Chapter Twenty-Four Marie
Chapter Twenty-Four
Marie
It was Marie’s worst fear come alive—to be shackled. No, to be owned. And that was exactly what she was now, wasn’t she? The iron manacle hanging from her neck was proof.
They’d fitted her with a collar heavy enough for an ox, with enough aurum for at least three men. Like a dog, Marie thought. Like a fucking dog.
Marie flexed her fingers, the flesh still burned and reddened from where she’d touched the aurum.
They’d left them unbound. She’d half expected to have woken up in the Brotherhood’s dungeons, or one of their laboratories.
But she’d been promised to someone else—the hangman.
She looked around, her cell a small, lightless thing.
This was the jailhouse. When she’d first started making her rounds as a plague nurse some years ago, she’d made it a habit to stop here, to treat the worst of the city’s victims, those cutpurses and murderers and cons.
Not even Sanite had understood. Why bother, when they are already dead?
But Marie had only smiled. Because being dead and being doomed are not the same.
But now she felt herself doubting those words.
How na?ve she’d been, so eager to please, so sure of her own power and gifts.
But her brief glimpse of motherhood had shown her different.
Without her daughter, she would be as good as walking death on two legs.
If she survived this whole ordeal and her baby didn’t?
Well, death and doom would be one and the same now.
Footsteps clattered along in the darkness, drawing near. Marie sat up, forced herself to gather some semblance of courage. Turn your heart to stone. Light flooded her cell, and suddenly Marie was staring at three leering police officers.
“My, my, look here, the great Marie Laveau saddled like a horse.” The officer let out a whooping laugh, his men joining in.
Marie swallowed down the sting of humiliation. Her pride would not help her tonight. “Are you always so eager to see a woman in chains?”
His eyebrows rose. “You’d be surprised, Laveau. My momma always said don’t go askin’ questions if you ain’t prepared for the answers. And you”—his eyes flickered over Marie’s dirtied frame—“surely don’t want the answer to that.”
“What have I done? Tell me, what is my crime?” she demanded. “Will there at least be a trial?”
“No time for all that. So, I’d reckon no.
There’s an insurrection waging in the streets.
The good folks of New Orleans are eager to have order restored.
Everything back to the way it was.” The officer sneered, having taken her silence for surrender.
“I’ll see you at dawn, witch.” He turned and left, his men following, except for one.
The officer lingered behind, holding on to the bars of her cell with both hands.
“They say you’re the next Quarter Queen.” The man pressed his face against the bars of her cell. “You think yourself a queen, do you? And what do you rule, exactly? A bunch of juju negroes already owned by another?”
Marie turned to face him, considering him in the weak light of the lantern that swayed in his hand.
She knew what he wanted—it was what Corbin wanted, what they all wanted from her in some way or another.
They wanted her magic. No, not the garden variety of spells or hexes she could cast with a single breath.
They wanted her real craft, her power, her innermost light.
Marie smirked. Well, they could keep wanting. That she would never give.
“If you are a queen, then where is your crown, your majesty? Is that dirty little rag on your head supposed to be it?” He laughed at her, eyes flickering dismissively to the cloth tignon on her head.
Her simple cloth of rough cotton was certainly not the golden crown of the Quarter Queen, but Marie was not one to be mocked.
She watched him silently. Something about her gaze must have unnerved him, for his laughter soon quieted. He spat into her cell. “You’ll hang by dawn, Laveau. And after, you’re going to hell, witch.”
She very well might, this was true. But it wouldn’t be for her magic.
Moonlight fell through the little box of a window, casting silver puddles onto the floor of Marie’s cell. Her magic was as good as dead with the aurum around her neck.
There was one last hope, one last ritual she could try.
Conduction. Different from the kind Jon had used in his ritual, this was gentler magic, the magic born of the natural tether between mother and child, a magic that didn’t require an ounce of her own, magic not even aurum could stop.
Marie cast a silent prayer to her saints and closed her eyes.
Marie, she called into the darkness. Marie…
And when she opened her eyes, she was in a different room altogether. The world was mostly formless and blurry, but there were shapes drifting into view. Faces, Marie supposed. Which could mean only one thing…
She was seeing with her daughter’s eyes.
