The visions had never affected me like this before. Both Abraham and Macon had seen me. How was that possible? What was Macon trying to tel me? Why did he want me to see these visions? I couldn't put it together, except for one thing. Either the visions were changing, or I was. Lena had made sure of that.

6.17

Inheritance

I stayed away from Ravenwood, like I promised. By morning, I didn't know where Lena was or where she was headed. I wondered if John and Ridley were with her.

The only thing I knew was Lena had waited al her life to take charge of her own destiny -- to find a way to Claim herself, in spite of the curse. I wasn't going to be the person to stand in her way now. And, as she pointed out, she wasn't going to let me.

Which left me with my own immediate destiny: to stay in bed al day feeling sorry for myself. Me and some comic books, anything but Aquaman.

Gatlin had planned otherwise.

The county fair meant a day of pageants and pies and a night of hooking up, if you were lucky. Al Souls meant something else entirely. It was a tradition in Gatlin. Instead of spending the day in shorts and flip-flops at the fair, everyone in town spent al day at the graveyard in their Sunday best, paying their respects to their dead relatives and everyone else's. Forget the fact that Al Souls Day was actual y a Catholic holiday that took place in November. In Gatlin, we had our own way of doing things. So we turned it into our own day of remembrance, guilt, and general competition over who could pile the most plastic flowers and angels on our ancestors' graves.

Everyone turned out on Al Souls: the Baptists, the Methodists, even the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals. It used to be that the only two people in town who didn't show up at the cemetery were Amma, who spent Al Souls at her own family plot in Wader's Creek, and Macon Ravenwood. I wondered if those two had ever spent Al Souls together, in the swamp with the Greats. I doubted it. I couldn't imagine Macon or the Greats appreciating plastic flowers.

I wondered if the Casters had their own version of Al Souls, if Lena was somewhere feeling the same way I was feeling now. Like she wanted to crawl back into bed and hide until the day was over. Last year, I didn't make it to Al Souls. It was too soon. The years before that, I spent the day standing over the graves of Wates I never knew or barely remembered.

But today I would be standing over the grave of someone I thought about every day. My mother.

Amma was in the kitchen in her good white blouse, the one with the lace col ar, and her long blue skirt. She was clutching one of those tiny old-lady pocketbooks. "You best get on over to your aunts'." She pul ed on the knot of my tie to straighten it. "You know how they get al worked up if you're late."

"Yes, ma'am." I grabbed the keys to my dad's car off the counter. I had dropped him off at the gates of His Garden of Perpetual Peace an hour ago. He wanted to spend some time alone with my mom.

"Wait a second."

I froze. I didn't want Amma to look into my eyes. I couldn't talk about Lena right now, and I didn't want her to try to get it out of me.

Amma rifled through her bag, pul ing out something I couldn't see. She opened my hand, and the chain dropped into my palm. It was thin and gold, with a tiny bird hanging from the center. It was much smal er than the ones from Macon's funeral, but I recognized it right away. "It's a sparrow for your mamma." Amma's eyes were shiny, like the road after the rain. "To Casters, sparrows mean freedom, but to a Seer, they mean a safe journey. Sparrows are clever. They can travel a long ways, but they always find their way back home."

The knot was building in my throat. "I don't think my mom wil be making any more journeys."

Amma wiped her eyes and snapped her purse shut. "Wel , you're mighty sure a everythin', aren't you, Ethan Wate?"

When I pul ed up the Sisters' gravel driveway and opened the car door, Lucil e sat on the passenger's seat instead of jumping out. She knew where we were, and she knew she'd been exiled. I coaxed her out of the car, but she sat on the sidewalk where the cement and the grass met.

Thelma opened the door before I knocked. She looked right past me to the cat, crossing her arms. "Hey there, Lucil e."

Lucil e licked her paw lazily, then busied herself with sniffing her tail. She might as wel have flipped Thelma off. "You comin' by to say you like Amma's biscuits better 'n mine?" Lucil e was the only cat I knew who ate biscuits and gravy instead of cat food. She meowed, as if she had a few choice words on the subject.

Thelma turned to me. "Hey there, Sweet Meat. I heard ya pul up." She kissed me on the cheek, which always left bright pink lip prints no amount of sweaty palm could wipe off. "Ya al right?"

Everyone knew today wasn't going to be easy for me. "Yeah, I'm okay. Are the Sisters ready?"

Thelma put her hand on her hip. "Have those girls ever been ready for anything in their lives?" Thelma always cal ed the Sisters girls, even though they were older than her, twice over.

A voice cal ed from the living room. "Ethan? Is that you? Come on in here. We need ya ta take a look at somethin'."

There was no tel ing what that meant. They could be making casts out of The Stars and Stripes for a family of raccoons or planning Aunt Prue's fourth -- or was it fifth? -- wedding. Of course, there was a third possibility I hadn't considered, and it involved me.

"Come on in." Aunt Grace waved me in. "Mercy, give him some a them blue stickers." She was fanning herself with an old church program, most likely from one of their respective husbands' funerals. Since the Sisters never let anyone actual y keep one at the service, they had plenty of them lying around the house.