CHAPTER 12
DREYA
A fter leaving Marie's house with our shiny new prophecy and a growing sense of impending doom, we barely had time to breathe before the universe decided to have a complete nervous breakdown. I was in the middle of inventorying supplies with Kota when my phone erupted like it was auditioning for a dubstep concert. "This is Dre," I said as I answered on speaker. I set the phone down between us while simultaneously trying to organize jars of herbs that kept rearranging themselves by expiration date, including dates that hadn't happened yet.
"This is Chiara. Please tell me that you can help. Rosie was on the hotlines and gave me your number to call directly," the woman on the other end said in response. Her voice was shaking harder than a tourist after their first purple drink. "My coffee shop is stuck in some kind of time loop. I've lived the same day seven times now. I've served the same customers the same drinks over and over. I’ve tried to stop it with every spell I can think of but nothing works. I'm losing my mind."
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling another nosebleed coming on. Perfect. "Stay calm. We'll send someone to—" Another call beeped through. Then another. And another. My phone lit up like Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, having an electrical crisis.
"Problems?" Steve asked from the doorway of our magical kitchen. My husband's expression showed intense concern. But also that particular brand of amused resignation he'd developed since our lives diverged into magical chaos.
"Oh, you know," I said as I watched a jar of rosemary fade in and out of existence while Kota tried to catch dried lavender that was trying to un-dry itself. "Just reality having a complete meltdown. The usual stuff."
"Actually," Phi called from her corner of barely controlled scientific mayhem, "time's getting a bit..." she waved her hand vaguely, "squiggly."
"Squiggly," I repeated flatly. "The fundamental fabric of reality is getting squiggly. Fantastic."
That's when a woman materialized in the middle of our workshop. Like, literally materialized without warning. My shields went up instantly as Kota and I moved into defensive positions. Behind me, I heard Steve curse while the rest of my sisters shifted into attack mode.
The woman's outfit seemed to be a mash-up of multiple eras. What really caught my attention was the raw power rolling off her in waves that made my head hurt. "I mean you no harm," she said calmly as if she hadn't just bypassed every ward we had. "I am Madame Chronos, and you need my help with your temporal problem."
"Yeah, because that's not suspicious at all," Lia muttered. "How exactly did you get past our wards?"
"Time is my domain," she said simply. "Your wards are impressive, but they exist in linear time. I don't."
"And we should trust you why?" I demanded, not lowering my shields. The last surprise visitor we'd had turned out to be one of the Lost Legends.
Instead of answering, she gestured at Phi's detection equipment. "The crystal's power is becoming unstable. Its energy signature is bleeding into the fabric of the Quarter and creating pockets of recursive time."
"The time loops," I realized, thinking of our distraught coffee shop owner. "They're not random, are they? They're happening where the Lost Legends have used the crystal."
"Precisely." She moved to examine Phi's latest invention, which looked like someone had tried to combine a grandfather clock with a Tesla coil. "And each use makes the crystal more unstable and creates more rifts in the time continuum."
"We've been tracking both," Phi said cautiously as she pulled up a map. "The reality distortions and the crystal's energy signature. Look at the pattern."
We gathered around the map. I didn’t fully trust our visitor but was too desperate for answers to ignore her. Points of light appeared, showing locations of temporal anomalies. More lights indicated where we'd detected the crystal's power. As we watched, the points connected themselves and formed lines of energy that intersected and crossed.
"It's a ritual circle," Dani breathed. "They're creating a massive magical array with the crystal at its center."
"But where exactly is the center?" Kota asked, studying the pattern.
"That's the problem," Madame Chronos said grimly. "The center keeps moving. Time isn't flowing properly around the crystal anymore. It's like trying to pin down a moment that won't stay still."
My phone buzzed again. This time, it was Puich. I answered and put it on speakerphone. "The problems are spreading. We've got people showing up at hospitals with chronological displacement syndrome." His tiny voice was pitched with concern.
"With what now?" I demanded as I reached for my bag.
"They're aging randomly," Puich explained. "One minute, they're their normal age. The next, they're experiencing their childhood or their elderly years. The doctors are baffled."
"Send them to Charity Hospital," I instructed. I had worked there when I began nursing too many years ago. There was a unit run by witches and Fae. "We'll meet you there. And Puich? Try to keep the mundies from noticing that their patients are temporarily becoming toddlers."
"Already on it. The brownie network is in full damage control mode."
I turned to my sisters. "Ready..."
Dea held up her bag. "Let’s go."
"I'm coming with you," Steve said. "Someone needs to keep you from adopting every temporally displaced person you try to heal."
