"Because I wasn't sure we should use it," Thomas admitted. His weathered hands trembled slightly as he held the obsidian mirror. "The spirits said some knowledge comes with a price, but when Dea put our situation so succinctly, I realized we might need it."
Phi reached for the mirror slowly, like she was approaching a rabid dog that might decide her face looked tasty. "What kind of price are we talking here? Money? Blood? Our grandmother's secret gumbo recipe?"
Thomas's expression went darker than week-old coffee. "What you love most." Well, shit. That escalated quickly.
The moment Phi's fingers brushed the obsidian frame, the mirror's surface started rippling like black water. "I can see something," she whispered in a voice that was all breathy and dramatic. "It's like looking through a window into..."
Her voice died faster than my motivation on Monday mornings when I was working as a social worker, and her face went whiter than my ass in January. I moved to her side at the same time that every one of my survival instincts was having a full-blown panic attack. We should have known better than to let her touch the thing. She had the power of prophecy. Or it was thrust upon her at times. It wasn't something she could control. I prayed she didn’t start spouting some cryptic nonsense about our demise.
It was impossible to keep my gaze from the surface when I got close enough. The mirror showed a vast cavern filled with swirling mist composed of thousands of human figures moving in slow, tortured spirals around a central point. "Those are souls," Claude breathed from behind us. That answered that question. Everyone could see this.
"It's the Collector's prison," I surmised. "We're seeing inside its dimensional cage."
"Even if we manage to renew the binding," Sarah mumbled, "those souls won't be freed.”
Shaking her head, Dre patted the girl’s hand. “No. They're part of its power source and tied to it now."
Thomas covered the mirror before anything else happened. No one wanted to give up what we loved most. The last thing we needed was for Phi to do it accidentally. If she lost her husband or one of her kids, she would go on a rampage that would make the Collector look tame.
Before anyone could process this delightfully cheerful revelation, every protective ward on the plantation started screaming like banshees with their tails on fire. Through the windows, we saw shapes just outside the property line. They weren't the harvesters we'd been dealing with.
"Zombies," I breathed as bile burned the back of my throat. "The Collector's influence has grown strong enough to animate corpses and use them as soldiers."
“Similar entities are stirring across the Gulf Coast region," Cyran informed us. “I hoped they were just people in cosplay. This is going to get too much attention when someone sees their great-aunt Sally strolling down Bourbon.”
"Looks like we're going zombie hunting, sisters," Kota said as she conjured a machete, her grin sharp enough to cut glass. "Time to show these walking corpses what happens when they crash our family reunion uninvited."
CHAPTER 17
DANIELLE
The unnatural thunder was getting closer. In about thirty seconds, Lia and Dre had turned our dining room into a war room with military efficiency that would've made generals weep with envy. "Everyone who can't fight supernatural monsters needs to get to the main house now," Dre announced, channeling every ounce of authority she had as the oldest sister.
"Claude, Margaret, Sarah, Thomas—you're our VIPs. We need to keep you and at least one member of each bloodline alive, or none of this matters," she informed us.
"I can fight," Sarah protested, her teenage indignation warring with very real terror as another wave of protective alarms screamed through her head. "Yesterday, I made the roses attack those harvester things. I know I can do this."
"And today you're going to help your mother work on what your part is for the binding ritual," Lia replied, her voice carrying that particular tone that brooked no argument. "You're going to do it while staying behind people who've been doing this longer than you've been driving. We can't have you doing any heroics or taking stupid risks that'll force us to choose between saving the world and saving your stubborn ass."
Kota jabbed a finger at the teen. "We need you breathing for the binding ritual. Dead magical teenagers are pretty useless for complex spell work."
"But I—" Sarah started.
"Can turn into fertilizer really quickly if you're not careful," Kota cut her off. "Trust me, I've seen it happen. It's not pretty, and it really puts a damper on the whole 'saving humanity' thing."
Sarah's mouth opened for what was undoubtedly going to be a brilliant teenage rebuttal. The plantation's protective wards chose that moment to start screaming like banshees with their hair on fire. The Collector’s minions were battering the barriers around Willowberry. The fuckers were probing for weaknesses with the persistence of a telemarketer and twice the malevolent intent.
"Well, shit," Kota muttered, gripping the machete she'd conjured. "Looks like the Collector's sending us a welcoming committee."
Through the windows, our ancient oak trees shuddered as the Collector's minions tested our magical barriers from the outside. "The wards are holding," Kaitlyn reported, "but I’m not sure how long that will last."
"The Collector," I snarled the name like a curse. "It's learning our defenses in real time."
That was when new uninvited guests arrived. The Collector had a seriously twisted sense of humor. Zombified alligators joined the party that was pressing against our ward line. My stomach roiled when I caught sight of the rotting flesh hanging off their bones in strips. Their eyes glowed with a familiar malevolent intelligence I’d seen from the harvesters.
My heart slowed when they couldn't cross onto our property. “That’s disturbing. How did...” my voice trailed off when birdsdescended in formations that would have made the Air Force weep with envy.
Their screeching carried harmonics that made my ears bleed. The worst part was how half of their feathers were missing. Bile burned the back of my throat. Some were missing entire limbs. And all were dive-bombing the protective dome overhead with kamikaze pilot enthusiasm.
