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My heart now pounding in ers on both hands crossed superstitiously, I hopped off the stool and hurried to the front door to check the boxacross the street It was a ic in the air rose above background levels--like when a Sensitive accidentally ht was still red I er it, at least from this distance I was still in the clear--for now But da ic
Booy, I ju the door open and stepping outside onto the threshold between the store’s bay here MERCANTILE was mosaicked in tidy blue capitals
It was mid-October, and the heat and humidity still formed a miserable blanket across the French Quarter Royal Street was nearly empty of people
The war had knocked down half the buildings in the Quarter, which gave hborhood and the Mississippi River, which bordered it Figuresfireworks for the finale of the festivities The air smelled like sparks and flaht sky
It wasn’t the first time we’d seen smoke over the Quarter
On an equally sweltering day in October seven years ago, the Veil--the barrier that separated huic we hadn’t even known existed--was shattered by the Paranormals who’d lived incalled the Beyond
They wanted our world, and they didn’t have a probleh the fracture, bringing death and destruction--and changing everything: Magic was now real and measurable and a scientific fact
I was seventeen when the Veil, which ran roughly along the ninetieth line of longitude, straight north through the heart of NOLA, had splintered That round zero
My dad had owned Royal Mercantile when it was still an antiques store, selling French furniture, priceless art, and very expensive jewelry (And, of course, the walking sticks Sosticks) When the war started, I’d helped hi MREs, water, and other supplies to the inventory
War had spread through southern Louisiana, and then north, east, and west through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and the eastern half of Texas The conflict had destroyed soacres of scarred land and burned, lonely cities It had taken a year of fighting to stop the bloodshed and close the Veil again By that time, the ht alongside the troops
Unfortunately, he hadn’t lived to see the Veil close again The store became mine and I moved into the sether--he didn’t want to spend every hour of his life in the sa were now my only links to him, so I didn’t hesitate I missed him terribly
When the as done, Contained the war and the Paranoric but of voodoo, Marie Laveau, ghost tours, and even literary vaic Act, banning ic inside and outside the war zone, e called the Zone (Technically, it was the MIGECC Act: Measure for the Illegality of Glamour and Enchantment in Conflict Co to it)
The war had flattened half of Fabourg Marigny, a neighborhood next door to the French Quarter, and Contain Para they could find into the neighborhood and built a wall to keep them there