Ree looked up into the face of Claudette Duvalier.
She was a tad older than her mother, with smooth brown skin, long dark braids trailing to her hips, fox eyes, and full lips painted a deep mauve. “I heard you were looking for me,” said L’Enchanteresse. She downed the rest of Ree’s drink in one go, finishing with a smirk. “Careful what you summon, little Laveau. It just might come calling back.”
Claudette’s gaze dropped to theLpendant on her throat, and Ree heard the spirits whisper in her ear, the soft tickle of a feather.Careful.Careful.This woman was powerful, her bloodline old and well kept. L’Enchanteresse was already moving to the backstaircase. Her invitation hung thick in the room like an unspoken spell for Ree to follow.
She would not ask twice.
Claudette showed Ree into the upper parlor. The room was dim and moist, the air thick with trapped heat that rose from the alehouse below. Rows of makeshift iron cots filled the room, the beds lined tidily from wall to wall. On them rested a slew of black folks: some wore tattered shirts sticky with sweat and unwash; mothers cradled crying babies close; children absently tossed dice; others picked through bowls of sun-ripened fruit. Runaways, if Ree had to guess.
Ree glanced down, feeling something pawing at her leg. It was the dog from downstairs. A loping, shaggy thing, it had followed them up and was now pacing attentively at Ree’s side.
“Down, Petey! Get on!” Claudette snapped at the dog. But Petey remained, undeterred by his mistress’s foul mood. He galloped over to one of the children, who offered a piece of banana.
“What is this place?” Ree asked.
“Think of it as a tunnel of sorts,” explained Claudette as she walked. “Those who’d like to leave this godforsaken city pass through here on their way to Haiti. It takes more than a few pretty spells to get this many folks free passage.”
“…I had no idea this existed.” She would have never guessed such a place would be sitting just above the ordinary likes of the Pint & Pea, least of all hiding in plain sight in the Quarter. This was surprising to say the least. And very much illegal.
“Of course you didn’t. You’re a Laveau,” she muttered curtly. “I detest this fucking city down to its cursed bones. But someone has to do something.” The implication was clear: Marie Laveau did nothing. And if she did, it was surely not enough.
At Ree’s stricken expression, something in the older witch’s face quietly relented. “Sorry about your friend—the boy with the pretty eyes. I quite liked him. He was dedicated to the cause. Real fire in his bones, that one.”
Ree’s brow furrowed. “Marcel?Dedicated to the cause?” At lastshe understood. “He helped you get these people to Haiti, didn’t he? But he never told me—”
Claudette shrugged, cutting Ree off. “Maybe you never asked.”
She led Ree past a sprawling map of Haiti unfurled over a long table, the parchment frayed at the corners. Sea-blue strokes curved along the coastline, its cities marked in red and violet swirling ink—to the northern coast was Cap-Haïtien; to the south was Jacmel, wreathed in green mountainous ridges; and at its heart was Port-au-Prince, the crowned jewel, the seat of revolution and power.
Claudette showed Ree into a back room where an altar to Simbi Makaya still smoked. She stood over a worktable spread with tarot cards and a heap of herbs: lemon balm that was cut and sifted, talc, sprigs of wormwood. She picked up a cigarette from a dish, lit it with a spell, and used a mortar and pestle to crush the herbs to grit.
“Speak your piece and begone. You’ve caused enough trouble for us all.”
“You were there that day in Congo Square,” Ree said. “I saw you.”
“I knew I would regret getting involved in your messy little tiff.”
“Then why did you?”
Claudette looked up from her work, pestle still in hand. She didn’t seem angry, only vexed. “Presumptuous, aren’t we?” She sighed. “Sanite wouldn’t have wanted the other Voodoos hurt because of some sniveling little brat. Old woman been dead and still a fucking thorn in my side.Shit.”
“How noble of you.”
“You have your mother’s tongue. Tell me, how fares it living in Marie Laveau’s shadow?” Claudette made a tutting sound with her teeth as she turned back to the work of crushing her herbs. “Marie Laveau the Second, but never the First.”
“You say that to wound me. It doesn’t. I never set out to be my mother.”
“Spare me your questions, you little brat, and leave.” She waved a jeweled hand. “I don’t need the stink of your pity of a mutiny catching on to me.”
“I can’t leave. Not without answers for my mother.” Ree hesitated. “She’s in trouble, Claudette.”
The pestle stilled in the older witch’s hand. She slowly looked up at Ree, her green eyes alight. “What kind of trouble, per se?”
“Jon the Conjurer.”
“Yes, the conjurer of old,” Claudette said, lips pursed. “I am familiar with his power. The question is, areyou,child?”
Ree reached into the satchel on her arm and pulled out the crushed dark blossoms of Conjurer Root. The forbidden fruit her mother had set the earth ablaze to destroy.
