Marie blinked, dumbfounded. He’d seen what she’d attempted with Ogoun, how summoning him had nearly consumed her. But now, standing before her with that smug smile, he made it all seem so easy.
“And as for pain…” His smile went cold. “Pain can be so very useful.”
“You hurt me.” Marie said it before thinking, startled by her own weakness.
His look was unflinching. “And I will hurt you again if it makes you stronger.”
Marie thought back to the blistering pain along her skin that she had felt only a few seconds ago. He’d channeled his own pain into the illusion. The realization left her breathless. Just what kind of torture had Jon the Conjurer endured? That day when she was ten and had found him on the flogging post must have been only a bitter taste. The Man with a Thousand Lives, the slaves called him in whispers—a thousand lives’ worth of pain.
Jon clicked his teeth, disappointed. “Your illusion casting needswork. If you are to open the Veil, you will be facing Legba directly. None is better at trickery than him. You must be ready for anything. Look at you now, so guarded. So cold. Your emotions are your weapons, Marie. They can be channeled to make illusions stronger. Rage can turn a priest mad. Lust can make a man bed a girl with the face of a goat. Anything can be real so long as the emotion can be felt. Do you understand?”
Marie remained still, afraid to answer. She’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. Perhaps Sanite had been right about Jon all along. Perhaps he really was the devil in the flesh.
Jon strode toward her and snatched her chin in his hands, forcing her to meet his eyes. They were completely black, so far away from the silvery-white glow of the Quarter Queen’s true power. “Do you understand, Marie?”
She nodded, eyes closed. When she opened them, it was not Jon who stood before her but…Jacques. Marie stumbled away from him. “No.”
“Hello, Marie,” said Jacques.
“Jacques?” Her voice trembled. It was him. The same golden-brown skin, the gentle wave of his hair, the light green of his eyes.
Jacques smiled warmly at her. “Come now, my love. We’ve been apart long enough. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Marie flung herself into the circle of his arms. Jacques held her close, stroking the small of her back. Oh, how she had ached for his touch. In those first days, she’d cursed the gods and the saints for leaving her without him. But now she thanked them. She would light a thousand candles upon their altars, and on Sundays she would kneel before God and say her prayers. Because they had finally been answered—her husband was home. Marie pressed her lips to Jacques’s, welcoming his sweet kiss.
She cupped his face, pulling him to her. His mouth crushed hers, hand tangling in her hair, tilting her head up so he could plunge his tongue inside, deliciously slick against hers. He devoured her with a hunger sinuous and dark. Pleasure blistered her skin, the kiss more intense than she had ever shared with her beloved. He swallowed her moan.
But it was not Jacques that she tasted. No, she tasted cigar smoke, and something else. Something bitter. Vervain. The herb to calm the mind, to better castillusions.
Marie screamed, leaping away. The illusion fizzled before her eyes, and it was Jon staring at her now, his eyes flinted amber, not her husband’s gentle green.
“You bastard!” Marie hissed, her face flaming. “You had no right. No fucking right—”
“You said you wanted me to teach you. And now you scorn the lesson.”
Marie froze. He was right. If she had any hope of opening the Veil, she would face far worse, wouldn’t she? She had to be ready, even if it meant baring her soul to a man like Jon. Slowly, she nodded.
Jon grinned. “We go again.”
Marie closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was her husband, smiling at her. She knew it was an illusion, she did. But this spell was stronger than any she’d ever felt, stronger even than Sanite’s. In the distance, someone was screaming loudly. Why wouldn’t they stop? In a surge of horror, Marie realized the screams were her own.
“Get out of my fucking head!”
Jacques stood over her, sneering all the while. He turned his head to the side, amused by her agony. “Now, why would I do that?”
Marie gritted her teeth, forcing herself to see past the illusion. It felt real only because of the pain, she thought. If pain could make an illusion stronger, then it could dispel it too. She thought suddenly of the pain losing Jacques had wrought on her, the whispers ofWidow Parisat her back, the snickers of jealous biddies who were happy to see her brought so low. She thought back to even before that, to the pain of losing her grand-mère to yellow fever. And then the very first pain…the pain of losing her own mother. The woman who had taken one look at Marie’s magic and abandoned her on sight. Marie dredged up the pain of her earliest memories like pulling a stone from the dark of a well. When she opened her eyes, it was Jon staring at her now. Not Jacques.
Marie climbed to her feet, glowing with victory. Jon stood acrossfrom her, panting from the force of his own spell. The oneshe’dbackfired onto him. Just what had he seen in his own terrible vision? Then she remembered his words, filled with the ache of painful memories conjured again.I am the last of my kind. My wife…my children…
It mattered not, Marie decided. Because in time she would know all.
“Now…” Jon smiled through the pain, dark eyes full of wonder. “Now you are learning.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ree
Ree was in her mother’s dream.
