Chapter Eleven Ree #3
Now properly face-to-face, she could see that at twenty-eight years old his features had refined themselves into perfect place.
He was…embarrassingly handsome. His hair was longer than she remembered, combed away from his face, still the same deep ruddy brown, the color of communion wine.
Part of it curled into his eyes, the same piercing gray, as bright and pale as quicksilver under certain light.
His skin was paler than hers but still held the same touch of gold, the permanent mark of an unforgiving Louisiana sun.
Needless to say, Madame Monet’s girls would have gladly bedded him for no coin at all.
“I know why you chose this place.”
“Of course you do.” His expression hardened. “How could you forget?”
Ree’s face stung. She hadn’t—it would be impossible to forget her pain, to forget his. “But I don’t know why you called me here now.”
“Don’t lie to me. It’s too early for that, princess. And to think”—he leaned in, gray eyes bright with bitter regard for her—“we haven’t even gotten to the work of confession.”
So, he’d come to torture her then. Just not in the way she’d thought.
The Inquisitor had come to draw a different kind of truth out of her.
His. And it was one that couldn’t be pried with instruments of agony or holy rituals.
Despite the venom in his words, his eyes did not lie.
He might feign disinterest, but she saw a glimpse of hurt beneath it all.
And she deserved it, didn’t she? He was purposely digging at her, prying out a truth that had nothing to do with the Harbinger.
And somehow that made it worse. How to tell him that she couldn’t leave?
Eight years ago, they’d met in the Aurelia on a Sunday night, at this very table. And it was here that Henryk Broussard had asked her to run away with him. She remembered it like it was only yesterday, the way her heart leapt into her throat, the light in his eyes when she agreed.
That old wound between them, finally torn open at the seams. The one neither could admit was bleeding all over them.
She wavered, then said, “Just tell me what you want.”
“I am told you were friends with the prisoner they hanged in Congo Square,” Henryk said.
Ree closed her eyes, shutting out the image of Marcel’s swinging corpse.
She gripped the glass hard enough she might break it.
“I am also told you started a very public and very nasty magical disturbance. You’ve been busy.
After today’s events, I would say you might need that drink after all. ”
“It was Marcel. Did they tell you that?” If he was not moved by the sight of her in chains, then perhaps he would be by the knowledge that one of their oldest friends was now dead.
He puffed out a surprised breath and leaned back, sadness in his eyes. “No,” he said quietly. “They didn’t. Marcel was supposed to leave this place. Out of all of us, he was the one who was supposed to make it out.”
And yet he hadn’t. Ree could taste his dream of Haiti on her tongue.
The smell of wind and sea and the dancing freedom of rituals by moonlight and sunlit day.
No need for secrecy. If she closed her eyes, Ree could still feel some piece of Marcel here with them.
He’d loved the Aurelia—the shining silver constellations that drifted across the ceiling, the bright spell of music that played on a carousel, the theater of it all.
Every bit of it felt hollow now. The magic was lost.
“He told me he was going to run away once. Risk it all. But he didn’t.” His voice twisted, heavy with an accusation he did not say. Not directly. “Because he loved you.”
Because he loved you. Hot tears stung at Ree’s eyes. Marcel, the only proper brother she’d ever had, stayed in this godforsaken city because of her? Everyone who had ever loved her ended up hurt or worse, it seemed.
Henryk finished his drink, set it down on the table with a loud clink. She felt the mood shift, their pleasantries finished. Behind him, a dancer tossed glistening beads into the crowd, showed her naked breasts to a gaping man, kissed another on the mouth.
“Now, where is your mother? Where is Marie Laveau?”
Despite the ache of tears pressing at her throat, Ree found the will to keep her voice level. “The Quarter Queen has more important business to attend to than sharing whiskeys.” Empty posturing on her part, but she didn’t need her mother’s secret in the hands of two enemies today. One was enough.
“More important than checking on her beloved daughter? If memory serves, Marie Laveau was fiercely protective of you. To a fault. Controlling, I believe you always called her.”
“Is this why you went through all of that trouble to send me a message, Henryk? To torture ourselves with the past?”
“No.” Yes. That same tightness at the corners of his eyes.
“When news of a Harbinger reached the Vatican, I was sent to inspect these claims. You do understand the grave significance of a Harbinger, don’t you?
A demonic prophecy means that your city is likely under the siege of evil. And that evil is Jon the Conjurer.”
“The only siege this city is currently under is a plague of wealthy white men with whips and collars.”
“Fair enough. But when demons foretell the second coming of one of New Orleans’s greatest enemies, then I fear you may be wrong. This city may very well be in need of a second Holy Inquisition.”
“Why ask to meet here? Why not leave me in jail?”
“Because in the jail, you would become the property of the city and fall under their jurisdiction. Unfortunately for you, if there is going to be a formal inquiry into the Harbinger, the Church cannot allow that.”
So her freedom was a matter of bureaucracy then. Nothing more and nothing less.
“And now that you have me?” She took a lingering drink, painfully aware of the way his eyes flitted to her mouth, the splash of whiskey that wetted her lips. “Are you going to torture me now? Make me confess?”
“Do not be so eager for punishment, Marie Laveau the Second. It will come to us all in due time.” He sighed, as if it all couldn’t be helped. “I am forbidden from formally interrogating you until seven days have passed since my arrival. I suppose you’ve got God’s favor, princess.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Maybe you should ask Father Antoine. He always did have a painfully soft spot for Marie Laveau.”
