“Which is why you learned Veil magic.”
“Yes. If Conjurer Root is the key, then think of the Veil as the door to death, the first realm of the afterlife, the first gateway. There are seven, but that is magic you need not know. Notnow.” His eyes glittered, enlivened by their secrets.
“But you will teach me Veil magic?”
“It remains the only way. You are not suited to Conjurer Root, Marie. The Baron does not make a pact with every soul who seeks his power. You’ve too much light, my dark sun.” He closed his eyes. “Too much goodness in you for his liking. Taking Conjurer Root would only hurt you more than help. You would need to entreat Legba instead. He favors you some.”
She could sense that there was more. He turned to face her, but she could see something in him had changed. He looked less like the dark Conjurer of lore but rather like a man, humbly baring himself before her.
“I’m going to ask you something now, Marie, and I want you to answer honestly. Once I give you this power, it will be yours to wield. But I need to know.”
“You are going to make me choose.”
She had always known it would come to this. The minute she’d told him why she needed Veil magic in the first place, he’d knownher heart had belonged to another. But that hadn’t stopped her from sharing his bed. His heart. She had thought that their lessons might not turn into something more, that she could keep herself safe from this strange man. She’d been warned to be careful with him, but he’d never been warned to be careful with her, had he? Every moment spent together, every kind word, every longing glance, had stolen her away from that one little word,careful,until she was his, and he hers.
“Are you going to use the power of the Veil for Jacques Paris, or…” His eyes, molten amber, held hers, steady in the dark. “For the loa? For me?”
Silence stretched between them. If she chose Jacques as she had always intended, she would have her way. She would have accomplished her own whims just as she had set out to do. But she would lose Jon. And losing Jon now, after everything…that seemed the worst kind of pain. Worse than losing her husband. Baron Samedi himself had warned her this choice was coming, hadn’t he? That the loa would decide for her, if she could not. But she would.
“For you,” she whispered. “I think…always for you, Jon.”
She knew it was the truth the moment she said it. She felt as if she had betrayed Jacques, and maybe she had a thousand times over in Jon’s bed. But hadn’t everyone told her to let him go, to let his ghost finally,finallyrest? Perhaps she could now. Perhaps in choosing Jon, she was choosing herself, to love without consequence, without pain. Maybe now she could be done with being theWidow Paris.She could simply be Marie Laveau, and that would be enough.
He kissed her, and she tasted something different, something bitter.Something is wrong,Marie thought. But when they pulled apart, he led her by the hand to the wall farthest from the entrance to the tomb. It was too dark to see much of anything, but he guided her hand to the space in the middle.
“There is no going back,” said Jon. “You will learn this magic through touch. And you should know many have been driven mad by its power.”
A steep price to pay to learn the art of manipulating magic that belonged only to the gods. And now she understood why he had fortified her so. Why she had endured so many long moonlitlessons screaming and crying as he pried into her mind and conjured old demons. He’d been preparing her.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Marie nodded. She touched a hand to the wall. Glowing white light snaked from her palm out into a winding pattern over the wall. It was the veve of the Lord of the Crossroads, the keeper of the first gateway. Papa Legba. He Who Stands at the Beginning and the End. But the mark changed shape, turning into something she had never seen before, older magic than she had ever known, until it formed a symbol written in the Old Tongue.Open.
Bitter cold swept into the tomb, intoher.The voices of the dead whispered, louder and louder until they were crying out for release, a wretched wailing that made her quiver. But she could not give it to them.
Marie pried her hand back from the wall. It was as if it didn’t want to let her go. As if in that single space of a breath, death itself had held her hand. Marie was shaking, but Jon soothed her, wrapping her in his embrace, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“It is done,” he murmured against her ear.
When they parted, she saw the white light had crawled across the entire face of the wall, revealing a mural it had been too dark to see before. Marie could see now there was a painting of three figures, old and fading, the color bleeding from it. Shock tore through her.
She was staring directly at herself.
Marie was painted in expert brushstrokes, her wild coils falling in dark ribbons around her face, a glowing sun symbol at the center of her forehead. And to her left was Jon, a crescent moon upon his brow. And there was another, one who looked almost identical to herself, a copper star painted at the center of her brow, a mischievous light in her eyes.
“What is this?” Marie breathed.
“The old slave folk call it the Song of Three. When the first Quarter Queen, Saloppe, was burned at the pyre in the Inquisition, she spoke of a horrendous future: The Church would one day return to New Orleans, and it would wage a war upon those like us. But that is not the will of the loa. So, they convened to make their owntrinity.” Jon gestured toward the strange mural. “The sun, the moon, and the star that hangs between. The Song of Three.”
Marie stared, her mind turning back to the whispered stories of the Holy Inquisition, of the torture and darkness black folks and Les Magiques had endured. And if this Song of Three was true, would they endure it again? Surely it would not come to that. Destiny could be changed, entire futures rewritten.
“You are with child, Marie.” There was a softness to his voice, perhaps even a tremble of fear. “Ourchild.”
Marie tore her eyes from the young girl’s face to look at Jon. “A daughter?”
“Yes. A daughter.” His face bore the same old pain she’d glimpsed by the fire the night he’d told her about his origins, a tightness at his eyes that she could not yet understand.
Fear and joy filled her heart. Hadn’t she felt the earth move at their coupling, the invisible needle of fate threading one line between herself and Jon, tying them to some invisible force? It was some relief to know she had not simply imagined that divine feeling inside herself, for now she knew it was her child.Theirchild.
