The Quarter Queen

Prologue Marie

Prologue

Marie

Marie Laveau had known evil before.

The same could be said for anyone who called New Orleans home.

After all, evil could be found commonly enough in the pockets of bartering men, in the turn of an overseer’s whip, and in the eyes of clergymen who turned away at the slightest offense.

But to practice the art, the magic, the very essence of Voodoo was to know darkness as well as one might know their own lover.

Being a Voodoo Priestess afforded Marie many gifts, least of all the ability to sense the kind of evil that lived beyond the mortal plane.

It was this very evil that came to her one late winter night in Congo Square.

Marie stood before her court, filled with flickering torchlight and dance and song.

A handful of her devotees dressed in Voodoo’s customary colors of dark violet and gold worked the thrumming crowd, bartering brews and talismans to those seeking remedies for sickness of the body and the heart alike, conducting small rituals to rid customers of mischievous spirits, divining fortunes with tarot cards and tea leaves.

The crowd was a motley mix for antebellum New Orleans: slaves out past curfew, free colored people, a few natives, white aristocrats.

All come to see the Quarter Queen in her forbidden court.

Her trusted acolytes, the scarlet-haired Nan and Ory, beat upon a pair of wooden drums in a pulsing rhythm.

Marie picked through the many watching faces for any sign of her daughter.

To her disappointment, there was none. Ree, she knew, was likely drinking her weight in bourbon just a few streets over.

Even likelier underneath some pretty boy or biddy.

Marie swallowed down a sigh, as she so often did when it came to the matter of her daughter.

She’d always been an insolent child, but now, at twenty-four years old, she was as wild and wayward as a mustang.

Ree hadn’t so much blossomed into womanhood as she did burst through it, her life a drunken string of midnight soirees and silly games.

But that was mostly Marie’s fault, now, wasn’t it?

In many ways being a good queen was far easier a task than being a good mother.

Marie felt the crowd’s eyes following her, bewitched by her magic.

On her head rested her crown: a tignon, the embroidered cloth spun into a knot that was as high and golden as the sun.

Her body hummed to the bone with magic, her golden-brown skin glowing.

She put a hand to her shoulders, where a heavy serpent rested, twined around her like a vine up an old oak tree, its green-black scales glittering in the torchlight.

Her familiar hissed at the crowd of onlookers, many of whom drew back in fright while others leaned in, delighted by the thrill.

“Sosie,” Marie cooed, calming the snake. “Enough.”

The air in her Quarter had been sour with strange spirits today, and Marie meant to draw them out.

Last night she’d dreamed she was standing alone in the middle of the crossroads.

But when she’d turned, she’d found Papa Legba, Lord of the Crossroads, red eyes glowing like coals, pointing a gnarled finger to the only path before her: a long road entrenched in smoky darkness, endless to the eye.

An omen. An unshakable portend of evil to come.

She just had to understand what kind. Now she tapped her heel on the ground three times.

“Un. Deux. Trois. Father. Son. Holy Spirit,” Marie chanted.

The crowd followed in an obedient echo. Un. Deux. Trois.

“I’m here!” A familiar voice broke the air, halting the music. Marie looked up to find Ree stumbling through the crowd, her dark coils scattered behind her in a wild tangle. Marcel followed, the boy casting a sheepish, apologetic look to Marie over Ree’s shoulder. Ever apologizing for her mistakes.

“You’re late,” Marie said. Her gaze swept over the red flush on her daughter’s face, the dewy glaze in her dark eyes. “And drunk.”

But Ree only laughed, scarlet lips stretching into a sly smile. “Would you have me any other way, maman?”

Yes, by the saints and loa she would. But there was business that must be attended to, and it was better that her daughter be privy to it.

One more lesson to learn, one more instruction she must teach.

Casting a final stern look to her daughter, Marie waved her hand, resuming the ritual.

The music started up again, the drums finding their rhythm once more.

“We invoke thee. Spirit, come,” commanded Marie.

A rush of power, deliciously vibrant, flooded through her, lifting her from the ground, and she began to levitate, gloriously suspended. The air chilled. The crowd collectively held their breath, the drums reaching a thunderous crescendo.

“Spirit, come. Come. Come!”

But it was not Spirit who answered her call. There was nothing benevolent about the energy that overcame her. No, this time, something evil had taken her invitation.

It was immediate. Close. Dwelling here in the French Quarter. Here in Congo Square, hiding somewhere in the crowd. The evil called to her, whispered in her ear like a lover’s coo. Come play, Quarter Queen.

A demon. Its presence should have been no more nuisance than a flea.

Many demons called to her, as did spirits and ancestors, and all those in between.

It didn’t mean she needed to answer. But there was something to this demon’s call.

