Chapter Five Ree #2
“We got you now, girl,” the snatcher sneered, and before she could say a word, he stuffed a piece of cloth into her mouth. The cloth was sour and stale. She tasted blood, disgustingly wet and coppery in her mouth, perhaps from having bitten down on her own tongue in her shock.
Ree had never met a snatcher before. She’d seen them—terrible, greasy men—at the gambling halls and lower-end music houses.
They worked on behalf of the courts—bounty men, one could say.
If Les Magiques slaves were caught on the run, the snatchers would drag them back to the courts for a handsome fine.
And then there were the other stories. Tales about how they liked to find the freed Les Magiques out wandering at night and capture them too and barter them off to slavers without their freedom papers.
“How do we know she’s one of them mystics? Could just be a simple colored,” said the shortest man of the bunch.
“Here’s how,” answered the tall one. He jammed a block of aurum against the exposed flesh of her throat.
White-hot pain exploded in Ree’s body, so vivid she nearly lost consciousness.
Ree screamed against the sour cloth they’d stuffed into her mouth, most of it stifled.
“See? It only hurt the sin in them. Burn away all the wicked in their blood, don’t it? ”
If that were true, Ree thought, you’d be in hellfire. But men were nothing if not faithful to their own lies.
“Jesus Christ,” shouted the third man. He was as stubby as a pig, with cruelly appraising eyes, and he took a long look at Ree, as if seeing her for the first time. “Granger, come look here.”
The lamp was shoved back in Ree’s face. The men looked her over, taking stock of her face and breasts.
For once, Ree was conscious of her provocative dressing, of the bodice that swelled her already ample breasts, the rouge she carefully ran along the apples of her cheeks.
All of it made her feel dirty now. One of the men, Granger, swiped out at her.
His fingers found purchase against her throat, and she thought for one terrible moment that he might choke her to death. But he only seized her necklace.
“Marie Laveau,” he said with a gasp, voice caught between horror and delight. Ree swallowed down bile.
“No. Not the First. This is the Second. The daughter,” the stubby one said as a slow smile spread across his lips. Ree heard what he didn’t say: the weaker one.
In one fell swoop, he fit a collar around her neck, right over her necklace. The aurum burned something awful, and with a pang of horror, Ree realized it was burning her. Her flesh sizzled where the metal made contact. She let out a cry around the rag.
“This? This is the daughter of Marie Laveau?” Granger laughed and spat in her face. “What a crock!”
He knew her by the velvet necklace that was affixed to her neck, where the marking of her surname hung in twin silvery serpents that wound together to make an L.
She hadn’t thought to take her seal off, the one she wore so proudly in the city to announce her status as a Laveau.
Oh, the irony. It occurred to her now, facing certain death, that her protesting meant very little.
She did enjoy the status being her mother’s heir afforded her, if even a little. She could admit that now.
Ree spoke muffled words. The men laughed, entertained at her imprisonment.
Ree tried again, and Granger shoved his hands into her mouth and yanked out the gag.
“What was that, sweetheart?” He leaned in, close enough to kiss her.
She could taste the brandy on his breath and for once was sickened by the smell.
“I said,” Ree hissed, rage blurring her vision, “fuck you.”
Ree slammed her forehead forward as hard as she could into Granger’s nose. It made a satisfying crunch, blood spurting down from his nostrils and into his mouth. He yelped. The other two snatchers jumped into motion, but Ree was already primed for the attack.
She smashed her hands together, and the two men collided.
It was enough of an impact to knock them breathless.
Granger, broken nose hooked oddly, was struggling to breathe through his pain, and he lurched at her.
Ree flung out a hand, and Granger was knocked backward, far enough that she could gather her bearings.
“Come to me,” Ree murmured. Silence. She tried again in French, panic rising like bile in her throat.
Like any Voodoo Priestess, Ree had access to the spiritual realm, to the ancestors and loa that resided there. But how much access, how many spirits, and which loa would obey was all dependent on her strength, her obedience to the faith. And Marie Laveau the Second was anything but obedient.
One long, horrible moment passed. No answer.
“Venez à moi,” Ree tried again. “Come to me.”
The men were getting to their feet and loading their guns, which she knew were full of aurum pellets.
