Chapter Two Ree #2
“Sure it is. And I’d wager I had considerably more fun.” She paused, then said, “I know what the demon told you. Of the Har—”
The word stuck in her throat, her mother’s power flaring.
“Not here” is all she said.
The pressure on her vocal cords relaxed, and Ree rubbed her neck, scowling at her mother.
They continued on in silence, leaving the worst of the crowd behind on Bourbon Street, walking farther until they turned onto Royal Street where the market was a bit quieter.
Even during the day, the Quarter was a feast for the senses: Enterprising slaves sold their own wares on the side, peddling their stitchwork and calas cakes, and Voodoos plied their trade for a bit of coin—old ladies in rough-spun purple and gold turbans who read fates into the cards, bartered gris-gris bags to hex a wayward husband back home, and sold dried chicken feet as charms of protection.
The Voodoos each nodded to Marie as she pressed on, paying silent homage to their Quarter Queen.
“Change one thing into another, come see a show of magic from the pale hand of a brother!” shouted a tall, silvery-haired man from a wooden stall to a group of white ladies, who covered their giggling with daintily gloved hands.
He made a show of waving his ash-wood staff, which he used to turn a bucket of stale water into sweet wine, then dipped a golden chalice and drank deeply from his handiwork.
A member of the Brotherhood of the White Hand, infamous alchemists who practiced the arcane magic of transmutation. Ree wanted to retch at his pompous air.
Never one to be outdone by the Voodoos, the Brotherhood had set up grand stalls along the road draped in their customary colors of dreary black and bone white, where their initiates performed parlor tricks meant to drum up business and steer the poor fools to their headquarters, the illustrious Ivory Hall, which expressly forbid any person of color—magical-blooded or not—from ever entering.
The Brotherhood’s infamous pale handprint was everywhere upon the face of the city, if you knew where to look—in the grand steamboats that carried the wealthy back and forth down the rolling blue of the Mississippi River, in the common household cauldron that could multiply a meal by two.
New Orleans gladly welcomed the innovation the Brotherhood’s alchemy brought to its markets, so long as it stayed within the narrow limits of what was deemed “safe.” But ask any slave in New Orleans for the truth—Brotherhood magic would never be safe for folks like them.
To Ree’s surprise, her mother approached the alchemist and looked over his strange arrangement of concoctions set in smoking alembics and cast-iron cauldrons that gurgled and bubbled like the world’s worst stew.
“Make your request known,” said the alchemist without looking up from stirring a strange green mixture in one of his pots.
“Two coffees.” Marie set down a generous heap of coin, although they could order café au lait from the Pint the little candles that were burning down to their wicks, casting spectral shapes against ruby stained-glass windows; the rows of dark wooded pews where men of science and learned books mingled with the holy and the magical, heads bowed in silent prayer and contemplation.