Chapter Twenty-Four Marie #5
“So be it.” Then Jon ran the blade along Sanite’s throat, blood spurting from the neat little line he’d carved, spraying along the blade’s silver handle, his hands and face.
“No!” Marie howled, lurching forward. But it was too late. She thrust out a hand, and Jon was flung to the far end of the hall. She wailed for Sanite, Ogoun’s fire spilling from her mouth, pouring out over the stone until it had formed a flaming wall.
Marie knelt by her queen. The old woman was lying on her side against the stone, the blood from the knife wound along her neck and from her torn eye seeping into the cracks.
Sanite gurgled and gurgled, choking furiously as she tried to speak, her one good eye on Marie. It was completely white, still filled with that terrible all-seeing magic, even as the life faded from her.
“You will look, Marie Laveau, and you will never find. What…you seek…” Sanite gasped, blood spurting from her lips. She pulled the golden cloth from her hair and placed it in Marie’s hand with trembling fingers. “Does not lay outside of you, but within. As above, so below. So within, so without.”
That eye hung on Marie’s face for a moment longer, and then it was rolling up into the socket, unseeing.
Sanite fell slack until Marie was holding only her golden cloth.
Marie stared at it for one painful moment, realizing what Sanite intended for her to do, then slowly tied it upon her head.
At once, she felt all of Sanite’s strength, that terrible wrath, her many faults, the few virtues—all of it flowed into Marie.
She felt the tignon change and transform until it became a crown, as Sanite had intended.
The fire parted. Jon stepped through. Marie was still kneeling when he approached her. But she had the strength of the Quarter Queen within her now. And she understood, at last, Sanite’s final lesson. Not Jon’s.
As above, so below. So within, so without.
Marie was shaking. Jon held his hand out to her, just as he had during their second fateful meeting, at the masquerade. She’d wanted so desperately to learn his secret magic, his tricks. And learn she did.
“Join me, Marie.” One last chance. She stared at his hand…
She took it.
“What a righteous queen you are.” He’d meant it as a taunt, another cruelty to seed into her spirit.
“No.” Marie slowly lifted her head to face him, tears stinging her eyes. “A mother.”
By the time Jon realized what was happening, Marie already had the aurum collar in place. It burned her bare hands, but she ignored the pain, that same blistering ache, and closed it around Jon’s wrist with a snap.
Jon let out a howl, stumbling back in disbelief. She knew what wearing those chains again meant to him, what it would cost him.
She slowly rose to her feet. “I am sorry, Jon.” And it was the truth. She was sorry.
Jon watched her, his golden eyes wide. It was the first time she’d ever seen him truly afraid. Marie supposed she should be thankful. He’d taught her pain could be useful, that it could be anchored to make one’s magic stronger.
“Take this off,” Jon demanded shakily. Not a monster, she realized, but simply a man broken by his own pain. “Marie.”
She ignored him. The truth was she didn’t need to taunt him with illusions of the past, trickeries of power. No, she didn’t need any of that, not when she had the real thing.
Power surged through her in a furious burst of light.
The ground shattered, cracks traveling along the stone.
She knew what lay beneath. But did Jon? Her magic began to carve itself into the stone, into the veve shaped like a doorway, a flickering veil.
Something older, something powerfully ancient coursed through her veins, pulled from the dark well of the earth itself.
The air split, then circled around her in a furious gale.
She was on the threshold of death. She felt the soft caress of its hand reaching from the great beyond, reaching for her.
Horror slowly filled Jon’s face. After all, Marie had sought at first to learn the secrets of the Veil for Jacques. Not for him. Jon was a man of contingencies. So, with Father Antoine’s blessing, she’d been forced to make her own.
“I would have joined you, Jon.” Marie’s magic intensified. “But not at the cost of my daughter. You would kill her. And that’s just not something I’m willing to forgive.”
Marie felt herself floating, higher and higher until she hovered over the bloodied stone, until Jon kneeled directly beneath her, frozen.
She began the forbidden incantation, drawing upon her magic. It came to her, rippling over her body—her eyes, forearms, glowing fingertips. Finally, she dropped to the ground, her magic flowing from her in throbbing waves, her dark hair scattering behind her.
“Marie…” Fear edged his voice now. “What have you done?”
Unbidden magic crackled with her fury and despair. “Everything you taught me.”
Marie slammed a blood-soaked hand into the ground, into the sacred markings. It began to glow with a pulsing violet light.
“Open,” she whispered in the Old Tongue.
There came from the silence a dull creaking sound, the groan of an old gate being swung open.
The door to the Veil opened before Marie Laveau at last.
Darkness seeped into the sanctuary, a whisper at her ear. You’ve opened the door, Marie Laveau, it said. Now, come see who answers.
It was death. And Marie Laveau knew death well.
She’d felt it all around her since she was a child.
She’d glimpsed it in the eyes of chained men and women, saw it looming over those poor souls in their sickbeds drawing their final, fevered breaths, watched hopelessly as it followed her husband like a shadow when he turned to leave her one last time.
So when death came to her now, she held out her hand, greeting it like an old friend.
“No!” Jon screamed. “What have you done?”
That was when the world went white.
A blinding light flooded the sanctuary. Marie squeezed her eyes shut.
When she opened them again, a towering black door had appeared before her.
Silver light glowed around the edges like moonlight had seeped into its old cracks.
The door was covered in a long tattered white curtain that swayed softly.
The blood drained from Marie’s face as her eyes remained fixed on that pale shroud and the glowing door behind it. The Veil.
