With Jacques, the children would not come. Was it the gods themselves who held them back from her? Was it because of this? Was her path always meant to lead to Jon?
Marie smiled, a hand going to her belly. It was not yet round, not yet firm, but it would be.Soon.She could be done with her pain at last. For now, she had what she had always needed, what she hadn’t thought to want for herself until now. She had a family.
Marie hurried to evening mass, feeling as if her joy carried her down the road. The great blessing of a child. But something else was brewing beneath the surface, some other dark feeling. She’d felt it in their kiss, tasted as much on his tongue. She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he had told her only a piece of the truth, not the whole of it. It was that word that bothered her most:Inquisition.
That the first Quarter Queen had foretold of their coupling, oftheir child, on the stake troubled her. It was a violent prophecy born in the pain of twisting flames, a tormented purgatory between life and death. Jon was hiding something. She’d tasted lies on his tongue.No lies,they had promised each other.
Marie turned her eyes to the cathedral. And who better to seek the truth from than one who had seen the horrors of the First Holy Inquisition himself?
Marie hurriedly crossed the flagstone, careful to keep her hood drawn. She ran. Just as she always did when she was scared. She ran to Antoine, same as she had as a child, to the church, into the arms of her saints and angels. He could help her make sense of this.
Father Antoine’s chambers were guarded by two stone archangels: the sword-bearing Michael and his brother Raphael, who bore a long spear in hand. Voices drifted from the shadows. Marie stopped, concealing herself just behind a pillar. There were two men speaking in hushed voices. It was Father Antoine and…Marie’s heart stuttered—Silas.
Marie stared, finding it hard to believe this was the same quietly commanding alchemist she’d glimpsed in the flickering darkness of the steamboat’s belly. What stood before her now was a wretched thing hollowed out by the turn of his own alchemy. His face was pale, all color drawn from him.
“Silas, you mustn’t be afraid,” Father Antoine was saying. “Your soul will endure this trial.” The priest laid a hand on the wizard’s shoulder, but Silas recoiled.
“Soul?” Silas gave a half laugh, a bitter edge to the sound. All humor vanished from his voice. “Tell me, Father, whatsoul?”
Silas had a strange, faraway look in his eyes, no different from when Sanite scried into the future. But he was not seeing the future, Marie understood. It was the dark of the past.
“Nothing can take what God has given,” Antoine said. “Not even from the likes of a wretch like you.”
Nothing can take what God has given.Antoine had told her the same, many years before.
Marie had been six years old, sitting in Sunday school with the rest of the girls in her class, when she’d first seen the face of a demon. The parish’s priests and nuns could be a prickly bunch,especially when they had to endure “the Voodoo girl.” When Marie would pass them in the cathedral halls, they would whisper so that she could hear:What a strange girl. What an odd child, Marie Laveau.
Marie always knew she was different; she hardly needed the whispers of holy men to know that. Still, it hurt. Her grand-mère had always cautioned her that the bright thing that lived inside her, that ran through her blood, could be a dark thing as well. That her magic could be poisoned by the words of others if she allowed. So Marie kept her magic hidden, said her prayers, and hardened her heart. But still, they knew.
Marie had taken a piece of charcoal and began tracing. Out of the corner of her eye, a tall, oddly skeletal thing sat at the desk beside hers, next to Ginny Boudreaux, a girl who liked to put wads of honey in Marie’s hair when she wasn’t looking. It had its hands crossed politely like the rest of the girls who faced Father Antoine as he lectured on about the Book of Psalms. But there was nothing polite about this…creature, only a foul darkness that lingered in the room and began to creep into the magic Marie kept hidden away in her heart.
Marie kept tracing but now mumbled a string of prayers under her breath. She remembered Grand-mère’s warnings, to always guard her magic from those who wished to poison it. But the creature didn’t want to simply poison it—he wanted totakeit. That’s what he’d told her anyway, in a language Marie had never heard before but understood all the same. The creature was hissing, warning her of all the foul things he would do to her once she finally ceased her prayers.
Finally, the church bell tolled, signaling the end of the lesson and the beginning of midday mass. The class emptied, and the rest of the girls clamored on, all except for Marie, who remained at her desk, determined to finish her picture. She knew it was important for her to do so, though she couldn’t say exactly why.
Father Antoine stood above her, peering down over his copper spectacles. He looked first at Marie, who remained bent over her task, her fall of dark hair obscuring her work, then to the picture itself.
“Marie?” Father Antoine crouched to her height. He was as tall and spindly as a scarecrow but with eyes as warm as the hot cocoa and chicory Grand-mère made for Marie each morning.Those are kind eyes,Marie had found herself thinking. And there were so few to be found in New Orleans. “Marie, did you hear the bells?”
“No, I heard a voice.” Marie lifted the picture and showed it to the good priest.
He stared for a moment, those kind eyes going dark, seeing some deeper meaning that she could not. Then he took the page from her, eyes roving over the hideous face, the charred skin, the red eyes that sparkled like rubies from hollow sockets, the long forked tongue that hung from a lipless mouth.
“Do you know what this creature is, Marie Laveau?” asked the priest calmly. Behind him, the creature began to laugh.
“An angel.” Marie stuck her tongue out, mimicking the creature. “Not all angels are beautiful.”
“Very true, my child. Very true indeed.” He said nothing else but took her quietly by the hand and led her to the headmaster’s study in the western high tower, hurrying through the torch-lit corridors and then out across cold flagstone. When they had entered the headmaster’s quarters, Marie feared she might be expelled. What would Grand-mère think? She couldn’t afford to pay for Marie’s schooling elsewhere, and who else would take a colored girl, free or not, in their classroom?
Father Antoine pulled a large book from a locked chest at the very back of the room. When he brought it before Marie and showed her a collection of horrid faces, she suddenly understood this wasn’t a meeting to expel her from the Church. This was an invitation to go deeper.
“Is this the one that you drew, child?” he asked, tapping the face of the very same creature Marie had glimpsed in the classroom.
Marie nodded.
“And how did you come to see it?”
“It was sitting beside me.” Marie thought hard. “Well, actually, beside Ginny, but close enough that I could hear it whispering to me.”
