“I think all we’ve been doing is lying to each other.”
He leaned forward with frightening speed, his arms pressed on either side of her chair. Ree stared into the black mask, the face that was not a face at all but the horrible visage of a red-cloaked demon. “Out of respect for our friendship when we were children, I have tried to be patient with you, witch. But you are out of time. You created the living undead before the public. Do you not think word has already spread around the city? Do you not think every friar, every priest and nun has written to the Vatican of your accused heresy?”
“I do not care what the Vatican thinks.” Capture made her bold. Or maybe it was the fear snaking its way through her belly.
“Oh, but you should. You see, because of your little stunt, the Church has sent a Tribunal of Inquisitors across the sea. They come to New Orleans as we speak. And these are not kind men.”
“Do you believe yourself a kind man, Henryk?”
“Do you admit to committing necromancy, Marie Laveau the Second?”
“We do not call it necromancy in our culture. So, I cannot call my magic a name I do not accept from a religion I do not believe in.” She was bluffing, but it was buying her only meager time. “But if I did, surely you must know that it was that same power that brought you back from the cusp of death too.”
It wasn’t quite the same. Henryk hadn’t been dead yet, not fully. But he’d been slipping into its dark folds, and she’d found a way to reel him back to the land of the living.
“Maybe,” Ree said quietly, “you should write that down in your little book too, and givethatto the Vatican.”
“There may yet be a way for both of us to get what we want.”
Ree hesitated before asking, “And how might we do that?”
A minute passed, then another. He stared at her from the gaunt holes of the black lacquered mask, and she found it terrifying she had no idea what he may be thinking. And then he did something she did not expect him todo.
Henryk knelt in front of her, then slowly took the mask off.
His face was before hers, so close they might kiss. Close enough that she could smell the soap on his skin, the almond oil in his hair, see the lighter flecks of flinty color around the center of his irises. It was hard to look at him and not see the boy he had been, the boyshe had once so innocently loved. He was Henryk again. Her Henryk, if she could call him that. Or maybe this was another one of his tactics to pry information from her at any cost.
“Give me your mother,” he said coldly. “The Harbinger names a Laveau witch. When the tribunal arrives, we can attribute whatever magic you performed to your mother’s influence. They would question you for a time. But you would be let go with your life intact. This is the only move you have left, Ree.”
He is trying to spare you. Because he cares about you,a voice said. But then reality set in, cold and unforgiving. No, he cared for his position, to sew up the bleeding before she caused any more damage. And if he did care, if some small part of him had revived some warmth of feeling for her, then it was surely not enough. Not nearly enough.
“And my mother? What would become of her?” But she knew. She would meet a fiery end on a stake. “They would kill her.”
“Better her than you, Ree.”
Oh, she was Ree now, was she? She had not been Ree to him in many years. She was simply a witch in his way, another heretic he could do away with.
When Ree said nothing, she could tell something in him changed. For a moment the room was silent, and they could hear only the hushed singing of the nuns in the sanctuary, their voices wafting eerily into the space between them. A dark cloud passed over his features, and what she saw before her now was a face more frightening than the black mask.
“Do you want to know what will happen to you when they take you?” he asked softly. Her heart struck a jagged rhythm. “You will be arrested and held in darkness. This will go on for a day, two, or ten. You will not know because there will be no light. No windows. Only you and the darkness you have brought upon yourself. And then they will come for you. They will undress you, force you naked in a room full of wonderfully inventive contraptions. And they will torture you with them. All manner. All means. And then, finally, because your body cannot handle the pain, you will confess. But by then it will be too late, and you will have begged for death.”
The Inquisitor’s words took frightening shape before her like aheinous Quarter puppet show. By the loa, shewasterrified. And yet she forced herself to speak anyway. “And will you be the one to torture me, Henryk?”
Something in his eyes softened, and she knew it was not a part of their game. It was the human part of him rising to the surface, clawing to get out. And it did not matter, she understood at last. This was who he was now. “I would hope not,” he answered, his voice taking on a strange note. And then that tender glimpse vanished, his face cool stone before hers. “Where is your mother? Where is Marie Laveau?”
Ree remained silent. The bindings tightened around her arms, squeezing painfully. The chair was alive, sentient with alchemy. It squeezed her flesh until she saw black spots dance in her vision. And still she did not answer.
“I’m going to ask you one more time:Where. Is. Marie. Laveau?”
“Away from the likes of you fucking hypocrites!” she spat.
“Do you want to know why I knew you weren’t coming that day on that bridge, Ree? Because ofher.It was always her. The great Marie Laveau. More titan than mother. Her influence is so tangled up in you, you don’t even know where you begin and where she ends.”
“Stop it.”
His eyes flashed, cold steel that cut right through her, down to the quick. “But it’s the truth, isn’t it? Even if you despised her control. Even if you longed for your own choices. Even as Marie sought to maneuver every aspect of your life for you, you could never leave her, could you?” Was this the Inquisitor talking? Or was this Henryk Broussard, the quiet altar boy she’d saved with a kiss?
“Because she is my mother, Henryk. And I love her.”
