“I need to see the langiappe.” It was a man’s voice, gravelly and heavily accented. “You would be surprised how many people find their way here and are not who they claim to be.”
I dropped down onto my stomach and pulled myself forward so I could see around the side of the bookcase. Link was right. Amma was standing in front of a black wooden table, clutching her pocketbook with both hands. The legs of the table formed the feet of a bird, its talons inches from Amma’s tiny orthopedic shoes. She was in profile, her dark skin glowing in the yellow light, her bun tucked neatly beneath her flowered church hat, her chin up and her back straight. If she was afraid, I couldn’t tell. Amma’s pride was as much a part of who she was as her riddles, biscuits, and crossword puzzles.
“I imagine so.” She opened her purse and took out the red bundle the Creole woman had given her.
Link was on his stomach, too. “Is that the thing the lady with the doughnuts gave her?” he whispered. I nodded, and gestured for him to be quiet.
The man behind the table leaned into the light. His skin was ebony, darker and smoother than Amma’s. His hair was twisted into rough, careless braids tied together at the base of his neck. String and tiny objects I couldn’t see clearly were woven into the braids. He traced the line of his goatee as he watched Amma intently.
“Give it to me.” He reached out his hand, the cuff of his dark tunic sliding down his arm. His wrist was bound in thin strands of string and leather, laden with charms. His hand was scarred—the skin warped and shiny, as if it had been burned more than once.
Amma dropped the bundle into his hand without touching him.
He noticed her caution and smiled. “You island women are all the same, practicin’ the art to ward against my magic. But your herbs and powders are no match for the hand of a bokor.”
The art. Voodoo. I’d heard it called that before. And if women like Amma provided protection from his magic, that could mean only one thing. He performed black magic.
He opened the bundle and held up a single feather. He examined it closely, turning it over in his hands. “I see you’re not a trespasser, so what do you require?”
Amma tossed a handkerchief onto the desk. “I’m not a trespasser, or one a the island women you’re used to seein’.”
The bokor lifted the delicate fabric, examining the embroidery. I knew what the design was, even though I couldn’t see it from here—a sparrow.
The bokor looked at the handkerchief, then back at Amma. “The mark a Sulla the Prophet. So you’re a Seer, one a her descendants?” He smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Now, that makes this little visit even more unexpected. What would bring a Seer to my workshop?”
Amma watched him closely, as if he was one of the snakes slithering around in the shop’s terrarium. “This was a mistake. Got no business with your kind. I’ll be seein’ myself out.” She shoved her purse into the crook of her arm and turned on her heel to go.
“Leaving so soon? Don’t you want to know how to change the cards?” His menacing laughter echoed through the room.
Amma stopped in her tracks. “I do.” Her voice was quiet.
“Yet you know the answer yourself, Seer. That’s why you’re here.”
She spun around to face him. “You think this is a social visit?”
“You can’t change the cards once they’re dealt. Not the cards we’re talkin’ about. Fate is a wheel that turns without our hand.”
Amma slammed her hand down on the table. “Don’t try to sell me the silver linin’ from a cloud as black as your soul. I know it can be done.”
The bokor tapped on a bottle of crushed eggshells near the edge of the table. Again, his white teeth shone in the darkness. “Anything can be done for a price, Seer. Question is, what are you willin’ to pay?”
“Whatever it takes.”
I shuddered. There was something about the way Amma said it, even the shifting sound of her voice, that made it seem like an invisible line between the two of them was disappearing. I wondered if that line ran deeper than the one she crossed the night of the Sixteenth Moon, when she and Lena used The Book of Moons to bring me back from the dead. I shook my head. We had all crossed too many lines already.
The bokor watched Amma intently. “Let me see the cards. I need to know what we’re dealin’ with.”
Amma took a stack of what looked like tarot cards out of her purse, but the images on the cards weren’t right. They weren’t tarot cards—these were something else. She arranged them on the table carefully, re-creating a spread. The bokor watched, flipping the feather between his fingers.
Amma dropped the last card. “There it is.”
He balked, muttering in a language I didn’t understand. But I could tell he wasn’t happy. The bokor swept clean his rickety wooden table, bottles and vials shattering on the ground. He leaned as close to Amma as I’d ever seen anyone dare to get. “The Angry Queen. The Unbalanced Scale. The Child of Darkness. The Storm. The Sacrifice. The Split Twins. The Bleeding Blade. The Fractured Soul.”
He spit, shaking the feather at her, his version of the One-Eyed Menace. “A Seer from the line a Sulla the Prophet is smart enough to know this is not just any spread.”
“Are you sayin’ you can’t do it?” It was a challenge. “That I’ve come all this way for cracked eggshells and dead swamp frogs? Can get those from any fortune-teller.”
“I’m sayin’ you can’t pay the price, old woman!” His voice rose, and I stiffened. Amma was the only mother I had left. I couldn’t stand to hear anyone talk to her that way.
Amma looked up at the ceiling, muttering. I was willing to bet she was talking to the Greats. “Not a bone in my body wanted to come to this godforsaken nest a evil—”
The bokor picked up a long staff wrapped in the crisp skin of a snake, and circled Amma like an animal waiting to strike. “And yet you came. Because your little dolls and herbs can’t save the ti-bon-age. Can they?”
Amma stared at him defiantly. “Someone is gonna die if you don’t help me.”
“And someone will die if I do.”
“That’s a discussion for another day.” She tapped one of the cards. “This here is the death I care about.”
He examined the card, stroking it with his feather. “Interestin’ you would choose the one who is already lost. Even more interestin’ you would come to me instead a your precious Casters. This concerns them, does it not?”
The Casters.
My stomach dropped. Who was already lost? Was he talking about Lena?
Amma drew a heavy breath. “The Casters can’t help me. They can barely help themselves.”
Link looked at me, confused. But I didn’t understand any more than he did. How could the bokor help Amma with something the Casters couldn’t?
The images crashed down on me before I could stop them. The unbearable heat. The plague of insects infesting every inch of town. The nightmares and the panic. Casters who couldn’t control their powers, or use them all. A river of blood. Abraham’s voice echoing through the cavern after Lena Claimed herself.
There will be consequences.
The bokor circled around to face Amma, measuring her expression. “You mean the Light Casters can’t.”
“No other kind I’d ask for help.”
He seemed pleased with her answer, but not for the reason I thought. “Yet you came to me. Because I can do something they can’t—the old magic our people carried across the ocean with us. Magic that can be controlled by Mortals and Casters alike.” He was talking about voodoo, a religion born in Africa and the Caribbean. “They don’t understand the ti-bon-age.”
Amma stared at him like she wished she could turn him to stone, but she didn’t leave.
She needed him, even if I didn’t know why.