Page 52 of Curse in the Quarter (Bourbon Street Shadows #1)

T he Archive had held—barely. By the time the Collectors withdrew into whatever rift had birthed them, the wards shimmered with exhaustion, the air still charged with the taste of ozone and ancient malice.

Delphine had been shaken but unhurt, her questions barely contained beneath the weight of everything she’d just seen.

Bastien had walked her out through streets that were slowly righting themselves, the city’s bruised reality knitting back together in uneven stitches.

He’d told her they’d talk later, once the Quarter felt less like a wound, and while she was displeased with his putting her off, they were both exhausted.

Twenty-four hours later, that wound was still tender.

The distortions had faded, but his instincts said they were only sleeping.

He’d spent the day half-listening to reports from the alliance, half-listening for the faintest ripple in reality that might mean the Collectors had returned.

He told himself that meeting Delphine later was about assessing her wellbeing after the chaos—confirming she was truly safe—but the tightness in his chest when he saw her waiting by the Archive steps told him otherwise.

She was the danger he couldn’t walk away from, and the one risk he wasn’t ready to name.

The next evening, they stood in front of the Archive, where Delphine had asked Bastien to meet her.

"Would you like to get drinks?" Delphine's voice cut through the chaos at the Archive steps, tourists streaming past them in bright clusters.

"I need something normal after . . . whatever happened in there. Even if normal's an illusion." She had continued to stay at Maman’s when she wasn’t in the Archive, an outing Bastien wasn’t thrilled about, but he was committed to her life being her choice.

Bastien stopped, one hand on the wrought iron railing.

The Quarter pulsed around them with residual energy from the frequencies of the Veil tear that set his teeth on edge.

Getting drinks with her meant proximity.

Conversation. The risk of saying too much or not enough.

But he couldn’t say no to her. Would never.

"Yes." The word escaped before wisdom could intervene.

Relief transformed her face. "Royal Street has a wine bar. Quiet but not isolated." Her smile carried Charlotte's mischief, the same expression that had once convinced him to dance at midnight in Jackson Square. "Safe from the weirdness that follows us around."

They moved through cobblestone streets where gas lamps threw amber pools across uneven pavement.

Jazz spilled from doorways, mixing with laughter and the distant clip of horse hooves.

Normal New Orleans evening sounds, except humans kept avoiding certain corners without realizing why.

Their instincts recoiled from spaces where glyphs had burned through reality's fabric.

The wine bar occupied a narrow townhouse, all exposed brick and candle-warmed shadows. They claimed a corner booth, ordered Bordeaux that cost more than most people's grocery budget, and faced each other across polished wood scarred by decades of conversations.

"I'm losing time," Delphine said after the server retreated.

Her fingers found patterns on the wine glass stem—unconscious ritual gestures that made Bastien's chest tighten.

"Whole afternoons disappear. I'll be walking down Magazine Street and suddenly I'm on Chartres with no memory of how I got there.

Like someone else is moving my body while I'm . . . elsewhere."

"Dissociation. Stress response to?—"

"Don't." She cut him off with surgeon's precision and an annoyed huff.

"Don't give me clinical explanations for things we both know aren't clinical, and that I believe you already knew had been happening to me.

" Wine reflected candlelight as she lifted the glass.

"I hear music that doesn't exist. Melodies I've never learned but know note-perfect. "

That pre-memory tremor settled in his ribs, recognition fighting its way toward consciousness despite every barrier he'd built.

Charlotte had described identical experiences in those final weeks before the ritual.

The growing awareness that her soul carried impressions from other lifetimes, other loves, other losses stretching back through centuries of forgetting and remembering.

In 1762, they'd walked the levee path in silver moonlight, her hand inches from his but never quite touching.

Protocol demanded distance between merchant's daughter and mysterious gentleman caller.

But Charlotte had stopped suddenly, pressing fingertips to her temple.

"This route," she'd whispered. "I've walked it before.

