Chapter Twenty-One Ree
Chapter Twenty-One
Ree
When Ree awoke on the floor in the bayou house, Claudette was bent over her, shaking her back and forth by the shoulders until her teeth rattled.
“What did you learn?” the older witch demanded. “Whatever it was, it was not good. You were screaming like a goat.”
Ree said nothing and climbed to her feet, striding over to the water dish filled with lemon balm and rose petals that they used to dampen Marie’s brow to keep the fever down.
She splashed her face, tried her best to wash away her mother’s memories.
But they were there, seared into her mind, where they might live forever.
“I know what the Song of Three means now,” said Ree.
How long had it been since that night she’d heard the spirits’ riddle in the bayou?
They’d seemed resistant to tell her then, she just couldn’t understand why.
Would she have even believed them if they had told her what the first Quarter Queen’s words had truly meant?
What they meant for Ree? Though only a week had passed, Ree could see the stubborn girl she’d been, so foolish and brash, making a game of everything in her path. But this was no game—this was her life.
“The Song of Three is just talk,” Claudette said. “Fable born out of the Inquisition. A riddle the old folks tell themselves to make meaning out of a dark time.”
“No, it isn’t, Claudette. It’s about my parents. It’s about me.” She faltered. “I…I was supposed to die.” But Marie had changed that, somehow. She’d changed fate.
Claudette hissed, emerald eyes flashing, and fanned herself with her tarot cards. “ ’Tis bad juju to suggest such things.”
“It is the truth. I saw it for myself. I was born of both their magic.” Marie’s light and Jon’s darkness twined together into some unnamable thing.
Into her. “I turned Marcel into a zombi. The Harbinger says a Laveau witch will raise the dead—don’t you see?
It’s me, Claudette. I was the thing Jon wanted to use. ”
“And what would he have done with you?”
Ree wasn’t sure of the particulars, or that she even wanted to know.
Not entirely. “The loa demanded final sacrifice before they would grant him a rebellion.” A sacrifice her father had been willing to make.
But not Marie. She felt herself seeded with guilt.
She’d always scorned her mother’s protections, her ever-watchful eye.
But now she knew. If she had known the truth, perhaps their relationship would have been different.
But hindsight would do her no favors now.
“But that didn’t happen. Your mother saved you. That is why she warred with Jon.”
Kind as they were, Claudette’s words didn’t make the truth any easier for Ree to accept.
That her own father could come to the decision to sacrifice her.
We must be willing to sacrifice the few to save the many.
To some, that might make him the hero. There was relief in knowing that this other side of her magic was her father’s blood at work.
That even if it had killed her, he had been willing to use it to save others.
A terrible bargain. But New Orleans was full of them.
Her mother took gasping, shallow breaths, her body fragile on the bed.
The truth burned Ree’s throat: Marie was wasting away.
She would be lucky if she lived through the night.
Which meant Ree couldn’t wait any longer.
If she was going to open the Veil, then she must do it now.
She stalked to the door but felt a sudden breath of wind push her backward.
She whirled to see Claudette staring at her, hands on her hips.
How very controlling L’Enchanteresse had become during their time together—some might even say concerned.
“And just where are you going?”
“To save my mother!” snapped Ree. “To the city of the fucking dead. That’s where Jon hid the spell, Claudette. It’s where the Veil magic has been this whole time.”
“You can’t go just yet.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Because of this.”
Claudette produced a golden slip of paper affixed with the city’s seal, the fleur-de-lis. Ree crooked a finger, and the letter floated into her waiting hand. She read it over:
Mayor Felix Corbin
Requests the honor of your presence
On Tuesday evening, February 28th
At eight o’clock
Théatre des Lys
New Orleans
1786 Royal Street
“Then I will not go.” She didn’t have time for silly celebrations. The magic of Mardi Gras was useless to her tonight.
“Don’t be a fool. You can’t refuse him. Not after you were caught raising the dead.”
