Read Chapter 21: The Claim of Blood

The rain had started again, a thin, persistent drizzle that turned the mansion’s ironwork into streaks of black ink. Elodie stood in the nursery of the Fontenot house, the bassinet before her like a cradle for the dead, and she could not stop staring at the single dark strand of hair caught in the weave of the old linen.

“It’s not possible,” Julien said from the doorway. His voice was raw, scraped clean of its usual wry warmth. “You’re saying Thorne is my cousin. That we’re *family*.”

“Not cousin. Not exactly.” Elodie turned to face him, the strand of hair now pinched between her thumb and forefinger, held up to the gray light like a relic. “If Céleste was adopted into the Leveau line, and Marie raised her as her own, then Céleste’s descendants—if she had any—would carry Leveau mitochondrial DNA. And Thorne claims descent from the Leveau line. That means he and you might share a maternal ancestor. It doesn’t make you brothers. It makes you *kin*.”

Julien ran a hand through his hair, a gesture she’d come to recognize as his tell for when the world was slipping sideways. “And what about me? My family has owned this house for a hundred and fifty years. We have the papers. The deeds. The portraits of men who look exactly like my grandfather.”

“And Marie Leveau went to extraordinary lengths to erase a Fontenot child from the record.” Elodie stepped closer to him, the strand of hair still held out like a peace offering. “She adopted Céleste. She gave her the Leveau name. But *blood* doesn’t care about names, Julien. If you descend from Céleste—if your great-grandmother or hers was Céleste’s daughter—then you are both. Fontenot *and* Leveau. The two lines the curse was built to punish.”

The lullaby started again. It came from the walls, from the floorboards, from the cold air of the hallway beyond the nursery door—a soft, keening melody that rose and fell like breath. It had been playing on and off all morning, growing louder each time, as if the house itself were counting down the hours.

Julien flinched. “That’s not going to stop, is it? Not until one of us is dead.”

“Or until we prove who we are.” Elodie wrapped the strand of hair in a clean handkerchief from her coat pocket, folding it with the precision of a woman who had once catalogued a dead man’s cufflinks. “I know a lab in Baton Rouge. A genetic genealogist who owes me a favor. If I drive there now, courier it, and pay for rush processing, we can have results in under twenty-four hours.”

“We don’t have under twenty-four hours.” Julien’s voice cracked on the last word. “Odette said Thorne’s message was clear. Midnight tomorrow. That’s… that’s not enough time.”

“It’s *all* the time we have.” Elodie crossed to him and took his hands in hers. His skin was cold, but he didn’t pull away. “Listen to me. If the curse is tied to a broken promise between Marie and Abraham—if the magic is anchored to the *blood* of the families involved—then proving your true lineage might be the key to breaking it. Not surrendering the deed. Not giving Thorne the gold. *Knowing the truth.*”

Julien looked down at their joined hands. “And what if the truth is that I’m not a Fontenot at all? What if I’m just… a Leveau who got lucky? That this house, my family’s name, everything we fought to keep—it was never really ours?”

“Then you’re still you.” Elodie squeezed his fingers. “You’re still the man who spent the last three weeks fighting to save a house he didn’t have to care about. You’re still the man who makes terrible coffee and hums off-key when you think no one’s listening.” She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “And you’re still the man I—the man I’ve come to care about. More than I should.”

Julien’s mouth curved into a shadow of his usual smile. “Care about, huh? That’s a lawyer’s way of saying it.”

“I’m a lawyer. It’s how I say things.” She released his hands and stepped back, businesslike again. “I’ll need a sample from you. A few hairs, pulled from the root. And I’ll need to take the bassinet’s strand as a comparison. If Céleste’s DNA is in the maternal line, the mitochondrial match will show up whether the child was male or female. I should also take something from Odette, if she’s willing—a hair from her brush, a tissue, anything. She’s your direct blood relative, so her mtDNA will match yours if your grandmother was Céleste’s descendant.”

Julien nodded slowly, the wheels of his mind turning behind his eyes. “And what about Thorne? If he’s a Leveau, can we get a sample from him?”

“He won’t give one willingly.” Elodie’s jaw tightened. “But he gave me something better. He told me he was *listening* to the mansion for years. That means he’s had access. Physical or otherwise. And if he’s been in this house, he’s touched things. Left traces.”

“You want to find his DNA in my house?” Julien’s eyebrows rose. “In the middle of a curse deadline, while the lullaby is playing on loop, you want to go mining for a stranger’s skin cells?”

“I want to prove he’s a Leveau descendant,” Elodie said. “And I want to prove you are too. If both of you are, then the curse isn’t about choosing one heir over another. It’s about *reconciliation*. Marie used Céleste to seal the Fontenot claim to the gold. Abraham’s daughter was the collateral. If the two lines can prove they’re bound by blood, maybe the promise can be fulfilled differently. Maybe the gold doesn’t have to be a prize—it can be a *bridge*.”

The lullaby swelled, a note climbing higher than the melody had ever gone, and then cut off abruptly. The silence that followed was louder than the song.

From downstairs, Odette’s voice rang out, sharp with alarm. “Julien! *Julien!*”

He moved before Elodie could, boots pounding on the stairs. She followed, the handkerchief with the strand of hair clutched in her fist. Odette stood in the foyer, her hand pressed to her mouth, staring at the front door.

The door stood ajar, rain blowing in across the marble floor. And pinned to the door’s inner panel, just above eye level, was a small cloth doll—no bigger than her palm, made from faded calico and old lace. Its head was wrapped in a piece of fabric that Elodie recognized instantly: the same quilt pattern as the voodoo doll Thorne had shown her at the café.

“It was here when I came down,” Odette whispered, her face the color of ash. “There’s something inside it.”

Julien reached for it, but Elodie grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch it. Not yet.” She pulled out her phone and took a photo, then knelt to examine the doll without making contact. The stitching was fine and small, the kind of needlework that had taken hours. And pinned to its chest, in a tiny silver frame no bigger than her thumbnail, was a lock of dark hair.

“It’s mine,” Julien said, his voice hollow. “That gray at the root. That’s from my father’s brush. I’d know it anywhere.”

Elodie’s blood ran cold. Thorne had been in the house. He had taken something from Julien’s family—something intimate, something tied to the bloodline—and he had left it here as a message.

*He isn’t waiting for the deadline,* she thought. *He’s already started collecting.*

She looked from the doll to the strand of hair in her handkerchief, and the pieces snapped together with a clarity that made her stomach drop.

Thorne wasn’t just a claimant. He was a collector. And if he had Julien’s father’s hair, he had the means to work the same blood magic Marie had used a century and a half ago.

“We need to go,” Elodie said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. “Now. Before he finishes whatever he started.”

Julien stared at the doll, his jaw set. “Where?”

“Baton Rouge.” Elodie tucked the handkerchief into her inner pocket. “And then we’re going to find out exactly whose blood is in this house. Before the house takes ours.”