Beautiful Chaos (48 page)

“What was that?” I was staring at the bokor. “Why is there a Sheer that looks like me?”

He walked back to the terrarium and dropped the snake inside with the others. “It doesn’t look like you. It’s your
ti-bon-age.
The other half a your soul.”

“What did you say?”

The bokor took a match and relit the candle. “Half your soul is with the livin’, and half’s with the dead. You left it behind.”

“Left it behind where?”

“In the Otherworld. When you died.” He sounded almost bored.

When I died.

He was talking about the night Lena and Amma brought me back, on the Sixteenth Moon.

“How?”

The bokor flicked his wrist, and the match went out. “If you come back too fast, the soul can be fractured. Divided. One part
a the soul goes back with the livin’, and the other half stays with the dead. Caught between this world and the Other, bound to the missin’ half until they’re brought back together.”

Divided.

He couldn’t be explaining it right. That would mean I only had half a soul. It didn’t even seem possible.

How could a person only have half a soul? What happened to the rest of it? Where did it—

Bound to the missing half.

I knew what had been following me all this time, lurking in the shadows.

Me—the other me.

It was the reason I was changing, losing more and more of myself every day.

The reason I didn’t like chocolate milk anymore, or Amma’s scrambled eggs. The reason I couldn’t remember what was in the shoe boxes in my bedroom, or my phone number. The reason I was suddenly left-handed.

My knees buckled, and I felt myself pitch forward. I could see the floor rising up to meet me. A hand grabbed my arm and hauled me back to my feet. Link.

“So, how do you get the two halves back together? Is there a spell or somethin’?” Link sounded impatient, like he was ready to throw me over his shoulder and run home.

The bokor threw his head back and laughed. When he spoke, it felt like he was looking right through me. “Takes more than a spell. That’s why your Seer came to me. But don’t you worry, we have an agreement.”

I felt like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on me. “What kind of agreement?”

I remembered what he had said to Amma, the night we followed her here.
There is only one price.

“What’s the price?” I was yelling, my voice echoing in my ears.

The bokor lifted his skin-covered staff and pointed it at me. “I’ve told you more than your share a secrets tonight.” He smiled, all the darkness and evil within him twisting itself into a human face.

“How come we don’t have to pay you?” Link asked.

“Your Seer will pay enough for you all.”

I would have asked him again, but I knew he wouldn’t tell us. And if there were deeper secrets than this, I didn’t want to know.

12.07

W
hen I got home, it was way past midnight. Everyone in my house was asleep—except one person. Amma’s light was on, her room glowing between the two haint blue shutters. I wondered if she knew I was gone, and where I’d been. I almost hoped she did. It would make what I was about to do a hundred times easier.

Amma wasn’t the kind of person you confronted. She was a confrontation all on her own. She lived by her rules, her law—the things she believed, which to her were as sure as the sun rising. She was also the only mother I had left. And, most days, the only parent. The idea of fighting with her made me feel hollow and sick inside.

But not as hollow as it made me feel to know I was only half of myself. Half the person I’d always been. Amma knew, and she had never said a word.

And the words she did say were lies.

I knocked on her bedroom door before I had time to change my mind. She opened it right away, as if she’d been waiting for me. She was wearing her white robe with the pink roses on it, the one I gave her on her birthday last year.

Amma didn’t look at me. She looked past me, as if she could see something more than the wall behind me. Maybe she could. Maybe there were pieces of me scattered all over the place, like a broken bottle.

“Been waitin’ on you.” Her voice sounded small and tired, and she stepped out of the doorway so I could come in.

Amma’s room still looked ransacked, but one thing was different. There were cards spread out on the little round table under the window. I walked over to the table and picked one up. The Bleeding Blade. They weren’t tarot cards. “Reading cards again? What are they saying tonight, Amma?”

She crossed the room and started pushing the cards into a stack. “Don’t have much to say. Think I’ve seen all there is to see.”

Another card caught my eye. I held it up in front of her. “What about this one? The Fractured Soul. What does this one have to say?”