They readied their collars. Still the spirits were silent.
They did not come. With a pang of horror, Ree realized the truth of the moment with sobering clarity: They were not coming to her. No one was coming for her.
Now Ree understood her mother’s scorn of her defiance. It hadn’t been real before. Ree had needed only enough magic to see her own whims satisfied. Never had she needed it to survive, to truly rebel. Until now.
She could try channeling the spirits alone.
The last time that she’d dared commune with the spirits directly, she’d used Marcel, Anabelle, and Fabrice as conduits.
To offer others as conduits was one thing, but to offer herself as a living vessel?
It was what Church folks liked to call a deal with the devil.
It very well could be. Her mother had always warned her of practitioners who offered themselves to the loa without proper preparation—poor fools who’d never conditioned their bodies to contain such divinity.
At best she could be left blind or crippled, her body destroyed by whatever mischief the loa had done while in it.
At worst? Well, sometimes the vessels came back to the mortal realm completely mad, driven insane by entangling with divinity. If they bothered to come back at all.
Ree struggled to stand, gasping through the pain of the aurum collar, which shocked her each time she attempted magic.
It was a different kind of pain. It thundered through her body, rumbling her bones.
Her veins coursed with fire. Ree gritted her teeth, swallowed down a scream, and tried again to get to her feet.
Ree tried her magic again, but this time as just a thought. A prayer. Come to me, she entreated the spirits.
Why? came the voice of the ancestors. You do not come to us. You do not pray to us. Even now your altar lies empty.
This was the truth. Ree swallowed down a scream, a mixture of pain and frustration.
But truth or not, she didn’t have time for sage words, not when she was facing down the barrel of a gun and chains.
How were the ancestors any different from her mother?
They’d sooner see her brought low and humbled if it meant she would swear fealty to them.
Everything was a lesson, even her pain. Hypocrites—the lot of them.
Fuck them. Ree didn’t need the ancestors.
She didn’t need her mother, not truly. She needed only herself.
She was done being beholden to anyone or anything—to the city’s hollow laws, the sanctimony of the Church, these backwoods witch-hunters, even Voodoo.
She could do this herself, couldn’t she?
What was Voodoo but another game to be won, another parlor trick she could master on her own with enough practice?
Now, as Ree faced certain death, it was her mother’s words that she heard, a vicious whisper in her head: Get up, my love. A queen never kneels.
But she was so tired, her body heavy with pain.
The aurum had eaten away at the heart of her magic, made it impossible to utter a simple spell, let alone breathe.
Even so, it was some small comfort that even if the spirits and ancestors had abandoned her now in her darkest moment, her mother had not.
A hand on her shoulder. This was no fever dream.
Ree glanced up and stared directly into the face of her mother, who was wearing an expression she had never seen.
Marie’s eyes were narrowed, filled with dark, glinting fire, her mouth set low over bared teeth.
It was the face of the bayou wolf, full of wild fury.
“Now that”—Granger let out a low whistle—“is the real Marie Laveau.”
“In the flesh,” Marie countered, her voice a furious whisper, “and the spirit. How terrible for you all.”
The snatchers were circling now. Ree caught sight of Silas, who approached from the woods, staff in hand.
For one horrible moment Ree thought Silas might flee, or worse yet betray them.
But he hadn’t. Snatchers wanted white mystics too.
They wouldn’t enslave them, but they loved burning them on a pyre just as well.
“Y’all gon’ make us fucking rich! Can you believe the bounty we’d get for one? But fucking three?” the shortest of the bunch said. He hadn’t the good sense to be properly scared, delirious as he was with greed.
Silas gestured with his staff at the snatcher, who blanched. “I think your head will make a nice trophy on my wall. What say you, Quarter Queen?” Though the Grand Wizard jested, his voice was low and full of barely contained wrath.
“I detest the Brotherhood. But even they are too good for this filth,” said Marie.
“And on that, we can agree.” Silas passed her a look. “Let’s not make a habit of that.”
Granger fired off a shot, but Silas had already struck his staff to the ground in a mighty blow, redirecting the bullet to the ground where it ricocheted, striking Granger in the thigh. He let out a broken yelp.