but it puts money in my pocket and food on the table, so don’t knock it, seeing as how, you know, you
I let out a sigh. “I’m working on the job thing. . . .”
He bumped me with his shoulder, and I veered precariously close to the water. I bumped him back, shooting him a glare, only to be met with laughter. “
“Ha, ha.” But the reality went way beyond being a nuisance. My fight with Athena and my quest to end my curse had been a harrowing, brutal affair so far. And I didn’t expect that to change.
“They wouldn’t hurt you,” Violet called in a dreamy voice. She’d turned around and was walking backward. “You’re like their
“Yeah. No thanks.” Not something I wanted to hear, picture, or even think about. Just the idea that I could control a bunch of slithering, rubbery, hissing . . . I didn’t care if they loved me; I was
I hated that I was afraid. I was armed with a 9mm handgun, a borrowed blade, and a power that could turn things to stone, and yet I was scared of a creature only a fraction of my size.
“Fear like that comes from somewhere,” Henri said quietly.
I sidestepped a rotting log. “It comes from outrunning the hurricanes with my mother. You know what happens when it floods, when things are rushing so fast through the swamps and into the city? It pushes everything at you—fish, gators, snakes. . . .” So many snakes.
“Heard about that. Covington and some other towns out by The Rim were overrun with them.”
It was a memory, one of a very few, I had of my mother—four years old, running with her from New Orleans to a town that would eventually sit along The Rim, the boundary between New 2 and the rest of the United States. But as horrendous as that memory was, it paled in comparison to my mother giving me up to the state shortly after.
So began a long succession of foster homes, abuse, and trying to hide my differences. Though, for all my efforts, I couldn’t hide my pale hair and eyes. Now I knew where I got them—Medusa. Her long white hair, thick and straight and shiny, and her eyes so bright they looked like the clearest Caribbean Sea, had attracted the attention of a god who raped her, and another god, Athena, who cursed Medusa for that crime. But in her haste to punish, Athena had made a crucial mistake. She forgot to exempt the gods from the gorgon’s power. She’d created a god-killer.
Spying the dock and the boat, I let out a relieved breath.
Violet skipped down the stretch of rickety, low-lying boards and hopped into a metal boat tied to one of the dock’s posts. She set Pascal on the only bench and then tinkered with the engine as I climbed aboard and sat down next to Pascal.
The boat dipped again with Henri’s weight, rocking slightly from side to side. “Need help with that, Vi?”
“Nope.” Violet eased past Henri and stepped onto an old wooden box. “I’m captain today.”
She pulled her mask down over her face, as though she was preparing for war, not a trip down the bayou. The boat’s engine roared, startling two snowy egrets nearby. Black smoke sputtered from the motor as Violet revved the engine a few times before reversing us away from the dock.
Henri smiled at me, lifting his brow. “Captain it is.
We raced across the wide Mississippi, bouncing over the choppy waves, the fine spray dampening our skin. Violet guided the boat like she’d been born to it, and I supposed she had, being raised out in the bayous and swamps of New 2. She knew exactly how to navigate us to our destination—a secluded house deep in the bayou, owned by an old man, a trapper called the River Witch.
According to Violet, the River Witch was very powerful and knowledgeable. He was not in a coven, not a member of the three main witch families that populated the city, nor was he a warlock, which was what the few male witches in existence were called these days. I’d learned in one of my classes at Presby that there was a time long ago when all magical practitioners, whatever their gender, were called “witch.”
The constant rise and dip of the boat made my stomach tight and uneasy. I gripped the metal hull with one hand, my other holding the edge of the bench, trying to stay anchored to my seat. Violet pushed the small boat to its limit, and I knew she was making up time. No one wanted to be stuck in the swamps at night.
We entered the wide channel the hurricanes had cut through Bayou Segnette State Park and Jean Lafitte Preserve. The bayou connected the Mississippi to Lake Cataouatche. Off the bayou were smaller channels, eerie dark places. Dangerous places. The perfect places for all manner of creatures to hide.
The boat slowed as Violet navigated down a smaller channel under a cathedral of moss-draped trees.
Strangely, it felt absent of temperature here. Neither hot nor cold. Just stagnant and damp, causing a film of humidity to cover my face. The smells of mud and decomposing sea life hung heavy in the air. A water moccasin slithered through the water, making serpentine waves, before curling itself around a small cypress root. Its body bobbed in the wake as we went by, and my skin crawled.
After a few more miles, Violet steered the boat into another narrow channel and slowed until we were coasting. Mist hovered over the dark water, and through it, a yellow glow appeared and a narrow boat took shape. It looked like it came from another time, another world. Made of reeds, the sides were low but the bow and stern curved high and inward to a point. A lantern hung from one of the curves, casting its dim glow over the boat. A hunched-over old man, his face partially hidden by the hood of a dark cloak, stood at one end, holding a long pole to push the boat forward.
I glanced down at Pascal stretched out by my side and muttered, “Looks like we’re going to meet the reaper, doesn’t it, boy?”
“He won’t hurt you,” Violet said softly over her shoulder. “As long as you don’t touch his stuff.”
Sebastian once told me that Violet had been raised by a trapper who lived in the swamps. “Is this the person who raised you, Violet?”
This time she shrugged. “He taught me some things.”
As we drew close enough to exchange words with the River Witch, the reed boat turned and moved deeper into the bayou.
Eventually the River Witch’s house appeared, rising from the water on short, stocky stilts. It was one story, with a porch that ran the length of the house and steps that led to the dock where we tied our boat. Wind chimes and sun catchers hung from the porch’s top frame.
“When we go in, don’t touch anything. He hates when you touch his stuff, okay?” Violet reminded us.
“Don’t worry,” Henri assured her. “We won’t touch anything.”
Single file we went, the witch leading the way, our weight creaking the boards under our feet. Warm yellow light filled each of the windows and spilled from the door as the witch opened it and went inside.
I followed, feeling a huge dose of skepticism mixed with a desperate kind of hope. So far, finding the means to unravel the two-thousand-year-old gorgon curse inside me had been like trying to find a tiny grain of salt in a desert full of sand. The only information I’d found had been in the Novem’s library, where I uncovered two stories, one Sumerian, one Egyptian, of gods cursing a human. And nothing that helped me much, other than vague references to “untangling” the curse words.
I hesitated just inside the doorway, surprised to find the front room crammed with antiquities, the sort of things that would’ve been more at home in the Novem’s library than out here in the swamp. Shields, swords, helms, statues, jewelry, chests . . . all stacked with no rhyme or reason.
Henri gave me a gentle nudge. “You moving or what?”
“Yeah,” I said, distracted by what I saw and wondering just who the River Witch was and how he’d come by all those things. He wasn’t a simple trapper, a simple witch. That much was obvious. Wariness crept up my spine and tingled the back of my neck as I moved through the room and entered the large kitchen.
Herbs hung from exposed rafters. Mortars and pestles of different sizes lay on the countertops along with rocks, eggs of varying sizes, and jars of preserved animals and reptiles.
Violet crawled onto a high stool at the wide island, and spread her hands over the smooth slab of white marble as a cat jumped onto the counter, arched its back, and hissed at her.
