The Quarter Queen

Chapter Fourteen Marie #3

“None that you might know.” He hadn’t meant it as insult, but Marie’s face stung. She hated not knowing. Perhaps that was why she was drawn to him so: the possibilities twinkling in those mischievous eyes, that knowledge still as yet unknown to her.

“Then tell me,” Marie implored.

“Is that a command or a question?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination. I hear it is quite creative.”

“Sanite Dede has been speaking far too kindly of me then.”

Marie’s smile faltered. “Before…when you…when I…” She hesitated, remembering the soft press of his lips against her throat, that briefest moment of pleasure and relief amidst the madness. “…I saw things.”

Jon stirred a bubbling cauldron over the fire. “Of course you did. You were close to death, Marie. You were moving closer to the Veil. There is a magic that lives between life and death, a crossroads few can open.”

Marie’s mind turned to the moment Jon had saved her, the way he’d transported them away in a blast of air, the turn of a blackbird’s wings. “And the spell you used to take us away?”

She didn’t hide her curiosity about his magic. And he didn’t ask her to, as so many others might.

“That was a road opener spell.”

“That was not like any road opener spell I’ve ever seen.”

Road openers were rituals to Papa Legba meant to open paths to better alignment or luck, to clear spiritual blockages.

But he’d pushed beyond her understanding of Voodoo traditions.

Jon hadn’t just entreated the spirits to open the paths before him.

He had forced it, bent time and space to his will.

It was unlike any magic she had ever seen or tasted. And by the loa, she wanted more.

“Then perhaps you’ve had the wrong teacher, love.” He winked at her, and Marie flushed. “You would be surprised what you can accomplish, if only you’d dare break a few rules.”

Jon offered nothing else after this, working instead in silence.

He ladled hot water into a tin canister.

Marie’s nose was suddenly met with the soothing smell of fresh coffee.

Her stomach turned. She was hungry too. Jon poured the coffee into cups and passed her one.

Marie quickly downed it, not minding that she’d scorched her tongue and throat; channeling the fire god had already left her insides seared.

Jon passed her a biscuit tin with crumbled ashcake inside.

She ate it greedily, not stopping until she’d had the crumbs too. She looked up, suddenly embarrassed.

Jon laughed. “Go on, now. Don’t worry, there’s more.” He passed her another tin, this one filled with chocolate wafers and tea biscuits wrapped in wax paper. They were stale and tasteless, but she ate them anyway, ravenous. All the while she watched Jon. And he watched her.

Jon always seemed more myth than man to her.

Even now. But in the warm glow of the firelight, he didn’t seem the threat the others made him out to be.

She heard what they called him—High Jon, Dr. Jon, Jon the Conjurer.

A healer, the slaves whispered down at Congo Square.

A conjurer with dark power. But his power didn’t seem so dark to her now, did it? It brought you back to life.

Properly unmasked, he was what Sanite Dede liked to call “pleasing of the flesh,” handsome in a way that not many men in New Orleans were.

His features were strong, fiercely chiseled like those of the heroes from the old legends Grand-mère had read to her by the light of the bayou’s moon.

When he turned to smile at her, that little crescent moon piercing at his ear glinted wickedly.

When she felt full, Marie reached for more coffee.

As she did, the blanket fell from her shoulders, revealing her cotton slip.

When she’d been sleeping, he must have undressed her from her muslin gown, leaving her in only her undergarments.

Marie stilled. Only Jacques had seen her like this.

He’d been her husband, after all, the only man she’d ever lain with.

Jon averted his gaze as Marie pulled the blankets tighter, flushed at her own modesty.

She’d caught him looking. Those golden eyes flickered unabashedly to her lips, then lifted to her eyes. She realized then that they were the soft brown of sweet tea now, that in his effort to save her she’d drained him of his powers. “You are curious, aren’t you? About my magic?” he asked softly.

So, she’d not been the only one trying to read faces and thoughts.

Jon could take one look at her and know the secrets of her heart, even the darkest ones she’d kept hidden.

A moment of panic seized her. Could he know the darkest of them all, the secret that she’d kept closer than any other?

She watched his face. Yes, she decided. Yes, he might know that too.

