Liv looked up at a statue of a woman clinging to a cross. "Let's get this over with."
Link pulled out his garden shears. "I don't think these babies will do the job."
"Not through the gates." I pointed at the wall on the other side of the trees. "Over them."
Liv managed to step on every part of my face, kick me in the neck, and wrench her sneakers deep into my shoulder blade before I shoved all six pounds of her over the gate. She lost her balance at the top and landed with a thump.
"I'm fine. No worries," Liv called from the other side of the wall.
Link and I looked at each other, and he bent down. "You first. I'll climb up the hard way."
I stepped on his back, grabbing onto the wall. He pushed himself up until he was standing. "Yeah? How are you gonna do that?"
"Gotta look for a tree that's close enough to the wall. Has to be one somewhere around here. Don't worry. I'll find you."
I was at the top. I clung to the wall with both hands.
"I didn't ditch school all these years for nothin'."
I smiled, and let myself fall.
Five minutes and seven trees later, the Arclight led us deeper into the cemetery, past the crumbling Confederate headstones and the statues guarding the homes of those who had been forgotten. There was a tight cluster of moss-covered oaks, whose crossed branches created an arch over the path, barely wide enough to squeeze through. The Arclight was flashing and pulsing.
"We're here. This is it, right?" I looked over Liv's shoulder at the selenometer.
Link looked around. "Where? I don't see anything." I pointed to space between the trees. "Seriously?"
Liv looked nervous, too. She didn't want to climb through brambles of Spanish moss in a dark graveyard. "I can't get a reading now. It's going crazy."
"It doesn't matter. This is it, I'm sure."
"You think Lena and Ridley and John are back there?" Link looked like he was planning to go back and wait for us out front, or maybe at a rib joint.
"I don't know." I pushed the moss aside and stepped through.
On the other side, the trees were even more ominous, hanging over our heads and creating a sky of their own. There was a clearing ahead of us, with a huge statue of a beseeching angel in the center of the graves. The graves were bordered in stone, outlining the breadth of each plot. You could almost see the coffins buried in the earth beneath them.
"Ethan, look." Liv pointed past the statue. I could see silhouettes framed by a tiny slice of moonlight. They were moving.
We had company.
Link shook his head. "This can't be good."
For a second, I couldn't move. What if it was Lena and John? What were they doing in a graveyard at night, alone? I followed the path, flanked by even more statues -- kneeling angels staring into the heavens, or the ones looking down at us as they wept.
I had no idea what to expect, but when the two figures came into view, they were the last two people I expected to see.
Amma and Arelia, Macon's mother. The last time I'd seen her was at Macon's funeral. They were sitting between the graves. I was a dead man. I should have known Amma would find me.
There was another woman sitting in the dirt with them. I didn't recognize her. She was a little older than Arelia, with the same golden skin. Her hair was woven in hundreds of tiny braids, and she was wearing twenty or thirty strands of beads -- some gemstones and colored glass, others tiny birds and animals. She had at least ten holes winding around each ear, and long earrings hung from each hole.
The three of them were sitting cross-legged in a circle, headstones dotting the dirt around them. Their hands were joined in the center of the circle. Amma had her back to us, but I had no doubt she knew I was there.
"It took you long enough. We've been waitin', and you know how I hate to wait." Amma's voice was no more agitated than usual, which didn't make any sense, since I had disappeared without even a note.
"Amma, I'm really sorry --"
She waved her hand as if she was swatting a fly. "No time for that now." Amma shook the bone in her hand -- a graveyard bone, I was willing to bet.
I looked at Amma. "Did you bring us here?"
"Can't say I did. Somethin' else brought you, somethin' stronger than me. I just knew you were comin'."
"How?"
Amma gave me some of her best stinkeye. "How does a bird know to fly south? How does a catfish know how to swim? I don't know how many times I have to tell you, Ethan Wate. They don't call me a Seer for nothin'."
"I foresaw your arrival, too." Arelia was stating a fact, but it annoyed Amma just the same. I could tell by the look on her face.
Amma raised her chin. "After I mentioned it." Amma was used to being the only Seer in Gatlin, and she didn't like being trumped, even if it was by a Diviner with supernatural gifts.
The other woman, the one I didn't know, turned to Amma. "We bes' get started, Amarie. They're waitin'."
"Come sit down here." Amma motioned to us. "Twyla's ready." Twyla. I recognized the name.
Arelia answered the question before I asked. "This is my sister, Twyla. She's come a long way to be with us here tonight." I remembered. Lena had mentioned her Great-Aunt Twyla, the one who had never left New Orleans. Until now.
" 'At's right. Now you come on sit by me, cher. Don't be 'fraid. It's only a Circle a Sight." Twyla patted the space next to her. Amma was sitting on Twyla's other side, giving me the Look. Liv stepped back, looking pretty freaked out, even if she was training to be a Keeper. Link stayed right behind her. Amma had that effect on people, and from the looks of things, Twyla and Arelia did, too.
"My sister is a powerful Necromancer." Arelia's voice was proud.
Link made a face and whispered to Liv. "She gets with dead people? That's the kinda thing a person should keep to themselves."
Liv rolled her eyes. "Not a necrophiliac, stupid. A Necromancer, a Caster capable of calling and communicating with the dead."
Arelia nodded. "That's right, and we need help from someone who's already left this world."
I knew right away who she was talking about, or at least I hoped I did. "Amma, are we trying to call Macon?"
Sadness passed across her face. "I wish I could say we were, but wherever Melchizedek's gone, we can't go."
"It's time." Twyla pulled something out of her pocket and looked at Amma and Arelia. You could feel the shift in their demeanor. The three of them were all business now, even if it was the business of waking the dead.
Arelia opened her hands in front of her lips and spoke softly into them. "My power is your power, sisters." She tossed tiny stones into the center of the circle.
"Moonstones," Liv whispered.
Amma pulled out a sack of chicken bones. I would know that smell anywhere. It was the smell of my kitchen back home. "My power's your power, sisters."
Amma tossed the bones into the circle with the moonstones. Twyla opened her own hand, revealing a tiny carving in the shape of a bird. She spoke the words that gave it power.
"One unto this world, one unto da next.
Open the door to da one who's annexed."
She started to chant, loud and feverish, the unfamiliar words rippling through the air. Her eyes rolled back in her head, but her eyelids remained open. Arelia began to chant as well, shaking long strands of tasseled beads.
Amma grabbed my chin so she could look me in the eye. "I know this isn't goin' to be easy, but there are things you need to know."
The air in the center of the Circle of Sight began to swirl and churn, creating a thin white mist. Twyla, Arelia, and Amma continued to chant, their voices reaching a crescendo. The mist seemed to act on their command, gaining speed and density, swirling upward like a growing tornado.
Without warning, Twyla inhaled sharply, as if she was taking her last breath. The mist seemed to follow, disappearing into her mouth. For a minute, I thought she was going to drop dead. She sat there, her back so straight you would've thought she was tied to a rack, eyes rolled back in her head, mouth still open.