Back at the main Delacroix estate, the quiet of the night was filled only with the steady, rhythmic drumming of a cold January rain lashing against the tall windows. In Louisiana, winter brought a damp, bone-chilling mist that cut through the humidity, making the crackling warmth of the grand stone fireplace behind Madam Odalie's desk a necessity rather than a luxury.
Odalie sat alone in her private office, swirling a glass of deep, blood-red Bordeaux. Her dark eyes were fixed on the oil painting hanging on the opposite wall, a portrait of her sister, whose sharp, judgmental gaze seemed to stare right through her. Odalie lifted her chin and glared back with cold disdain.
A sharp, three-beat knock broke the silence of the room. The heavy mahogany door creaked open, and one of her senior enforcers stepped inside, slipping out of his rain-dampened cloak.
Odalie didn't turn around. She kept her eyes locked on the portrait.
"Did they get her?"
"Oui, Madam," the man replied quietly.
"Bon," a slow, triumphant smile curled at the corners of her lips.
A lingering, heavy silence settled over the room. Odalie could sense the hesitation in the air, the way the enforcer shifted his weight, chewing on a question he knew he shouldn't be asking but couldn't help himself.
"Do you think taking the child is wise, Madam?" he finally ventured, his voice tight.
Odalie's head snapped around, her dark eyes flashing with sudden, icy authority. "Eben, you question my judgment?"
"It's just... we've just struck a direct blow against the House of Black," the man replied, lowering his gaze respectfully but pressing on. "They are high-ranking European nobility. They will not take this kindly."
Odalie let out a dry, dismissive scoff, turning back to her wine glass.
"The House of Black may hold power and old-world authority across the ocean, mon cher, but they are blind in the bayou. Here, nou ki mèt, we are the masters," Odalie said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, confident hum. "Even if they scream bloody murder to MACUSA, they won't find a shred of evidence connecting us to the abduction. That is precisely why we used third-party mercenaries with no ties to our name. Besides, I placed an S-rank hex bag in that room. Even Morgana herself would have collapsed like a common novice, and nobody would have noticed until it was too late."
The enforcer hesitated, taking a cautious step closer. "If I may, Madam... why this specific child? We could have tracked down other open mediums closer to home without stirring up an international war."
Odalie set her wine glass down on the mahogany desk with a sharp clink, leaning forward into the firelight. Her face lit up with a fanatical, obsessive gleam.
"C'est vrai," Odalie murmured, her Creole lilt softening into something almost reverent. "But you weren't in that room when I was. You didn't feel what I felt."
She paused, remembering the heavy, suffocating current of magic humming beneath the surface of the child's skin.
"Gadé, look at it from my perspective," she continued softly. "When I stepped into that hotel suite, I felt it. Raw, dark, entirely unfiltered medium magic. I have never sensed anything like it in my life. The parents are fools. They are too blinded by their own arrogance to realize what they are sitting on. But I saw it. It is ancient, potent power."
She smiled, a predatory expression that made even her hardened enforcer swallow hard.
"Who wouldn't want a conduit of that magnitude? The child is only four years old. Four! Imagine what she will be like when she reaches her peak. She is a blank slate, the perfect age to be completely molded and exploited. With the looming succession crises and shifting powers in our family, she will be the ultimate instrument to produce an unbroken line of terrifyingly powerful heirs." (A/N: Barf. This was uncomfortable to write.)
Odalie leaned back, resting her hands on her desk as her eyes burned with absolute ambition.
"And when she comes into her full power... she will bind herself to my line. Tse, mine. It will end all the concerns the elders have about my leadership, and my sister will be left with nothing to show for her pathetic moralizing."
A low, giddy laugh bubbled up from her throat, bright and triumphant. "Mon Dieu, I couldn't help but take that risk."
The man remained entirely silent, watching her unpredictable shifts with cautious discretion.
Odalie took a slow, deep breath, visibly reining herself in as her expression settled back into cool, collected authority.
"How is my sister?" she asked smoothly.
"Still down," the man answered. "The curse is taking her very well. It's only a matter of time."
"Bon," Odalie smiled, a razor-thin curve of satisfaction. "Keep me updated on her progress... and take that damn portrait out of this room."
"Oui, Madam."
*****
Sirius woke with a gasp, his chest burning as if something heavy had been sitting on it.
The ceiling above him was wrong. Pale plaster and an unfamiliar lamp, not the dim amber sconces of the suite. For a moment he lay there, disoriented, his mind scrabbling for the last thing it had held onto.
Lyra's scream. A boot. Darkness.
Lyra.
He lurched upright, and the room swung violently around him. His limbs felt packed with wet sand, his head thick and sluggish, but none of it mattered. He had watched a stranger wrap his four-year-old daughter in a cloak and carry her out the door, and he had done nothing. He had crawled across a floor like a wounded animal and been kicked aside like one.
He was an auror. Twelve years in the field, a Custodian of the ICW, a man who had walked into the worst the wizarding world had to offer. And he had let this happen. He let this happen!
He swung his legs off the bed and tried to stand. His knees folded at once.
A hand caught him under the arm before he hit the floor.
"Easy, Captain."
Sirius jerked his head around, and his stomach dropped. "Mara?"
Mara held him steady until he found his balance, then lowered him back onto the edge of the mattress. Her tactical gear was streaked with rain and plaster dust, her face drawn tight.
"What are you doing here?" he rasped.
"Isaac sent word that you needed an emergency international portkey," Mara said. "I had it arranged within the hour, but when I tried to reach him, there was nothing. No reply, no check-in. It wasn't like either of you." Her jaw tightened. "So, I came looking. Then I found the three of you on the floor, and the door was blown off its hinges."
