Marguerite's form began to fade as the hour passed and the veil between worlds strengthened. "The reunion gathering is not a coincidence. The Collector plans to use that event to harvest the remaining talents all at once. You must not let the families gather as planned."
"Tell us how we can perform the binding before then?" Dani demanded. "We need those bloodlines!"
"Find another way," Marguerite replied as her voice grew distant. "Or watch as the Collector claims not just New Orleans but spreads its hunger across the world. The choice is yours. But choose quickly—time grows short."
“Don’t worry. There is a way to find them,”Adèle interjected. “We simply must be clever enough to find them.”
“Time to get creative,” I told my sisters. No way were we going to do anything short of rebinding this creature.
CHAPTER 10
DAHLIA
The acrid taste of terror clung to my tongue like a bad case of morning breath as we hauled our sorry asses back up those stone steps from the Guardian vault at Congo Square. My hands were shaking worse than a crack addict in withdrawal—which, let me tell you, was saying something since I'd seen plenty of those back in my social work days. But this wasn't fear making me tremble like a Chihuahua in a thunderstorm. Oh no. This was the bone-deep, soul-crushing realization that we were royally screwed.
The Collector was an apex predator. It had been methodically picking off Guardian families for over a century. It was like a particularly dedicated serial killer with a very specific victim profile. And guess what? We'd just moved to the top of its hit list.
"Hold up," I said, planting my feet on the stone steps like a stubborn mule. My sisters turned to look at me, their faces ghostly pale in the flickering purple glow of Dea's witch fire. They looked about as thrilled as parents at a CPS home visit.
"We can't leave yet." I channeled every ounce of determination I had left. "Marguerite gave us the grand tour, sure, but we barely dipped our toes in that magical library. If we're going to have a snowball's chance in hell of stoppingthis cosmic asshole, we need to know everything. And I mean everything."
Dani was already giving me that look—the one that said she was mentally triaging our situation like a critical NICU case. Immediate intervention needed? Check. Not enough resources for a good outcome? Double check. Family about to fall apart? Triple fucking check.
"Lia's right," Phi said, already doing a one-eighty back toward the chamber like she was responding to a Code Red. "We were so laser-focused on those ritual instructions that we completely half-assed the rest of the archive. That's like doing a home assessment and only checking the kitchen."
I nodded grimly. We were about as prepared for this fight as a new social worker walking into their first domestic violence call—which was to say, not at all. But sometimes you had to work with what you had. Even when what you had was a prayer, some attitude, and a really bad feeling about how this was all going to end.
"Plus, if this place has been hidden for over a century, who knows when we'll get another chance to access it," Dani added reluctantly as she followed Phi.
We'd barely survived Dea's spirit communication with Marguerite earlier. The Collector's assault on our protective circle had been like getting hit by a supernatural freight train. But now that we knew this vault existed beneath Congo Square, we couldn't waste the opportunity.
The vault felt different in the aftermath of our magical battle. Without the immediate threat of the Collector trying to fry Dea's brain, the space revealed details we'd missed during the chaos. The chamber extended back into shadows that our earlier panic-fueled exploration hadn't reached.
"Look at this," Kota called from the far wall, running her fingers along carved stone. "These genealogical records are incredible."
I joined her, my breath catching as I studied the intricate carvings. Family trees were etched into the stone with painstaking detail, each branch representing generations of Guardian bloodlines. The Destrehan name dominated the central position, with the other families—Castellano, Moreau, Fontaine, Beauregard, Ashford, and Marigny—radiating outward like spokes of a wheel.
"Holy shit," I breathed, tracing the carved lines with my fingertip. "These records go back to before the founding of New Orleans. Some of these bloodlines trace back to the original French and Spanish colonists."
I continued examining the genealogical records, tracing family lines that read like a horror novel's victim list. "If what we've learned is right, most of these bloodlines have been systematically wiped out. The Collector's been playing a very long, very thorough game of supernatural genocide."
"I don't think the bastard got all of them," Kota said, that stubborn set to her jaw that meant she was about to do something either brilliant or spectacularly stupid. She raised her hands, magic crackling around her fingers like static electricity before a storm. "There's got to be more here. Families don't just document their own extinction."
She began weaving a revelation spell, her power reaching out to uncover whatever secrets these walls were hiding. I felt the magic pulse through the chamber, probing and searching like fingers running along a wall looking for hidden switches.
For a moment, the air shimmered with possibility. Then... nothing. Well, not nothing exactly, but barely a whisper of response. A few faint marks appeared on the stone walls—scratches that might have been names, dates that flickered into view for a heartbeat before fading back into obscurity.
"Shit," Kota muttered, sweat beading on her forehead from the effort. "Whatever enchantments are protecting this information, they're stronger than my usual tricks. I'm getting fragments, but it's like trying to read a book that's been mostly erased."
She was right about one thing though. The newer carvings I could make out, clearly etched by different hands over the decades, showed the stubborn persistence of life. Marriages, births, relocations—proof that some Guardian families had kept going well into the twentieth century despite having a cosmic horror breathing down their necks. The most recent additions I could clearly see were dated 1993.
"That matches the correspondence date Marguerite mentioned," Phi noted, running her fingers along one of the clearer inscriptions.
After photographing the wall thoroughly, we pushed deeper into the vault. I nearly jumped out of my skin as Dea's witch fire revealed what looked like the world's most dangerous museum exhibit. Several ceremonial daggers were arranged on stone pedestals, each one resting in its own protective case like they were too precious—or too deadly—to trust to the open air. Their blades caught the purple light with an otherworldly sheen that made my magical senses prickle like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical socket.
"That’s meteoric iron," Adèle's voice whispered through our mental link from back at the plantation. "They were forged from metal that fell from the heavens themselves. The original Guardians knew that only celestial materials could pierce the barrier between worlds. Such weapons can cut through the veil as easily as a scalpel through skin."
Next to the daggers sat crystal orbs the size of bowling balls, each one pulsing with enough stored magical energy to make my power-sense feel like it was getting a migraine. Light swirled inside them in hypnotic patterns that would make any fortune teller weep with envy.
