Marie put the portrait back in its place. Everything as it was. The rest of the acolytes were flooding into the room, arms bursting with smoking vials and wicker baskets saddled with mountains of herbs and talismans. Soon, the Quarter Queen would hold court, and the Voodoos would do as they had always done—plot how to live their lives in the shadow of another kingdom. Was that what was waiting for her after Sanite’s passing? A kingdom of servants who already served another master, one who kept them locked and chained?Such small lives,Marie thought.
Marie turned her gaze back toward the great picture of Papa Legba, the glowing red eyes that seemed to be staring directly at her, silently inviting her into his realm of mist and sky, a cloudy crossroads that only the divine dared walk.The Veil.
That old magic would be hers in the end. She would make sure ofit.
Chapter Eleven
Ree
Hello, princess.
The blood drained from Ree’s face as she stared up at the man she thought she’d never see again. She’d spent the years in his absence stupidly replaying the matter of their separation, striving to see how it had all gone so wrong, trying in vain to remember every detail of his beautiful face. She dreamed of him many nights, some spent sleeping next to Anabelle. She’d imagined their reunion a thousand times.I’m sorry,she’d say.Forgive me, please.
Ree lurched to her feet and gave in to the urge to reach for him through the bars. “Henryk—”
His black gloved hand caught hers, viper-quick, and twisted it firmly in his grasp. It wasn’t painful, but the warning was clear.Don’t come any closer, or the next action will be painful indeed.
She was aware of Anabelle’s eyes on her, but Ree didn’t care. Henryk tightened his grip, slipping a coin into her palm. “Don’t,” he said, the rough burn of his voice sending chills down her spine. His gray eyes flashed as he let her go. “You will address me as High Inquisitor Broussard. Nothing more.”
Nothing more.Ree was going to be sick. It was one thing to envision his return, the indifference he might show her—that shedeserved. But never in her worst nightmares did she think he would return a witch-hunter.
Ree clutched the small coin behind her back. What could it mean? Why bail her out?
Henryk held her gaze for a second longer before sweeping his eyes over the cell, the aurum shackles that bound both women, the stone stained in the blood of witches long dead. His eyes tightened at the corners, an expression only Ree seemed to notice.
The lantern swayed in the officer’s hands. “Sure you don’t want the other? She’d fetch a good price up in cotton country, all things considered.”
“No,” said Henryk. His eyes fell coldly over Anabelle, who had the good sense to recoil back as far as her shackles would allow. “Just the one will do. The other is of no use to me.”
And with that, Henryk turned on his heel, disappearing into the dark of the jailhouse’s dungeons. A moment later and the door to Ree’s cell groaned open.
“Out now, Laveau, before I change my mind,” the officer ordered with a scowl.
Ree raised her leg, flashing her shackled ankle through her skirts. “Only if you would be so kind.”
The officer grunted at her nerve but made quick work of unshackling her foot. Behind her, Anabelle scoffed. “Still cheating your way around this city, I see. Fucking heathen.”
“Same as everyone else,” Ree muttered. She kept her eyes forward. She would not turn back, she decided. The past held nothing for her. And that was exactly what Anabelle Dupont was to her—the past.
The officer marched Ree out into the corridor. When they were alone at last, Ree craned her collared neck, and he undid the last of her bindings. They fell to the floor in a loud clatter. Ree flexed her sore fingers, cracked the stiff bones in her neck for good measure. There would be bruises come morning, her skin burned from the traces of the aurum. But she could feel her magic flooding back, and with it some semblance of her old self. She remembered the snatchers, their laughing faces as they chained her. She would never be brought that low again.
Ree raced past the other cells, filled with prisoners lying in their own filth, staring at the leaking ceilings, eyes dull and unseeing. Finally, she burst outside into the blinding sunlight of late afternoon. Ree didn’t dare look back. She ran.
Ree ran until her lungs ached, until her already sore body screamed in protest as she plunged herself into the crowd, eager to vanish into the sea of nameless faces of tourists and locals. She ran until red-blue dusk encroached along the rooftops. Night would soon come, and she needed to get to the bayou house to see to her mother. But in light of her arrest, going immediately there felt like a bad idea. What if she was being followed? What if the police were keeping a watchful eye? No one could know why her mother was suddenly gone. Not yet. So Ree changed course, setting off instead for their house on St. Ann, where she would be expected to go. Ree knew she was being paranoid. But better paranoid than stupid. She’d made so many stupid decisions, like reaching for Henryk’s hand.
Nearing home, Ree slowed, catching her breath, and held up the coin. It was the mark of the Aurelia, the music hall just down the road. Despite the venom he had shown her in that cell, she knew it was a message to meet there. Her heart twisted at the thought. She and Henryk passed messages to each other as children during communion, Henryk as an altar boy for Father Antoine and Ree as the dutiful daughter at her praying mother’s side. She was sure this was a message to meet later, in secret, when no one was watching as they had been in that cell. The smell of the jailhouse still clung to her, the rancid smell of misery and death.
It had smelled like death the day she’d met Henryk Broussard too. The memory came at her fast, transporting her to the dark halls of that sick ward on that fateful day sixteen years ago. Ree hadn’t wanted to go, of course. She’d been at her mother’s side day and night over the last few weeks, studying herbs and roots, learning how to draw the dizzying, complex shapes of veves that she would need to know to entreat each loa. Her hands had ached from all the sifting and sorting and cutting that rootwork required, and she felt her feet would fall off if her mother made her walk another step.
Her mother had not cared. In the middle of the night, she pulledRee by the hand down the darkened hall, where the flames of tiny white candles danced in the rain-lashed windows, casting shadows over rows and rows of bedridden folks, calling hopelessly into the dark for their loved ones—their mothers, their children—or for God. The haunted echoes of the sick made Ree want to cover her ears.
At eight years old, Ree had been old enough to attend her mother’s rituals in Congo Square and, according to Marie, learn to use her talents with Voodoo for more than herself. There had been an outbreak of yellow fever again, plague brought downriver on the steamboats. AlreadyThe Quintessencehad reported a handful dead and more to follow. Father Antoine had summoned Marie to stave off what she could, despite the Church’s objection to witchcraft.Folks would take anything—even the devil’s magic—to keep themselves alive,Marie cautioned Ree on the carriage ride over.
They attended to a slave woman, and her mother nodded. The woman would live. Not all would take to her antidote-tonic, she had told Ree. Some magic was not absolute. They saw to a spice merchant next, who complained that his money meant he should not be here, not like this, not withthem.Ree watched her mother bristle and shake her head, and Ree knew that the man would not live.
And so they went, patient to patient, until they stopped at the bedside of a small boy, a few years older than Ree. He had wine-brown hair and a smattering of sun-dappled freckles on his cheeks. He did not open his eyes when her mother asked, his small chest rising and falling uncertainly. It was as if he were on the verge of a deep sleep, and with each wheezing breath, he drifted farther and farther into the dark.
Her mother went to Father Antoine, gave the barest shake of her head. “The boy will not live. It would be prudent to perform last rites.” She was already turning away, preparing to attend to her next patient. She snapped a finger at Ree. “Come, Ree. There is still work to be done.”