"Esme," Sirius said hoarsely, his eyes sweeping the room. "Isaac—"
"Still unconscious. They're in the next room, and the Healer says they'll wake soon." She held up a hand before he could stand again. "Captain, listen. There was a hex bag in that room. The people who helped me get you out found it hidden under the floorboards. I wouldn't have known what I was looking at."
He stared at her. "A what?"
"A hex bag," a cultured, sorrowful voice said from the doorway.
Sirius's wand was in his hand before he had finished turning, the one Mara must have retrieved from under the nightstand, its tip trained on the tall wizard stepping into the light.
"Step back, or I will put a hole through you," Sirius growled.
"Captain, wait. He was the one who brought you here," Mara cautioned, her hand drifting toward her holster.
"My name is Étienne Delacroix," the man said, raising his palms in a quiet gesture of peace. "And I promise you, Heir Black, I am not your enemy."
"Delacroix?" Sirius spat, fury burning straight through the weakness in his limbs.
"I am the husband of Marie Delacroix, the true matriarch of our line. It was the few still loyal to Marie who helped Mara bring you out of that hotel."
Mara gave a short, reluctant nod. Sirius's grip on his wand did not ease.
"The hex bag," Étienne said quietly. "It is an illegal dark artifact, a thing of old hoodoo, placed in a room to curse everyone inside. What was in yours was extraordinarily potent. It would seem Odalie knew immediately that you were a threat. Had we not pulled you out as soon as possible, you would all be dead by now."
Dead. Sirius thought of Esme crumpled against the wall, of Isaac sprawled on the floor.
"It is not common knowledge," Étienne went on. "The craft is kept within the Laveau families alone. Aurors would not know to look for it. It is undetectable."
The Laveau families. Slowly, the pieces slotted together in Sirius's mind. The hotel. The staff. The ease with which someone had slipped into that suite, planted a hex bag, and slipped out again without a single ward tripping.
"The hotel is yours," Sirius said, his voice dangerously flat. "Your family owns it."
Étienne's silence was answer enough.
Sirius took a step toward him, and Mara moved to intercept. "Why are you here?" he demanded. "Did you know what your sister-in-law did?"
"I am well aware of what Odalie did," Étienne replied grimly, a heavy sigh escaping him. "And as the husband of Marie, I offer you my deepest apologies."
"An apology isn't going to get me my daughter back!"
"I understand..."
"Why would she take her?!" Sirius demanded, cutting him off with a harsh sweep of his arm. "I knew I didn't like the way she looked at Lyra, especially when she had the bloody nerve to propose a betrothal, but I never expected her to pull a stunt like this! She's a child, for Merlin's sake! A four-year-old child!"
Étienne closed his eyes briefly, bowing his head under the force of Sirius's rage before looking back up with a troubled gaze.
"I cannot claim to know every dark thought in my sister-in-law's mind," he confessed softly, "but I know the desperation that drives her. Our house is dying, Heir Black. For generations, the Laveau line and its branches have suffered a severe weakening of our ancestral bloodlines. Daughters have become impossibly rare. Nearly every child born to our family for decades has been a boy. Without powerful women to inherit the Veil and anchor our grimoires, our house's influence is rapidly slipping away."
He gestured vaguely toward the window, where the rain continued to lash against the glass.
"Marie and Odalie have been locked in a bitter succession war for years," he continued. "Odalie has craved the family seat for as long as I can remember. Then word spread that Marie might be carrying a girl, a true heiress to lead the family. Not long after, Marie fell to a curse we have been unable to break. I do not know how long she has left."
His voice hardened. "Odalie calls it an accident. We all knew it was her hand, but we could not prove it."
His expression turned deeply grim as his eyes met Sirius's.
"And then you arrived in Louisiana with a little girl who possesses raw, unanchored mediumistic power," he said quietly. "To an ambitious, ruthless woman like Odalie, Lyra was not just a guest. She was a miracle. A blank slate. By stealing her, molding her, and eventually binding her into her own branch, Odalie would not only secure her claim to the seat. She would guarantee her faction total control over our bloodline for the next century."
The words settled over the room like ash.
Sirius had stopped breathing somewhere in the middle of it. Binding her. Molding her. He turned sharply to Mara, and his voice came out rough. "How long have I been out?"
Mara hesitated, and that was answer enough.
"Three hours," she said quietly.
The floor seemed to tilt again. Three hours. Sirius knew what that number meant. He had spent twelve years on the other side of cases like this, and every Auror learned the same grim arithmetic. The longer a child was missing, the further she was carried, the more hands she passed through, the colder the trail became. Three hours was already far too long.
He rounded on Étienne. "Where is she?"
Étienne's face fell. "I do not know."
"You don't know?"
"I wish that I did." Étienne's hands curled at his sides. "I am shut out of the family estate. My access has been blocked, my name struck from every ward I once held. The enforcers answer to Odalie now. Even if I could reach the gates, a stranger like you would never get in. And there is no guarantee she is in any of our estates. Odalie is not a fool. She may have hidden your daughter anywhere. A property under another name, a place no one in my family has ever set foot in. I cannot tell you where, because I truly do not know."
"Then I don't need you to tell me," Sirius said.
Both of them stared at him.
He was already reaching into his collar for the thread of his own magic, the one anchored to the tiny stitches he had sewn into every one of his children's clothes. He had done it out of paranoia. Black markets pay well for gifted children. He had never wanted to be right.
"Mara," he said, his voice steadier than he felt. "I need a map. The whole region, as large as you can find."