Page 38 of Curse in the Quarter
“Longer. These patterns suggest her family was involved in supernatural practices for generations before Charlotte's birth. She didn't develop soul-binding theories in isolation—she inherited foundation work from ancestors who'd been experimenting with consciousness preservation since Louisiana was French territory.”
“The spreading contamination?—”
“Network activation. Charlotte embedded preparation protocols throughout bloodline inheritance, dormant until proper conditions emerged.” Maman's voice carried the authority of someone who'd tracked supernatural genealogies for decades. “Your Delphine isn't just reactivating dormant magic. She's calling forces that have been waiting centuries for this moment.”
The locket pulsed with increasing violence, the metal growing so hot he had to set it on the reading table. The moment it touched wood, symbols began burning themselves into the surface—not random marks but organized patterns that spelled words in languages the existed prior to Latin.
“It's trying to communicate,” Maman observed, watching characters appear in real-time. “Probably receiving signals from whatever source is coordinating the network activation.”
“What kind of signals?”
“Coordinates. Instructions. Maybe warnings aboutentities that don't appreciate souls developing beyond their designated positions.” She reached for protective items from her shelves—salt blessed by multiple saints, iron filings from sacred construction, water drawn from graves of martyrs. “Bastien, whatever's happening with that locket, it's attracted attention from forces that view individual consciousness as a harvestable resource.”
Through the shop windows, dawn was beginning to paint the Quarter in shades of gold and possibility. But beneath familiar beauty, currents of change were building toward culmination that could reshape everything about how supernatural beings related to authority.
“How much time do we have?”
“I don’t know yet. Every moment that artifact remains active, it broadcasts recognition signals revealing her location and development level to anyone with the knowledge to interpret them.” Maman gathered the protective items into a cloth bag. “You need to reach her before someone else does.”
“Someone else?”
“Collectors.”
The name made his chest tighten with recognition. He'd encountered such beings during his expulsion from grace—enforcers whose authority operated beyond physical law, whose solutions tended toward permanent elimination of problems.
“What do they want with her?”
“Same thing they wanted with Charlotte two centuries ago. Prevent consciousness evolution that threatens established order.” Maman's expression darkened. “Only this time, they've had centuries to prepare countermeasures.”
The Lacroix estate's rose garden on Charlotte's twentieth birthday in 1762, where she moved between blooms thatseemed to lean toward her presence. She wore pale yellow silk, her hair loose around her shoulders, looking more like a forest spirit than French aristocracy. In her hands, she carried a leather journal filled with theories that would either preserve their love or destroy them both.
“I've been thinking about time,” she said, settling on a marble bench beside the fountain where water spelled poetry in languages older than Latin. “About how it moves forward for mortals but differently for beings like you.”
“What about it?”
“When you fell from grace, did you lose your connection to eternity? Or did you simply gain a different relationship with temporal existence?” She opened the journal, revealing pages covered in mystical diagrams. “Because if consciousness can exist independent of linear time . . .”
“Charlotte, what are you planning?”
“To love you across every lifetime I'm granted, in every form I'm given, until the universe itself runs out of new configurations for souls to inhabit.” Her dark eyes blazed with vision that could reshape cosmic law. “And to make sure you recognize me each time, no matter how many centuries pass between us.”
The absolute conviction in her voice, the love that would engineer its own immortality—determination that would either bind them across eternity or scatter their souls beyond any hope of reunion.
“I need you to carry something for me,” she said, withdrawing from her reticule a locket whose silver surface reflected not their surroundings but possibilities existing in parallel dimensions. The engravings hurt to look at directly—symbols encoding concepts beyond mortal comprehension.
“Promise me that when this awakens, when it calls acrosswhatever distances separate us, you'll help me remember what love means.”
“Why wouldn't you remember?”
“Because transformation of this magnitude requires sacrificing aspects of self that make us recognizably human.” Her fingers traced the artifact's surface with reverent care. “I'll be fire or wind or flesh, but I might not be someone capable of love as we understand it.”
“Then I'll teach you again.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
The memory shattered as the locket exploded into movement on Maman's reading table. Not random vibration—purposeful motion, sliding across the wood toward the shop's front door as if pulled by invisible force.
