Read Online Beautiful Redemption by Kami García, Margaret Stohl - Free Book Online Page B

but the shelves weren’t bare anymore. They were lined with cracked brown, green, and blue glass bottles. I recognized them immediately.
    They were from the bottle tree in our front yard.
    Amma must have taken them down. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of evil spirits anymore. Or maybe she just didn’t want to catch the wrong one.
    The bottles were empty, but each one was stopped up with a cork. I touched a small bluish-green one with a long crack down one side. Slowly, and with about as much ease as if I was pushing the Beater all the way up the hill to Ravenwood on a summer day, I edged the cork out from the rim of the bottle, and the room began to fade.…
The sun was hot, swamp mist rising like ghosts over the water. But the little girl with the neat braids knew better. Ghosts were made of more than steam and mist. They were as real as she was, waiting for herancient grandmamma or her aunties to call them up. And they were just like the living.
    Some were friendly, like the girls who played hopscotch and cat’s cradle with her. And others were nasty, like the old man who paced around the graveyard in Wader’s Creek whenever there was thunder. Either way, the spirits could be helpful or ornery, depending on their mood and what you had to offer. It was always a good idea to bring a gift. Her great-great-great-grandmamma had taught her that.
    The house was just up the hill from the creek, like a weatherworn blue lighthouse, leading both the dead and the living back home. There was always a candle in the window after dark, wind chimes above the door, and a pecan pie on the rocker in case someone came calling. And someone always came calling.
    Folks came from miles and miles to see Sulla the Prophet. That’s what they called her great-great-great-grandmamma, on account of how many of her readings came to pass. Sometimes they even slept on the little patch of grass in front of the house, waiting for the chance to see her.
    But to the girl, Sulla was just the woman who told her stories and taught her to tat lace and make a butter piecrust. The woman with a sparrow that would fly in the window and sit right on her shoulder, like it was a branch on an old oak.
    When she reached the front door, the girl stopped and smoothed her dress before she went in.
    “Grandmamma?”
    “I’m in here, Amarie.” Her voice was smooth and thick—“Heaven and honey,” the men in town called it.
    The house was only two rooms and a small cooking space. The main room was where Sulla worked, reading tarot cards and tea leaves, making charms and roots for healing. There were glass canning jars all over, full of everything from witch hazel and chamomile to crows’ feathers and graveyard dirt. On the bottom shelf was one jar Amarie was allowed to open. It was full of buttery caramels, wrapped in thick wax-coated paper. The doctor who lived in Moncks Corner brought them whenever he came by for ointments and a reading.
    “Amarie, you come on over here now.” Sulla was fanning a deck of cards out on the table. They weren’t the tarot cards the ladies from Gatlin and Summerville liked her to read. These were the cards Grandmamma saved for special readings. “You know what these are?”
    Amarie nodded. “Cards a Providence.”
    “That’s right.” Sulla smiled, her thin braids falling over her shoulder. Each one was tied with a colored string—a wish someone who visited her was hoping would come true. “Do you know why they’re different from tarot cards?”
    Amarie shook her head. She knew the pictures were different—the knife stained with blood. The twin figures facing each other with palms touching.
    “Cards a Providence tell the truth—the future even I don’t want to see some days. Dependin’ on whose future I’m readin’.”
    The little girl was confused. Didn’t tarot cards show a true future if a powerful reader was interpreting the spread? “I thought all cards show the truth if you know how to make sense a them.”
    The