Ree shook her head, laughing. She couldn’t. Even if she knew how, she wouldn’t. She could feel them pulling on her life force, tugging greedily for her as an anchor. She couldn’t stop them. It was too much now. She felt herself growing weaker with every breath. The truth was, she wouldn’t last much longer. Perhaps the demon had lied. Perhaps she’d always been hurtling toward death, down Legba’s long crossroads toward Baron Samedi, and maybe she would never make it to the pyre. Maybe this was how it was meant to happen. Here, like this. At least she would die with the satisfaction that a monster like Corbin might come with her.
“You wanted a Laveau’s magic? Well, now you can have it,” said Ree, warm blood on her tongue.
He didn’t seem to understand that her magic was beyond his control because it was beyond hers now. He twisted Ree to face him, looked down at her, confused for a split second by her words.
Ree slammed her face into his, felt the bone of his nose crushing against her skin, blood spurting hot between them. He staggered backward, startled by the force, then teetered on the ledge. For one split second, it looked as if he might fall, but he caught himself on the slice of broken railing, dangling like a piece of rotten fruit againstthe night.
Ree stood over him, the hiss of the wind stinging her face, lifting the dark fall of her hair at her shoulders. Strange that such a large man should look so small now.
Staring down at him, she felt it—that thread of fate taking shape, sewing along the air, drawing a new line in the world. One choice, this choice, would change everything. Why had her mother not killed this man? Because one choice would have set off a chain reaction of other choices, consequences, deaths. Maybe she was ready to face them. Someone hadto.
Ree raised a hand in the air, using Bade’s wind to lift Corbin, his life force throbbing against her palm as she held him in the crackling grasp of her magic. Her power constricted, an unseen manacle tightening around his throat.
“Careful, little girl.” Corbin’s voice rose, trembling with fear. The iron groaned. “Mutiny has a price. You break these rules, you’re as good as dead.” His face split with rage, eyes streaked with panic. “You hear me, witch? As good asdead!”
One last appeal. He needn’t have. His fate was set. All of theirs were now.
“Respectfully, Felix.” A wicked smile pulled at Ree’s lips. “Fuck the rules.”
She made a dropping motion with her hand. And Felix Corbin plunged through the air, right over the balcony from his big house, free-falling through the starlit night and down into the dark, gaping mouth of the damned that waited for him below.
Ree watched the zombi crash over him in a crushing wave, swelling around him. His flailing limbs poked the air, twisted white thorns. The undead seized him with snarling mouths. They tore the flesh from his bones as easily as peeling a rind. In the end, they tore him down to nothing at all.
Corbin was dead. The mutiny done. But now the game had changed and set itself anew. There would be consequences. And as sure as the sun would rise, there would be a reckoning. Another sound rose above the screams, the gnashing teeth, the crackling of magic and transmutation spells being hurled into the night. Papa Legba’s laugh danced on the wind, rustling in the sugarcane, a voice only Ree could hear.Well done, Quarter Queen.
Something changed. She felt the pull of the world below, the invisible currents of fate rustling around her. She recalled her question to Papa Legba: Could one change fate?You must ask yourself, child: Do you have the power to changeit?
Ree grinned. Yes, she thought she might, after all. Maybe they all did.
Fate stitched around her, unseen hands reaching from the cosmos, rearranging the light of the stars. She felt it inside the marrow of her bones—deeper than that, down in the dark well of her spirit. It was the dance of the ancestors awakening inside her. The stir of the old gods finding their way through her blood. This was the magic of ordainment, the raw, blistering power of magic bending shape, changing hands, the anointing of a queen finally being crowned.
Below, the crowd stared up at her, an awestruck silence permeating the dark. The few Voodoos knelt. The Brotherhood stilled, alchemical sigils surrounding their pale shining heads like halos. She spotted the white circle of Henryk’s face below as he saw her with new eyes. Ree turned, saw her reflection in the looking glass that hung inside the room. Her mother’s golden cloth had spun itself into a new shape. A glowing fleur-de-lis crown.
She was the Quarter Queen, like her mother before her. Now and into the long hereafter.
Outside, the world had changed shape. What was left of Corbin’s grounds burned, the sugarcane fields transformed into a gruesome battlefield littered with slain men and curling smoke. Ree stumbled forward through the oily stench of alchemy and aurum, blood and gunpowder. She put a hand to her chest where she felt a deep shudder at her touch. There was something inside of her, something terrible that was trying its best to tear its way out. It was the magic of the Veil, she realized. Some part of it was still working its way through her, a violent deluge of a thousand cold hands clawing up from the darkness of her heart.
It was the zombi. They wereusingher. Stealing her life force to keep crossing back over. And they would not stop, Ree realized. She could not stop them. This was not the magic her mother had taught her. This was her father’s magic. And he was not here.
The ground tilted beneath her, and Ree fell, rushing to meetit—
A hand seized her from the dark, holding her up in a viselike grip.
Marie Laveau stared down at her. The widowed queen. The priestess. Her mother. Her eyes were so white they were silver, a wholly unnatural power circling around her in pulsing waves. A sun veve glowed at the center of her forehead.
“You will not die, daughter. So long as I draw breath,” she said, “I expressly forbid it.”
Marie helped Ree to her feet. Her eyes flitted over Ree, the crown on her head, and Marie smiled, tears flowing from her white eyes.Wordlessly, Ree took her by the hand. She felt the magic flow between them, easy now in a way it had never been before. She knew that whatever would come, they would face it together.
Arm in arm, Marie and Ree stepped into the chaos. But something was wrong. Very, very wrong. That dark feeling inside Ree was too much. It was clawing at her now. The voices behind the door were getting louder and louder, multiplying by the second. More undead were demanding to be let out.
Spells whizzed past her head as she and Marie made their way across the grounds. Voodoos and Brotherhood holding back Corbin’s men. Zombi trudged forward, shuffling in silence through the smoke. Ree felt them calling for her, reaching for her with rotted hands. An army of soulless creatures, listlessly awaiting her command.Let us out,the dead demanded, over and over again. Too many dead to count. Vast and terrifying in their numbers.
Ree shoved her hands to her ears. With a start of horror, she realized they were bleeding.Shewas bleeding. From her eyes. Her mouth. Her nose. The life was bleeding out of her. Because they were taking it. That black door inside of her was pounding. She couldn’t let them all in, not at once. She wasn’t her father. And this wasn’t the magic she was raised to know.
But we know you, Marie Laveau the Second,those voices said, a sonorous thunder.Give to us, Quarter Queen.Bring us back.
Ree was scarcely aware of her surroundings: There were men firing at them, a zigzag of color and sound all around them. Then a flash of searing green light as a giant serpent appeared before Ree and Marie, moving in a maddening whirl in the air. She realized it was Silas’s mark, the ouroboros, moving in a pinwheel of static in front of them, a shield of light.
