But was it an awful woman who had saved her life today? Her mother had risked everything, her own life, without so much as blinking an eye. Ree knew she should be grateful, but somehow, standing there with her shoulders squared and facing down Marie Laveau, she felt anything but. She felt…resentful.
It was a wound that had always been there, she knew. When she was much younger, it had caused her sorrow. Why couldn’t her mother be like the other mothers at church, passing their children sweets and cookies wrapped in wax paper? Why couldn’t her mother stay home at night, like the others, to read her a bedtime story? Why did she need to leave by moonlight to gather with her precious followers in Congo Square? What exactly in this godforsaken city pulled her so? What could she love more than her own daughter? In time, as she aged, the answer became crystal clear to Ree: Voodoo.
Marie released a frustrated breath. “When will you be done with this spoiled princess performance and play the part you are meant to? You are my heir, Ree. It is time you behaved as such.”
“Oh, maman. You mean your puppet.”
“Mind your tongue, little girl.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
She wasn’t a little girl, despite her mother’s insistence otherwise. She was the same age, if not a few years older, even, as when her mother had ascended to Queen of the Voodoos.
“You see, I never minded being your puppet as a little girl. Just like a marionette down in the Quarter shows. Their strings pulled bycruel masters. And then I grew up…” Ree stared her mother down. “…and I began to see your strings too.”
“Not another word.”
“Oh, I think one more will do just fine. It’s your turn to explain yourself—why did you meet with Silas? What is your relationship to the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood?” Ree was going to be fair about it. She was going to offer her the chance to come clean, to do away with all of her secrets and plots.
A flash of glittering anger in Marie’s eyes. But still she said nothing.
“Silence still makes you a liar,Marie.But since you are so quiet, perhaps I should tell you that I overheard you with Father Antoine, discussing the Harbinger and the Inquisition. And…” She hesitated, then said the name anyway: “Jon.”
“Enough!” her mother commanded, vibrant anger radiating from her. The fire flared, smoke filling their small parlor, backlighting her mother in the hearth’s orange-gold light, her face twisted first with sorrow, then with fury.
No, it was not Ree’s mother staring at her. It was the Quarter Queen, her bone-white eyes, the tignon upon her head coming undone, transfiguring itself into her golden fleur-de-lis crown, her long curls floating about her cheeks like seaweed swaying in black water.
“I am your queen,” she spat. “It’s high time you acknowledged that.”
“You are mymother! It’s high time you acknowledged that.”
And there it was. The real trouble between them.
When her mother spoke again, her voice had grown unusually soft, carrying an unmistakable bitter note. “The ways in which I have failed you as a mother are but small sacrifices to the ways in which I have succeeded as Queen of the Quarter. One day you will understand, when you have taken my place.”
“You might fancy yourself a queen, Mother. But you still bend the knee to these white men and the Church like everyone else in this fucking city.”
“And you, Ree?” her mother asked, dangerously soft. “Since you know of these things, tell me, daughter—do you know which Inquisitor the Vatican has assigned to hunt us, to huntyou?”
Now it was Ree’s turn to go quiet. Her mother sneered. “Yes, Henryk Broussard returns to New Orleans. But not as the boy you once loved. No, my sweet daughter.” Those white eyes flashed. “As your enemy. So, you see it is you who commits the greatest sin of them all—you put a thing as fickle as love before your own magic.”
“Well, maybe, Mother, if you had too, you wouldn’t be such…such…a pathetically lonely old widow with a heart of fucking stone!”
The magic behind Marie’s eyes abruptly died, her dark eyes empty and impassive. Her mother’s face, always so carefully blank. Always so guarded with her armor of piety and virtue. And yet…Ree had seen that glimpse of old pain. The kind that gnawed at you with crooked teeth, that bled you dry down to marrow and bone. She was her mother. She was her queen. And she was theWidow Paris,the woman whose husband had vanished and never saw fit to return. That was the exact moment that Ree knew she’d gone too far.
Her mother crossed to the door. As she passed, she came to a quiet halt at Ree’s shoulder, Sosie reared and hissing in her arms.
“You don’t know all that I have done for you, daughter,” whispered Marie. There was no anger, Ree realized. Only mournful regret, a shadow of old pain come again. “And for both our sakes, I pray you never will.”
Marie swept out of the house without another word.
Ree reclined in a hot bath, her skin raw and stinging after she’d scrubbed off the snatcher stink. Anabelle was perched beside the tub, combing Ree’s damp curls away from her face. From below the floorboards of Anabelle’s bedchamber came the usual sounds of a New Orleans pleasure house: the mad giggling of courtesans as they flitted about the halls hand in hand, the gruff bickering of men and merchants come to see their business done, the hurried cries of lovers. Tonight, no one would disturb them, least of all Madame Monet, not when Ree had put down enough coin for two nights.
“You know, I have two gifts for you.”
Ree sighed. So much had happened—the Harbinger, the snatchers, and news of an impending Inquisition and Henryk—that something as simple and innocent as trading tokens of affection with a lover seemed…almost juvenile to her now. “That’s kind, Anabelle. But I’m not sure I’m in them—”
Anabelle tugged the knot that held her silk slip together. It fell from her shoulders, rippling into silken ridges around her feet.