Not in this life, but . . . I know where every loose brick waits to trip me.

I know the exact spot where jasmine grows wild over the garden wall.

" When he'd asked her to explain, she'd shaken her head, copper curls catching moonlight.

"Like remembering someone else's dreams. Beautiful and terrible at once. "

"Memory creates patterns when we're under stress," Bastien said now, offering truth wrapped in safe language. "Dreams, books, conversations—they blend together until the past feels more real than the present."

"You think I'm having a breakdown."

Bastien sighed quietly. He didn’t want Delphine to think she was going mad but he still wasn’t quite ready to unveil all the truths she’d eventually need to hear.

"I think you're experiencing something meaningful.

The question is whether you need to understand its origins, or whether the significance lies in how it's changing you now. "

Delphine set down her glass with deliberate care.

"You do that constantly. Answer without answering.

Dance around truth like it might bite you.

" Her eyes held directness that belonged purely to this lifetime—Charlotte had been subtler, more willing to approach difficult topics sideways, but this was very much like Delia, who he'd been able to love fully, openly.

"Is that investigator training or personal habit? "

Both. Decades of handling cases where too much revelation destroyed the people he was trying to protect.

But his caution with Delphine ran deeper than professional paranoia.

Every word between them carried weight she couldn't comprehend—history she'd forgotten, promises that had shaped his choices for over a century, hopes he'd spent decades strangling because hope meant vulnerability and vulnerability meant failure.

He wanted to tell her everything. About Charlotte's ritual preparations.

About the soul-binding glyphs manifesting wherever she walked.

About the locket that had recognized her essence after twenty-five years of silence.

About how her déjà vu episodes were memory fragments bleeding through from lifetimes she'd lived when these streets were mud and cobblestone, when she'd sung those melodies in his arms before fire and betrayal tore them apart.

Instead, he said honestly, "Personal. Some truths are too heavy to carry all at once. Better to let them surface naturally than force them into the light before someone's ready."

"And I'm not ready?"

"You're stronger than you know. But strength and readiness aren't identical." He reached for his wine, noticed his hand trembling slightly. "Sometimes kindness means letting people discover their own answers rather than imposing conclusions from outside."

The Bordeaux loosened her careful composure, softened the professional mask she wore during their daytime interactions.

Candlelight caught gold highlights in her hair that was darker than Charlotte's had been but held the same tendency to curl at the temples when humidity rose.

The resemblance wasn't identical—rebirth had changed bone structure, eye color, the set of her shoulders—but essence remained constant.

The way she tilted her head when thinking.

How her thumb traced circles on the glass rim when processing difficult concepts.

"What about you?" She refilled both glasses, movements flowing with unconscious grace. "What truths are you avoiding?"

The question struck deeper than intended, hitting the core of his existence since 1906.

Every truth that mattered was bound up in loss too vast for casual conversation.

In responsibilities that had defined his choices across lifetimes.

In love that had proved more destructive than protective despite the best intentions.

"That some losses never heal," he said, words emerging without permission. "That time doesn't fix everything, no matter what people claim. That sometimes survival means accepting part of yourself will always wait for something that can't return."

Recognition flickered in her expression—not memory, but empathy born from experiences that ran deeper than current circumstances should allow. "That's why you take these cases? Help other people solve mysteries because your own can't be solved?"

"Maybe I just understand that reality holds more possibilities than most people can handle. Someone needs to stand between what people know and what they need protection from."

Silence settled between them, comfortable but charged. The wine bar's other conversations faded to background murmur. Their corner felt isolated from the world beyond candle-reach.

"Thank you," Delphine said finally.

"For?"

"Not dismissing what I'm experiencing. Not offering easy explanations that we both know don't fit.

" She met his eyes across the small table.

"I've spent my career around people who need to rationalize everything, who can't accept phenomena outside conventional understanding.

It's . . . refreshing to talk with someone who doesn't need to fix everything. "