Page 50 of Curse in the Quarter
“If consciousness can survive across lifetimes, if someone could retain detailed knowledge from previous incarnations . . .” She met his eyes directly. “Then this isn’t just historical research anymore. This is personal legacy work spanning centuries.”
“Someone who died before completing their most important project,” Bastien said, testing how far her intuition would carry her. “Someone who spent generations preparing for the opportunity to finish what they started.”
“The bloodline targeting, the genealogical connections, even the choice of location.” She gestured toward the patterns still visible despite their deactivation. “It’s all designed to recreate exact conditions that existed when the original work was interrupted. Like setting up a laboratory experiment with precise environmental controls.”
Around them, the cemetery continued its peaceful afternoon routine. Tour groups moved through established routes, visitors left offerings at famous tombs, groundskeepers tended areas they’d been avoiding all morning due to inexplicable unease. But Bastien could sense change building beneath the calm Delphine had imposed through her unconscious influence.
The midnight gathering would proceed regardless of any temporary stabilization. Whatever force had been orchestrating the network activation expected its focal point to appear willingly. The question was whether Delphine would recognize her role in time to make conscious choices about participation, or whether she would be swept up in currents she’d helped create but didn’t understand.
As they left the cemetery, walking back toward the Quarter through streets where deactivated glyphs marked their passage like a map of her unconscious influence, Bastien made his decision.Tonight, before midnight, before whatever gathering had been arranged could proceed according to the mysterious plan, he would tell her the truth about who she was and what she represented.
The stabilization she’d demonstrated proved she had power enough to control the energy around her. Now she needed understanding to wield that power wisely.
Time was running out. The network was calling.
And somewhere in the approaching darkness, entities that viewed consciousness as harvestable resource were preparing to collect what they believed belonged to them.
The battle for her soul was approaching fast, and he wouldn’t let her face it completely unaware of the weapon she carried within herself.
Fourteen
Bastien spread the parchment fragments across the mahogany table like puzzle pieces of his own damnation. Each yellowed edge held Charlotte’s careful script, her methodical documentation of their forbidden love. Three days he’d stared at these pages, unable to translate the coded passages that had once been intimate secrets between them. The irony cut deep—he who had lived every moment she’d described now found himself paralyzed by the prospect of hearing those memories spoken aloud.
The Archive room held its familiar quiet, broken only by the distant hum of the building’s old heating system and the occasional creak of settling wood. Afternoon light slanted through tall windows, illuminating the dust that danced perpetually in academic spaces where knowledge waited to be discovered. But today felt different. Today, the very air seemed charged with anticipation.
Delphine’s footsteps echoed in the corridor before she appeared in the doorway, two steaming cups balanced inher hands. She’d changed from her morning attire into a cream sweater and dark trousers, her hair pulled back in a practical bun with rebellious strands framing her face. Bastien noticed how much she resembled Charlotte in this light, this setting.
“Any luck with those fragments?” she asked, settling her research bag on the adjacent table. “You mentioned yesterday that the handwriting was proving difficult to decipher.”
“Some progress,” he replied, gesturing to the scattered pages. “The script is consistent with mid-eighteenth-century French, but there are sections that seem to be written in a personal code. Academic terminology mixed with what appears to be emotional notation.”
“The handwriting style is . . . complex.” He watched her settle into the chair across from him, noted how she pulled her cardigan closer around her shoulders despite the room’s warmth. “Academic, but with personal notations that seem to follow no standard cipher.”
She leaned forward, studying the scattered pages without touching them. “Mid-eighteenth-century, you said? The letter formations look French in origin, though there’s something else. A kind of intimacy in the script that suggests these weren’t meant for general consumption.”
“Exactly my assessment.” The lie flowed smoothly. He’d had over a century to perfect the art of misdirection. “I acquired them from an estate sale in the Loire Valley. The previous owner had accumulated quite an extensive collection of occult materials, but these seemed different. More personal.”
“Most spiritualist documentation from that period was either complete charlatanism or hopeful speculation.” Sheadjusted her position, and Bastien caught the faint scent of her perfume—something with notes of jasmine that made his chest tighten with memory. “But whoever wrote these approaches the subject with genuine scientific methodology. Almost as though they were documenting real phenomena. But also with the familiarity as if it were for someone specific.”
Bastien's breathing grew shallow. He remembered that night with perfect clarity—their first real communication, when Charlotte had finally learned to quiet her mind enough to sense his presence directly. She'd been sitting at her writing desk, having grown frustrated with the parlor games and table-rapping that passed for spirit contact among her social circle.
The first fragment trembled slightly as she lifted it, and Bastien’s breath caught. How many times had he watched those same fingers—different body, same soul—handle these very pages? Charlotte had written most of these entries late at night, by candlelight, while he watched from whatever form he could manage in those early days of their connection.
“The handwriting becomes more confident as it progresses,” Delphine observed, turning to another page. “Listen to this: 'Third attempt at establishing consistent communication. I have discovered that conventional methods—candles, crystals, protective circles—serve only to create barriers between us. The connection strengthens when I approach it as I would any other form of correspondence. Direct, honest, without artificial mystification.'”
“Correspondence,” Bastien said quietly. The word lodged in his throat like a stone.
“Yes, it's a fascinating approach. She's treating supernaturalcontact as though it were letter-writing with someone in a distant country.” Delphine selected another fragment, this one containing Charlotte's first description of guardian tether notation. “The technical language becomes more sophisticated here: 'The entity responds most readily when I address him not as a spirit manifestation, but as an individual with his own thoughts and feelings. He possesses distinct preferences, demonstrates humor, and shows what I can only describe as protective concern for my wellbeing.'”
The keepsake locket burned against Bastien's ribs. Charlotte had written those words after their sixth conversation, when she'd realized he was more than a spiritual curiosity—that he was a man who happened to exist beyond the boundaries of life and death.
Delphine began to read aloud, her voice taking on the measured cadence of academic translation. “Day seventeen of the ninth month. The connection strengthens with each passing evening. Tonight I observed the ritual of guardian tether notation, though I dared not participate directly. The practitioners speak of binding souls across death’s threshold, of love that transcends the boundaries of flesh.”
Bastien remembered the weight of the quill in Charlotte’s hand, the way she paused between phrases to glance toward where she somehow sensed his presence. She’d been documenting not just phenomena, but the gradual recognition that what existed between them defied every natural law.
“The terminology is remarkably sophisticated,” Delphine continued, setting down the first fragment to reach for another. “Listen to this scientific approach: 'Fifth attempt at establishing ethereal contact. Subject demonstrates sensitivity to otherworldly emanations between the hours of midnight and three. Physical manifestationsinclude temperature fluctuations and what can only be described as a resonance of recognition. '”
“Resonance of recognition.” The phrase lodged in Bastien’s throat like a physical object. Charlotte’s term for the moment when their souls touched, when mortality became irrelevant and only connection remained. She’d coined it during their second week of contact, struggling to find language for something that existed beyond words.
