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“Don’t talk to me about messes, Melchizedek Ravenwood. My family’s been cleanin’ up your family’s messes for over a hundred years. I’ve kept your secrets, just like you’ve kept mine.”
“I’m not the Seer who failed to foresee them finding the locket. How do you explain that? How did your spirit friends manage to miss that?” He gestured around them, with a sarcastic flick of his cigar.
She spun around, eyes wild. “Don’t you insult the Greats. Not here, not in this place. They have their reasons. There must’ve been a reason they didn’t reveal it.”
She turned away from Macon. “Now don’t you listen to him. I brought you some shrimp ’n’ grits and lemon meringue pie.” She clearly wasn’t talking to Macon anymore. “Your favorite,” she said, taking the food out of lit
tle Tupperware containers and arranging it on a plate. She laid the plate on the ground. There was a small headstone next to the plate, and several others scattered nearby.
“This is our Great House, the great house a my family, you hear? My great-aunt Sissy. My great-great-uncle Abner. My great-great-great-grandmamma Sulla. Don’t you disrespect the Greats in their House. You want answers, you show some respect.”
“I apologize.”
She waited.
“Truly.”
She sniffed. “And watch your ash. There’s no ashtray in this house. Nasty habit.”
He flicked his cigar into the moss. “Now, let’s get on with it. We don’t have much time. We need to know the whereabouts of Saraf—”
“Shh,” she hissed. “Don’t say Her name—not tonight. We shouldn’t be out here. Half-moon’s for workin’ White magic and full moon’s for workin’ Black. We’re out here on the wrong night.”
“We have no choice. There was a quite an unpleasant episode this evening, I’m afraid. My niece, who Turned on her Claiming Day, showed up for the Gathering tonight.”
“Del’s child? That Dark drink a danger?”
“Ridley. Uninvited, obviously. She crossed my threshold with the boy. I need to know if it was a coincidence.”
“No good. No good. This is no good.” Amma rocked back and forth on her heels, furiously.
“Well?”
“There are no coincidences. You know that.”
“At least we can agree on that.”
I couldn’t get my mind around any of this. Macon Ravenwood never set foot outside of his house, but there he was, in the middle of the swamp, arguing with Amma—who I had no idea he even knew—about me and Lena and the locket.
Amma rummaged around in her pocketbook again. “Did you bring the whiskey? Uncle Abner loves his Wild Turkey.”
Macon held out the bottle.
“Just put it right there,” she said, pointing at the ground, “and step back yonder.”
“I see you’re still afraid to touch me after all these years.”
“I’m not afraid of anything. You just keep to yourself. I don’t ask you about your business, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”
He set the bottle on the ground a few feet from Amma. She picked it up, poured the whiskey into a shot glass, and drank it. I had never seen Amma drink anything stronger than sweet tea in my whole life. Then she poured some of the liquor in the grass, covering the grave. “Uncle Abner, we are in need a your intercession. I call your spirit to this place.”
Macon coughed.
“You’re testin’ my patience, Melchizedek.” Amma closed her eyes and opened her arms to the sky, her head thrown back as if she was talking to the moon itself. She bent down and shook the small pouch she had taken from her pocketbook. The contents spilled out onto the grave. Tiny chicken bones. I hoped they weren’t the bones from the basket of fried chicken I’d put away this afternoon, but I had a feeling they might have been.
“What do they say?” Macon asked.
She ran her fingers over the bones, fanning them out over the grass. “I’m not gettin’ an answer.”