“Yes. And you will teach me,” she said.

“Teach you what, Marie?”

“Veil magic.”

He did not recoil as Sanite did. He did not even move. Jon sat as still as stone, gazing upon her with calculating eyes. “Do you know what you are asking?”

“Yes.”

“And why do you need Veil magic, Marie Laveau?” A glimmer of teasing in his voice. He was testing her, testing the limits of their trust.

“Why else”—Marie held his eyes, forcing herself to speak the truth for once—“if not for love?”

“You should understand one thing: Death is but a doorway. And trouble comes to those who open it.”

She needed to open that door, to see Jacques returned to her at last. The costs did not matter to her.

Only a fool who had never tasted grief should think there was more to lose.

When she had lost Jacques, she had lost herself.

And she’d already lost her mother, and then Grand-mère.

What should she fear now? Not death. She sought only to bend it to her will.

“I understand,” said Marie quietly.

Jon’s eyes told her that she didn’t. That she might never completely grasp the costs. But he rose to his feet, offering his hand. “Good. Then your first lesson starts now.”

They stood barefoot in the bayou, the grass cool between their toes.

The magic was better this way; the earth would reach from its roots toward their feet and speak its spells into their bones.

Her grand-mère had taught her this kind of magic, wild and full of dirt and flowers and roots.

The kind of magic free from Sanite’s careful rules and silly edicts.

A small black crow darted out from the brush and landed on his shoulder.

“Hello, Aram,” he cooed to the bird. The crow watched Marie closely.

She had the sense that it did not trust her one bit.

“I will not coddle you as Sanite does,” Jon said when he turned back to her.

“But I will not lie to you either. The only illusions you will find with me will be in spells, not in our words.”

Marie thought back to her marriage with Jacques.

Hindsight had made their days seem rosier, easier than they’d really been.

She was sure Jacques had loved her. But her magic?

It was never enough. Jacques was Haitian by birth and had inherited its revolution in his blood.

But his magic hadn’t come close to Marie’s.

He’d always pestered her to think of how she might stretch herself for more, to be more than she already was.

“I will have the truth only, Jon.”

“And the truth you will have,” said Jon. “Now, let us begin.”

Jon began to walk in a circle, murmuring under his breath. As he did, veves scorched themselves into the grass, as if he’d taken a white-hot brand and seared them by hand into the earth’s face.

Marie had never seen such markings. They were exceptionally old, older than Voodoo itself. “What are you doing?”

“Wards,” Jon answered, still intently focused on his spellwork. “All the better to quiet the noise.” He looked up and grinned. “We wouldn’t want anyone to hear your screams, now, would we?”

Jon’s eyes darkened, the black of pitch. And before Marie could react, she was on the ground, doubling over in agony. A cry ripped out of her as pain shot across her skin, stabbing her all over. She looked up at Jon through watery eyes. “Make it stop. Please.”

He shook his head. “That was only an illusion, Marie.” In an instant the pain ceased. Marie remained on her knees, panting. She could breathe again. “Lesson one—never leave yourself unprotected. Even from those you love.”

Marie froze. Is that what she had done with Jacques? Left herself unprotected in his absence? The thought made her sick.

Jon’s eyes were steady on hers. “Sanite has taught you rituals, no? Let me tell you a secret, love. They take too long. In the coming days, you will need to defend yourself in the moment. There may be no time for such rituals. Your magic requires immediacy, Marie. You need to learn to conjure like this—” He snapped his fingers, releasing a crackling charge of cold green light.

Marie blinked, dumbfounded. He’d seen what she’d attempted with Ogoun, how summoning him had nearly consumed her. But now, standing before her with that smug smile, he made it all seem so easy.

“And as for pain…” His smile went cold. “Pain can be so very useful.”

“You hurt me.” Marie said it before thinking, startled by her own weakness.

His look was unflinching. “And I will hurt you again if it makes you stronger.”

Marie thought back to the blistering pain along her skin that she had felt only a few seconds ago.

He’d channeled his own pain into the illusion.

The realization left her breathless. Just what kind of torture had Jon the Conjurer endured?

That day when she was ten and had found him on the flogging post must have been only a bitter taste.