Something she could no more ignore than a sailor could resist the call of a siren into violent tide.

The music halted. Then the crowd began to laugh—a horrendously disjointed sound that stretched into one long guttural shriek.

An unholy sound that rotted the air itself, pitiless and hollow.

It was the demon, hiding amongst the crowd, spreading its influence like a sickness that kept on seeping into any willing flesh.

But Marie would not be cowed. Especially not in her own court.

“Come out,” Marie ordered the demon. “Now.”

Marie’s magic flared, and the entire crowd quieted at once.

Ree stepped forward into the middle of the square, her bare feet touching the cool flagstone.

She stood eerily still, her face carefully blank.

And then with a sickening crack! her head snapped backward at an unnatural angle, then forward, dark hair falling over her face.

As she tilted her head upward to gaze at her mother, Marie saw a thin smile stretch across her face and a yellow glow set behind her dark eyes, as if they were strangely bejeweled in the flickering torchlight.

The crowd silently watched mother and daughter, the Voodoo Queen and her princess. The demon had taken station in Ree’s body. Not quite a possession, but it was taunting her, Marie knew, a blasphemous threat. And the Quarter Queen did not take kindly to threats.

Marie approached the demon. It cocked its head, regarding her with unblinking yellow eyes. “Marie Laveau,” the demon sang from Ree’s mouth. “Your sinsss call to you, Laveau. Can’t you hear them from down below?”

“I hear only you, for the moment, demon.”

The demon laughed. “Foolish girl. Silly girl. I know your greatest sin. Don’t you remember his name?”

“And what is this man’s name?” Marie asked. But she knew. By God, she knew.

With deliberate slowness, the demon said in the Old Tongue, “You know the name well, Marie Laveau. You know it better than your own.”

Marie heard the name in her dreams every night. A haunting that would not leave.

The demon opened its mouth, and from it rushed: “And so it shall be: A Laveau witch’s reign will raise hell upon the earth. From its gates, the damned will return. Their king, High Jon, will walk the Quarter once more.”

The wicked words lodged into her chest like a rusted knife, twisting and twisting.

A feverish murmur passed through the crowd at the mention of that fateful name.

Jon.

The name rang incessantly over and over in her head, a sickening song that would not stop.

Demons always lied, but these words tasted of truth.

Jon had been many things to Marie. Her teacher, later her lover, and above all else her enemy.

He had been the only evil she’d ever feared. The only one she’d ever loved too.

Marie released her hold on the infernal creature, drawing away sharply.

“Begone, demon.” Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her, weak. She hated that. Hated that there was a part of her still that could be brought low by him.

“I do not answer to you, witch—”

Oh, but it did. Marie crooked a hand, the motion like turning a doorknob. The demon opened its mouth as if it had been violently pried by unseen hands and emitted a high, keening wail.

Her daughter collapsed. Marie rushed to her and bent low, pressed a handkerchief to Ree’s brow. She slowly opened her eyes, which were blessedly dark again, the eyes of her wild and wicked child.

“Maman, what happened…?”

“Hush now.” Marie helped Ree to her feet and moved her quickly through the crowd, her mind racing. Everyone was watching. Everyone had heard.

That had been no trick. No lie. Marie knew one thing to be true: Those words had been a Harbinger. And soon, everyone would know.

History had a way of repeating no matter how one tried to bury it.

Some sins just wouldn’t be so easily forgiven, Marie supposed.

After all, she knew this better than most. Old sins demanded payment.

And she harbored no sin worse than Jon the Conjurer.

The whisper of his return had stirred something in her that she’d buried twenty-five years ago.

She’d long been rid of him, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she?

Marie waved a hand, and the courtyard gates swung open, iron groaning.

She pressed through the swell of onlookers and faithful Voodoos, each one hastily moving out of her way.

All except one. A white man in a fine hat stepped into Marie’s path, a few of his slaves gathered at his side.

An outsider who’d passed through New Orleans on the wrong night, beheld her magic for himself and still couldn’t make a lick of sense of it.

Marie didn’t blame him—no one could. She smiled slowly down at him, her eyes flashing white, the full force of her magic like sudden moonlight.

He recoiled like he’d touched hot grease.

The man took his hat from his head in stupefied awe. “What…are you?”

A good question, indeed. One she often asked herself in her lowest moments. A widow. A witch. A mother. At times, even a hypocrite. But only one answer mattered tonight.

“To them? But a humble servant to Spirit. But to you and all your wretched kind…” The tignon piled atop Marie’s head quickly unwound itself like a ribbon, unspooling her hair in a wave of tumbling dark water.

In its place shined a golden fleur-de-lis crown, the mark of her sovereignty and shame. “…a fucking queen.”