Page 12 of Mardi Gras Murders & Midnight Masquerades
The air around the book shimmered, and a translucent figure materialized. Mary Alice was wearing the same period dress and the stern expression she always had on. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees.
"Mother," Cami breathed. "Can you tell us why your bookis changing?"
Mary Alice's spirit moved closer to the grimoire. Her ethereal fingers trailed over its pages. When she spoke, her voice carried the weight of centuries. "I will tell you what I know. I encoded everything I knew about the Society of the Masked in these pages, but I hoped..." She paused as her form flickered with emotion. "I hoped the knowledge would never be needed."
Dani's hands hovered near the book. "The magical signatures we've been tracking are echoes of something that almost destroyed everything."
"Yes." Mary Alice's face hardened with ancient anger. "I encountered them when I first moved to New Orleans. Their magic was corrupted. They found ways to twist the natural flow of power, to harvest it through suffering. The symbols you see moving now?" She gestured to the crawling text. "They're part of a ritual circuit I discovered too late to stop completely. But I left everything I learned in here. Their recruitment patterns, their ritual requirements, and their true purpose."
The spirit moved to the wall where our parade route maps were pinned. "They're clever, using the carnival's own energy. These aren't just celebrations this year. They will turn our traditions into components of their ritual."
"Why now?" I asked, watching as the grimoire's pages turned on their own, revealing more of Mary Alice's hidden knowledge. "Why this carnival season?"
Mary Alice's form grew more solid, her expression grim. "Because the stars are aligning exactly as they need. They will move the components into the positions they need."
"The routes changed this year," Jeff informed us as he pulled up the official parade map on his phone. The familiar paths had been subtly altered, creating new intersections at key points throughout the city. "The krewes adjusted their traditional paths without question. At the time, everyoneassumed it was just about crowd control and construction. The changes seemed logical. Necessary even."
"But look at the new patterns they create," Phi said, overlaying the route changes with a ley line map. "They form perfect channeling circuits. Someone's been manipulating the carnival planning committees. Each parade route acts like a power conduit, channeling energy directly into their ritual sites."
"The Society is stronger now than in my time," Mary Alice warned. "We fought them before. Those of us who refused their invitation. We created a protection spell using our combined power, but the cost..." She flickered briefly. The effort of maintaining her form was clearly taxing. "The cost was high. We lost some of our strongest practitioners. I’d bet some of the victims were either involved, or are their descendants. Each death weakens the protection spell a little more."
“You mean what you did stopped them from completing the ritual?” I clarified.
"Precisely. The protection spell we created was just meant to stop them," Mary Alice continued. “And then identify and empower those who could permanently end their plans. We wove our magical signatures into it, ensuring the next generation would inherit not just our power, but our responsibility. They have taken out the descendants of those capable of continuing the spell each year."
Golden light suddenly filled the library as magic clashed. Our wards were responding to present danger. We hurried to the windows, the grimoire's pages still rustling behind us. Figures in elaborate masks retreated into the shadows, their magic leaving oily, dark trails in the night air as wolves chased them.
"We will get them," Lucas promised before he and Noah took off to help the otherwolves.
Kota's phone buzzed. She stared at the screen, her face draining of color. "What the hell?"
"What is it?" I moved closer as she held up her phone, displaying a text from an unknown number. “The dance is already in motion. The masks are waiting. Will you wear them willingly, or shall we carve your cooperation into your flesh?”
"What the actual fuck?" Dre growled. "First, the moving text in the grimoire, now threatening messages? Why target us specifically?"
"Because we're not random pieces on their game board," Phi said as her fingers flew across her tablet. Multiple diagrams of magical resonance patterns appeared on the main display. She highlighted different wavelength patterns, each corresponding to one of our abilities. "I’d bet anything that together, we create a perfect harmonic resonance. The kind of power grid you'd need for a ritual that could tear through the veil between worlds."
I felt sick as understanding dawned. "We're not just targets. We're components they need. Battery packs of specialized power."
"But what happens to the batteries once they're drained?" Dani asked quietly. The answering silence was deafening.
"Then we need to turn the tables on them. We’re nobody’s battery," I countered. "And we can’t allow them to use the masquerade. Every powerful supernatural in New Orleans will be there, all wearing masks..." I didn’t need to finish that. We all understood the gravity.
“At least this last threat tells us something,” Kota said into the silence.
“What’s that?” Dre asked.
Her answering smile was wicked. “We can be reasonably certain the Society is involved with these deaths. They mightnot be the mastermind, but at least some of them are behind it.”
“Which means we know who to target to stop the murders,” Phi added with glee.
The Society of the Masked was preparing their endgame. They were armed with power, experience, and a ritual hundreds of years in the making. But they'd forgotten something important. In this city, family magic ran deeper than any secret society's schemes. There were countless who would die fighting to protect everything our ancestors had died to preserve. And as any supernatural in New Orleans could tell you, that was the worst kind of magic to bet against.
CHAPTER 5
Danielle
The night wrapped around the plantation like a living thing as we processed Mary Alice's warnings about the Society. The protection magic of the plantation hummed beneath my skin. It was still reacting to the lingering darkness left by our unwanted visitors. Even with the wards up, something about those magical dead spots made me uneasy. Could they cross the property line and get to us using them?
