Chapter 5

The safehouse floorboards creaked under Lena’s twitching fingers, the iron tang of New Orleans seeping through the walls like a poison fog, while Jax paced nearby, his bruised shoulder a stark reminder of their frantic escape. Lena pressed her cheek against the grimy wood, desperate for the cooling touch of mud or the damp embrace of moss, but there was only dusty oak and the screeching vibration of the city. 

The Severing was no longer just a hollow ache; it was a rhythmic violence. Every few seconds, a tremor rumbled through her spine—a phantom earthquake born from the distance between her soul and the cypress roots of the Bend. The "Urban Wall" pressed in on her, the hum of fluorescent lights and the distant throb of the electrical grid sounding like hornets trapped in her skull. It made her stomach churn with a greasy, industrial nausea.

"Lena, you’re shaking again," Jax said. His voice was sandpaper-rough, devoid of its usual skepticism. He stopped his pacing, his shadow falling over her curled form. 

"I know... I know, no no, I know," she muttered, the repetition slipping out before she could catch it. She reached out, her fingers fumbling blindly until they brushed the heavy canvas of his boot, then the warmth of his ankle. 

The moment her skin met his, the world stilled. The tremors in her hands didn't vanish, but they dampened, the chaotic frequency of the city finding a grounding conductor in him. Jax didn't pull away. He sank onto his haunches, offering his hand. Lena took it, gripping his calloused palm like a lifeline. He was organic, he was alive, and for a fleeting second, the deafening silence where her magic used to sing wasn't quite so terrifying.

"It’s the iron," she whispered, her voice a fragile thread. "The city... it’s a cage of wires and cold metal, Jax. It cuts the breath right out of me. Gator’s truth, I feel like I’m drowning in dry air."

Jax watched her, his brow furrowed. "I used to think you were just eccentric, Duval. Or high on swamp gas. But I can feel it. You’re like a radio losing its signal." He shifted, wincing as he adjusted his bruised shoulder. "We can’t stay here. If they tracked us to the last spot, they’re closing the loop on this one too."

Lena leaned her head against his knee, her eyes fluttering shut. "I owe you the 'why' of it. You’re in the current now—the trouble we're in right here, right now, cher—and it’s only fair you know where the falls are."

She took a breath, and when she spoke, her words began to meander, winding like the slow-moving Bayou Chevreuil during a summer drought. "Project Phlegethon... it isn't just about docks and condos. The Terrebonne folks, they’re looking to pierce the Heart of the Bend. There’s a vein there, a deep place where the water stays cold even in August. They want to run their pipes right through the center of it, dump the runoff where the spirits drink. It’ll be a river of fire, Jax. Industrial rot poured into the very veins of the land until the swamp sours and the cypress turn to bone."

"And your coven?" Jax asked, his tone grim. "Why would they let them? Maribelle lives for that land."

"Maribelle lives for power," Lena spat, the name tasting like copper. "She thinks she can bargain with the rot. She thinks if she lets them poison the physical world, she can bottle the agony it causes—use it to fuel her own workings. She’s trading the soul of the Bend for a crown of black glass. She’s complicit, helping them clear the 'metaphysical brush' while they bring in the bulldozers."

A sharp, needles-and-pins sensation pricked the back of Lena’s neck. Her silver locket, tucked beneath her shirt, began to throb. It wasn't the gentle, rhythmic pulse of her mother’s heartbeat she used to imagine; it was a jagged, frantic vibration that synced perfectly with the distant rattling of a streetcar three blocks away.

*You see how small you are, Little Bird?*

The voice wasn't in the room. It was a cold oily slick sliding through the cracks of her mind. Maribelle.

"No," Lena gasped, her hand flying to the locket, twisting the silver chain around her index finger until the metal bit into her flesh. 

*Without the Bend, you are nothing but meat and bone,* the voice taunted. *The city will grind you into dust. Come home, Lena. The swamp is hungry.*

"Get out," Lena hissed. "Hellfire, get out of my head!"

Jax gripped her shoulders. "Lena? Who are you talking to?"

"The locket..." She yanked it out, holding the shimmering disk between them. It was vibrating so hard it blurred. "It’s not her. It’s not Mama. Maribelle is using it like a... like a lightning rod. The city noise, the industrial hum—it’s feeding the connection. I’m blind to the woods, but I’m a beacon for her in this hell."

She looked around the room, her eyes wide and bloodshot. She grabbed a discarded scrap of burlap from a corner—something natural, something not made in a factory—and wrapped it tightly around the locket, trying to muffle the vibration. It helped, but only a little. The "Urban Wall" she had hoped would shield her was instead acting as a sounding board for her aunt’s psychic intrusions.

"We have a leak," Jax said suddenly, standing up and pulling her with him. He moved to the window, peering through a crack in the boarded-up glass. "I saw a black sedan twice on the way here. I thought I'd lost them in the Marigny, but there's a mark on the doorframe outside. A fresh scratch. Someone's been marking our trail."

Lena felt the panic rising, a frantic "no no, not that, no no" blooming in her chest. Her magic was gone—the vines she could usually command to trip a pursuer or the fog she could summon to cloak their tracks were nothing but memories of a ghost.

"The neutral contact," she said, trying to steady her breathing. "The one Remy talked about. The one who handles 'displaced talent' inside the Wall."

"The asset in the Quarter," Jax nodded, checking his piece. "If we move now, we can lose them in the crowds of Bourbon. They won't risk a scene there. But you... can you walk? The nausea?"

Lena stood, her legs feeling like wet clay. She reached out, her hand lingering on Jax’s arm for one more second of grounding warmth before she squared her shoulders. 

"I’ll walk," she said. "I’ve survived the cottonmouth’s nest and Maribelle’s spite. I won't be broken by a little bit of concrete and bad intentions, mon coeur."

The use of the endearment made Jax pause, a flicker of something soft and startled crossing his face before the grim mask of the survivor returned. "Then let's move."

They slipped out the back door, the humid New Orleans night air hitting Lena like a physical blow. Without her magical sight, the alleyway was a terrifying maze of sharp edges and unknown shadows. The Urban Wall didn't just dampen her power; it draped a shroud over her intuition. 

As they neared the mouth of the alley, Lena’s locket suddenly flared with a heat so intense it scorched through the burlap. She flinched, her hand going to her chest. 

"Jax, something's—"

She stopped. Her eyes, stripped of their ability to see the shimmering auras of the supernatural, saw only the mundane world—the trash cans, the crumbling brick, the flickering streetlamp. But for the first time since the Severing, she felt a different kind of cold. Not the clinical cold of the city, but a predatory, damp chill that didn't belong on a New Orleans sidewalk.

She looked toward the mouth of the alley, seeing nothing but the orange glow of the streetlamp. But the locket was screaming now, a metallic screeching in her senses that told her she was looking right at a predator she could no longer perceive.

The locket burned hot against her skin, humming louder than the city’s growl, as a shadow uncoiled from the alley—watching, waiting, no longer hidden by her lost sight.