Her hands were shaking so hard that it took her three tries to grab the card from me. “You think you know somethin’, but a piece a somethin’ is the same as nothin’. Neither one gets you much a anything.”

“You mean like a piece of my soul? Is that the same as nothing?” I said it to hurt her, to bust up her soul, so she could see how it felt.

“Where did you hear that?” Her voice was shaky. She grabbed the chain around her neck and rubbed the worn gold charm hanging from it.

“From your friend in New Orleans.”

Amma’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed the back of the chair to steady herself. I knew from her reaction that whatever she’d seen tonight, it wasn’t me raising souls with the bokor. “Are you tellin’ me the truth, Ethan Wate? Did you go to see that devil?”

“I went because you lied to me. I didn’t have a choice.”

But Amma wasn’t listening to me. She was flipping the cards madly, pushing them around under her tiny palms. “Aunt Ivy, show me somethin’. Tell me what this means.”

“Amma!”

She was muttering to herself, rearranging the cards over and over again. “I can’t see anything. Has to be a way. There’s always a way. Just have to keep lookin’.”

I grabbed her shoulders, gently. “Amma. Put the cards down. Talk to me.”

She held up a card. On the front was a picture of a sparrow with a broken wing. “The Forgotten Future. Know what these cards are called? Cards a Providence, because they tell more than just your future. They tell your fate. Know the difference?” I shook my head. I was afraid to say anything. She was coming unhinged. “Your future can change.”

I looked into her dark eyes, which were filling with tears. “Maybe you can change fate, too.”

The tears started falling, and she was shaking her head back and forth hysterically. “The Wheel a Fate crushes us all.”

I couldn’t stand to hear it again. Amma wasn’t just going dark. She was going crazy, and I was watching it happen.

She pulled away, gathered up her robe, and dropped to her knees. Her eyes were shut tight, but her chin was turned up to her blue ceiling. “Uncle Abner, Aunt Ivy, Grandmamma Sulla, I’m in need a your intercession. Forgive me a my trespasses, as the Good Lord forgives us all.” I watched as she waited, mumbling the words over and over. It was a good hour before she gave up, exhausted and defeated.

The Greats never came.

When I was little, my mother used to say that everything you needed to know about the South could be found in either Savannah or New Orleans. Apparently, the same was true about my life.

Lena didn’t agree. The next morning, we were arguing about it in the back of history class. And I wasn’t winning. “A Fractured Soul isn’t two things, L. It’s one thing split in half.”

When I said “two souls,” all Lena heard was “two” and assumed I was offering myself up as the One Who Is Two. “It could be any of us. I’m the One Who Is Two, if anyone is. Take a look at my eyes!” I could feel her rising panic.

“I’m not saying I’m the One Who Is Two, L. I’m just a Mortal. If it took a Caster to break the Order, it’s going to take more than a Mortal to restore it, don’t you think?” She didn’t look convinced, but deep down she had to know I was right.

For better or worse, that’s all I was—a Mortal. It was the
source of the whole problem between us. The reason we could barely touch, and couldn’t really be together. How could I save the Caster world, when I could barely live in it?

Lena lowered her voice. “Link. He’s two things, an Incubus and a Mortal.”

“Shh.” I glanced at Link, but he was oblivious, trying to carve
LINKUBUS
into his desk with a pen. “I’m pretty sure he barely qualifies as either one.”

“John is two things, a Caster and an Incubus.”

“L.”

“Ridley. There could still be a trace of Siren inside her, even as a Mortal. Two.” Now she was reaching. “Amma is a Seer and a Mortal. Two things.”

“It’s not Amma!” I must have been shouting, because the whole class turned around in their seats. Lena looked hurt.

“It isn’t, Mr. Wate? Because the rest of us thought it was.” Mr. Evans looked like he was ready to get out the little pink pad of detention slips.

“Sorry, sir.”

I ducked down behind my textbook and lowered my voice. “I know it sounds weird, but this is a good thing. Now I know why all that crazy stuff has been happening, like the weird dreams and seeing the other half of myself all over the place. Now everything makes sense.”