ladies from Gatlin and Summerville liked her
to read. These were the cards Grandmamma saved for special readings. “You know what
these are?”
Amarie nodded. “Cards a Providence.”
“That’s right.” Sulla smiled, her thin braids falling over her shoulder. Each one
was tied with a colored string—a wish someone who visited her was hoping would come
true. “Do you know why they’re different from tarot cards?”
Amarie shook her head. She knew the pictures were different—the knife stained with
blood. The twin figures facing each other with palms touching.
“Cards a Providence tell the truth—the future even I don’t want to see some days.
Dependin’ on whose future I’m readin’.”
The little girl was confused. Didn’t tarot cards show a true future if a powerful
reader was interpreting the spread? “I thought all cards show the truth if you know how
to make sense a them.”
The sparrow flew in from the open window and perched on the old woman’s
shoulder. “There’s the truth you can face and the truth you can’t. You come over here
and sit down, and I’ll show you what I mean.” Sulla shuffled the cards, the Angry Queen
disappearing into the deck behind the Black Crow.
Amarie walked around to the other side of the table and sat down on the crooked
stool where so many folks waited to see their fate.
Sulla flicked her wrist, fanning the cards out in one swift motion. Her necklaces
tangled together at her throat—silver charms etched with images Amarie didn’t
recognize, hand-painted wooden beads strung between bits of rock, colored crystals that
caught the light when Sulla moved. And Amarie’s favorite—a smooth black stone
threaded through a piece of cord that rested on the hollow of Sulla’s neck.
Grandmamma Sulla called it “the eye.”
“Now pay attention, Little One,” Sulla instructed. “One day you’ll be doin’ this on
your own, and I’ll be whisperin’ to you from the wind.”
Amarie liked the sound of that.
She smiled and pulled the first card.
The edges of the vision blurred, and the row of colored bottles came back into view. I was still
touching the cracked bluish-green one and the cork that had unleashed the memory—one of
Amma’s, trapped like a dangerous secret she didn’t want to escape into the world. But it wasn’t
dangerous at all, except maybe to her.
I could still see Sulla showing her the Cards of Providence, the cards that would one day form
the spread that showed her my death.
I pictured the faces of the cards, especially the twins, face to face. The Fractured Soul. My
card.
I thought about Sulla’s smile and how small she looked compared to the giant she seemed to be
as a spirit. But she wore the same intricate braids and heavy strands of beads snaking around her
neck in both life and death. Except the cord with the black stone—I didn’t remember that one.
I looked down at the empty bottle, pushing back the cork and leaving it on the shelf with the
others. Did all these bottles hold Amma’s memories? The ghosts that were haunting her in ways the
spirits never would?
I wondered if the night of my death was in one of those bottles, shoved down deep where it
couldn’t escape.
I hoped so, for Amma’s sake.
Then I heard the stairs creak.
“Amma, you in the kitchen?” It was my dad.
“I’m in here, Mitchell. Right where I always am before supper,” Amma answered. She didn’t
sound normal, but I didn’t know if my dad could tell.
I followed the sound of their voices back through the hall. Lucille was sitting at the other end
waiting for me, her head tilted to the side. She sat straight like that until I was inches away from
her, and then she stood up and sauntered off.
Thanks, Lucille.
She’d done her job, and she was through with me. Probably had a saucer of cream and a fluffy
pillow waiting for her in front of the television.
I guessed I wasn’t going to be able to spook her again.
As I rounded the corner, my dad was pouring himself a glass of sweet tea. “Did Ethan call?”
Amma stiffened, her cleaver poised over an onion, but my dad didn’t seem to notice. She
started chopping. “Caroline has him busy waitin’ on her. You know how she is, classy and sassy,
just like her mamma was.”
My dad laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “That’s true, and she’s a terrible patient. She
must be driving Ethan crazy.”
My mom and Aunt Prue weren’t kidding. My dad was under the influence of a serious Cast. He
had no idea what had happened. I wondered how many of Lena’s family members it took to pull
this off.
Amma reached for a carrot, lopping the end off before she even got it on the cutting board. “A
broken hip’s a lot worse than the flu, Mitchell.”
“I know—”
“What’s all that racket?” Aunt Mercy called from the living room. “We’re tryin’ ta watch
Jeopardy!”
“Mitchell, get on in here. Mercy’s no good at the music questions.” It was Aunt Grace.
“You’re the one who thinks Elvis Presley is still alive,” Aunt Mercy shot back.
“I most certainly do. He can dance himself a mean jive,” Aunt Grace shouted, catching every
third word at best. “Mitchell, hurry on up. I need a witness. And bring some cake with you.”
My dad reached for the Tunnel of Fudge cake on the counter, still warm from the oven. When
he disappeared down the hall, Amma stopped chopping and rubbed the worn gold charm of her
necklace. She looked sad and broken, cracked like the bottles lined up on the shelves in her
bedroom.
“Be sure and let me know if Ethan calls tomorrow,” my dad shouted from the living room.
Amma stared out the window for a long time before she spoke, barely loud enough for me to
hear. “He won’t.”

Categories: Beautiful Redemption