Chapter Fifteen Ree #2
For a moment, the room fell away. It was just the two of them.
So many words unspoken. So many feelings kept carefully guarded.
It might have hurt her less to know that he was furious with her.
He’d be right to be. But it was his indifference that wounded her the most. She was just too stubborn a woman to dare tell him about her regrets.
And would he listen, truly? She was not sixteen anymore.
And he was no longer a simple parish boy.
Ree reached for the decanter beside the hairbrush and stiffly poured herself a drink, the sweet wine pooling in her glass, shining like a ruby.
She brought it to her lips and drank, the taste flat and cloying.
Hollow. What was wrong with her? But she knew.
It was him. Ever since Henryk Broussard had returned to New Orleans, she’d felt herself become unmoored, slowly coming undone at the seams, bit by bit.
“Did you become an Inquisitor because of me? Because I…did not go with you?” she said after a while. She didn’t know exactly why she asked, only that in that moment it seemed like she should.
He grunted, a bitter noise that twisted her chest. “You think too highly of yourself.”
The Inquisitor’s hand stilled on the door before he slowly turned to face her again.
There was conflict brewing beneath the mask of perfect restraint he wore so well, a flash of longing, a moment of searing ache she’d become acquainted with in the long years since their final goodbye. After all, she knew that face well.
Because it was her own.
It was the one she’d masked beneath her games and lovemaking and petty ways.
“We fooled ourselves once, Ree. In the end, we both became what fate always intended. And the sad thing is…” Slowly, Henryk’s gray eyes met hers.
There was some unnamed emotion in them. Some feeling she swore she’d seen before, long ago.
“We were never going to be able to run away from that,” he murmured finally, and left.
The drink shook in Ree’s hand, and she stared down at it, stunned, silently relishing the cool weight of the crystal against her skin.
She hurled it against the mirror, fracturing the glass, dark wine seeping into the cracks.
Her reflection splintered into a thousand different faces: the witch, the failing daughter, the lovesick fool. Different masks, she told herself. There was only one problem now.
None of them quite fit anymore.
The sun was just beginning to set over Congo Square, a dark purplish-blue light creeping through the dark horizon like a vein.
Henryk Broussard stood before a wooden stake, a woman shackled to it.
She bucked against her bindings, rustling the aurum chains, a hood covering her head.
But Ree would know her anywhere. Anabelle.
A small crowd had gathered for the bloody spectacle to come.
Upon an overlooking terrace, Ree positioned herself for a better view.
Her mother owned the room above the little café below, one of the handful of safe houses she kept about the city.
Her name was not on the deed, of course, but the name of a man she’d long spelled under her command should the need arise.
Ree had thought her mother’s tactics paranoid, but now, as she gazed upon the High Inquisitor below, she felt herself grateful for her mother’s farsighted strategy.
Other Les Magiques had taken great measures to put as much distance between themselves and Congo Square as they could. But not Ree. She needed to set things right.
Beside her, a redheaded alchemist was shaking on his knees, his hands bound behind his back. She crouched down, trailed her scarlet-painted fingernails along his back like a spider, deeply enjoying every quiver that racked his body.
He bucked against her, wild with panic. But there was nothing he could do. She’d thought to save some aurum from the vial she’d given Marcel. It had been easy enough to slip into this alchemist’s drink. And now that last little bit was inside his belly, spreading in his veins.
“Shhh,” she cooed against his ear. “Serves him right. You remember those words, don’t you, love?”
The stricken look on his face told her that he very much did.
She saw grim flashes of Marcel swinging from that rope.
It brought her some pleasure to know he was seeing it too.
The alchemist was trembling. She hadn’t bothered to get his name.
She didn’t need it, and he wasn’t worth the trouble.
By her mother’s saints, she’d managed to snatch him from the floor of some alehouse without being spotted and had dragged his sorry ass up two flights of stairs.
She didn’t need his crying. What she needed to do was concentrate.
The kind of magic she needed to work was fickle.
It was what Marie Laveau might call reckless magic.
Ree slid a gold-tipped knife from the pocket of her satchel and cut crisscross into the alchemist’s back, quick, so the poor fool wouldn’t feel a thing, but he bucked and moaned, slobbering all over the rag she’d stuffed into his mouth.
Ree ignored him and returned to her spell.
