Page 34 of Curse in the Quarter (Bourbon Street Shadows #1)

T he stench of burned sage and copper pennies led Bastien through the labyrinthine back alleys of the Meridian District, past shuttered storefronts and graffitied brick walls that leaned inward like conspirators sharing secrets.

Voss’s scent trail wound through narrow passages where light barely penetrated, creating pockets of shadow dense enough to hide a dozen sins.

He found her three blocks from the ash-marked building, crouched beside a makeshift stall constructed from salvaged metal sheeting and threadbare tarps.

Her pale hair caught what light existed like spun glass.

She arranged small vials filled with luminescent liquids on a rickety wooden table, each one pulsing with its own internal rhythm.

“Bastien Durand,” she said without looking up, her voice carrying that same musical quality that made his teeth ache. “I wondered when you’d find me.”

He stepped from the shadows, letting his boots announce his presence on the cracked asphalt. “Your scent was all over that building. The one marked with ash sigils. ”

Her fingers paused over a particularly bright vial, its contents swirling like captured starlight. “Was it now? How unfortunate for me.”

“Cut the games, Voss. You’ve been trafficking more than just soul fragments.”

She raised her head, and those unsettling violet eyes fixed on his with predatory amusement.

“Have I? What an interesting accusation.” She straightened, and he noticed the new additions to her appearance since their last encounter—silver chains wound around her wrists, each link inscribed with symbols that hurt to look at directly.

“Tell me, Detective, what exactly do you think you’ve discovered? ”

The alley felt smaller, as if the walls were creeping closer. He could smell ozone and sulfur, the telltale signs of active magical workings. Whatever Voss had been up to, it was bigger than simple black market dealings.

“I know you’ve been selling to someone with deep pockets and deeper knowledge. Someone who understands what these fragments really are.”

A laugh bubbled up from her throat, sharp and crystalline. “Oh, Bastien. Sweet, predictable, Bastien. Always chasing flames, aren’t you? Even when you know they’ll burn you alive.”

The words hit something raw inside his chest, a wound that never quite healed.

Images flashed unbidden—Delia’s face twisted with hurt and accusation, her voice breaking as she threw his badge at his feet, the sound of their apartment door slamming with such finality it might as well have been a coffin lid closing.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but the words felt hollow.

Voss tilted her head, studying him with the intensity of a scientist examining a particularly fascinating specimen.

“Don’t I? You have such a distinctive pattern, Bastien Durand.

Such a . . . harvested recurrence of behavior.

Some souls are born to repeat their mistakes across lifetimes, you know.

We have a name for your particular affliction. ”

The air around them grew thick, oppressive. He could feel power building in the space between them, crackling along his skin like static electricity before a storm.

“What name?” he asked, though every instinct screamed at him not to give her the satisfaction.

Her smile was sharp enough to cut glass. “Tether Widow.”

The words landed cold, piercing him. Something cold settled in his chest, a recognition that came from deeper than conscious memory.

“A soul born to love completely and lose catastrophically,” she continued, her voice taking on the cadence of someone reciting sacred text.

“Doomed to watch their beloved die again and again, lifetime after lifetime, always because of choices they make in the name of protection. Always because they think their secrets are shields instead of poison.”

The parlor of her boarding house on Royal Street. Delia sat at the piano, her fingers picking out a melody that seemed to capture starlight in musical form. She looked up when he entered, her face brightening with the kind of joy that made him forget he'd ever fallen from grace.

“You've been working late again,” she said, though her tone held affection rather than accusation. “Mrs. Thibodaux mentioned you didn't come calling yesterday evening.”

“I'm sorry, Del. The case ? —”

“Bastien.” She rose from the piano bench, moving toward him with concern shadowing her features. “You look exhausted. And there's . . .” She hesitated, reaching toward his sleeve where silver dust clung to the fabric. “What is this? It shimmers like nothing I've ever seen.”

He caught her hand before she could touch it, perhaps more sharply than he intended. “It's nothing. Just . . . evidence from a crime scene.”

The light in her eyes dimmed slightly. “You never speak of your work anymore. I used to feel as though I knew your thoughts, but lately . . .” She pulled her hand free, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Sometimes I wonder if you're the same man I fell in love with, or if he's been replaced by someone who thinks I cannot be trusted with even the smallest confidence.”

The memory crashed over him without warning—Delia’s voice, raw with months of accumulated hurt and suspicion.

“I’m protecting you ? —”

“From what? From who I am? From who we are together?”

The flashback dissolved, leaving him standing in the alley with Voss watching his every reaction with predatory interest.

“There it is,” she said softly. “That soul’s shadow I can smell on you. The weight of all your failures, pressing down like a collapsed star. Tell me, Detective—how many times have you stood where I’m standing and realized you’ve lost her all over again?”

Bastien's hands clenched into fists, but he kept his voice level. Professional. “Who's buying the fragments, Voss?”

“Ah, changing the subject? How wonderfully predictable.” She turned back to her vials, selecting one filled with what looked like liquid midnight. “But I suppose even tether widows deserve to know the name of their tormentor.”

She held the vial up to the weak streetlight, and shadows danced within the dark liquid like living things.

“The Maestro,” she said simply.

“You’re working for a fae?” he asked.

“Working for? Oh, my dear detective, you misunderstand the nature of our relationship entirely.” She set the vial down with careful precision. “The Maestro doesn’t employ servants. He conducts symphonies.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Her smile returned, sharp and knowing. “It means you’ve been dancing to his music far longer than you realize. Every choice you’ve made, every path you’ve walked, every time you’ve chosen duty over love—all of it orchestrated by a mind that thinks in centuries instead of moments.”

