She felt another power surging through her. A vibrant anger she could not stamp down to ash. It wanted to be let out, to burn free.
And yet, the spell died on Ree’s lips. She lowered her hands. “Goddamn you.”
“I warned you to make an alliance, little girl. But you did not listen.”
She was reminded of the words he’d spoken to Marie when he’d betrayed her in that moonlit glade.I told you, didn’t I, Marie? I warned you. Turn your heart to stone. And you did not listen.
Music started up again, louder, as a second procession of dancers and revelers made its way down the thick of Royal Street. Silas pointed his staff at her.
“Mutatio,” he whispered.
Her throat began to close—it was as if someone had stuffed hot wool inside her mouth, crushing her magic down to dust on her tongue. The tissue inside her mouth had begun to sew itself up. Ree screamed, but only a dry sob escaped. Outside, the notes swelled, rising to meet her pain, her cries swallowed beneath the maddening music of a city whose song would never die.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Marie
It was Marie’s worst fear come alive—to be shackled. No, to beowned.And that was exactly what she was now, wasn’t she? The iron manacle hanging from her neck was proof.
They’d fitted her with a collar heavy enough for an ox, with enough aurum for at least three men.Like a dog,Marie thought.Like a fucking dog.
Marie flexed her fingers, the flesh still burned and reddened from where she’d touched the aurum. They’d left them unbound. She’d half expected to have woken up in the Brotherhood’s dungeons, or one of their laboratories. But she’d been promised to someone else—the hangman. She looked around, her cell a small, lightless thing. This was the jailhouse. When she’d first started making her rounds as a plague nurse some years ago, she’d made it a habit to stop here, to treat the worst of the city’s victims, those cutpurses and murderers and cons. Not even Sanite had understood.Why bother, when they are already dead?But Marie had only smiled.Because being dead and being doomed are not the same.
But now she felt herself doubting those words. How naïve she’d been, so eager to please, so sure of her own power and gifts. But her brief glimpse of motherhood had shown her different. Without her daughter, she would be as good as walking death on two legs. If shesurvived this whole ordeal and her baby didn’t? Well, death and doom would be one and the same now.
Footsteps clattered along in the darkness, drawing near. Marie sat up, forced herself to gather some semblance of courage.Turn your heart to stone.Light flooded her cell, and suddenly Marie was staring at three leering police officers.
“My, my, look here, the great Marie Laveau saddled like a horse.” The officer let out a whooping laugh, his men joiningin.
Marie swallowed down the sting of humiliation. Her pride would not help her tonight. “Are you always so eager to see a woman in chains?”
His eyebrows rose. “You’d be surprised, Laveau. My momma always said don’t go askin’ questions if you ain’t prepared for the answers. And you”—his eyes flickered over Marie’s dirtied frame—“surely don’t want the answer to that.”
“What have I done? Tell me, what is my crime?” she demanded. “Will there at least be a trial?”
“No time for all that. So, I’d reckon no. There’s an insurrection waging in the streets. The good folks of New Orleans are eager to have order restored. Everything back to the way it was.” The officer sneered, having taken her silence for surrender. “I’ll see you at dawn, witch.” He turned and left, his men following, except for one. The officer lingered behind, holding on to the bars of her cell with both hands.
“They say you’re the next Quarter Queen.” The man pressed his face against the bars of her cell. “You think yourself a queen, do you? And what do you rule, exactly? A bunch of juju negroes already owned by another?”
Marie turned to face him, considering him in the weak light of the lantern that swayed in his hand. She knew what he wanted—it was what Corbin wanted, what theyallwanted from her in some way or another. They wanted her magic. No, not the garden variety of spells or hexes she could cast with a single breath. They wanted her real craft, her power, her innermost light. Marie smirked. Well, they could keep wanting. That she would never give.
“If you are a queen, then where is your crown, your majesty? Is that dirty little rag on your head supposed to be it?” He laughed ather, eyes flickering dismissively to the cloth tignon on her head. Her simple cloth of rough cotton was certainly not the golden crown of the Quarter Queen, but Marie was not one to be mocked.
She watched him silently. Something about her gaze must have unnerved him, for his laughter soon quieted. He spat into her cell. “You’ll hang by dawn, Laveau. And after, you’re going to hell, witch.”
She very well might, this was true. But it wouldn’t be for her magic.
Moonlight fell through the little box of a window, casting silver puddles onto the floor of Marie’s cell. Her magic was as good as dead with the aurum around her neck.
There was one last hope, one last ritual she could try. Conduction. Different from the kind Jon had used in his ritual, this was gentler magic, the magic born of the natural tether between mother and child, a magic that didn’t require an ounce of her own, magic not even aurum could stop. Marie cast a silent prayer to her saints and closed her eyes.
Marie,she called into the darkness.Marie…
And when she opened her eyes, she was in a different room altogether. The world was mostly formless and blurry, but there were shapes drifting into view. Faces, Marie supposed. Which could mean only one thing…
She was seeing with her daughter’s eyes. Gailon’s face floated into view, and a surge of anger burst forth in Marie’s chest. The connection wobbled. The world went dark. Marie took a breath and held the connection steady. The time for retribution would come. But now she couldn’t stop the fear. She could handle this cell, these men, but the thought of her little baby facing the very same…
Marie’s stomach lurched. Gailon was facing her, which meant he was facing her daughter. Something flickered overhead—his staff. Dark green light glowed from the end of it. He took aim, pointing it directly at her…