She’d done this spell before, a variation of a road opener incantation, though it had been, like many other times, to suit her own whims. Pluck a few cards from a man’s hands, swap them out for others, gain a few coins.
She figured a man couldn’t be much different.
Legba, she invoked. Lord of the Crossroads. The gatekeeper to all paths.
Silence. The wind changed direction. Her dark curls fell to one side of her neck. And then a cold whisper at her ear. Hello, priestess.
Ree could smell the warm spice of rum on his breath, the syrupy sweetness of hot pralines. Papa Legba was fond of her mother, she knew. He’d come to Ree in flashes and spurts before and seemed to like her mischief well enough. It made her wonder what he saw in her mother, her endless virtue.
Open the path before me, Ree silently prayed.
The wind whispered coldly, Whatever for?
Ree kept her eyes closed, forcing herself to concentrate. The alchemist was rocking back and forth, making ugly groaning sounds. To spare one of your own, she said.
You dare to use your magic for more than yourself, child? Papa made a sound of startled amusement. A tickle of laughter at her ear. As you wish.
Henryk circled the pyre, pouring oil upon the logs arranged at its base.
Ree glanced down. The alchemist was crying fat, ugly tears that she was certain his own Grand Wizard would have little patience for. Silas would not take kindly to her mishandling one of his own. Trouble for another day.
Henryk faced Anabelle, quivering on the stake. In one sweep of his gloved hands, he removed the cover from her head, revealing her tear-streaked face. He removed the old cloth stuffed into her mouth.
“I’ve done nothing wrong! I’ve done nothing,” Anabelle sobbed.
Henryk remained unmoved, face like chiseled marble, carefully blank. “You were caught practicing magic outside of your sanctioned time and place. You are directly linked to a magical insurrection that left innocent people dead.” His lips twisted. “So, you’ve done plenty wrong.”
Henryk brushed a dark coil from Anabelle’s cheek. She recoiled, eyes bright with fear. Perhaps Ree was wrong. He might still have some compassion in him yet.
She knew that she should be focused on Anabelle, on seeing this task done so that she could return to the work of saving her mother.
But her heart shattered at the sight of Henryk preparing a witch to burn, mechanical and rote in his manner, as if all the feeling had been bled from him.
How easily he could do this to a young woman who’d never chosen her magic, or her station in life. And how easily he might do this to me.
Had he forgotten that he’d grown up friends with a witch, and that it was a witch who’d brought him back from the cusp of death?
Was becoming an Inquisitor some sick revenge for leaving him alone on that bridge, the same as Anabelle had done to her?
Beautiful as he’d grown to be, he was unrecognizable to her.
In his cruelty, he’d become a terrible kind of monster.
She found herself doubting everything. Maybe she was mistaken.
Maybe he’d never tried to warn her about Anabelle.
And maybe, just maybe, the monster might want her next.
Father Antoine hobbled from the crowd, dressed in his black friar robes, the heavy crucifix at his neck catching the fading sunlight. He made a solemn cross in the air before Anabelle, speaking quietly, performing her last rites.
But Anabelle would not need them. Not today. Not ever, if Ree had her way.
Henryk lowered the torch upon the kindle. Anabelle went slack in shock, the fire hissing as it took on the logs and caught to roaring flame.
Ree cast her eyes on the space in Congo Square she’d traced with the matching veve that she’d marked the alchemist with. Now, she murmured to the air.
In the passing of one breath, Anabelle was screaming, a sound that tore the air, and in the next, she was gone before the fire could touch her. There was a pop!, and in her place the alchemist appeared. Another pop!, and a shaking Anabelle landed beside Ree. The crowd gasped.
“Ree—” Anabelle sobbed, but Ree put a finger to her lips.
Onlookers crossed themselves, followed by cries of witchcraft, of devilry afoot.
The wind shifted. Perhaps your mother was right about you. Papa Legba laughed, a sound that sent a cold shiver down her back. His voice was preternaturally deep, eerily resonant—everywhere all at once. You are learning yet, Marie Laveau. And then he was gone.
The fire ate quickly along the alchemist’s feet first, traveling higher and higher. His screams came rippling from his throat, wild and undone. Henryk stood back in shock, but there was nothing to be done. The fire consumed the alchemist whole.