The Man with a Thousand Lives, the slaves called him in whispers—a thousand lives’ worth of pain.

Jon clicked his teeth, disappointed. “Your illusion casting needs work. If you are to open the Veil, you will be facing Legba directly. None is better at trickery than him. You must be ready for anything. Look at you now, so guarded. So cold. Your emotions are your weapons, Marie. They can be channeled to make illusions stronger. Rage can turn a priest mad. Lust can make a man bed a girl with the face of a goat. Anything can be real so long as the emotion can be felt. Do you understand?”

Marie remained still, afraid to answer. She’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. Perhaps Sanite had been right about Jon all along. Perhaps he really was the devil in the flesh.

Jon strode toward her and snatched her chin in his hands, forcing her to meet his eyes. They were completely black, so far away from the silvery-white glow of the Quarter Queen’s true power. “Do you understand, Marie?”

She nodded, eyes closed. When she opened them, it was not Jon who stood before her but…Jacques. Marie stumbled away from him. “No.”

“Hello, Marie,” said Jacques.

“Jacques?” Her voice trembled. It was him. The same golden-brown skin, the gentle wave of his hair, the light green of his eyes.

Jacques smiled warmly at her. “Come now, my love. We’ve been apart long enough. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Marie flung herself into the circle of his arms. Jacques held her close, stroking the small of her back.

Oh, how she had ached for his touch. In those first days, she’d cursed the gods and the saints for leaving her without him.

But now she thanked them. She would light a thousand candles upon their altars, and on Sundays she would kneel before God and say her prayers.

Because they had finally been answered—her husband was home.

Marie pressed her lips to Jacques’s, welcoming his sweet kiss.

She cupped his face, pulling him to her.

His mouth crushed hers, hand tangling in her hair, tilting her head up so he could plunge his tongue inside, deliciously slick against hers.

He devoured her with a hunger sinuous and dark.

Pleasure blistered her skin, the kiss more intense than she had ever shared with her beloved. He swallowed her moan.

But it was not Jacques that she tasted. No, she tasted cigar smoke, and something else. Something bitter. Vervain. The herb to calm the mind, to better cast illusions.

Marie screamed, leaping away. The illusion fizzled before her eyes, and it was Jon staring at her now, his eyes flinted amber, not her husband’s gentle green.

“You bastard!” Marie hissed, her face flaming. “You had no right. No fucking right—”

“You said you wanted me to teach you. And now you scorn the lesson.”

Marie froze. He was right. If she had any hope of opening the Veil, she would face far worse, wouldn’t she? She had to be ready, even if it meant baring her soul to a man like Jon. Slowly, she nodded.

Jon grinned. “We go again.”

Marie closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was her husband, smiling at her.

She knew it was an illusion, she did. But this spell was stronger than any she’d ever felt, stronger even than Sanite’s.

In the distance, someone was screaming loudly.

Why wouldn’t they stop? In a surge of horror, Marie realized the screams were her own.

“Get out of my fucking head!”

Jacques stood over her, sneering all the while. He turned his head to the side, amused by her agony. “Now, why would I do that?”

Marie gritted her teeth, forcing herself to see past the illusion.

It felt real only because of the pain, she thought.

If pain could make an illusion stronger, then it could dispel it too.

She thought suddenly of the pain losing Jacques had wrought on her, the whispers of Widow Paris at her back, the snickers of jealous biddies who were happy to see her brought so low.

She thought back to even before that, to the pain of losing her grand-mère to yellow fever.

And then the very first pain…the pain of losing her own mother.

The woman who had taken one look at Marie’s magic and abandoned her on sight.

Marie dredged up the pain of her earliest memories like pulling a stone from the dark of a well.

When she opened her eyes, it was Jon staring at her now. Not Jacques.

Marie climbed to her feet, glowing with victory.

Jon stood across from her, panting from the force of his own spell.

The one she’d backfired onto him. Just what had he seen in his own terrible vision?

Then she remembered his words, filled with the ache of painful memories conjured again.

I am the last of my kind. My wife…my children…

It mattered not, Marie decided. Because in time she would know all.

“Now…” Jon smiled through the pain, dark eyes full of wonder. “Now you are learning.”