“And what is this man’s name?” Marie asked. But she knew. By God, she knew.
With deliberate slowness, the demon said in the Old Tongue, “You know the name well, Marie Laveau. You know it better than your own.”
Marie heard the name in her dreams every night. A haunting that would not leave.
The demon opened its mouth, and from it rushed: “And so it shall be: A Laveau witch’s reign will raise hell upon the earth. From its gates, the damned will return. Their king, High Jon, will walk the Quarter once more.”
The wicked words lodged into her chest like a rusted knife, twisting and twisting.
A feverish murmur passed through the crowd at the mention of that fateful name.
Jon.
The name rang incessantly over and over in her head, a sickening song that would not stop. Demons always lied, but these words tasted of truth. Jon had been many things to Marie. Her teacher, later her lover, and above all else her enemy. He had been the only evil she’d ever feared. The only one she’d ever loved too.
Marie released her hold on the infernal creature, drawing away sharply.
“Begone, demon.” Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her, weak. She hated that. Hated that there was a part of her still that could be brought low by him.
“I do not answer to you, witch—”
Oh, but it did. Marie crooked a hand, the motion like turning a doorknob. The demon opened its mouth as if it had been violently pried by unseen hands and emitted a high, keening wail.
Her daughter collapsed. Marie rushed to her and bent low, pressed a handkerchief to Ree’s brow. She slowly opened her eyes, which were blessedly dark again, the eyes of her wild and wicked child.
“Maman, what happened…?”
“Hush now.” Marie helped Ree to her feet and moved her quickly through the crowd, her mind racing. Everyone was watching. Everyone had heard.
That had been no trick. No lie. Marie knew one thing to be true: Those words had been aHarbinger.And soon, everyone would know.
History had a way of repeating no matter how one tried to bury it. Some sins just wouldn’t be so easily forgiven, Marie supposed. After all, she knew this better than most. Old sins demanded payment. And she harbored no sin worse than Jon the Conjurer. The whisper of his return had stirred something in her that she’d buried twenty-five years ago. She’d long been rid of him, hadn’t she?Hadn’tshe?
Marie waved a hand, and the courtyard gates swung open, iron groaning. She pressed through the swell of onlookers and faithful Voodoos, each one hastily moving out of her way. All except one. A white man in a fine hat stepped into Marie’s path, a few of his slaves gathered at his side. An outsider who’d passed through NewOrleans on the wrong night, beheld her magic for himself and still couldn’t make a lick of sense of it. Marie didn’t blame him—no one could. She smiled slowly down at him, her eyes flashing white, the full force of her magic like sudden moonlight. He recoiled like he’d touched hot grease.
The man took his hat from his head in stupefied awe. “What…are you?”
A good question, indeed. One she often asked herself in her lowest moments. A widow. A witch. A mother. At times, even a hypocrite. But only one answer mattered tonight.
“To them? But a humble servant to Spirit. But to you and all your wretched kind…” The tignon piled atop Marie’s head quickly unwound itself like a ribbon, unspooling her hair in a wave of tumbling dark water. In its place shined a golden fleur-de-lis crown, the mark of her sovereignty and shame. “…a fuckingqueen.”
Part One
Heart of Stone
For it is said that the alchemists have a most forbidden incantation among them, more nefarious than other spells, rituals, and rites of transmutation, the cursed words: Turn your heart to stone. Said with enough intent, and with the right touch of magic, these few words transform hearts and destroy the most stalwart of minds.
—Sanite Dede, Quarter Queen II, chapter excerpt from her primordial grimoire,On the Brotherhood of the White Hand and Their Fraternal Order
Chapter One
Ree
One thing was true as far as Marie Laveau the Second was concerned: If there were rules, you could be sure she would break them. Ree smiled and looked down over the room full of blacks and whites dancing naked under the smoky low light, a sensual melody vibrating in the air from the string band in the corner. Tonight, she was breaking more than a few.
Only a few hours had passed since her mother’s ritual in Congo Square, but already she’d begun to sober up. She couldn’t quite remember all that had occurred—a flash of Marie’s white eyes, the steady rhythm of the drums, whispers among the crowd—but her mother had remained suspiciously tight-lipped about the whole ordeal and had retired early to their shared home on St. Ann Street without another word.
Now Ree watched from her observation balcony, where she had a generous view of Maison des Fleurs’s latest stock of courtesans. Marcel rolled dice with Fabrice and Ory at her table. Whiskey-eyed and honey-tongued, Marcel was her second. Fabrice and Ory were cousins, sharply dressed Georgia boys who used their connection to the water loa to run spirits down the bayou. They belonged to her mother’s Voodoo circle but, unlike the other members, didn’t mind taking orders from Ree if mischief might be found. There were manypleasure houses in the French Quarter, though none like Madame Monet’s House of Flowers. As she so often said, she hada flower for every occasion.