She recalled her mother’s frantic plea to the priest: You must delay their coming. Antoine, please. I would need time to gather protections for my people. For my daughter.
And so he had, in a way. Ree had admittedly never cared for the priest, but it was possible that he did not share her indifference. She had one week. A week to find a way out of this entire ordeal. A week to save her mother.
“Of all the things to become, you chose the enemy.”
“I think you made it clear I was that to you already, Ree.”
It was her turn for anger now. Her voice rose, shaking with every word. “I never considered you an enemy. I—”
“You what?” he asked.
I loved you. “So this is revenge then. That’s it.”
“No, princess. And if it were, it wouldn’t be against you.”
Her brows drew together in confusion. Something about those words troubled her. And if it were, it wouldn’t be against you. Who then?
Before she could ask what he meant, the air shifted. Ree looked up to see someone standing over her.
“I saw you at the hanging earlier, witch.” A man, big as an ox, with a suntan that strongly suggested he was just another drunken sailor.
His smile reminded her of that alchemist who’d mocked Marcel.
“I’m thinking maybe it should have been your black ass hanging from a rope right alongside him. You and that n—”
Henryk slammed the man facedown against the wooden table, rattling their drinks.
Ree gaped. One of the dancers wending around the floor froze, snapping her feathery fan across her face, aghast. But Henryk didn’t seem to notice. He’d seized the man by both of his arms and twisted them painfully behind his back in a viselike hold.
“Stop. You can’t…you can’t do this.” The sailor’s glassy eyes filled with tears.
“And why not?” In the parlor’s silvery light, Henryk’s face was different. Cruelly alive in a way she had never seen before.
“But you’re a priest!” the man sputtered helplessly. He’d seen the dark dress, the crucifix at his neck. Ree could not blame him. It was an easy mistake to make. A foolish one too.
Henryk’s smile was cold. “I’m no priest.” He pulled the man’s arm tighter, contorting the bone oddly. “I can pray for you, if you like. Pray that this arm heals correctly. But I promise you by the time I’m finished with you”—Ree heard a sickening snap—“it won’t.”
The man shrieked. Hot tears streamed down the sides of his face and into his mouth. People were watching now.
But Ree understood. He was a witch-hunter.
And he was right. He was no priest, no Father Antoine.
The Church had seen him educated in a manner of ways that had nothing to do with saints and prayers.
Inquisitions were nasty work. He would need to know the very specific art of torture—how to break exact points in the bones and joints, how to draw confessions from flesh by touching only the mind.
The work of an Inquisitor lived in the dark threshold between suffering and sanity.
“Apologize to the lady,” Henryk snarled at the man’s ear. But the man kept blubbering, the pain too much. Henryk shoved the other arm, breaking it too. “Now.”
“I’m sorry!” He gasped. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”
“Enough,” Ree said quietly. No matter the circumstances, she’d seen enough pain and misery for one day. And really, it wasn’t the man who was bothering her now. It was Henryk. Because this was not the Henryk she remembered.
“You broke my arms!” The man sobbed, red-faced and swollen from the tears.
“Be glad that’s all I did,” Henryk said, and let him go. “Now leave.”
The man stumbled off, in quick search of a healer, no doubt. Henryk turned cold gray eyes back on Ree. If he could reduce this man to a blubbering mess in a matter of seconds, she could only imagine what he did to witches.
His eyes were coolly appraising. Just who was this Henryk standing before her? He was a mystery to her—a stranger whose face she’d somehow always known.
Ree sipped from her drink. She realized her hand was shaking a little. “So, you take offense to my magic but not color?”
“No, I think I’ll leave that bit to the Brotherhood.”
“How noble of you, Inquisitor.”
Henryk didn’t say a word, his gray eyes watching her in silence.
Her mother had warned her about the work of Inquisitors.
They were hunters, skilled interrogators who played with their prey up until the moment of death.
This might have been a harmless drink between…
strangers. She might have a week to hold him off before she was dragged into confession.
But there was no mistaking that tonight was only the first of many interrogations to come.
Henryk straightened his crucifix. “I bid you good night, princess.” He gave her one last once-over, but she couldn’t read him. “But we’re not done here. Far from it.”
Henryk turned to leave. He was threatening her; there were no two ways about it. And yet…she couldn’t think about any of that. The truth was, all she could think about was the day she’d left him standing all alone on that bridge.
In a burst of wild desperation, Ree shot out a hand, catching him by the wrist. “Did you come back to hurt me, Henryk? To make me pay for what I did to you?”
Henryk went very still, his eyes going flat. “I didn’t come back to New Orleans for an apology, Ree. And despite what you may think, I didn’t come back for you. Not in the way you think.”
Ree sat frozen in her seat, face stinging with hurt. She supposed she deserved worse, but hearing him say those words cut deeply. “You won’t forgive me, will you?” she said quietly. She took a deep, steadying breath.
How to tell him that she had loved him, but that, despite all their differences, she had loved her mother more?
There was a moment of hesitation, a moment in which she thought like a fool that he might oblige her. But then he snatched his hand from hers. “I thought you were listening, princess.” His voice lowered, full of venom. “I’m not a priest.”
He quickly turned and left, disappearing into the night.