Madame Chronos stepped forward. "I should examine these victims. Their temporal signatures might help us track the crystal's location."
I shared a look with my sisters. We still didn't trust her, but she seemed to know her stuff about what was going on. She hadn’t attacked or tried to get us to take her to the main house and into the secret artifact room, so she had that going for her. "Fine," I said. "But try anything funny and you'll find out why the Lost Legends are afraid to face us directly."
I rushed through Charity Hospital's side entrance. Two months ago, a group of witches and Fae had worked together to convert this abandoned wing into New Orleans' first supernatural medical ward. The project had been my baby. After hearing about one too many supernaturals dying because they couldn’t get any care, I'd finally pushed the council for a specialized location. Neither Kip nor I could be everywhere healing people when needed.
Kaitlyn had the coven pitch in with protection spells while the Fae had added their own brand of magic. Even the brownies had helped renovate. Now every room was equipped to handle everything from pixie pox to mermaid molt to banshee laryngitis. The whole place hummed with layered wards that kept mundane humans from wandering in and supernatural patients from freaking them out. But right now, those carefully crafted wards were struggling against the chaos besieging the city.
Puich met us at the entrance. His ridiculous white tennis shoes were somehow still pristine. "It's getting worse," he reported, leading us past the reception area where a young witch volunteer was trying to keep her desk from disappearing. "We've got three full rooms of patients, and Kip's already busy dealing with others in the city."
The ward was pure madness. The first thing I saw was a businessman in his forties who kept flickering between board meetings and high school football practice. His Armani suit was playing tag with a vintage letterman jacket. A young mother by the window was having it worse. She was experiencing her own childhood while trying to comfort her baby.
"What can you do for them?" Steve asked quietly as I examined the businessman. After two months of careful planning and creating a safe space for supernatural healing, and now we couldn't even keep our patients on the right timeline.
"Technically, this isn't an injury or illness," I replied as I called up my healing power. The magic that usually flowed so easily through these specially designed rooms felt slippery. It was like trying to grab smoke. "It's more like their personal timelines are getting tangled. I can try to stabilize them temporarily. Unless we stop whatever the Lost Legends are doing with that crystal, this will get worse."
The next few hours were a crash course in temporal triage. Madame Chronos moved from patient to patient, stitching time back together around each person. Meanwhile, I followed in her wake. I healed the physical toll these temporal hiccups were taking on their bodies. Turns out, existing in multiple moments at once did a number on your organs.
We fell into a rhythm. She'd stabilize their personal timeline, and I'd repair the damage caused by their brief stint as quantum pretzels. The businessman's nosebleeds stopped as soon as she anchored him to the present. The young mother's migraine eased when I got my hands on her after Madame Chronos untangled her timeline from her baby's.
Steve stayed close, running interference when the regular hospital staff got curious about all the activity in the abandoned wing. It was harder for the wards to hide it with time going crazy. Steve was getting pretty creative with his excuses. My favorite was telling a nurse that we were investors considering a new oncology wing in the abandoned section.
"Your healing abilities complement temporal magic quite well," Madame Chronos noted as we moved to the next patient. "Most healers can't work with temporally displaced patients at all. Their magic gets too confused by the timeline splits."
"Lucky me," I muttered as I wiped sweat from my forehead. "Though I have to admit, this is way better than trying to heal them on my own."
When we were finished, my sisters took Madame Chronos in Lia’s car, and I drove with Steve. "You know what I don't get?" he said when we finally headed back to the plantation. "Why didn't the Lost Legends just create their ritual circle somewhere else? Why pick a spot where the six magical sisters could detect it and counter their plans?"
"Because they need us," I replied. "The prophecy said we're the crystal's true guardians. Without us, they can’t stabilize their ritual. It’ll backfire on them."
"And you said they're using you as magical anchors without even touching you directly. Can’t they channel your bond the same way?” he asked.
My eyes widened. "Our trap might need some adjustments." I pulled out my phone to call Lia, then paused as a thought hit me harder than a hangover. "Wait. If they need our connection to stabilize the ritual..."
"Then you could deliberately destabilize it instead," Steve finished with a grin that matched mine. "Have I mentioned lately how scary you and your sisters can be when you work together?"
"Frequently. It's one of your more endearing qualities."
We pulled up to the plantation at the same time as my sisters. We dove right into magical research with our unexpected visitor. "Okay, now that we’re back," Madame Chronos started. "We need to modify your trap design. The ritual circle draws power from your connection to the crystal whether you want it to or not. But we can use that."
"By reversing the flow," I agreed. "Instead of trying to contain their power, we let them draw on our connection..."
"And then yank the metaphysical rug out from under them," Lia finished with a grin that would have made a shark proud. "I like it. It's got that special blend of crazy and clever that usually works for us."
