Or, her mother was inhers.She couldn’t be sure anymore. It was as if her mother’s eyes had become her own. She saw cryptic flashes, shining in and out like bright pops of light: her mother facing down sneering alchemists, venom from the snake’s fangs, fire in her blood. Ree twisted and writhed, screaming into the oblivion for some sense of relief. But no one answered. She felt herself falling and falling until the darkness of sleep overcame her.
When she woke again, the pain had receded, and she was moving down a long dark corridor, drifting quietly as if the air itself carried her bare feet across the cold stone. The corridor stretched before her, the darkness pooling around her as thick as tar. But she could see something moving at the end of the hall, pale as a ghost. It was a long tattered white veil. The veil drifted, as if stirred by a stroke of wind, revealing a tall black door.
And someone was knocking from the other side.
The pounding got louder and louder, a maddening sound that made Ree smash her hands over her ears and squeeze her eyes shut tight.Open your eyes.Her mother’s voice. Always her mother’s voice.
When Ree opened her eyes again, she had moved—she wasstanding directly in front of that great black door. The knocking had ceased. The corridor hung empty, filled with blessed silence. And then the white veil parted before her, as if in invitation.
Come closer, Marie Laveau,a voice sang from the other side,and right your mother’s wrongs.
Slowly, Ree parted the silken veil further and pressed her ear to the door. It shuddered, and she heard the wailing of a thousand ancestors, their voices carrying as one.We are many,they called from the other side,and we are coming.
Ree woke with a strangled cry, casting a wild glance about the room. There were no more terrible whispers calling from the shadows, and the only veil that dared move now was the curtain hanging over the terrace door, drifting with the early morning draft. Two pretty redheads lay on either side of her, fast asleep. She’d been channeling her mother. After finding Claudette at the Pint & Pea and learning the truth of her father, Ree had felt a shift in her mother’s condition. An unseen desperate tug that beckoned her closer. It was Marie—calling to Ree from the Veil to channel her. But Ree had little experience with this kind of magic. She needed a teacher, someone to guide her the way Jon had guided Marie. But Claudette Duvalier had flatly refused, leaving her with only the cryptic instruction that channeling was best done when she was asleep, when her spirit was closer to the loa.
But she couldn’t think about that, not when someone was loudly knocking at her door. Miffed, Ree shoved the arm draped over her bosom aside and got to her feet. A silken robe flew into her waiting hand, and she threw it on, quickly tying it into a clumsy knot. By the time she reached the door, a hand was already turning the doorknob.
Ree yanked the door open, a hex already on her lips. “Oh, for fuck’s sake—”
Henryk waited on the other side, a dark velvet cloak drawn over his face, auburn strands in his eyes. But of course he’d done his best to slip in unseen. What business did a holy man have in a pleasure house at this hour? A flicker of impatience crossed his face.
“We must speak.” At Ree’s protest, he cut his gray eyes at her. “Now.”
Ree snapped her fingers, and the lovely courtesans of the Chateau Rouge were already scampering from the room, ducking past Ree and Henryk without a backward glance. The courtesans of the Quarter’s infamous Red Palace were known not just for their flaming hair, but for their talents in discretion.
Henryk’s gaze swept the room, taking in the rumpled silken sheets, the emptied wineglasses strewn over the armoire and table in rigid silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was so carefully even.Tooeven. “Do you always pay for your fun?”
“I paid Monsieur LaCroix for the room and the dinner,” she corrected with an impish smile. “The whores were simply a gift.”
Henryk’s lips quirked. Was it stifled bemusement? A hint of the old Cajun boy who used to humor her games and advances? “I see.”
“What do you want, Inquisitor?” Despite her own smile, Ree was in no mood for Quarter politics. She’d been expecting that he might find her again. He had warned her of as much. But he did not look as if he was going to drag her in for questioning. The look on his face told her other troubles concerned him.
“When you intervened that day in the square, you set a new game in motion,” said Henryk, the gruff burn of his voice catching her off guard. She’d missed it. “Corbin saw you, saw what you could do for him. I don’t think you understand what you’ve done: You made yourself useful to the most dangerous man in New Orleans. You’ve caught the eyes of the wolf. Next will be his teeth. I wonder, what does your mother think of this?”
It was a tactic to draw the truth from her, but she would confess to nothing.
“Thank you for the warning, but us Laveaus can handle ourselves.”
“Did you handle your little tiff in Congo Square?”
Her lips pursed into a sour line at the thought of that particular chaos. Only two days had passed since, but already so much had happened. “I’ve not forgotten.”
“Well, neither has the Church. Or”—he sighed—“Felix Corbin. They’ve reached an agreement of sorts, a public response that suits both of their agendas.”
Ree bent over the armoire to grab her brush, intentionallyflashing a good deal of flesh as she did. When she turned around, gazing at him over her shoulder in a half-lidded expression, she watched with some pleasure as his eyes immediately shifted to the floor, then back to her.
“Do you understand what this means?”
Ree raked the brush through her curls, satisfied with the way the Inquisitor followed her every action, his gaze lingering on the spill of her cleavage when she turned justso.
By the loa, what was she doing? Toying with him? Was she trying to drive them both mad? She told herself it was easier like this, to keep herself removed from him as best she could, to treat him the same as every other pretty boy and girl she’d had her fun with. Except Henryk Broussard was not like the others, never had been to her.Tell him.But she couldn’t; her pride would not allow her that. So instead, she settled on saying, “No, but I have the strangest feeling you’ll enlighten me.”
“They want a witch to answer for this, Ree,” explained Henryk. His face contorted, almost cruelly. “Both the Church and Corbin have decided they can’t simply abide such a show of magic. They fear it would make them look weak. And they’ve…well, they’ve called for an execution.”
Ree’s lips curled. “They are weak.” The Vatican could peddle their myths on another street corner for all she liked, so long as they left the Voodoos to their own lot.
“After the Quarter Quarrel, they won’t allow another one.” He went quiet, pensive almost. “You’ve quite the parentage. You should know it has made you a target.”
