The door to Anabelle’s bedchamber flew open, breaking the lock. Anabelle squeaked and darted behind her partition screen as Marie Laveau walked in, casting a dubious look about the pleasure chamber. The air was heavily perfumed, sticky with candle wax and waning incense, the walls lined with hedonistic contraptions and paintings of storybook characters in lewd positions.
Ree flashed her mother a sour look. “Maman, you can’t just walk in wherever you like, you know.”
Judging from the sharp look aimed at Ree, her mother highly disagreed. “Come, we’ve business in the city.” Marie cast a look toward the silk partition where Anabelle was quickly pulling on her robe. “Out. Now.”
Half-robed and clutching her gown in her arms, Anabelle scampered from the room.
“Must you insist on ruining all of my fun, Mother?” Ree tossed offthe silk sheets, stretching with all the leisure of a cat sunning itself. Marie flicked a finger, and a robe clothed Ree.
“For God’s sake, you heedless child, if you insist on lying with whores in the dark of night, at least have the decency to dress yourself by the light of day.”
“Oh, I forgot, you’re the great Marie Laveau, the ever-pious saint who never sinned a day in her life,” Ree retorted with a roll of her eyes. Although she’d only meant to tease, her mother fell silent, dark eyes studying her.
Sometimes, when her mother would stare at her with that faraway look, it was easy to imagine the person Marie Laveau had been before she’d become the Quarter Queen. But there were times when Ree swore that her mother seemed…bewilderedto see her, as if she’d suddenly come face-to-face with her younger self. A self she had no desire to ever, ever recall again.
Even Ree could admit she was Marie’s copy in nearly every way. There were differences, of course, little tells. If Marie Laveau the First was the sun, golden-skinned and dark eyes fiercely blazing, then Marie Laveau the Second was the night star. She was darker than her mother in complexion, her brown skin more copper than gold, her eyes darker and more feline, her hair a smoky tangle of unruly curls and coils that shrouded her face in a black veil.
Marie turned on her heel and swept out the door, then paused, her profile crowned in the muted gold light of morning. “Oh, and Ree?”
“Yes, my queen?”
Her mother turned, and the look on her face stopped Ree cold. It was undeniably and completely full of old regret. For that one moment, it was as if she were staring at a different woman. And perhaps she was. “You needn’t worry, child,” said Marie, her voice strangely quiet. “I’ve sinned plenty.”
Ree followed her mother deeper into the madness of the Quarter day market. The French Quarter had many names: theVieux Carréto the Creoles, theQuartierto the Frenchmen and Cajuns, thehotboxto the slaves. They had plenty of names for her mother too. TheQuarter Queen, yes. Priestess. And others not so benevolent. Witch. Demoness. Traitor. Ree supposed it was that one that hurt her mother the most—traitor.Because, according to her mother, it was also true. Some were bold enough to shout these names at her as she passed, heckling from the safety of their balconies. But Marie paid them no mind and continued past the moneyed men in tall hats who strolled the banquettes, the ladies on their arms who twirled their parasols coquettishly and flicked open their silk fans to gape at the Laveaus.
Though it was late winter, snow would not touch these parts, unlike the states farther upriver. Today the sun was hot and gleaming, and the only sense of chill in the air was one of anticipation for the coming of Mardi Gras, which would soon see the whole of the city in debaucherous chaos. Ree followed her mother beneath black ironwork terraces twisting like cobwebs overhead, where the creole bourgeoisie sipped mugs of steaming chicory coffee and picked at beignets dusted in sugar and jam, trading the day’s gossip. Clapboard storefronts and marigold-colored shotgun homes slouched together like drunken friends. Bartering echoed from a maze of merchant stalls, English and French running together into one jumbled note. Any other day, Ree might have stopped and indulged herself in the market’s wonders: spices piled into silver trays, spools of silk and damask, crates of goods unknown.
As they walked side by side, Ree waited for the speech on civility and manners she knew was surely coming, but Marie remained silent.
“Rumor has it you were busy last night,” Ree finally said.
Marie cast her a sidelong look. “Apparently you were too. Tell me, daughter, do you ever grow tired of spending your nights with canal rats?”
“And you spent the night speaking with a demon. Perhaps I should be the one questioningyou,Mother.”
Marie drew in a sharp breath. “Ree.Not everything is the game you make it out to be.”
“Sure it is. And I’d wager I had considerably more fun.” She paused, then said, “I know what the demon told you. Of the Har—”
The word stuck in her throat, her mother’s power flaring.
“Not here” is all she said.
The pressure on her vocal cords relaxed, and Ree rubbed her neck, scowling at her mother. They continued on in silence, leaving the worst of the crowd behind on Bourbon Street, walking farther until they turned onto Royal Street where the market was a bit quieter. Even during the day, the Quarter was a feast for the senses: Enterprising slaves sold their own wares on the side, peddling their stitchwork and calas cakes, and Voodoos plied their trade for a bit of coin—old ladies in rough-spun purple and gold turbans who read fates into the cards, bartered gris-gris bags to hex a wayward husband back home, and sold dried chicken feet as charms of protection. The Voodoos each nodded to Marie as she pressed on, paying silent homage to their Quarter Queen.
“Change one thing into another, come see a show of magic from the pale hand of a brother!” shouted a tall, silvery-haired man from a wooden stall to a group of white ladies, who covered their giggling with daintily gloved hands. He made a show of waving his ash-wood staff, which he used to turn a bucket of stale water into sweet wine, then dipped a golden chalice and drank deeply from his handiwork. A member of the Brotherhood of the White Hand, infamous alchemists who practiced the arcane magic of transmutation. Ree wanted to retch at his pompous air.
Never one to be outdone by the Voodoos, the Brotherhood had set up grand stalls along the road draped in their customary colors of dreary black and bone white, where their initiates performed parlor tricks meant to drum up business and steer the poor fools to their headquarters, the illustrious Ivory Hall, which expressly forbid any person of color—magical-blooded or not—fromeverentering. The Brotherhood’s infamous pale handprint was everywhere upon the face of the city, if you knew where to look—in the grand steamboats that carried the wealthy back and forth down the rolling blue of the Mississippi River, in the common household cauldron that could multiply a meal by two. New Orleans gladly welcomed the innovation the Brotherhood’s alchemy brought to its markets, so long as it stayed within the narrow limits of what was deemed “safe.” But ask any slave in New Orleans for the truth—Brotherhood magic would never be safe for folks like them.
To Ree’s surprise, her mother approached the alchemist and looked over his strange arrangement of concoctions set in smoking alembics and cast-iron cauldrons that gurgled and bubbled like the world’s worst stew.
“Make your request known,” said the alchemist without looking up from stirring a strange green mixture in one of his pots.
“Two coffees.” Marie set down a generous heap of coin, although they could order café au lait from the Pint & Pea just one step over on Canal Street. Ree couldn’t help but marvel at her mother, who ordered from a rival alchemist no differently than how she might instruct one of her acolytes to fetch a bag of bones for her.
Eyes still trained on his mixture, the alchemist made a motion with his staff. With a flash of black smoke, two tins of water changed into hot coffee right before their eyes. Made the creole way, of course—full of warm sweet milk and earthen chicory.
Only when he passed both cups to Marie, who gave Ree hers with a warning look that saidwatch and learn,did he see the waiting brown hand in front of him. Instantly, his mouth flattened into a sneer. “Marie Laveau,” the alchemist said with an air of express distaste. “Bartering with the Brotherhood is illegal to your kind, witch. You might believe your juju magic makes you above the rules, but you ought to do the fair thing and follow them too.”