"It's also incredibly dangerous," Madame Chronos warned. "If your timing is off by even a fraction of a second – which, given the current state of things, is more than possible – the backlash could..."
"Let me guess," Dani interrupted. "Make reality go boom?"
"More like everything ceases to exist," Phi supplied helpfully. "But yeah, basically boom."
"Your trap is clever," Madame Chronos said as she studied the intricate wards we'd laid around Willowberry. "But the Lost Legends have found a way to shield themselves from the worst effects of temporal manipulation. Notice how they don't bleed when they use the crystal? While you six..." She gestured at our collective bloody noses and trembling hands.
"Are leaking like broken faucets?" I supplied. "Yeah, we noticed."
"If you try to spring this trap as is, they'll be able to use that advantage. They'll turn your connection to the crystal against you and take control of your powers." She paused to let that lovely thought sink in. "You need to learn how to ground yourselves against temporal chaos before you can hope to fight it."
"And how exactly do we do that?" Lia asked as she dabbed at her nose with what had to be her hundredth tissue of the day.
"I have a place where we can practice safely. A pocket dimension where time behaves differently," she replied with a sweep of her hand.
"Differently how?" I asked, already knowing I wouldn't like the answer.
"I’m in charge there, and outside powers can't intrude," she said with a smile that sent chills down my spine. "Just try not to accidentally erase yourselves from existence. The paperwork is dreadful." She winked and snapped her fingers. Magic rippled out from the noise and a shimmering oval appeared a few feet away.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” I asked before my sisters and I jumped through the mysterious portal.
Madame Chronos snorted and rolled her eyes. “It’s far safer than here. And it’s the only way you can learn more.”
Nodding, I followed her through with my sisters behind me. Her practice space turned out to be exactly as weird as promised. "This is my anchored realm," Madame Chronos explained as she gestured to what looked like the world's most massive training room carved from pure obsidian. The black walls seemed to absorb any temporal disturbances, like a cosmic version of soundproofing. Unlike everywhere else we'd been, time here flowed in one steady stream, no fluctuations or hiccups in sight. "Here, temporal magic can't create rifts or tears. It's the perfect place to practice control without risking your lives"
By the time she finished talking, my magic actually sighed in relief. It felt like I'd found solid ground after trying to stand on Jell-O’. The constant pressure of time trying to split apart just vanished.
"It's like a temporal panic room," Phi said as her scientific brain churned. Her detection equipment, which had been going haywire for days, suddenly settled into steady readings. "A bubble where time has to behave itself."
"Exactly," Madame Chronos smiled. "Now we can work on your control without worrying about accidentally erasing yourselves from existence. Though I should warn you. Learning to combat time magic in a stable environment is very different from what you'll face out there."
We spent what felt like several eternities practicing. Coordinating six different magical specialties was like trying to herd cats while riding a unicycle on a tightrope. Over lava. During a hurricane. "No, no, no," Madame Chronos called out as another attempt ended with Phi's detection equipment having an existential crisis. "You're thinking too linearly. The Lost Legends will be drawing power through multiple points simultaneously. You need to be ready to counter from every when, not just everywhere which is why whatever you use for grounding needs to be extra."
"Every when," I muttered. "Sure. That's totally a normal thing to worry about." By the time we finally got back to our own dimension (and wasn't that a weird sentence), Phi had more bad news.
"The temporal instability is spreading faster than we thought," she informed us as she looked over the screen of her device. Lights were flashing, and the thing was blaring like a fog horn. "The weak spots in reality are multiplying."
"We need to find a better way to ground ourselves before drawing the Lost Legends to us, but we still need to address the party," I said as I straightened my shoulders. "Dani, how's the party prep coming along? What do we need to finish?"
Dani gestured toward the barn where we’d been working earlier. "The preparations are proceeding as planned. Even with the current temporal chaos, we're managing to coordinate vendors and security and finish the decor."
I smiled and shifted my gaze to Phi. "I need you monitoring those weak points in reality," I told her. “The moment anything changes?—"
"My detection grid spans the Quarter," she assured me. "Every fluctuation, every distortion will register immediately."
I turned to Lia and eyed the small fortress of empty energy drink cans surrounding her workspace. "Perhaps consider a more... sustainable approach to maintaining consciousness? We need your probability manipulation at full strength."
She met my gaze with caffeine-brightened eyes but pushed away her latest can with visible reluctance. "Your concern is noted, if not necessarily appreciated."
That was good enough for me. Whether we were ready or not, the hour of reckoning approached. All we had to do was make sure there was still a reality left to save when it arrived.