Page 7 of Curse in the Quarter
The locket pulsed once more, then went dark again. Butthe warmth lingered in his palm, and with it, something he’d thought lost forever.
Hope.
Whatever was coming, he would be ready for it. This time, he wouldn’t arrive too late. This time, he wouldn’t watch helplessly as the woman he loved died in flames, her eyes filled with confusion instead of recognition.
This time, perhaps, the story might have a different ending.
Outside his window, the first hints of sunrise began to paint the eastern sky in shades of gold and rose. The rain had stopped, and the Quarter was stirring to life as it had for centuries—a city built on the boundary between worlds, where the impossible was merely improbable and the past never stayed buried for long.
Bastien closed his case files and prepared for the day ahead. Whatever the arcane recursion was building toward, whatever the awakening magic intended to accomplish, he would meet it head-on.
After all, he’d already lost everything once. What more could the universe possibly take from him?
The locket on his desk caught the morning light and seemed, just for a moment, to pulse again.
Everything, he realized. If he was wrong about what was coming, if this was another cruel trick of memory and hope, the universe could take everything all over again.
But if he was right . . .
If he was right, then perhaps some bonds really were strong enough to survive death itself.
Two
The Obscura Archive occupied a converted Creole townhouse on Ursulines Street, its narrow facade squeezed between a palm reader’s shop and a store that sold nothing but vintage postcards. Bastien had walked past the building thousands of times over the past twenty-five years, always on the opposite side of the street, always with his eyes averted from the second-floor windows where he knew she worked.
Today, for the first time since Delphine Leclair had grown old enough to hold a job, he was going inside.
The keepsake locket burned against his ribs as he climbed the front steps. Hours had passed since he’d felt it pulse to life in his office, and the metal hadn’t cooled. Each step toward the Archive’s entrance made it hotter, as if responding to proximity with something it recognized.
A brass plaque beside the door read “Obscura Archive: Historical Research and Document Preservation.” Beneath it, smaller text promised “Specializing in Louisiana Genealogy, Colonial Records, and Unusual Historical Phenomena.”
Bastien paused with his hand on the door handle. He had avoided this encounter for exactly this reason—because he knew that seeing her as an adult, hearing her voice, watching her move through the world with no memory of what they had once meant to each other, would break something in him that had taken decades to repair.
But the locket’s warmth reminded him why he was here. The arcane recursion was building toward something, and every instinct screamed that Delphine would be at its center.
The Archive’s interior was everything he’d expected—mahogany shelves lined with leatherbound volumes, research tables scattered with papers and magnifying glasses, the musty smell of old documents and accumulated knowledge. Dust motes danced in shafts of light from tall windows.
She was at a corner desk, bent over what appeared to be a colonial-era land grant, her auburn hair falling in waves around her face as she transcribed faded text onto a legal pad.
The sight of her stopped his heart.
Not just recognition, but the accumulated weight of twenty-five years of careful distance collapsed into nothing. The slope of her shoulders as she worked. The way she tucked errant strands of hair behind her ear when she concentrated. The graceful line of her neck.
But there was steel in her now that hadn’t existed in Delia’s time—professional competence born of education and independence that no woman of 1906 could have achieved. She wore simple jeans and a white blouse, her only jewelry a silver chain that disappeared beneath her collar.
Modern.
Self-possessed.
Utterly unaware that the man watching her from the Archive entrance had loved her across lifetimes.
“Can I help you find something?”
Her voice was warm, clear, with the faint trace of accent that marked her as New Orleans born and raised. But when she looked up from her work, there was no flash of recognition, no stirring of soul-deep memory. Just polite professional interest.
“I’m researching recent disturbances in the Quarter’s . . .” He cleared his throat, forcing his voice back to its normal register. “Historical patterns of supernatural incidents. Looking for precedents.”
“Supernatural incidents.” She set down her pen and gave him a look that was half amusement, half warning. “Are you a journalist? Because I should mention that we don’t provide information for tabloid articles or ghost tour operators.”
