Page 12 of Curse in the Quarter (Bourbon Street Shadows #1)
T he glyph sketch lay flat on Maman Brigitte’s reading table like an accusation drawn in charcoal and ink.
Bastien watched her dark eyes trace the angular symbols, noting how her expression shifted from curiosity to concern to alarm.
Outside her Rampart Street shop, late afternoon rain drummed against windows that had witnessed more supernatural consultations than most buildings in the Quarter.
“This is not good,” Maman said finally, her voice carrying decades of experience interpreting omens others preferred to ignore.
“Soul-binding resurgence. Haven’t seen patterns like this since .
. .” She paused, calculating years. “Well. Since never. These markings aren’t just echoing old magic. They’re calling it back.”
She rose with fluid grace, moving to shelves that held items most people would dismiss as curiosities—carved bones that hummed with barely audible frequencies, crystals that cast shadows in impossible directions, bottles filled with liquids that moved without being disturbed.
From beneath the register, she withdrew Charlotte’s leatherbound journal. Its cover bore water stains and scorch marks, evidence of dangerous knowledge contained within its pages.
“My predecessor’s work,” Maman reminded him, opening to a page marked with black ribbon. “She kept records of the old families’ magical experiments. Most of it was for academic interest only, but some patterns have a way of repeating themselves.”
The page described “resonant objects” in language that mixed scholarly precision with practical warning.
Items crafted not just to hold magical energy, but to seek out specific targets across time and space.
Artifacts designed to vibrate when near their intended matches, growing stronger with proximity until separation became impossible.
“Here,” Maman said, pointing to a particular passage.
“Mentions a locket etched with a hidden tethering glyph. ‘Vessel meant to vibrate when near its match, crafted by C. Lacroix to ensure recognition across lifetimes.’” She looked up from the journal.
“That wouldn’t happen to sound familiar, would it? ”
Bastien’s hand moved to his chest, where the keepsake locket rested against his ribs. The metal had been warm since his encounter with Delphine at the Archive, pulsing with faint energy that seemed to match his heartbeat.
“Charlotte created it as a failsafe,” he said. “She was convinced that love strong enough could survive death, but worried that reincarnated souls might not remember their connections. So she crafted something that would know me, would respond when her essence was near.”
“And it’s been active recently?”
“Since this morning. Since I met . . . ”
Maman’s expression softened. “Twenty-five years you’ve been carrying that locket through this city, never more than a few miles from where she works, and it stayed silent.
Now, when soul-binding glyphs start appearing, when arcane recursion threatens the Veil itself, it suddenly comes to life.
” She closed the journal. “That’s not coincidence, Bastien. That’s recognition.”
For decades, he’d convinced himself that proximity to Delphine’s childhood and adolescence meant nothing. That the locket’s silence proved keeping his distance was the right decision, and that perhaps the locket wasn’t even working as intended.
But the timing couldn’t be ignored. The locket had awakened the same morning supernatural incidents began clustering around families with Lacroix bloodline connections. The same day Delphine had been researching those exact genealogical patterns.
“I need to be certain,” Bastien said.
“Then test it. But watch yourself.” Maman’s voice carried warning born of experience with magical artifacts that exceeded their creators’ intentions.
“Resonant imprint vessels like that locket, they’re not passive tools.
They’re programmed to seek what they were made to find.
Get too close to the right target, and they won’t let you leave. ”
Bastien left the shop with her warning echoing in his mind.
The walk back to his office took him through streets that seemed charged with anticipation.
Evening shadows stretched longer than natural sunset should have allowed, and the air itself seemed to hum with barely contained energy.
Even mundane humans appeared affected—conversations quieter than usual, movements more deliberate, as if some instinct warned of approaching change.
His office felt smaller when he returned, walls seeming to close in as he placed the glyph sketch on his desk beside the keepsake locket he’d taken off to stare at2.
