"Listen to me very carefully," Dre said while the rest of us grabbed our go-bags. "Do not try to continue whatever ritual you started. Get to the main entrance of the cemetery and wait for us. We're on our way."
I hung up and moved with Lia down the hall. Cami was in the kitchen when we passed. We told her where we were going before we were out the door and piled into Lia’s SUV. She was backing out before I finished buckling my seatbelt.
The drive to Lafayette Cemetery felt like racing against time. Probably because we were. Someone was hijacking spiritual energy, and a teenage witch performing unsupervised necromancy was basically ringing the dinner bell for whatever supernatural predator was stalking the city. It was a recipe for disaster.
We found Zoe huddled near the cemetery gates, clutching what looked like an old leather journal. She was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. She didn’t look older than seventeen. Her expression was the kind of wide-eyed terror that came from realizing you'd bitten off way more than you could chew.
"Thank the gods you came," she said as we approached. "I tried to leave, but every time I get more than a few feet from the gate, something pulls me back."
"What exactly were you trying to do?" Dea asked gently. Her empathy helped calm panicked civilians.
"I was following instructions from my grandmother's journal," Zoe replied, holding up the worn leather book. "She wrote about communicating with the spirits of dead family members. I thought if I could reach her..."
"What happened instead?" I asked, cutting her off. We didn’t need to know what she wanted from her grandmother.
"Something else answered. It felt empty and hungry. It started pulling at me, like it wanted to crawl inside and wear me like a jacket." Zoe shuddered. "I managed to break the connection, but I can feel it watching me."
Dre pulled protective charms from her bag. "Did this thing say anything to you?"
"It called itself the Collector." Zoe's voice dropped to a whisper. "It said it had been waiting for someone from my family to call out. That we owed it a debt."
The Collector had to be the same entity we'd been tracking through corrupted ritual sites and guardian disappearances. "We need to get her to safety," I said to my sisters. "Now."
As we turned to leave, the temperature around us dropped sixty degrees or more faster than you could say, ‘oh, shit’. The familiar oily sensation of a malevolent supernatural presence rolled over us in waves. "It’s too late," Adèle projected from home. "It's coming."
The thing that materialized near the cemetery's central monument wasn't exactly a ghost. It had a vaguely human shape but wasn’t one. Its eyes burned with intelligence, and when it spoke, its voice sounded like grinding bone.
"The child called to us," it said, focusing its attention on Zoe with predatory intensity. "She offered herself as a vessel. We will collect what was promised."
"Like hell you will," I snarled, stepping between Zoe and the entity while my sisters formed a semi-circle in front of us.
The Collector's laugh was the sound of tomb doors creaking open. "You cannot protect them all, little witches. The barriers weaken. The binding fails. Soon, we will collect every soul that owes us payment."
"What payment?" Dea demanded as she palmed a potion that she had created to banish ghosts.
"The families that bound us used the deaths of our vessels as their power source," the entity replied. "Every guardian, every descendant of those who participated in our imprisonment, owes us a life. We will collect them all before we claim our freedom."
Turning to Zoe, I gestured to the book in her hand. "Is there anything about the Collector in there?"
Zoe flipped through the journal with shaking hands. "Yes," she said, pointing to a passage written in faded ink. "This page is titled the Collector of Souls. It says the Collector was bound during the yellow fever epidemic. If the veil between worlds was ever damaged, it would seek freedom using the recently dead as vessels."
"Baron Samedi's hurricane damaged that veil," Phi said unnecessarily.
The Collector's form solidified further. It was feeding off something. "The storm presented an opportunity. Each soul we collect makes us stronger. Each guardian bloodline that falls weakens the binding further."
"You’ll never get free," I said firmly as Lia pulled the medallion we'd taken from our earlier zombie attacker. "Weknow you're using corrupted gris-gris bags and possessing shopkeepers to do your dirty work."
The entity's attention focused on the medallion with unmistakable hunger. "Our servants are... limited. The veil still holds us partially bound. But each anchor we corrupt, each guardian we collect, brings us closer to full manifestation."
"Anchors?" Lia asked sharply as she dangled the talisman from her hand.
"The ritual sites that maintain our prison," the Collector explained with obvious satisfaction. "Your Baron Samedi's storm created cracks in our cage. Now we widen those cracks, one inch at a time."
The temperature dropped another ten degrees, and I realized we were running out of time. This thing was getting stronger just by being near Zoe and feeding off her power. It was like some kind of energy vampire.
"We need to leave," I said urgently. "Now."
When we tried to back toward the cemetery entrance, the Collector raised what might have been a hand. The air around us thickened like molasses, making movement feel like swimming through cement. "The child stays," it commanded. "She will serve as our vessel until we can claim her bloodline properly."
