CHAPTER 10
DAHLIA
I was seriously rethinking my life choices while staring at our magical mystery room that had decided to manifest like the world's most extra walk-in closet. My arms felt like overcooked noodles from drawing sigils. Worse was how my emergency Monster supply was crying Uncle.
“If you smudge that ward one more time because you're shaking from caffeine overdose, I will personally claw your favorite shoes,” Adele projected into our minds. Our feline familiar sat on a shelf like the queen she thought she was, her tail twitching as she supervised our work.
"Love you too, furball," I muttered but steadied my hand. My charm bracelet spun lazily. It finally settled into a normal rhythm instead of trying to exist in six dimensions at once.
“Channel that Smith stubbornness into the base layer,” Adele instructed, her mental voice dripped with that special brand of cat condescension. “ And for the love of catnip, stop trying to calculate probability streams while you're anchoring temporal wards, Phi. I'm not explaining to Dre why your brain leaked out your ears.” Phi glared at her but followed directions. The room - still so new to us it practically had that fresh magic smell - hummed in response.
“Now,” Adele continued, stretching lazily before padding over to inspect our work, “ layer these temporal anchors like you're building a fortress. Think of them as magical tent stakes holding down reality.” She batted at a symbol that apparently offended her delicate sensibilities. “ And fix that one. It's crooked.”
"You mean like what they did at the warehouse?" I asked, trying not to think about how that particular clusterfuck had felt like being drunk in a quantum physics experiment.
“Exactly.” Adele's mental voice turned sharp as her claws. “ Those idiots are treating time like a ball of yarn. These wards will make sure our newly manifested room of mysteries stays firmly in the present moment.” She paused, then added, “ Well, mostly. There might be some slight temporal bleeding during a full moon, but you're going to stop them before the next one.”
We spent the next hour layering protections like the world's most paranoid magical lasagna. The Smith determination was in the foundation because nobody was stubborn like my family. The Yearsley intuition was woven through the reactive elements because sometimes you need wards that can think on their feet.
“Focus,” Adele projected when Dre started suggesting we add explosion runes just for funsies. “ The temporal anchors need to be perfectly aligned or reality will leak through like a poorly sealed can of tuna.”
By the time we finished, my brain felt like scrambled eggs. I was pretty sure I'd forgotten what normal time felt like. But the wards... holy shit, the wards were something else. They hummed with power, layers of protection that would make Fort Knox jealous.
Adele prowled the perimeter one last time with her tail held high like a furry inspection rod. “ It'll do,” she declared. From her, that was practically a standing ovation. “ Now, perhaps we can focus on why this room decided to pop into existence like a metaphysical jack-in-the-box.”
“Let’s add that to the list,” I suggested. “We have a good enough understanding of that. We need to focus on the Lost Legends right now.”
"Must be a mighty long list by now," Lucas drawled from the doorway, and I didn't need to turn around to know he was wearing that smirk.
"The new wards look solid," Noah said, changing the topic. Dani went over to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“Yes, yes, everyone's paired off like a magical Noah's Ark. Can we focus on the fact that our mystery room is broadcasting temporal energy like a supernatural radio tower?” Adele's tail twitched in irritation.
"The combination of traditional protection spells and temporal anchors should prevent them from pulling their time-jumping tricks," Phi explained, while simultaneously trying to shoo Adele away from her latest scientific contraption.
“Touch my tail with that quantum detector again, and you'll find out exactly how many dimensions I can exist in,” our familiar threatened as she relocated to a higher shelf.
" Should being the operative word," I muttered but had to admit the wards felt solid. Even Adele's whiskers weren't twitching, which was basically a five-star rating from our feline quality control.
My phone buzzed for what felt like the thousandth time today. The council's emergency hotline was lighting up like a Christmas tree on steroids. "Another one?" Dani asked, already knowing the answer.
“Do tell us about more humans panicking over temporal anomalies. It's not like we have a room full of artifacts that appeared out of thin air to worry about,” Adele projected sarcastically.
"Yeah." I scrolled through the message. "The Magnolia Garden wedding venue just reported their rose garden is cycling through the seasons. Apparently, the bride is not thrilled about her photos featuring flowers from various life cycles."
Adele's mental eye roll was practically audible. “ The fabric of reality is unraveling, and they're worried about their Instagram aesthetic.”
"That's the least of our worries," Dre said as she emerged from our magical pop-up room, arms full of spelled notebooks. "Who cares if there are dead flowers in a few pictures?"
“Finally, someone with sense,” Adele approved, though she immediately ruined it by adding, “ Though I'd appreciate it if you'd stop dropping grimoire dust everywhere. Some of us groom regularly.”
The alerts kept coming, each one making my blood run colder than the last. "They're hitting businesses across the Quarter. Places with magical signatures." I looked up at my sisters. "I bet my new pair of Hokas they're searching for artifacts."