In the amber light of his desk lamp, both objects seemed ordinary—paper covered in symbolic markings, tarnished silver jewelry that could have come from any antique shop in the Quarter.
But when he moved them within inches of each other, the transformation was immediate.
The locket began to pulse with silver light that appeared to emerge from within the metal itself.
The glyph sketch responded with warmth spreading across the paper like living fire, symbols brightening until they appeared freshly drawn.
Not just magical resonance, but recognition between artifacts sharing a common purpose.
Charlotte’s work calling to her soul across centuries.
Bastien picked up the locket, noting how its essence had changed.
Not heavier, but somehow more present, as if proximity to the glyph had awakened functions that had slept for decades.
The metal vibrated against his palm with steady rhythm—not quite matching his heartbeat, but close enough to suggest synchronization with some deeper biological process.
He understood now why the supernatural community was growing nervous. If objects crafted centuries ago were reactivating, if dormant magical patterns were stirring to life, then whatever Charlotte had set in motion was approaching culmination.
The question was whether that culmination would destroy Delphine or transform her into something beyond human comprehension.
The clock on his desk read six forty-five.
Their appointment was in fifteen minutes—the private consultation Delphine had offered after hours, when they’d have the Archive to themselves.
The same meeting he’d agreed to, knowing it would put them alone together in a building full of historical documents that might react to her presence.
Not to mention being alone with her . . .
if she truly was Charlotte, and Delia, returned to him .
. .Bastien’s heart raced at the possibility that his love had truly returned to him
Bastien stared at the locket in his palm for long minutes. He could approach their meeting with standard academic detachment, maintain the distance that had protected them both for twenty-five years. Or he could take the test that would prove whether his hopes were delusion or recognition.
The Archive would be nearly empty at this hour. Delphine alone with historical documents, unaware that her presence among Charlotte’s genealogical records might complete circuits that had been incomplete for over two centuries.
He pocketed the locket and left for Ursulines Street.
Evening light slanted through the Archive’s tall windows as Bastien climbed the front steps.
The building felt different in near darkness—less scholarly repository, more temple to accumulated memory.
Shadows pooled in corners where afternoon sun didn’t reach, and dust motes danced like spirits in shafts of fading light.
The front door was locked, but warm illumination from the second-floor research room confirmed Delphine was waiting for him. He knocked softly, knowing she would catch the sound despite the building’s solid construction.
Footsteps on wooden floors, the click of locks being turned, and then she stood in the doorway. Hair pulled back in a loose bun, sleeves rolled up from hours of document handling, the kind of focused exhaustion that marked serious research .
“Mr. Durand. Right on time.” She stepped aside to let him enter. “I’ve been looking forward to this consultation.”
“I appreciate you staying after hours.” The words came easily enough, though the locket’s heat against his thigh made every syllable feel weighted with deception. “I hope what I have to share will be worth your time.”
“I’m certain it will be. I’ve been working with some fascinating family records since this afternoon—connections between bloodlines that suggest more intermarriage among the old Creole families than standard genealogies indicate.”
She led him upstairs to the research room, where documents covered every available surface.
Family trees drawn in careful ink, photocopied parish records, hand-drawn maps showing property ownership patterns across multiple generations.
The kind of exhaustive analysis that revealed hidden connections between people separated by decades or centuries.
The locket pulsed against Bastien’s skin the moment they entered the room.
Not the gentle warmth he’d experienced that morning, but active vibration that now seemed to match the rhythm of Delphine’s heartbeat. Metal heating against his leg as if responding to proximity with something it had indeed been designed to find.
“I’ve been digging deeper into those supernatural incidents we discussed,” Delphine said, gesturing toward a particular section of the table covered with new materials.
“Cross-referencing police reports, hospital records, even some private correspondence I found in the restricted collections. The pattern is more extensive than I initially thought—and more recent.”
She moved around the table, pointing out specific connections, and the locket’s vibration increased with each step that brought her closer to where he stood. By the time she reached for a particular document, the metal was almost too hot to bear.