Page 65 of Curse in the Quarter
“Emotional ones. The kind that outlast the original sound.” She leaned forward slightly, her eyes bright with the same curiosity that had always drawn him to her. “Charlotte writes so much about feelings that transcend time, about connections that survive death. Do you think that’s possible? Can love really echo across lifetimes?”
The question was so earnest, so hopeful, that it nearly broke him. She was intuiting the truth without conscious memory, her soul recognizing what her mind had been forced to forget.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I believe some echoes can be that strong.”
Her face lit up with the same radiant smile Charlotte had worn when he’d first agreed to teach her about magic. “I’ve been having the strangest dreams lately. Fragments of places I’ve never been, conversations I’ve never had. But they feel so real, so vivid. Like memories that belong to someone else.”
Bastien’s heart raced. The barriers were weakening faster than he’d anticipated. “Dreams can be powerful things. Sometimes they show us truths our waking minds aren’t ready to accept.”
“But not all echoes are pleasant, are they?” she continued, her voice growing more subdued. “Some are warnings. Some carry pain instead of love.”
Her insight startled him. “No,” he agreed carefully. “Not all echoes are kind. Some are born from trauma, from grief so deep it leaves scars on the fabric of reality itself. Those echoes can be dangerous—they can trap souls in cycles of pain, prevent them from moving forward.”
“Is that why you’re so cautious about the otherworldly? Because you’ve encountered the harmful kind?”
She was so close to understanding, to piecing together the fragments of truth he’d been feeding her. But he couldn’t push too hard, couldn’t risk triggering memories she wasn’t ready to handle.
“Experience teaches wariness,” he said instead. “Not all otherworldly phenomena have benevolent intentions. Some feed on human emotion, on connection and love. They twist beautiful things into weapons.”
Delphine nodded slowly, her fingers absently stroking the journal’s cover. “But you still believe the good echoes exist? That love can truly transcend death?”
“I have to,” he whispered, the admission torn from him before he could stop it. “Because if it can’t, then everything I’ve ever hoped for is meaningless.”
The weight of centuries pressed down on him in that moment. All the years of searching, all the careful planning, all the heartbreak of watching her live and die and be reborn again, unaware of their connection—it all hinged on the belief that love could indeed echo across time.
Delphine reached across the desk and placed her hand over his. The contact sent electricity through his entire body, the same spark he’d felt the first time Charlotte had touched him in the Lacroix gardens.
“I think you’re right,” she said softly. “I think some connections are too powerful to be broken by something as simple as death.”
The locket at Delphine’s throat suddenly erupted with searing heat, its metal surface glowing white-hot against her skin. She gasped and jerked backward, her hand flying to her throat as the arcane echo flare sent violent ripples of energy through the room.
Books tumbled from their shelves. The windows rattled in their frames. The very air seemed to vibrate with unleashed power. Bastien’s collection of rare texts scattered across the floor, their pages fluttering like wounded birds.
“What’s happening?” Delphine cried, struggling to remove the burning locket.
The metal seemed fused to her skin, glowing with an inner fire that cast dancing shadows across the walls. The intricate engravings on its surface had come alive, moving and shifting like living things.
Before Bastien could respond, her phone chimed with an incoming text. Still dealing with the flaring locket, she gestured frantically toward it. “Check that—please!”
Bastien grabbed her phone, his blood turning cold when he saw the message. From Maman, just one word: “Soon.”
The locket’s glow intensified, and Delphine’s eyes began to flutter, the same distant look he’d seen during her episodes starting to take hold. Her awakening was accelerating beyond anything he’d anticipated. The careful, gradual approach he’d planned was crumbling—time was running out for gentle revelation.
“Delphine,” he said urgently, moving around the desk toward her. “Look at me. Stay present.”
But she was already slipping away, her consciousness diving toward memories he’d tried so hard to keep buried. The locket pulsed like a second heartbeat, calling her home to a past that might destroy her.
“I remember . . .” she whispered, her voice taking on an ethereal quality. “Starlight on stone. Your hands teaching mine to trace the ancient symbols. The taste of magic on midnight air . . .”
“No,” Bastien said sharply, grasping her shoulders. “Not yet. You’re not ready.”
The barriers were crumbling, the memories flooding back like water through a broken dam. Soon, she would remember everything—their love, their loss, and the terrible price they’d both paid for defying fate.
The locket gave one final, brilliant flare before settling back to its usual warm glow. Delphine blinked, the distant look fading from her eyes, but Bastien could see the change in her. Something fundamental had shifted.
“I had the strangest feeling just then,” she said softly, her hand still pressed to her throat. “Like I was remembering a dream. Or maybe dreaming a memory.”
The night sky spread above them like dark velvet studded with diamonds. Charlotte lay beside him on the blanket they’d spread across the flat section of the estate’s roof, her head pillowed on his shoulder as they watched the stars overhead.
