He tapped the wooden signpost hanging overhead with the end of his staff. It readTransforma, Transcende, Progredere!Transform, transcend, progress! The alchemical creed of the Brotherhood, stamped on their every invention and muttered by giddy tourists and locals alike. It was a grim reminder to Ree that none of their progress included crossing racial lines.
“Fairthing?” Her mother laughed. “You mean the very same rules that dictate you imbecile men use wooden sticks for conduits and swap bodily fluid with a goat, yet you can’t share a fountain with a negro man?” The smile vanished from Marie’s face, leaving only cold regard. “So, spare me your righteous, pathetic indignation, you half-wit of an alchemist.”
His pale cheeks flamed red as he struggled to summon a proper retort, the silence stretching. Ree almost felt bad for the fool—her mother’s tongue could curse without ever uttering a single spell.
“There is one more thing. I have a message.” Marie took a terse sip of her coffee. “For the Grand Wizard.”
All that whiskey the night beforehadadmittedly muddled Ree’s mind, but she was sober enough now. Had Marie Laveau just propositioned an audience with the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood? The very same fraternal order that made it their business to shun the magic of Voodoo? And Silas Favreau was no cheap parlor magician. Under his command as the Grand Wizard, the Brotherhood had emerged to the forefront of innovation and commerce, making New Orleans one of the most magically advanced cities in the South, ahead of even the likes of Birmingham and Atlanta. Gaining his audience was no easy thing for anyone, she’d heard.
Yet Marie stood unfazed, lips stretching into that perfect smile Ree knew so well. Now she understood. Her motherwantedRee to see the true nature of Quarter politics at play. Marie reached into her satchel, retrieving a square envelope affixed with her serpentine L-shaped dark violet wax seal.
The alchemist scoffed. “And I’d like to afford a week of Madame Monet’s loving in my bed, but tough shit for the both of us. Queen of the Quarter or not, Silas willnevertake a message from the likes of you.”
“Won’t he?” Marie asked softly. There was the slightest suggestion of danger, the rattle of a snake slowly rising in high grass. “Refuse me. Go on, do it. But I have heard your master has quite the nasty temper. For my kind and foryours.Let us see which he hates more: my color or your glaringly predictable incompetence. Hm?”
The alchemist blanched to the roots of his silvery hair. Ree could see him struggle to make the mental calculation. But whatever he weighed in that narrow mind tallied in Marie’s favor, because after a tense moment, he silently took the envelope and pocketed it in his dark spangled robes, taking great care not to touch her as he did.
“Merci,” said Marie coldly, then turned away, gesturing for Ree to follow.
When they were far enough out of earshot, Ree rounded on her mother. “And what exactly was that?”
“What was necessary.”
“Oh, because that clears everything up. You tell me to follow the rules, and there you go breaking them—”
“There is a time for following rules and there is a time for breaking them.” Her mother adjusted her golden turban. “Maturity is all about knowing the difference, daughter.”
Ree realized their path had taken them to the narrow brick road leading up to St. Louis Cathedral, its high walls and steeples towering in the midday sun. In her youth it had seemed like an enchanted castle ripped from the gold-leafed pages of one of her storybooks, its stucco façade sun-bleached and worn, the noisy clamor of its pealing bells reverberating like thunder beneath her feet. But that was before she’d learned that there was no magic in these hallowed walls, nor in the holy men who dwelled within them. The true magic of New Orleans lived in its people, not in a little book with archaic rules.
Without a word, Marie strode toward the cathedral’s front doors. Ree let out a frustrated huff at her mother’s retreating back. “Where are you going?”
Marie spared a withering look over her shoulder. “Wait here, and for the love of the saints, stay out of trouble.”
“I make no such vow!” Ree called, but her mother had already swept inside the cathedral’s giant wooden doors.
Ree needed answers, and she was going to get them. If there was talk of demons and Harbingers, she could be sure that her mother would turn to the one man who would know best on the subject: the priest of the parish, the venerable Father Antoine.
Once she was sure her mother was a safe enough distance away, Ree silently slipped into the cathedral’s cool gloom. Her eyes darted around the sanctuary, to the ceiling painted in heavenly clouds and bishops and kings; the little candles that were burning down to their wicks, casting spectral shapes against ruby stained-glass windows; the rows of dark wooded pews where men of science and learned books mingled with the holy and the magical, heads bowed in silent prayer and contemplation.
Every Sunday, in these hallowed halls, Marie Laveau too could be seen consulting her saints. Her dueling faiths as a devout Catholic and a Voodoo Priestess had certainly confused many of herenemies and followers. Other Voodoos had followed in her footsteps and attended mass by day and conducted their own rituals by night. But not Ree. How could she be any good at serving a god she could not see or hear when she was still having trouble serving the Voodoo gods who were as real to her as the ground beneath her feet, the sun in the sky? She didn’t know much about the goings-on of religion outside of New Orleans—mostly because she had never stepped foot outside the city—but outsiders who came down on the steamboats were aghast at New Orleans’s rampant spiritual mixing, so different from the ways in which Christianity was practiced in the rest of the South. Ree had heard of the white Baptist preachers in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi spewing the coming of brimstone and damnation, the separate churches and back rows for blacks and coloreds.
But that was not New Orleans. While Christianity was certainly upheld in the city, woven, in fact, into its very fabric—into the many holidays and observances and festivities—Voodoo had mixed itself into its blood. Curiously, Father Antoine welcomed Voodoos into the fold, much to the dismay of his religious superiors (some even said the Pope himself). Would he still welcome them now, Ree wondered, even with talk of a demonic Harbinger? Since Ree was a child, her mother had sought Père Antoine’s council on numerous occasions. Ree had made it something of a game—as she did all things—to eavesdrop on their conversations when the opportunity presented itself. She slipped into a small broom closet adjacent to Antoine’s private quarters and pried the old wooden slat away, revealing a small wedge. She peered inside, seeing first her mother, pacing the length of the room, uncharacteristically upset, then Antoine himself. Her mother had said he had been quite fetching once, but now he was a frail old man, tall and thin, with snow-white hair that fell to his collar and a pallid complexion that suggested he hadn’t seen the sun in some time.
“Of course I have heard,” Antoine was saying. “The discussions of demons are well within my purview.”
Marie reeled away from him. “How can you jest about this, Antoine? There has not been a Harbinger spoken in seventy years.” A pause. “Surely you know what this must mean.”
This drew a grim nod from the priest. “They said the work of the first Holy Inquisition was never finished.”
Ree inhaled sharply. Talk of the Inquisition was rare. Not one person of magical blood was eager to summon the terror of its name. The First Holy Inquisition had been before her mother’s time, seventy-two years ago, under the order of the Spanish monarchy, who had seized control of New Orleans from the French, keen to see heretics and witches scourged from their newly acquired and very profitable land in the New World, all with the Pope’s blessing. They had succeeded too. The first Quarter Queen had been set to flame on a pyre.
“What will the Church’s answer be?” Marie demanded. “Antoine, Imustknow.”
Father Antoine paused. “There is talk of a tribunal forming.”
Ree watched her mother’s dark eyebrows draw together, the look of desperate calculation in her eyes. It was not like her mother to be afraid of anything, least of all the Church. “You must delay their coming,” Marie said at last. “Antoine,please.I would need time to gather protections for my people. For my daughter.”
“You overestimate my abilities, dear one. As you always have.” A note of fondness in his voice, the barest touch of a smile. “I am but a lowly priest, my child. But for you, I will try. Although it is not the threat of an Inquisition that ails you so, is it, Marie? It is Jon.”