“What if it’s a trap? You want me to walk directly into it?”
“That is exactly what I would have you do, child.” She shuffled the shiny silver-and-plum cards with a loud flourish.
“You will go to him in a pretty dress. You will drink wine like the rest of the city. You must distract him. Make him believe all the world comes to him. And then, you will slip away while he is preoccupied. Refuse him, and I guarantee he will send officers to every door you’ve ever walked through in a matter of hours. ”
Ree had to concede she made a point. But then she looked at her meager dress, which would not do for Corbin’s illustrious bal masqué. “I don’t have anything to wear.”
“Never mind that,” Claudette said with a smirk. “Let me work my magic. We shall ask the cards what character you may become.”
With a quick flash of her hands, she began shuffling, the golden bangles on her arms tinkling. One card leapt from the bunch, and she turned it over and tapped its glossy surface with a long painted nail. The High Priestess.
After Claudette had finished the long task of dressing her, Ree adjusted her mask, checking her reflection in the large gilded looking glass.
The irony was not lost on her that this was the mirror Marie had once gazed into while Sanite prepared her for Mardi Gras night, for her fateful meeting with the Conjurer.
But it was not her mother she saw. It was the High Priestess who stared back at her now, dark eyes enigmatic beneath the thin slip of golden lace set with tiny diamond specks she’d worn as her mask, the long shimmering black veil that had been carefully picked to accentuate the dark waves of her hair.
Claudette had interwoven the gold cloth of her mother’s tignon beneath the lace, something that made Ree nervous.
The tignon was her mother’s. It was her crown, after all.
But tonight, the piece of fabric was just that—a piece of fabric.
It would become the crown only on its chosen successor.
The top of the lace was adorned in a pointed tiara of golden metalwork, the jutting ends fixed with tiny silver stars set at the tips.
The gown was sewn in a mixture of copper, gold, and black lace, the shoulders left bare.
She could be the Madonna, some gaudy version of the holy mother.
Or, a dark voice sang at her ear, you could be as you are meant to. You could be a queen.
Ree pushed her way through the madness of Mardi Gras.
The crowd of revelers had grown thick on this end of Royal Street, people choking her from all sides.
She was tempted to use magic to force her way through, but eventually she gave up on the notion entirely.
She thought it best to preserve her energy for the ball.
She didn’t exactly expect Corbin to be up to his best behavior.
In fact, she was expecting that she might very well be walking into a trap.
Golden and silver beads fell into the darkened streets from the balconies above, where masked faces jeered down at her, their voices and laughter blending into indistinguishable debauchery.
Light posts glistened where elaborate gold, purple, and green bows had been tied.
The gambling parlors, taverns, alehouses, and hotels had all thrown open their doors, the arches well lit in flickering sconces enchanted with purple and gold flames.
The crowd pressed around her, a carousel of faces, each more terrible and beautiful than the last. Sailors and tourists, whores, dancers, magicians, fancy well-to-dos, trumpet-carrying musicians, children, and simple local folks transfigured into vampires and ghouls, phantoms, fairies, and all manner of folktale beasts.
Men with horns protruding from their foreheads, masks with long beaks over the noses, white-lacquered disguises, others crafted entirely of plumed feathers.
Ree passed lovers locked in searing kisses.
Pretty women who’d adorned their bare breasts in jewels and danced along the banquettes.
A blond woman sheathed in a glistening white bridal veil, on her knees in an alley, wiping the back of her mouth with her hand.
All manner of sin allowed, no pleasure spared. No saints and no sinners.
Ree was tempted to snatch a fat piece of beignet from a sweet stand manned by an old fellow donning a feathered disguise, but she thought better of it—the powdered dust would ruin the rouge along her cheeks and lips, the face Claudette had so carefully painted upon her.
Ree slid her mask into place and started up the gilded steps that led toward the Théatre des Lys’s double doors, grateful for the disguise.
She stepped inside to see the theater had been transformed.