“Perhaps you need to learn to love yourself more.”You could have loved me more,his eyes said. Or perhaps she was still a lovesick fool, imagining things that were not there. Things that had never been.
The door swung open, and Father Antoine stepped through. The alarm on his face was more emotion than Ree had ever glimpsed in the old priest, more than she’d ever thought he might feel forsomeone like her, a heathen and a heretic. “What in God’s name have you done? Enough! Henryk, enough! Let the girl go!”
Henryk rose to his feet. Antoine moved past him to Ree and quickly undid her bindings. He helped Ree to stand, her legs uncertain beneath her. She panted, weak with relief. The aurum had made her dizzy and depleted her magic. When she looked up, Henryk had paused in the doorway, only his profile facing her, a single cold gray eye peering down at her, alchemical and all-seeing.
“You should have let me die that day, Ree,” he murmured, a strange husk to his voice. Some hint of old emotion. “I am the same as Marcel, in a way. An undead thing of a different kind. You didn’t bring back a man. You brought back a monster.”
Ree stared at him, quiet. Although he’d meant this little interrogation to pry truths from her, at last she’d pried one from him. This was the truth. Or maybe it didn’t have tobe.
“No. You’rewrong,” Ree said, voice soft. “I brought you back because you were worth saving.”And even after everything, you are worth saving now.
Father Antoine stepped in front of Ree, his lined face set into one of grave seriousness. “I bid you leave her be, Inquisitor, and go from here!”
“Good.” Henryk slid that horrid black mask back into place. “We’re finished.”
He disappeared into the shadowed halls. When Antoine released her, Ree was shaking. Fire burned in her throat, a knot that ached and trembled. She’d held herself together as much as she could before Henryk’s best efforts to break her, but she knew some part of it had worked. Some part of her had broken after all.
“There, there, child. It’s all right.”
“No!” Ree wrenched herself away from him. None of this was all right. It might never be again.
She would not stoop so low as to be consoled by some guilt-ridden holy man. Antoine and his empty sermons and benedictions. Well, he was no more than a fraud on a street corner running a con like the rest. How could her mother not see him for what he was? Or maybe she was a hypocrite too. Maybe the goodness hermother believed Antoine held was the same as the goodness she’d glimpsed in Henryk, the goodness she hoped might still be there deep down. But now, after this?
She hadn’t realized that tears had been building in her all along, stuck to the back of her throat. “Do you agree with this, Antoine? You claim to love my mother.”
“I do,” he said quietly. “I love Marie like one of my own.”
“Do you want to know what I think? I think you are a goddamned hypocrite! An old man who feels sorry for himself that he chose the wrong side, but you’re too weak to change it.”
“Youmust change it, Marie Laveau the Second. You must be a catalyst for change as I believed your mother might be. You must have Marie’s faith, child.”
Marie’s faith?What good would that do her? There was no saving grace in this city, and if there were, God hadn’t seen fit to spare it on the likes of her.
“Whatever has happened to him, whatever dark thing he has become…just know that I don’t blame him, not completely. I blameyou.That faith you speak of? That corrupted him into what he is now. Tell me, will God forgive you for that in the end, old man?”
Furious, she felt the magic flood behind her eyes, the face of Voodoo that terrified so many others. But not Antoine. He was not terrified, only silent. Always so pathetically silent.
“Let us see where all of that contrition is now,” she spat.
Ree pushed past him. She was done with this. She needed to find Marie Laveau’s memory of her Veil magic, the final piece of this wretched puzzle. For her mother’s sake, and for her own.
Chapter Twenty
Marie
Marie and Jon stood hand in hand before a towering white mausoleum. There were many others like this one; the cemetery was filled with them now. Every moneyed man desired one, a final resting place that saidLook, see the weight of my silver.The thought almost made Marie laugh. Silver would do them no good where they were going.
Marie pulled her cloak tighter against the chill of night. Even during the day, in the bristling heat, St. Louis Cemetery could be an exceptionally cold place. The city of the dead. The spirits grew restless on this land, eager to speak their riddles, their curses. One such spoke to Marie now.Priestess,a voice hummed in her ear.Hypocrite,said another. Marie ignored them.
Jon moved a hand in the air, and the mausoleum slowly opened, the ground trembling. He motioned for Marie to follow him inside. But as they stepped into the darkness, Marie saw it was empty. There was no casket.
“What is this place?”
“This was to be my final resting place.” His lips turned into a wicked grin. “My tomb. When I first challenged Sanite for her rule, she did not take well to my threats. The venerable Quarter Queen built this place as a warning: that if I should challenge her, shewould kill me where I stood. But I learned to embrace my reputation among the Voodoos, and I grew to like it a little.” He shrugged. “Turns out the dead aren’t such bad company after all.”
Dark flowers twisted along the stone walls. Marie plucked one from the darkness, held it in her hand. It pulsed with power, dark red veins running along the petals.
“Conjurer Root,” Jon explained. “Think of it as a key. Not a door.” He plucked the flower from Marie’s hand, twisted its strange dark blossoms softly between his fingers as if he were admiring a treasured pet. “The root is a conduit to the Lord of Death. Baron Samedi. Those that have its power may resurrect the dead through the Baron. But his magic comes at a cost, and resurrecting life through this means may very well drain your own. By this magic alone, I would not be able to raise an army of zombi, not on my own. My life force is not yet strong enough.”
