One minute she’d been standing in the middle of the Dreadwood, drinking of her ceremonial wine to begin her crossroads ritual, and the next she’d awoken here. She’d seen this place before, only in glimpses, in fragmented dreams. The first time was in a vision after Jacques’s disappearance when she’d been bowled over in her grief, feverish and plastered to her bed. The second time had been during the war with Jon, scarcely a glimpse before his banishment. It was different now. She could see it fully: darkness that roiled and pressed in from all sides, as thick as sea mist, and a scattershot of whispers, too numerous to pick apart. She pushed to her feet, heart quickening. She might have thought she was in a bayou of some sort, but no bayou that she had ever seen before had shadow where there should have been water underfoot. It was a world outside of time and all mortal sense.
Because, after all, this was the Veil.Cursed knowledge,Sanite Dede had hissed when Marie had dared ask. She hobbled forward. Darkness engulfed her like a night shawl. Despite herself, she shivered.
“Hello, Marie.”
Marie turned to see the shimmering outline of a figure approach. There was only one man—no,being—that favored a withered cane in one hand and a set of copper scales in the other, with hooded eyes that blazed infernally red as hot coal. Papa Legba, the loa of the crossroads himself. Keeper of keys and opener of all roads. He Who Stands at the Beginning and the End.
Marie drew herself up to her full height, tried to steady her shaking nerves. It was no use. Papa only smiled. He liked the smell of her fear.
When Papa spoke, it was with a slow cadence, a dance of words. “Tell me, Marie Laveau. Why do you trouble yourself with ghosts?”
“Because unlike men, ghosts can’t hurt you,” Marie said.
“Can’t they?”
“Not in the ways that matter.” Marie stilled. “Hello, Papa.”
He’d visited her in the mortal plane before, once at the start of her initiation, and again after Jacques had died. Both times had been to take measure of her power, as if she were no different from a jewel being appraised for value. For all their endless power, loa were desperately curious about mortal affairs. Why else would they entreat servants and acolytes to their altars? She supposed their prayers and offerings, the deepest secrets of their hearts, were as delicious as freshly wrapped candy. Impossible to resist, delightful to savor on the tongue. But here, deep in his domain, Papa was different, his form much larger, the heat from his gaze as hot as the noonday sun. The Veil was Papa Legba’s world, after all.
“You do not ask where you are,” he said. “I suppose you already know.”
“I know where. I must know why.”
Staring at him for too long made her eyes hurt. But Marie held his gaze. Her pride wouldn’t allow her much else. Papa smiled—this he knew and liked about her most.
“You know why. You drank of the poison,” he said simply.
“I had a vision. It was your voice that I heard, along with the Baron’s. So I knew that it must be followed. Without question. I need to know why.”
“There was a time when all that you longed for was to enter thisrealm, priestess. And look at you now, here at last.” Papa swept out his arms, copper scales tinkling. “Yet you do not rejoice. Mortals.” He sighed. “So fickle of heart. Never pleased.”
“I will be pleased when I know why.”
“You saw, didn’t you?” He smiled. “Last I checked, the gods blessed you with the gift of sight. Not as powerful as your predecessor, Sanite, but blessed all the same. Tell me, priestess, did we waste our power?”
Marie prickled. She was not Sanite, and did not have the strength of her foresight by any measure, but her spirit’s eye could see glimpses of the unknown. She had seen but not understood, not completely. The Conjurer Root, mixed into her ritual wine. Conjurer Root, the herb Jon had sewn part of his soul into, his very essence. She’d thought the last of it had been scorched from all of Louisiana. She’d seen herself consume the poison, and flashes of what was to come: her comatose body, the convergence of her enemies crowding for the upper hand, and Ree, her foolishly capricious Ree, forced to rise to the occasion. She had seen a long, dark road open before her, the work of the Lord of the Crossroads and the Lord of Death, and she had known their power was absolute and must be obeyed. She must walk this new road. She had seen no other possibilities, no other recourse, but to drink the poison. To what end, she didn’t know.
“Jon,” Marie said at last. “This was Jon’s doing.”
Papa laughed, the force of it strong enough that Marie’s curls were flung backward from her face. “Did you think that banishment would stop him?”
“Stop, no. Cage? Yes.”
“Foolish child. You left him here, Marie.” Papa gestured out to this world of strange shadow and light, where flickers of souls winked in and out like stars. “Here.You left him in a place of old magic. Did you not think his own might grow stronger here? Stronger”—he pointed his cane out at her—“than evenyours?”
Marie froze. There had been so much to consider in those days, in that final moment with Jon, with hardly any time. She’d made the only choice that she could have, didn’t she?
“Does my plight amuse you, Papa?”
“Marie, my sweet, I must confess I do find your tiff amusing.” In many ways he lived up to his reputation, to his name.Papa.He was a seasoned parent, bemused at the squabbling antics of his many offspring. What did he care for the deep fissure between Marie and Jon? He did not see with mortal eyes, nor care for mortal feelings. He did not know the pain that Jon had caused her, the pain she’d caused him in turn. To Papa, they were bickering children. “Jon the Conjurer has you in his grasp.”
Marie stilled herself, bracing for the worst. “What…does he want?”
“What he has always wanted.” He leaned in, hunched over that cane like an old man. But Marie knew better. He was no old man. No man at all, but an old god in need of a new mortal delight. “To teach you a lesson.”
Papa led Marie deeper into the Veil. The scales he held in his hand shone in the darkness, the reflection of copper brighter than any lantern. Marie had no inkling of where he was leading her, but fear bubbled deep inside of her, and with every step it threatened to boil over like a potion unwatched. As she walked on, hovering in Papa’s massive shadow, she found that her eyes had relaxed some, and more of the Veil revealed itself to her.
It was a world unlike any other, a world of two. A world of two skies: the dark one overhead that glowed with silver moonlight, and the sunlit one beneath her feet. Where there should have been dirt was only golden sky, the clouds passing beneath her toes like schools of fish. This was the world of twilight, of those stranded between life and death. It was a strange thing to do, to fall between worlds as simply as a stone might tumble into the sea, forever lost. Was that what she was now, forever lost?
