Page 35 of Curse in the Quarter
“Resistance provides entertainment value. Continue struggling against inevitability—it enhances eventual collection satisfaction.”
Voss had retreated to her stall’s far edge, clutching amulets glowing with insufficient power. Other merchants closed booths with haste suggesting experience with entities whose presence endangered everyone nearby.
But the Collector was already dispersing, form dissolving like smoke. “She requires assistance with certain research tonight. We suggest prompt response to her communications.”
The shadows vanished, leaving ozone scent and burnedstarlight. Behind him, Voss muttered about contamination while counting currency with trembling fingers.
Bastien’s phone buzzed. Three missed calls from Delphine in the past hour. The most recent message was simple.
Delphine:
Something’s wrong. Please come.
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding against the sharp edge of the silence that followed.
The same plea Charlotte never had chance to make, the same desperation he’d failed to answer in time. His mind spiraled back across centuries, dragged by guilt and the terrible weight of promises broken.
The aftermath of Charlotte's failed ritual in 1763, where Bastien knelt in the ruined chapel holding what remained of the woman who had dared to challenge cosmic law; the same cosmic law that brought them together physically. Stained glass lay shattered around them, and the scent of burned roses filled air thick with mystical residue.
Charlotte's eyes opened one final time, though he could see her consciousness already fragmenting across dimensions the interrupted working had torn open.
“Did it work?” she whispered, voice barely audible above the crackling of dying magical fires.
“I don't know.”
“The locket—do you still have it?”
He pressed the artifact into her failing hands, watching silver light flicker weakly across its engraved surface. “It's here.”
“Then it worked. Partially.” Her smile was heartbreaking in its fragmented beauty. “I'll find my way back to you. Maybe not as Charlotte, maybe not in waysyou'll immediately recognize, but . . .” Her voice faded as the mystical backlash pulled her consciousness toward whatever realm claimed souls that dared too much.
“I'll be waiting.”
“I know you will. That's what makes this love worth any price we pay for it.”
The weight of promises made to the dying, the terrible responsibility of carrying love across centuries of separation—grief that would define every choice he made for the next two hundred and sixty years.
He drove through Quarter streets charged with residual energy, that memory burning behind his eyes. Whatever the Collector meant about Delphine requiring assistance, whatever cosmic forces were converging on her existence, he wouldn’t lose her again.
Not to entities viewing love as harvestable resource.
Not to anyone.
The Obscura Archive stood dark except for second-floor lights where Delphine worked late. But tonight felt different—charged with potential making his senses prickle.
The building’s protective wards were failing. Symbols carved in doorframes flickered weakly, blessed salt lines disrupted by forces leaving no tracks.
As he approached, the locket pulsed with increasing intensity. Not gentle recognition but violent vibration suggesting dangerous proximity to whatever cosmic working built toward culmination.
Inside, the Archive felt charged with expectation. Dust motes danced in patterns spelling words in languages he recognized but wished he didn’t.
He climbed toward the research room where silver light blazed with nothing resembling electricity.
Delphine sat at her table, surrounded by documentspulsing with inner illumination. But her movements were wrong—too fluid, too precise, suggesting consciousness not entirely belonging to the body it inhabited.
When she looked up, her eyes held depths speaking of knowledge accumulated across lifetimes.
“You’re late,” she said, voice carrying harmonics making walls vibrate. “Though I suppose traffic through supernatural markets can be unpredictable.”
