The coffin lid creaked open.
Inside lay a naked female corpse, skin pale as paper. No livor mortis. No rot. Just perfect, untouched flesh. A few yellowed notebooks were piled beside her head. At the bottom of the coffin, the black-magic notebook Marie Laveau wanted sat waiting like it had been left there on purpose.
Caroline leaned in for a look and screamed.
She stumbled backward, eyes rolling up, and hit the ground hard.
Soren didn't even glance at her. The body gave off a wrong, oily feeling. He wasn't about to touch it with his own hands. Purple light flared along his right shoulder. A massive, clawed ghost hand formed out of demonic energy and reached into the coffin.
The hand prodded the corpse once.
The skin dimpled, then sprang back. Elastic. Blood still liquid. But when the ghost hand peeled one eyelid open, the pupil was milky and fixed. Long dead. Or something worse.
Soren pulled the hand back. Whatever this thing was, it reeked of old, nasty witchcraft. One wrong touch and he could end up cursed, hallucinating, or worse. Better to let Marie Laveau deal with it.
He was just closing the coffin when a man's raw, broken scream tore through the front of the house.
"Showtime," Soren muttered.
He walked out of the greenhouse and back to the main entrance.
A man in his thirties knelt on the gravel, clutching the headless body of the old woman. Tears and snot streaked his face. When he saw Soren, his eyes went red.
"You killed my wife?!"
Soren didn't answer. The deer-antler blade flashed once.
The man's head hit the ground and rolled twice. His body stayed kneeling for a second longer before it toppled. Blood pumped out in thick arcs across the white gravel.
"Centuries-old lovers still pulling the tragic-suicide card," Soren said, flicking blood off the blade. "Cute."
He pulled out his phone and called Marie Laveau.
Twenty minutes later a black sedan pulled up outside the gates. Marie stepped out, heels crunching on the drive. She stopped dead when she saw the two headless corpses lying side by side.
Her eyes widened. For once the Voodoo Queen looked genuinely shocked.
Soren jerked his chin toward the greenhouse. "Come on. I've got something you need to see."
He led her through the garden to the white plastic structure at the back. The coffin sat open in the turned earth. Marie stared down at the pale body inside and went very still.
Then her hands gripped the edge of the coffin so hard her knuckles went white.
"This… this is impossible."
"You know her?" Soren asked.
Marie didn't answer right away. She leaned in, checking the body with quick, practiced movements. The tongue was torn, the edges ragged like it had been smashed with something blunt. Both wrists and ankles had shattered bone that shifted under the skin when she pressed.
Finally she straightened up, breathing hard.
"Sixteenth century," she said, voice tight. "A group of black-magic witches grabbed an innocent girl and used her as a living experiment. They carved every voodoo secret and curse they knew under her skin, then sewed her back up and kept her breathing with potions."
Marie's mouth twisted. "Later some self-righteous priests found her. Tried to 'save' her with holy magic. Idiots. Their spells clashed with everything already carved into her. The backlash turned her into… this. She can't die. She can't wake up. And any normal person who touches her sees endless hallucinations until they die screaming."
Soren looked at the perfect, untouched skin. "So she's basically a walking, breathing voodoo codex."
"Exactly." Marie's eyes were fever-bright. "Lost spells. Forgotten rituals. Power no one's been able to touch in hundreds of years. Those two idiots must have been hiding here studying her for decades."
She turned to him, hunger plain on her face.
"Soren, I need this body. With what's carved into her I can finally do things I've only dreamed about. Including that divination you wanted."
Soren studied her for a moment. The corpse meant nothing to him. But Marie clearly wanted it bad enough to bleed for it. Perfect leverage.
"I'll give it to you," he said calmly. "But not as a gift. We sign a contract."
Marie went still, eyes narrowing. She'd made deals with demons before. Contracts always cost.
"Relax," Soren said. "Not that kind of contract. Just something to keep our future cooperation clean. No soul-binding bullshit. No restrictions on either of us. Purely business."
He let the silence stretch.
"In exchange for the body, I get to pick one item from your vault. Anything I want."
Marie stared at him. The offer was bold, but the corpse in front of her was worth more than almost anything she owned. And Soren had already proven he could deliver on his promises.
She looked back down at the undying girl and slowly nodded.
"Deal."