Gailon’s face floated into view, and a surge of anger burst forth in Marie’s chest. The connection wobbled.
The world went dark. Marie took a breath and held the connection steady.
The time for retribution would come. But now she couldn’t stop the fear.
She could handle this cell, these men, but the thought of her little baby facing the very same…
Marie’s stomach lurched. Gailon was facing her, which meant he was facing her daughter. Something flickered overhead—his staff. Dark green light glowed from the end of it. He took aim, pointing it directly at her…
Something moved behind Gailon. Marie gasped. She saw the knife first, the quick flash of silver, then saw the blood spray the air. Then Gailon’s dark eyes, impossibly wide, still bright with stupid surprise as he fell away.
Silas stepped forward, quickly pocketing the knife. Cries filled the chamber. Her daughter was crying. And then Silas’s face swam before hers as he picked her daughter up and rocked her from side to side.
Marie, he said quietly, speaking directly into her daughter’s ear.
I can feel you here, witch. Listen closely.
There’s going to be a man. Perhaps you’ve already met him.
I can control him, but only to an extent.
He is going to have a set of keys in his pocket.
What happens in that cell I cannot control. Do you understand?
It was not as if she could respond. The connection flickered. A spark of hope flared in Marie’s chest. Perhaps all was not lost yet.
Good, he said at last, the ghost of a smirk on his lips. I thought that you might.
Marie opened her eyes. She was back within her cell. Even in the silence, she could hear her baby crying. Marie stilled, shutting her eyes to the darkness. Worrying would not help her now. Like it or not, she needed to trust Silas to do his part. So, she sat very still. And she waited.
Later, Marie heard the thud of footsteps leading to her cell, the telltale jangle of keys. The click of the lock rang in the air, and the door to her cell groaned open.
“Hello, witch,” the guard crooned. He smiled, flashing stained teeth.
Marie sat up, staring at him with slow regard. “Come to take your fun, I suppose?” Her gaze flickered over his smile, the eagerness of his body. She lowered her voice to a soft coo. “Then take it.”
He stepped closer. “Where is your magic?” he taunted, his breath the sourness of whiskey and stale tobacco. The stench turned her stomach. “Where are your spells and hexes, witch?”
“Come closer,” said Marie, “and I will gladly show you.”
Marie did not dare move, not even when he was suddenly upon her, his hands roving greedily along her body.
The guard pushed her flat on her back with enough force that she gasped.
What did it matter? She was without her magic, not a witch any longer, just a woman now.
He struck her in the face, then planted a drunken kiss along her shoulder.
Marie squirmed, her hair coming undone from its tignon. His hands squeezed along her waist, over her breasts.
Marie reached for the cloth at her head, the material slipping between her fingers.
“Little witch,” he crooned into her neck, fingers hastily working at getting his trousers undone.
Marie touched his throat, the gesture almost tender.
He smiled drunkenly, his expression glazed with pleasure.
And then he gasped, eyes bulging as Marie coiled her tignon around his neck.
He reached out, clawing blindly for her.
But Marie held fast and squeezed and squeezed, even when she felt him going slack against her.
The guard flopped and flailed like a cold fish in her hands, but she stayed fastened upon him, viperlike, watching as the light slowly ebbed from his eyes.
He stilled, dropping upon her like a heavy stone.
Marie rolled his body from her and heaved herself to her knees.
She was frozen like that for a long moment, rooted to the spot, her body coated in sweat, her breathing ragged.
But then the cry of another prisoner in the distance startled her into action.
She quickly patted along the guard’s chest, over his shirt, and then his trouser pockets.
Finally, her hands closed around the keys.
She brought trembling hands to her neck, to the little space at the back of the collar, and fit the key inside.
The collar unlocked with a click, clattering to the dirtied stone.
Marie climbed to her feet. She cracked her neck, her magic flowing back to her in a warm rush, banishing the soreness from her bones. She looked ahead and saw the barest speckle of light in the distance. There. There was her path forward.
Marie spared one last look to the man at her feet, those eyes staring up at her wide and unseeing. “There,” she spat, “there’s your fucking magic.”