There were voices whispering from behind it. Whispering to her.
Marie slowly rose to her feet. Jon shouted for her, but Marie could not hear him. It was as if the sound had been bled from the room except for the voices from behind the door. Marie drifted toward that strange glowing light.
Someone else was calling for her now—someone from behind the door.
Come, Marie, it said.
She’d know that voice anywhere—even after the long, lonely years she’d spent without it, she’d know it in a heartbeat. Because it was the voice of her mother.
Come back to me, her mother begged, and we can be together again.
As she drew closer, she could hear other voices too—Grand-mère, Sanite Dede. And Jacques. Her once beloved. He called to her, a caressing whisper at her ear. Join me.
Marie could hear something else, some faint echo in the distance—someone was crying.
It was her daughter. From somewhere in the cathedral, her daughter was crying for her.
Marie clung to that blessed sound, anchored herself to it.
Her daughter. Her reason for it all. She could not leave her.
Not now—not ever. Marie stopped, reason flooding back to her.
This was an illusion, another trick. The Veil had no power over her—she was the one who had summoned it; she was the one who had opened this door. And it was hers to close if she wanted.
A dark laugh sounded from behind that tattered white veil. The door opened, and a figure stepped from it, limned in silvery light. Papa Legba stood before her, glittering copper scales in hand. Lord of the Crossroads, keeper of keys, He Who Stands at the Beginning and the End.
“Marie Laveau,” Papa drawled slowly, something like a smile playing on his lips. “You would dare to open the sacred doorway to the dead?”
“I would.”
Those red eyes flashed. Not with anger, but with intrigue. “And so you have. Make your petition known to the Lord of the Crossroads. Whose soul is it that you require from me?”
What might she say? That she wanted to know what had become of her husband?
That after the long, terribly lonely years, this was what she had long sought after?
And here it was before her now, tauntingly real.
It was said that those foolish enough to dabble in Veil magic were looking for their lost loved ones, to bring back the souls of the dead.
But never had she heard of anyone offering the living.
Marie slowly looked to Jon, unbidden tears in her eyes. “I do not seek to take a soul. I only seek to offer one before you, Papa Legba.”
Jon stared numbly, frozen with incomprehension. Marie grimaced as she watched the white veil billow softly over the cold stone. He did not yet understand. But he would.
Papa’s red eyes crinkled at the corners, pleasantly bemused. “I have long watched you, Marie Laveau. I know you to be steadfast in your retributions. Vindictive, even. But this?” His withered lips curved. “This is truly diabolical. Are you sure, priestess?”
Marie was silent. It was this…or…She shut her eyes. She could not bear the alternative. If she killed him, Jon would be no more. At least this way, she could spare herself the act, and some part of him might still live on.
“Well…?” A dangerous edge to Papa’s voice now. The loa did not linger in the land of the living long. “Answer properly, witch.”
Finally, she brought herself to nod. “Yes.”
Marie turned to face Jon, lifting her hands. They were shaking. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying until she tried to speak.
“I—” Marie stopped.
Jon’s eyes found hers. For a moment he searched her face, snatching at the details of her features for his own. What was it she saw there, reflected in their gold depths? Pain? Love? She might never know.
The knot in her throat widened, her tongue like cold lead in her mouth. And yet she spoke anyway, voice quivering, heart stammering. Turn your heart to stone. She found the words at last. “I banish you, Jonathan, from this world,” Marie said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I cast you out.”
Papa Legba nodded, the deal done. “And so it shall be. A soul for a soul.” The scales in his gnarled hands tipped, weighing just a little heavier.
Jon opened his mouth to speak, then suddenly froze. The skin around his face stretched oddly, as if a thousand invisible hands were prying into his flesh. And they were. The spirits from the other side pulled and pulled at Papa Legba’s command, dragging Jon toward that strange silvery light.
As Jon’s thrashing body grew closer to the black door, it opened a little wider, waiting. Jon fought, but he was not strong enough to defy Papa’s command. No one was. The Lord of the Crossroads’s word was final.
“Marie! Please. Marie!” Jon yelled, voice curdled with dread. And he kept on calling for her. Marie. Marie. Marie. On and on, her name rang through the cathedral’s halls, a dull echo in her ear. Marie could not bear to look. And yet…she did.
The dead clawed viciously into Jon’s flesh, into his face, arms, hauling him across the stone to the tattered white veil.
It drew apart, silently welcoming him. Jon dug his fingers into the ground until his fingernails snapped and broke, rebellious to the end.
His eyes found hers, blood seeping from his mouth as he made a strange gurgling sound. Marie realized he was trying to speak.
“I…” Jon’s eyes shone, mouth gaping, teeth wet with his own blood. “…love you.”
And then he was gone, dragged down into that silvery light.
The white veil drew closed, the glowing door shut behind it.
The blinding light returned, flooding the room until the whole of it was swallowed in its white glare.
Marie shut her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was alone.
The voices of the dead were gone. And she knew with a wave of sadness that they would never trouble her again.
Marie stood frozen, Jon’s voice still ringing in her ears. I love you. And even as she thought it might be a trick, one last way to deceive her, she knew it was not. No lies, they had promised each other, after all.
With tears spilling down her face, Marie raised her eyes to the ceiling, to the god she could not see.
She screamed, a sound of bone-deep ache, twisting remorse, sin that needed to work its way out of her like a sickness.
God did not answer. She was alone. Only the crows were listening.
They were silent, staring from the rafters.
But even as they flew away, one by one, high into the dark—she knew.
The crows would not forgive.