Page 3 of Curse in the Quarter
The Saenger Theatre district. Four blocks from where he stood.
Two blocks from Delia’s boarding house.
“No.” The word came out as barely a whisper.
He was already running, his long coat streaming behind him as he raced through the narrow streets. Gas lamps flashed past in blurs of yellow light. His feet pounded against cobblestones while his mind cataloged the growing magical signatures around him.
Someone had been preparing this ritual for months, maybe years. They had layered protections around themselves, woven safeguards into the very architecture of the district. But they had also made a crucial error—they had assumed their targets would be willing participants.
Soul-tethering required consent, on some level. A connection already formed, a bond already present. It could not be forced on the unwilling, could not take root in empty ground.
Which meant Delia was in danger not despite their connection, but because of it.
He could feel the magic building toward crescendo as he ran while the Veil between worlds grew thin and volatile. Windows began to rattle in their frames. Street lamps flickered and went out. In the distance,someone screamed.
By the time he reached Chartres Street, he could feel the fire.
The Saenger Theatre was engulfed in flames that burned with an unnatural blue-white light. The fire spread in patterns that were not caused by the force of wind or physics, following lines of magical force that carved through the district like a malevolent web.
But it wasn’t just the theater. As Bastien ran, he watched the magical chaos tear through the French Quarter like a living thing. Windows exploded outward in showers of glass. Gas lamps burst into pillars of silver flame. The very cobblestones beneath his feet began to crack and buckle as ancient wards failed and mystical energies ran wild through the city’s bones.
Screams echoed from every direction—not just human voices, but the howls of supernatural beings caught in the ritual’s expanding web. A vampire stumbled past him, her carefully maintained glamour shredded, revealing the corpse-pale truth beneath. Two blocks over, a werewolf’s anguished cry cut through the night as forced transformation tore through his human form.
The forbidden working wasn’t just binding spirits across lifetimes. It was ripping apart every supernatural connection in the Quarter, severing bonds that had held for centuries.
And somewhere in that chaos, Delia was walking directly toward the theater.
He could sense her now, a bright point of human warmth moving through the devastation with unnatural purpose. The ritual had called to her, drawn her from the safety of her boarding house with compulsions she couldn’t resist. She walked like a sleepwalker, guided by magic thatrecognized the connection between them and sought to exploit it.
“No!” The word tore from his throat as he pushed harder, his angelic nature lending him speed that blurred the gas-lit streets into streams of light and shadow.
He reached the theater as the building’s facade began to collapse. Chunks of burning masonry crashed to the street around him, but he dodged through the debris with desperate precision. The main entrance was already blocked, but he knew the stage door, the narrow alley where performers slipped in and out between acts.
The door hung open, twisted off its hinges by the magical forces ravaging the building’s structure. Inside, smoke thick as fog obscured everything beyond arm’s length. But his supernatural senses guided him through the maze of corridors and dressing rooms toward the stage where the ritual’s focus burned brightest.
“Delia!”
He found her center stage, standing motionless in a circle of silver fire that didn’t touch her but held her trapped within its boundaries. Her brown dress was untouched by smoke or flame, but her eyes stared straight ahead with the blank expression of someone caught between waking and dream.
The life-thread severance was already beginning.
The truth slammed into him, solid and unavoidable—the magical bonds that connected them starting to fray under the pressure of the chaotic ritual. Someone had tried to tether multiple souls simultaneously, and the working had gone catastrophically wrong. Instead of forging new connections, it was severing existing ones, cutting through spiritual ties with the random violence of a hurricane.
“Delia.” He approached the circle carefully, testing itsboundaries with outstretched fingers. The silver fire burned cold against his skin but didn’t repel him entirely. “Delia, can you hear me?”
Her head turned toward his voice, but her eyes remained unfocused. When she looked at him, he saw no spark of recognition—only the growing confusion of someone whose memories were being carved away by forces beyond human comprehension.
“Who . . .” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the roar of collapsing timber. “I know I should . . . but I can’t . . .”
“It’s me,” he said, stepping through the circle despite the agony that lanced through his supernatural essence. “It’s Bastien. You know me.”
But she didn’t. The ritual had carved away not just their connection, but her memories of him. Every shared moment, every laugh, every gentle touch—all of it was being systematically erased as the arcane working tried to prepare her spirit for binding to another.
He reached for her, and she didn’t pull away, but neither did she step toward him. She stood perfectly still as he gathered her into his arms, her body warm and solid but her mind already drifting toward whatever destination the failed ritual had chosen for her.
“I remember music,” she said softly, her head resting against his shoulder. “Someone used to hum with me. But I can’t see their face.”
The words broke something in his chest that he hadn’t known could break. She was forgetting him even as he held her, their love dissolving under the pressure of magical forces that recognized no human emotion, no divine bond, nothing but the cold mechanics of spiritual manipulation.
