Her mother swatted at the bird, driving it away in a flurry. She gathered a trembling Ree into her arms, who stared after the bird in wonder. She knew it would come back for her.
“Maman,” said Ree. “I heard a voice.”
“Whose voice?”
“His.” It hadn’t been the first time Ree had heard this voice, this inner darkness. When her mother said nothing, her face carefully barren of any emotion, Ree said, “The things I heard…I saw. What amI?”
The voice had told her that she wasn’t just the child of Marie Laveau.
It told her she was something else. And meant for so much more.
Her mother had hesitated. Finally, she said, “You are my heir. My body and my soul. We are spirit and flesh. Two and one. Within and without. You are my namesake. You are Marie Laveau.” She stood and held out a hand to Ree. “Get up, my love. A queenneverkneels.”
The crunch of bramble underfoot pulled Ree back to the present—she had reached Marie at last in an old fur-trapping camp, where the Cajuns liked to move from time to time to trap the red wolves that roamed these parts. Her mother was sitting around a small fire, her long dark hair loosed from its golden cloth.
She’d know her mother’s magic anywhere, of course. Every mystic had a specific scent to their magic. Some sweeter than others, some as pungent as a bulb of garlic or as sour as a bag of lemons. Marie Laveau’s magic was sweet as the biggest beignet in New Orleans and hot as the Louisiana sun in the ides of summer.
To her shock, she scented another magic—the bitter, resinous notes of foxglove, the trickster flower. Beside Marie sat an alchemist, his long white hair trailing down his back. And not just any alchemist. Silas Favreau, the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood of the White Hand.
Once, her mother and the Grand Wizard had been great enemies, though her mother never discussed him. Now the rules meant they never crossed paths, as far as Ree knew. She herself had seen Silas only in passing, caught flashes of his long silvery hair and dark spangled robes as he came and went from his private carriage to the Brotherhood’s cloistered halls and to the city’s various pleasure houses, heard the drunken praises of Brotherhood fledglings celebrating their leader’s latest magical advancement when she visited the alehouses and music houses.
Out of caution, Ree stopped Thistle some distance away from the camp and tied her to a tree.
Footfalls crunched in the underbrush behind her. Ree froze. She had been followed.
But it was already too late.
She was yanked up by the hair and roughly dragged backward, deeper into the damp darkness. A swaying gas lamp was jutted into her face, bright enough that she was blinded. It took one horrifyingly long moment for her vision to adjust, and when it finally did, she saw three grubby faces peering back at her.Snatchers.
The truth struck her like a thunderbolt to the chest: They’d come to snatchher.
Ree kicked and twisted, but she was outnumbered, and they were much bigger than her.
“We got you now, girl,” the snatcher sneered, and before she could say a word, he stuffed a piece of cloth into her mouth. The cloth was sour and stale. She tasted blood, disgustingly wet and coppery in her mouth, perhaps from having bitten down on her own tongue in her shock.
Ree had never met a snatcher before. She’d seen them—terrible, greasy men—at the gambling halls and lower-end music houses. They worked on behalf of the courts—bounty men, one could say. If Les Magiques slaves were caught on the run, the snatchers woulddrag them back to the courts for a handsome fine. And then there were theotherstories. Tales about how they liked to find the freed Les Magiques out wandering at night and capture them too and barter them off to slavers without their freedom papers.
“How do we know she’s one of them mystics? Could just be a simple colored,” said the shortest man of the bunch.
“Here’s how,” answered the tall one. He jammed a block of aurum against the exposed flesh of her throat. White-hot pain exploded in Ree’s body, so vivid she nearly lost consciousness. Ree screamed against the sour cloth they’d stuffed into her mouth, most of it stifled. “See? It only hurt the sin in them. Burn away all the wicked in their blood, don’t it?”
If that were true,Ree thought,you’d be in hellfire.But men were nothing if not faithful to their own lies.
“Jesus Christ,” shouted the third man. He was as stubby as a pig, with cruelly appraising eyes, and he took a long look at Ree, as if seeing her for the first time. “Granger, come look here.”
The lamp was shoved back in Ree’s face. The men looked her over, taking stock of her face and breasts. For once, Ree was conscious of her provocative dressing, of the bodice that swelled her already ample breasts, the rouge she carefully ran along the apples of her cheeks. All of it made her feel dirty now. One of the men, Granger, swiped out at her. His fingers found purchase against her throat, and she thought for one terrible moment that he might choke her to death. But he only seized her necklace.
“Marie Laveau,” he said with a gasp, voice caught between horror and delight. Ree swallowed down bile.
“No. Not the First. This is the Second. The daughter,” the stubby one said as a slow smile spread across his lips. Ree heard what he didn’t say:the weaker one.
In one fell swoop, he fit a collar around her neck, right over her necklace. The aurum burned something awful, and with a pang of horror, Ree realized it was burning her. Her flesh sizzled where the metal made contact. She let out a cry around the rag.
“This? This is the daughter of Marie Laveau?” Granger laughed and spat in her face. “What a crock!”
He knew her by the velvet necklace that was affixed to her neck,where the marking of her surname hung in twin silvery serpents that wound together to make anL.She hadn’t thought to take her seal off, the one she wore so proudly in the city to announce her status as a Laveau. Oh, the irony. It occurred to her now, facing certain death, that her protesting meant very little. Shedidenjoy the status being her mother’s heir afforded her, if even a little. She could admit that now.
Ree spoke muffled words. The men laughed, entertained at her imprisonment. Ree tried again, and Granger shoved his hands into her mouth and yanked out the gag. “What was that, sweetheart?” He leaned in, close enough to kiss her. She could taste the brandy on his breath and for once was sickened by the smell.