“Or they're creating a distraction,” Adele suggested, her mental voice suddenly sharp. “ While we're all running around playing temporal whack-a-mole, they could be ? —”
"Um, guys?" Dea called from downstairs. "We might have a bigger problem. Someone's requesting access to the council's archive records. Specifically, anything relating to the crystal."
Adele's tail puffed up like a bottle brush. “ Well, isn't that just perfectly suspicious timing?” Sometimes I really hated when our familiar was right.
I nearly broke my neck, scrambling down the stairs with the others. My lucky charm bracelet was going batshit crazy against my wrist. The temporal distortions were getting worse. I could feel probability threads tangling around us like possessed spaghetti.
"When is it not suspicious? They’re in the archives?" I asked as I reached the entryway of the main house. "But they've only been collecting records for like, what? Three months?" My brain was already running the odds, and they weren't pretty. The chances of someone being legitimately interested in the council’s baby archive were about the same as finding a sober tourist on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.
"Exactly," Phi said. She got that look she’d get when she was ten steps ahead of everyone else. Show-off. "Which means either someone is really interested in Karen's complaint about Mr. Johnson's magical wind chimes..."
"Or they're trying to get something that isn't there yet," Kota finished. I grabbed my car keys. Sure, I was our group’s defacto driver, but I was the only one I trusted to drive while reality was doing the cha-cha around us.
"No. We protected that room six ways from Sunday," Dre said. I caught her rubbing her temples as another wave of temporal fuckery made the Spanish moss do its disappearing act. "We used every ward in our arsenal, plus some we made up on the spot that probably violated several laws of magic. Unless they want to deal with explosion runes, poison gas, and what happens when you mix my nastiest protection spells with Dani's paranoia, they're not getting in."
I didn't mention that my head felt like someone was using it as a temporal ping-pong ball. Or that I'd dumped enough power into those wards to fuel a small magical city. My sisters didn't need to know I'd barely left enough juice to heat up a cup of coffee.
"Besides," I added, watching a tree exist in three different seasons at once, "if they're trying this hard to distract us, it means they can't break through our wards. Which means they're getting desperate. And desperate people make mistakes."
Like showing up at the council archives when they were emptier than a vegetarian restaurant during Mardi Gras. The timing was about as subtle as a drunk gator in a tutu. My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I drove.
"Though if I'm wrong," I muttered, pulling another tissue from my pocket as my nose started its impression of a leaky faucet again, "I'm going to be really pissed about wasting all those explosion runes. Do you know how hard it is to draw those things while trying not to sneeze blood all over them?"
What we found in the archive room made me wish I'd grabbed one of those energy potions Kota was cooking up. Or maybe just a full bottle of aged whiskey. The place looked like a library picked a fight with a tornado and lost spectacularly. Papers whirled through the air, books were splayed open on every surface like wounded soldiers, and files scattered like confetti at a parade gone wrong. And in the middle of this chaos stood Viktor. He looked like the cat that ate the quantum canary while flipping off physics itself.
"Ah, the Sisters Six," he practically purred. "I was wondering when you'd join us." His tone was casual, as you please. You’d never know we'd caught him ransacking the council's brand-new archives. "Lovely morning for some research, isn't it?"
My charm bracelet was practically vibrating off my wrist. The probability threads around him were so twisted they made my eyes water. Yeah, this was going to be one of those days where being right sucked worse than gas station coffee. Every alarm bell I had was going off. Lucas tensed beside me. He was clearly picking up on the same vibe. "Viktor," I said carefully, "what exactly are you looking for?"
"Oh, you know," he waved a hand dismissively, but his eyes were sharp. "Just following up on some interesting energy readings. The crystal's signature has been... particularly active lately."
"You've been tracking it," Phi said in a voice flatter than week-old soda. She waved her latest science fair project around. It was some kind of detector that was having a seizure. "That's why the Lost Legends were always one step ahead. You've been feeding them information."
Viktor flashed us a smile that showed way too many teeth. Think shark meets used car salesman. "Smart girl. But then, that's why they chose your bloodlines, isn't it? The Smith determination and the Yearsley intuition. It’s the perfect combo for juicing up that crystal's power."
"You son of a—" I started, but Lucas caught my arm before I could do something stupid like try to punch a vampire. Though honestly, the way my day was going, it might have been therapeutic.
"You used us," Dani said. Her voice was colder than a witch's tit in January. "You fed them information about our activities so they could stay one step ahead."
Viktor actually clapped. The smug bastard. "Finally caught up, did you? Your awakening powers were just the beginning. The Lost Legends have been tracking your energy signatures across the Quarter. Six sisters with pure bloodlines. You're the perfect catalysts they've been searching for."
My stomach rolled like I'd eaten bad gumbo. They'd been following our magical trail like bloodhounds on steroids. Even now, they probably knew we were at the council chambers and were trying to find a way past the shields we'd thrown up around Willowberry.
