"Just some herbs from Celestine's shop on Dauphine Street. And maybe some of those consecrated candles from the place next door. Not too much. I just want to have the right supplies for spell practice."
Twenty minutes later, we were back in the French Quarter. Apparently that's where we lived now. We’d been driving back and forth through the same streets all day like supernatural Uber drivers with a really unfortunate route. Dauphine Street was lined with shops that catered to both tourists hunting for authentic voodoo experiences and locals who actually knew the difference between real magical supplies and overpriced tourist trinkets.
Celestine's shop, Gris-Gris & Gear, was squeezed between a tarot card reader and a mask shop. I’d never been there before. Its narrow windows were filled with herbs, oils, and carved santos that seemed to track our movement like tiny wooden security cameras. The moment I stepped through the door, I got smacked in the face with sage and an empathic assault that felt like being hugged by a live wire.
"Oh, nope, nope, nope," I gasped, stumbling backward into the doorjamb with a grunt. "Something is very, very wrong in here." The empathic barrage was immediate and overwhelming. I was hit with fear, confusion, and underneath it all, a sense of profound violation.
"Dea? What is it?" Lia's hand on my shoulder was the only thing keeping me from bolting out the door like my hair was on fire.
"There's someone here, but they're not really here, if that makes sense." I forced myself to move deeper into the shop despite every survival instinct I possessed screaming at me torun like my ass was being chased. "It's like someone left the lights on but nobody's home, except someone is definitely using the house."
"That makes this empty shop about ten times creepier," Kota observed, scanning the shelves lined with herbs, oils, and various magical supplies. The front of the store was completely deserted, which should have been our first clue that something was seriously wrong.
"We need to find Celestine," Phi said as she headed toward the back room with her usual determination. "She might be in danger."
"Wait!" Dani called out, but it was too late. Phi had already pushed through the beaded curtain separating the front from the back.
The rest of us hurried after her. What we found wasn't going to make it into any tourist brochures. Madame Celestine was sitting at a workbench surrounded by dozens of partially assembled gris-gris bags. Her hands were moving with the kind of mechanical precision that would have made a factory robot weep with envy. But her eyes were completely vacant. She was staring at absolutely nothing while her fingers worked without any conscious direction whatsoever.
"Well, this is delightfully creepy," I said, approaching the older woman like she might explode into supernatural confetti at any moment. "Celestine? Can you hear me?”
“You're kind of freaking us out here," Kota added with a grimace.
There was no response. She just kept stuffing little pouches with grave dirt, bones, and what looked suspiciously like hair. Her movements were so perfectly repetitive they could have been programmed by someone with absolutely no sense of fun or basic human decency.
I reached out with my empathic abilities to see what was happening to her. I immediately recoiled like I'd touched a live wire. There was nothing there. No consciousness or sense of self. She was just an empty shell being puppeted by someone who felt like it had crawled out of the supernatural equivalent of a toxic waste dump.
"This is the same energy signature as the cemetery symbols," Phi whispered as she documented the gris-gris bags with her phone. "Someone's controlling her."
"Not someone," I corrected as I got a better feel for things. "Something. I can’t explain it, but it doesn't feel like a person."
“That doesn’t mean it’s not,” Lia replied.
Dani moved to Celestine's other side. She was careful to avoid the ritual materials scattered across the workbench like supernatural landmines. "How do we snap her out of it?"
"Very, very carefully," I replied as I placed my hands on either side of Celestine's face. I opened my empathic abilities just enough to make contact with whatever was left of her consciousness. It was like trying to have a conversation in a hurricane. Thankfully, I'd had practice with Madame LaLaurie. "Celestine. I need you to listen to my voice. You're safe now. Come back to us."
For a moment, absolutely nothing happened. I pushed calming energy through to her. My sisters sent waves of energy to me. A few seconds later, Celestine’s hands stilled. She blinked twice before focusing on my face with the kind of confusion usually reserved for people who wake up in Vegas with new tattoos.
"What... where am I?" she whispered, looking around at the dozens of gris-gris bags like they'd materialized out of thin air. "I don't remember... did I make these?"
The terror that flooded through her when she saw her own handiwork hit me like a psychic slap. She was barraged withraw, primal fear mixed with a violation so profound it left me gasping like a fish out of water. "Something was working through me," she said in a shaky voice as she pushed away from the workbench. "I could feel it wearing my hands like gloves and using my knowledge. But I couldn't stop it. I couldn't even scream."
"When did this start?" Dre asked gently. As the oldest, she took on the mothering role as well as taking charge.
"I... yesterday? Maybe the day before? Time feels like pudding." Celestine wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the bags like they might spontaneously combust. "I remember opening the shop in the morning, and then... nothing until just now. Like someone turned off all the lights in my head."
I studied the gris-gris bags more closely, noting the specific combination of materials in each one. Grave dirt, bone chips, hair, dried blood, and small metal objects that were probably iron nails. "These aren't traditional protection charms," I noted. Everyone who grew up in New Orleans knew about gris-gris bags.
Lia shook her head as she reached out to touch one but pulled her finger back before she made contact. "They're anchors."
Phi began grabbing ingredients out of her bag and putting something together. Knowing her, it was a protective charm for Celestine. It’s what I was going to do before she beat me to it.
"Anchors for what?" Kota queried as she took a step away from the table.
"For binding spirits to specific locations," Adèle explained. "These bags are designed to create a network of supernatural control points throughout the city."
Horror made my blood run cold. "Shit. Someone's building a citywide spirit trap. They're planning to use every ghost in New Orleans as their personal battery pack."