The implications hit him hard. If the Maestro was real, if he truly possessed the kind of power Voss was suggesting, then everything Bastien thought he knew about his cases, about the magical crimes plaguing the city, might be nothing more than elaborate stagecraft.

“He’s not just buying fragments,” he said, the pieces clicking together with horrible clarity. “He’s collecting them for a specific purpose.”

“Now you’re beginning to understand.” Voss picked up another vial, this one containing what looked like crystallized screams. “Soul fragments aren’t just magical components, Bastien. They’re instruments. And the Maestro has been building quite the orchestra.”

He thought about the victims he’d found over the past months, each one drained of their essence in increasingly sophisticated ways.

He’d assumed they were dealing with a killer who was getting better at their craft, but what if it was something else entirely?

What if someone had been fine-tuning a process across multiple incidents, perfecting a technique for harvesting specific types of spiritual energy?

“How long has this been going on?” he asked.

“Longer than you’ve been alive. Longer than your father was alive . . . Yes, I do mean The Father. The Maestro plays a very long game, detective. He’s been weaving threads across bloodlines and time itself, creating patterns within patterns within patterns.”

The words triggered another memory, this one hazier and tinged with the quality of dreams. Bastien was standing in a cemetery at night, rain turning the earth to mud beneath his feet.

A woman with auburn hair was walking away from him, her shoulders shaking with sobs he’d caused but couldn’t understand.

The details were frustratingly vague, but the emotional weight was crushing—the certainty that he’d failed someone he loved, that his choices had led directly to their destruction.

“You’ve felt it before, haven’t you?” Voss’s voice cut through the fragmentary recollection. “That sense of déjà vu when you make the same mistakes? That feeling that you’ve stood in this exact spot, having this exact conversation, watching the same tragedy unfold?”

He had felt it. More times than he cared to admit. Moments when the present seemed to echo with the weight of repetition, when he’d catch himself making choices that felt both inevitable and wrong.

“He’s been manipulating events across multiple lifetimes,” he said, understanding crystallizing in his mind. “Not just mine. Others too.”

“Lifetimes, bloodlines, entire family trees.” Voss began packing her vials away with practiced efficiency.

“The Maestro doesn’t think in terms of individual existence, Detective.

He thinks in terms of patterns that span generations.

Her current incarnation is just one note in a much larger composition. ”

“What’s he building toward?”

“That, my dear tether widow, is a question you’ll have to ask him yourself.” She shouldered a worn leather satchel and stepped away from her makeshift stall. “Though I suspect you won’t like the answer.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away from here. Away from you. Away from the crescendo that’s building.

” She paused at the mouth of the alley, her pale figure already beginning to blur into the surrounding shadows.

“A word of advice, Bastien Durand—when you finally have your standoff with the Maestro, remember that he’s been composing your story for far longer than you’ve been living it.

Every choice you think is yours, every moment of agency you believe you possess, has been calculated and orchestrated by a mind that views free will as nothing more than an interesting variable in an otherwise predetermined equation. ”

“Voss, wait?—”

But she was already gone, vanishing into the maze of back streets like smoke. He was left alone in the alley with nothing but the lingering scent of burned sage and the weight of new knowledge.

He leaned against the brick wall, his mind racing through the implications of what he’d learned.

The Maestro wasn’t just another magical criminal hiding in the city’s shadows.

He was something far more dangerous—a conductor orchestrating events across timelines Bastien couldn’t even comprehend, manipulating the fundamental forces that governed life, death, and rebirth.

And somehow, Bastien was central to his plans. A twinge, not quite pain, ached where his wings were . . . before. Not a sensation he felt often, but he knew it was the magic surging through the city, and his proximity to Delphine.

The level of Maestro’s puppeteering should have been terrifying, but instead he felt a strange sense of clarity settling over him.

For months he’d been chasing fragments of a puzzle, trying to understand why the magical crimes in the city seemed to follow patterns that defied conventional investigation.

Now he knew—they weren’t random acts of violence or greed.

They were movements in a symphony that had been playing for generations.

His phone buzzed with a text message. He pulled it out, expecting an update from the precinct, but the screen showed only a number he didn’t recognize and a message that made his blood run cold:

Unknown Number:

The third movement begins. You can’t stop it. I’ll see you at the conservatory. —M

The screen went dark before he could respond, leaving him staring at his own reflection in the black glass. Behind his familiar features, he could swear he saw the ghosts of other faces—and his wings.

If the Maestro's message was true, Delphine's life hung in the balance once again.

So what choice did he have? If the Maestro truly had been orchestrating events across multiple incarnations, then running would only delay the inevitable.

And if there was even a chance that Delphine was in danger, that history was preparing to repeat itself in the cruelest possible way, then he had to act.

He pushed away from the wall and started walking toward his car, his footsteps echoing in the empty alley.

The conservatory was on the other side of the city, a grand old building that had been abandoned for decades after a fire gutted most of its interior.

If the Maestro wanted a dramatic setting for whatever confrontation he had planned, he couldn’t have chosen better.

As he drove through the nearly empty streets, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d made this journey before.

The conservatory loomed ahead of him like a Gothic nightmare, its broken windows and fire-blackened walls stark against the night sky.

He parked across the street and sat for a moment, gathering what courage he could find in the face of an enemy who had been planning this moment for longer than he’d been living this life . . .after the fall.

Somewhere in that ruined building waited answers to questions he was only beginning to understand. Somewhere in those shadows lurked a creature who viewed his entire existence as nothing more than an instrument in some grand composition.

There was time before he’d need to meet the Maestro and Bastien needed to do some research. A way to stop the ritual had to be there.

This time, he would find a way to break the cycle.

This time, he wouldn’t lose her again.

The lie tasted bitter in his mouth, but he held onto it anyway. Sometimes, hope was all the weapon a tether widow had.