Page 66 of Curse in the Quarter
“Do you think they’re watching us?” she whispered, her breath warm against his neck.
“The stars?”
“The souls who came before. The ones who loved like this and lost each other to time.” She shifted to look at him,her eyes reflecting the starlight. “Do you think they envy us for having this moment?”
Bastien traced the line of her cheek with his fingertip, marveling at how the moonlight turned her skin to silver. “I think they celebrate us. Every love that echoes theirs, every connection that proves such bonds can exist—it validates their own experience.”
“Promise me something,” Charlotte said, her voice growing serious.
“Anything.”
“If something happens to us, if we’re separated by time or death or magic—promise me you’ll look for the echoes. Promise me you’ll recognize my soul, no matter what form it takes.”
He kissed her forehead, breathing in the familiar scent of jasmine and starlight that always surrounded her. “I promise. Across lifetimes, across centuries, across the very boundaries of death itself—I will always find you.”
She smiled then, the expression so radiant it rivaled the stars above them. “And I’ll always come back to you. No matter how many lives it takes, no matter what obstacles fate puts in our way. Some echoes are too strong to ever truly fade.”
They lay there in comfortable silence, watching meteors streak across the sky like celestial benedictions. Neither spoke of their fears—that their families would discover their secret, that the otherworldly forces gathering around the estate might tear them apart, that love alone might not be enough to protect what they’d found.
In that moment, beneath the eternal stars, they believed in forever.
Bastien watched Delphine touch the locket at her throat and wondered if she could feel the echo of the promise fromlong ago. The barriers were weakening with each passing hour. Soon, she would remember that rooftop, remember the vows they’d made under starlight, remember everything that came after.
The afternoon light had shifted, casting longer shadows across his study. Delphine sat quietly for several minutes, her fingers still pressed to the locket as if drawing comfort from its warmth. When she finally spoke, her voice carried a weight that hadn’t been there an hour before.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “About the dreams, the feelings of recognition. They’re getting stronger.”
Bastien’s pulse quickened. “Stronger how?”
“Yesterday, I walked past a café in the Garden District and had to stop. For a moment, I could swear I smelled jasmine and heard piano music, but there were no flowers nearby and no music playing.” She looked up at him then, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I stood there for ten minutes, waiting for something I couldn’t name.”
The café she described was three blocks from where Charlotte’s family had owned a townhouse. The same corner where Delia had waited for him on rainy afternoons, humming melodies that seemed to come from nowhere.
“And the music,” Delphine continued, her voice growing softer. “There’s this melody that’s been following me. I catch myself humming it, but I don’t know where I learned it. It feels important, like a message I’m supposed to understand.”
Bastien’s hands went cold. The melody. The same haunting tune that had connected every incarnation, the musical thread that bound their souls across centuries. If she was remembering that . ..
“Could you hum a few bars?” he asked, though he dreaded the answer.
Delphine closed her eyes and began to hum, her voice soft and achingly familiar. The melody that drifted from her lips was the same one Charlotte had hummed while gardening, the same tune Delia had played on the piano in her tiny apartment, the musical signature of a love that refused to die.
The locket pulsed in rhythm with her humming, growing brighter with each note. Bastien gripped the edge of his desk, fighting the urge to cross the room and gather her in his arms, to tell her everything and damn the consequences.
When the melody faded, Delphine opened her eyes. “Do you recognize it?”
“Yes,” he whispered, the admission torn from him. “I recognize it.”
“From where?”
He could lie. Should lie. But looking into her face, seeing the hope and confusion and desperate need for answers, he found he couldn’t form the words that would deny her truth.
“From a time when music meant something different,” he said carefully. “When melodies carried messages that words couldn’t express.”
Delphine leaned forward, her eyes intense. “Tell me about it. Please.”
“There was a woman who used to hum that tune,” Bastien said, each word carefully chosen. “Someone who believed that music could bridge any distance, that the right melody could call a soul home across any void.”
“What happened to her?”
