A thick spell of silence fell between them. “Did you go to my mother?” Ree finally asked.
“I came to you.” He cast a doubtful glance at the door to the back, where Marie had retired in private. “The Quarter Queen has bigger problems.”
And Ree didn’t. Getting drunk on Bourbon Street and stumbling home in the dark hardly counted as a real problem. And if it were, it was one of her own making.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Just enough of a slap on the ass to get him off my back,” said Marcel.
“Poison?”
“Nothing too permanent. Corbin would throw a real good fit if something happened to Tandy. Been with him since his daddy died and left him all those acres.”
Monsieur Felix Corbin, the mayor of New Orleans, was better known to the city’s magical population as the Collector. Corbin had made a disgusting habit of owning only the very best of the city’s Les Magiques, slaves he would organize according to their magic, like sorting salt from sugar, and place proudly on his plantation one by one like golden baubles in a shop window. Like plenty of New Orleanian slave owners, Corbin adhered to the Code Noir, the series of laws and edicts that governed the “proper” treatment of slaves (and by that same token gave ample record of how to properly discipline if those same laws were broken). So, he allowed his slaves their own lives, or at least a shadow of a life. They could venture intotown, work as indentures to other guilds and merchants, frequent the Quarter, attend mass or Congo Square. This was, of course, a far more complicated matter for Les Magiques. When a slave held a propensity for magic, their price was considerably higher because they could, conceivably, be exploited in a variety of new and more profitable ways. There weren’t many in the city, nor really in the South as a whole. And of the few who made New Orleans their home, even fewer did so free.
“If Corbin ever found out…if he ever caught you…” Ree shuddered.
“Hewon’t.Don’t you go worryin’, my sweet. I’ve made it this long with my mischief, haven’tI?”
Mischief was one thing, poison was another. And he wasn’t just asking her for any poison. He was asking her foraurum.He hadn’t said it by name, and he didn’t need to—everyone knew aurum was as good as rat poison to anyone with magical blood. In smaller doses it was an incredibly effective irritant, immensely painful to be ingested or touched, causing scores of blisters that could sprout up like mushrooms across the flesh, ceaseless retching for days. It was exactly what he needed. Mr. Tandy had a bit of magic in him, enough to keep the rest of the plantation’s Les Magiques contained and the fields well toiled, but not nearly enough to be Brotherhood material. The aurum draught, in a half dose, would keep him bedridden for a little over a week with the shakes and a bad fever. Nothing he couldn’t overcome with a bit of rest. But a full dose would mean death.
Except, her mother kept her secret stash of aurum in the back. Ree’s gaze fell to the door where Marie waited on the other side. She wouldn’t be able to get the aurum now, that was for sure.
“Fuck it,” Ree said with a sigh. “You’ll have to wait ’til she leaves before I can get my hands on some.”
“That’ll do just fine by me.”
Ree waved him off. “Turn around now, let me see to your back.”
He stripped out of his ruined shirt, then laid himself facedown on the table. Ree hovered a hand over his ruined flesh. She closed her eyes, reaching out into the dark void of her mind, the place where the loa liked to linger and dwell. The gods could be ficklecreatures, invoked only at their own leisure or whims, or by the sheer power of their vessel. If she could connect to Zaka, Lord of Harvest and Earth, she could use the roots and poultices from the apothecary for the healing. But her magic lent itself more easily to Simbi Makaya, god of sorcery and maker of medicine.
Her palm began to glow with a faint violet light as she ran her hand up and down Marcel’s back, whispering the invocations her mother had taught her to the sorcerer god. His magic didn’t feel like a soft blade of grass in her hand, the coolness of soil against her fingers. It could be said that Simbi Makaya was a secretive loa, and so his magic came in fits and starts; it leapt from her fingertips and onto Marcel’s skin with the sharpness of jagged glass. Marcel hissed from the pain but said nothing. When Ree was finished, Marcel’s wounds had closed, but the skin had melded together improperly in a clumsy stitch along his spine. It would have to do until he got to a real healer. But if Marcel minded, he didn’t say. He hastily pulled his shirt over his head, turning to give Ree that familiar lopsided grin.
But his smile did nothing to calm her. Working with a shifty loa like Simbi Makaya could be a perilous thing for some witches, but it was more than that. What her friend wanted from her was quite possibly far more dangerous. “By the loa, Marcel,” Ree said. “I’m warning you if Marie Laveau catches us stealin’ from her, then we’re gonna need more than poison to get out of this. Won’t be enough magic in New Orleans to save us.”
Marcel’s eyes softened. It was the same way he had looked at her when she emerged from the Dreadwood after her initiation rites, starved and shaking from the cold, only to find herself face-to-face with a boy with whiskey eyes smiling at her like a Cheshire cat. Except this time, it didn’t feel like he was saying hello. This time felt a hell of a lot like he was saying goodbye.
Marcel pulled her into a quick embrace. She felt his tears hot against her collar. “Ain’t got no need for any more magic,” he whispered into the crook of her neck. “No need at all when I got you, Marie Laveau the Second.”
Later, Ree found her mother in the back perched at her long dark maple desk, poring over a large leather-bound book. It was not the parlor’s ledger, Ree realized. It was the Quarter Queen’s grimoire. Voodoo was still a young magic, born from the mixing of the old ancestral ways of their African ancestors and whatever strange new magic was to be found here in the South. Young enough, in fact, that there had been only two other Quarter Queens before Marie Laveau: her mentor, Sanite Dede, and before her, her sister Saloppe, who had been the first Quarter Queen of New Orleans. The grimoire had been passed down from each queen, and for anyone else to touch it would be a serious violation of their laws. But Ree found herself peering over, her suspicions needling at her. Her mother consulted Sanite’s teachings only when things were especially dire. Ree knew she should mind her own business and turn back to her own affairs, but she could not forget what she’d seen. First, Marie sent a message to the Brotherhood. And now this? Something wasverywrong.
Ree went to the little stove at the back and started a pot of water to boil for tea.
“What are youreallydoing, maman?” Ree sifted through tea leaves and settled on lavender for her nerves.
“Preparing,” said her mother without lifting her gaze from the spell book.
“Preparing for what?”
She finally looked up and held Ree’s eyes, a battle of emotions on her face. “The worst.”
“Will you finally tell me what’s happening, maman? Aram showed me that you spoke with a…demon. One thatpossessedme. I know about the Harbinger.”
Marie snapped the grimoire closed, a plume of dust curling in the air before her. “And what else did that nefarious little bird show you?”
Ree never could understand why her mother hated Aram so. Her mother had Sosie, after all. Was Ree not entitled to her own familiar? Her own power?Perhaps that is the real trouble,a little voice insisted in Ree’s mind. “That was it. But I petitioned the spirits, and…” The kettle whistled. Ree poured her water and stirred in hertea leaves. “They spoke of…a Song of Three? Some kind of riddle about a sun, moon, and star, and the Church. A holy war. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. But it sounded like a prophecy.”
Ree glanced up to see her mother had gone still, her brown skin suddenly pale. “Put it from mind,” Marie said at last. “The spirits play riddles on us for sport and will sooner make fools of us if we allow them the chance.”