"Why the wedding venues?" Noah asked, wrapping an arm around Dani like that would protect her from this clusterfuck. "Why target emotional bonds?"
"Because it's your business, isn't it?" Viktor said like he was explaining colors to a toddler. "Every couple that books Willowberry has to visit the property. We've been hoping one of your happy couples would give us a way back onto your land." He spread his hands like a showman. "But you've gotten annoyingly good at warding the place. So, we've had to get creative. They can still drain your energy, but they can’t get back inside..."
He trailed off meaningfully, and I felt my blood run cold. They thought there were more artifacts they could use in our secret room, and they were determined to find a way back onto our property to get to them. Every wedding venue they hit was another attempt to get at us.
The realization hit me harder than my first hangover. "The Light Fae party," I breathed. "That's what they're waiting for. They’re trying to track that couple, but you couldn’t tell them the identities because we never told anyone."
"Bingo!" Viktor's grin could have powered Las Vegas. "And those fancy new wards you just put up? They're not keeping anyone out. They're keeping the power in."
Lucas moved faster than a cat in a dog park, but Viktor was already pulling his disappearing act. "Oh, and sisters?" his voice echoed through the archive like a bad horror movie. "Keep strengthening those wards. The stronger they are, the better they'll contain the explosion when they overload all those new toys."
We stood there like idiots among the scattered papers. Six sisters and two seriously pissed-off shifter mates, marinating in the knowledge of how badly we'd been played. "Well," I said, because inappropriate humor is my superpower, "guess we know why I've been mainlining energy drinks. Nothing like being an unwitting magical battery to drain a girl's resources."
"Lia," Lucas warned, but I could see the worry in his eyes.
"What? Can't a girl joke about being cosmically screwed?" I ran my hands through my hair. "Seriously, we're in deep shit. We can't cancel the party. It might be the last one we throw. We also can't leave the artifacts unprotected. And can't trust anyone who isn't in this room right now."
"We fight back," Dre said in a voice as solid as an oak. "They want to use our connection to the crystal? Fine. But they're about to learn that the Smith determination and the Yearsley intuition aren't just fancy words in some dusty journal."
"They're right about one thing," Phi added. Her brain was obviously running calculations faster than my credit card at Target. "We are perfect catalysts. But they forgot something important."
"What's that?" Kota asked.
A grin spread across Phi’s face as I felt the power building between us. "Catalysts can change the direction of a reaction. And sestras? We're about to flip their whole plan on its head."
"We’re going to need help. Call Kaitlyn," I told my sisters. "If we're going to turn this whole thing around, we need her working with us."
Dre had her phone in hand and a few minutes later, Kaveh teleported Kaitlyn into the council archives. "What happened now?”
We updated her on what we discovered about Viktor and his involvement with the Lost Legends. Kaveh cursed and vanished to go looking for the vampire. We left him to his hunt. "Okay," Phi said as she pulled out one of her new devices. "If Viktor's been tracking us and giving it to the Legends, we can use that against them. Every time they ping our location, they're creating a connection we can trace."
"Like supernatural breadcrumbs," Kaitlyn added with a grin. "We just need to follow it back to their hidey-hole."
Two hours and one warehouse raid later, we all looked like we'd gone ten rounds with a temporal blender. Blood dripped from our noses. Our powers flickered like bad fluorescent lights as reality tried to tear itself apart around us. "Well," I managed while trying not to throw up as time did the cha-cha around us, "that could have gone better."
"You think?" Dre snapped, pressing a rag against Dea's nose as it gushed red. "They were ready for us. They knew we'd track them."
"At least we know what they're planning now," Phi said. "They're toying with us."
"And using us as batteries," Kota added as she swayed slightly when another temporal wave hit. "The more we fight back..."
"The more power they harvest," I finished, watching blood drip upward from my nose. Fun times.
Kaitlyn studied us with that intense look that meant her brain was cooking up something either brilliant or fatal. Probably both. "Your powers are bleeding out," she said. "The temporal exposure is literally tearing you apart."
"No shit," I muttered, then grabbed Dani's arm as she started to fade from view. "Any suggestions that don't involve us becoming quantum confetti?"
"Not exactly." Despite the denial, Kaitlyn's eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. "We need to find a way to freeze time around you. We need to put Phi's powers on steroids."
"And how exactly do we do that?" Lucas demanded. His hand was warm on my shoulder as another wave of dizziness hit.
"That answer is going to take some research," Kaitlyn replied with a shrug. "We're going to have to break physics. Maybe reality. Definitely several local ordinances."
I looked at my sisters, all of us bleeding, all of us existing partially in multiple moments, and managed a grin. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get those answers."
“Break it MORE, you mean,” Adele projected. She had a point. At least this time, we had energy drinks.