Page 1 of Midnight at the Magnolia

PROLOGUE

CELESTE

The bayou’s putrid breath slaps me in the face as I wade through the black water, each step a battle against nature’s grip. Cypress knees pierce the surface like accusing fingers, and somewhere in the distance, a bullfrog’s croak sounds like a death knell. Angel’s trumpet blooms glow ghostly white in my flashlight beam—Grandma’s favorite for herspecial tea.

Beautiful but deadly, just like everything else in this godforsaken swamp.

“Sarah!” My voice shatters the eerie silence, desperation clawing at my throat. “Sarah, where the fuck are you?”

The wind’s whisper through the Spanish moss is my only answer, mocking me with its indifference.

Three days. Seventy-two hours of hell since Sarah vanished, and those pigs with badges have already written her off.

“Probably just ran off with some boy,” they’d drawled, their eyes glazed with boredom and small-town apathy. But they don’t know shit. Sarah is my other half, my reason for breathing in this godforsaken swamp. She’d never leave without me.

A memory hits me like a sucker punch:

Last week, Sarah and I on Grandma’s porch, watching the sun bleed out over the horizon. Sarah’s eyes, alive with that firethat both terrifies and mesmerizes me, as she spins dreams of escape.

“We’ll go to New Orleans, Celeste,” she’d said, her voice a siren’s call. “We’ll burn this shit-hole town in our rear-view mirror. No more hiding, no more fear.”

I’d nodded, swallowing my terror.

New Orleans was a concrete jungle full of wolves we couldn’t even imagine.

But for Sarah? I’d walk through hell with a gasoline-soaked match. Besides, anything was better than staying here, watching Grandma mix her herbs and mutter about the price of crossing powerful men, about the daughter—our mother—she couldn’t save.

Now, as I push deeper into the swamp’s maw, that fear is nothing but a whisper compared to the ice in my veins.

My flashlight catches a flash of blue among the tangle of roots and moss—Sarah’s favorite dress, the one that makes her eyes sparkle like sapphires.

“No,” The word falls from my lips like a death sentence. “No, no, no...”

The world tilts, reality warping into a nightmare. There is Sarah, half-submerged, her eyes—those eyes that once held galaxies of dreams—now fixed on the indifferent stars above. The blue dress billows around her like a cruel parody of beauty.

A sound rips from my chest, primal and raw. I lurch forward, gathering Sarah’s lifeless body in my arms. Her skin is cold, so fucking cold.

“I’m sorry,” I sob, rocking her like a broken doll. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I should have protected you. I should have...”

The roar of an airboat engine shatters my grief. Flashlight beams slice through the darkness, exposing my pain to the world.

“Over here!” a voice barks. “We found ‘em!”

Hands grab me, trying to pry Sarah from my arms. I fight like a rabid animal, all nails and teeth and primal fury.

“Easy, girl,” one of the deputies grunts, his breath a cocktail of cheap whiskey and cheaper cologne. “Ain’t nothin’ more you can do for her now.”

As they zip Sarah into a body bag—a fucking trash bag for the most precious thing in my world—I catch the deputies’ hushed conversation.

“Gonna be a real clusterfuck, this one,” one mutters. “You know who her daddy is, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” the other replies, sucking on a cigarette like it holds the secrets of the universe. “That ambitious bastard up in New Orleans, playing at politics while his mama plays at voodoo. Reckon this’ll all get swept under the rug, just like the others.”

Their words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Others? There had been others? And these badge-wearing cowards had done jack shit?

In that moment, something inside me calcifies. The old Celeste—wide-eyed, trusting, afraid of her own shadow—dies there in the bayou alongside Sarah. In her place, something new claws its way into existence. Something cold, sharp, and hungry for vengeance.

I look up at the star-filled sky, the same fucking sky Sarah and I had dreamed under just days ago. I make a silent vow: I will have justice for Sarah, and for all the others like her. If the law is nothing but a joke, then I’ll become the punchline they’ll never see coming.

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