“Marcel…?”
He was coming straight for her. Each step wooden, an unnatural contortion of limbs. Ree felt suddenly very dizzy, her head ringing. Still, she couldn’t move, couldn’t bring herself to utter a single spell. And what magic would she call upon? Her mother had never prepared her forthis.
People ran by her, screaming. Even among the Voodoos, this was not the magic they had expected. She caught Father Antoine’s eye from across the crowd. Not horrified like the rest. Worry churned in those eyes. Eyes that were old enough to have beheld the bloody work of the First Holy Inquisition, to have seen before the result of such magic, the dark path where it would surely lead again.
“Move!”
Ree felt a whoosh—then was flung to the ground.
Henryk shot in front of her, and in one thrust, he sent the zombi back into the flames of the pyre. That thin, groaning sound stretched out into the dusky air, a sound of utter pain that gnawed through Ree’s chest and right into her heart. Tearfully, she watched that dead thing twist and twist upon the roaring fire until it burned down to ash and became nothing at all right before her eyes.
Numbly, Ree struggled to her feet. The world was spinning in a maddening blur. Smoke filled the clearing, blanketing everything in its path. She couldn’t tell up from down; nothing made sense.
Through the twisting red flames, Henryk was staring at her, coldly appraising.
His face had changed again—as if he’d come to some grim resolve. It was, Ree recognized with a stab of fear, the face of a hunter. Her eyes dropped to the fire, to the last of Marcel withering away. Then Ree realized—shehad done this, performed this forbidden magic. The Harbinger was slowly but surely coming true.
And so it shall be: A Laveau witch’s reign will raise hell upon the earth. From its gates, the damned will return.
Ree slowly met Henryk’s gaze through the fire.
This was her sin. And the Inquisitor had realized it too.
Chapter Eighteen
Marie
Magic had changed Jon’s face again, this time into the shape of a monster she’d thought herself rid of many, many years ago.
It was the face of the one who had left her first, whose absence had marked her soul with a terrible brand of loneliness. Her mother. When Jon’s face had changed again and taken on the shape of Marguerite Darcantrel, she couldn’t bear it. Flashes of her mother’s face came back to her—that eerie smile from behind that long black veil, the shape of her sinking into the shadows. Would she ever be free of that terrible night on the steamboat?La Lunemight never let hergo.
“Enough!” Marie snapped. “I said enough!”
She crashed her own magic into the illusion, smashing it in the moonlight, bits of silver floating away in the bayou wind and into the ragweed and trees. Marie was on her knees, panting. Although Jon held nothing back in their lessons, she found this one to be particularly cruel, worse even than when he had pretended to be Jacques.
“What do you fear, Marie?” asked Jon quietly.
He knelt beside her, lifting her chin so that she was gazing into his eyes. So very gentle he had become with her in these last fewblessed weeks, so gentle those golden eyes had been when she was gazing down at them in the dark, astride him.
“Tell me, what do you fear, Marie?” he repeated. “Those fears will be made manifest when you open the door to death if you do not learn to conquer them now. The loa do not respect any show of weakness. You cannot demand them to change the course of death if you haven’t conquered your own life.”
His words circled in her head, a maddening riot of sound.What do you fear, Marie?But he knew. He had seen inside her mind, had made himself privy to the dark thoughts and fears she kept hidden away. The steamboat had seen inside of her too, hadn’t it? It had gazed into the dark of her heart. And it had wanted more.
“I thought…I thought I wasn’t afraid of that monster anymore,” said Marie finally.
“That wasn’t the face of a monster, love.” His hands moved to her shoulder, slowly caressing the bare skin where the sleeve of her dress had slipped.
Oh, yes it was, a different kind of monster altogether. “It was my mother.”
“Ah,” said Jon. His grip on her shoulder tightened. “The curse of family.”
Sometimes it did feel like Marie’s family had been cursed. Marie was the first in her family to have been born free. Both her mother and her grandmother had not been so fortunate. Grand-mère had bought her freedom, of course, toiled off her debt in the sun until Corbin’s father had turned her free. Didn’t know what he had in her bloodline, because if he had, he would never have let her go so easily. Her mother had a tryst with a mulatto freedman, Charles Laveau, and birthed Marie shortly after. Because her mother was newly freed, so was she. It was the one good thing her mother had given her—freedom.
“She left me, Jon,” said Marie finally. “She left because I was too much, much more than she bargained for. My grandmother didn’t havethisstrength of magic. My mother didn’t either. So she had no reason to believe her daughter might. But I did. And I…couldn’t control it.”
Marie was barely five when her mother had left her with Grand-mère. Said she wasn’t right for motherhood, didn’t have theknackfor it, as if it were simply a card trick you could learn on a street corner. Truth was, she’d been afraid of Marie, of the strange happenings around her, the magic in her eyes, the spirits that whispered from every dark room. She let her go. Went to chase her freedom. Marie had sworn if she was ever to be a mother, she would not do the same.
And so, Marie had learned to hide herself, to make her magic smaller. To make herself smaller. But that did not help, did it? People still laughed at her, whispered about her behind her back during mass and in the dusty roads of the corner markets, jeered at her on the street.Such a strange, strange girl,they’d sneered. And then, years later, Grand-mère had passed on, leaving Marie with no one to guide her, to shape this strange magic.
