“You are a tool to them, child. A weapon. A useless weapon, but a weapon all the same. You can’t stop what’s coming. The Inquisition will return to this city, as the Lord of Chains has decreed, and the streets will run with blood, and we will drink of it. That blood will be on your hands, Marie Laveau the Second, but do not fear.” It smiled, that tongue flicking like the thundercrack of a whip. “We shall gladly lick every last drop from them too.Allow me to show you.”
The demon seized Ree, and at once she saw a flood of horrendous images before her:Rows of charred corpses hanging limp on jutting spikes. Nan. Ory. Fabrice. Claudette. Brotherhood. Countless Les Magiques dead.Jeering crowds, faces twisted cruelly as they hurled stones and curses at long processions of heretics being marched to their doom. The black-lacquered faces of Inquisitors watching through twisting dark smoke.
And through the smoke she saw the most horrifying image of them all—herself.
There she was, Marie Laveau the Second, naked and shackled before a crowd, writhing in the agony of a slow death as she burned on a pyre. And burned. And burned…
“If you open the Veil and save your mother, you will forfeit your own life,” snarled the demon. “Thisis the fate you will damn yourself to. This is what will become of you!”
A horrendous wail tore into the air, the frenzied sound of athousand animals slaughtered on stone altars for sacrifice, a chorus of torture and long suffering. The sound of the damned. It was Ree. She was screaming. She couldn’t take it anymore. But the demon held her firm, holding her in that terrible vision. Its power all-consuming.
A hand seized her by the arm, shaking her. She’d expected claws and horribly scaled flesh, but these hands were oddly warm, and very much alive.
“Come back, Ree,” a rough voice commanded. “Come back to me.”
Come back to me.Those had been her first words to Henryk Broussard, the words she’d used to coax him back to life. It was Henryk Broussard who spoke them to her now.
But she couldn’t come back. It was as if she were split between two places at once, in that terrible vision of sulfur and ash and fire, and now in the tomb with Henryk. She was caught between them, and they both pulled at her, threatening to tear her in two.
Henryk was shaking her fiercely now. “Damn it, Ree!Wake the hell up!You’re going to die! The demon is possessing you!”
And then his lips were upon hers. It felt like a stroke of lightning had hit her right in the spine, the feeling traveling down through her blood and into her bones. It was torture. It was heaven. She drank from his power greedily, stealing it for her own. Somewhere in the midst of her muddled thoughts, Ree understood what he was doing, what shouldn’t be possible. But she felt herself kissing him back, channeling that dark feeling into her body, giving her strength.
Ree’s eyes flew open, and the nightmare shriveled away at last. The demon was gone. The tomb was empty, and she was on the ground, kneeling in the darkness. Henryk had folded his arms around her, holding her close, interlacing his hand in hers. Ree’s eyes fluttered, sleep creeping over her vision.
“What was that?” she whispered. He’d given her something of his own, enough to fight the demon off. Something an Inquisitor of the Church should never possess. Ree slumped against him, fighting back the weight of darkness tugging at her.
Through the fog, she saw that his eyes were alight. Not gray, but silver.
He smiled. “It was magic, of course.”
And then the Inquisitor lifted her into his arms, and she allowed herself to drift away into the blessed quiet of oblivion, far away from the smell of burning flesh and bone.
Part Three
The Song of Three
Behold, child, for there exists no greater power than the magic of the trinity. For the divine, flesh, and spirit are one. And in this magic, we are made whole.
—Marie Laveau, addressing Marie Laveau the Second at her christening ceremony
Chapter Twenty-Two
Marie
In the long months since Marie had discovered she was with child, she’d done her best to prepare her body. She’d prayed fervently, ate her greens and roots and nourishing soups. She’d warded herself, made the right sacrifices at her ancestral altars. But nothing could prepare her for this.
Marie screamed. The pain itself was alive inside of her, working its way through her innards, past her organs, and against the swollen flesh of her belly. On and on it went.
She panted, her sweat-soaked cotton dress clinging to her skin. And then she pushed. The pain rippled over her in waves, this one threatening to drag her under. She couldn’t take much more.
When Marie had been with child before, she’d never carried to term. How many times had she awoken screaming, agonized by the sight of all that blood seeping down her thighs? She’d come close once, right before Jacques’s disappearance. He had been the one to wake her that night, the one who carried her to the bath and sponged the blood from between her legs and thighs. Later, he’d held her through the tears and sobs, the grief unending. But when he had gone and left her too, there had been no one to hold her fast, no one to share in her pain.
But not this time.This child would not be like the others, sheknew. She would birth her daughter. She must. Grand-mère’s old house rattled from the force of the wind. The woods were howling tonight, the spirits were talking. But what were they saying?Warnings,Marie thought.Omens.Sanite had tried to warn her too, in her own way, just as Antoine had done.
After Antoine’s warning, Marie had gone to the only mother she knew—the Quarter Queen. Marie supposed she should have been grateful Sanite had gone with her, for she didn’t think she had the strength to face Jon alone.
Jon’s mausoleum had rumbled open before them. Marie and Sanite stepped inside, churning red spheres of Ogoun’s flame conjured in both of their outstretched hands. Shadows fell across the cold stone walls. A flicker of the mural sliced through the dark: The three of them. A family.
