Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
When fallen angel Bastien Durand walks the rain-soaked streets of New Orleans, he carries more than just the weight of his past—he carries the memory of a love that has haunted him for over a century. Working as a supernatural investigator in the French Quarter, he's learned to live with ghosts, both literal and otherwise.
But when ancient magic begins stirring in the shadows and familiar melodies drift through the night air, Bastien realizes his greatest torment may also be his salvation. A brilliant librarian with eyes he's never forgotten holds the key to secrets that span lifetimes, though she has no memory of the souls she's carried before.
As supernatural factions clash and the veil between worlds grows thin, Bastien must navigate treacherous magic, old enemies, and the devastating possibility that some curses are stronger than death itself. In a city where the past never truly dies, he'll discover that love—and loss—can echo across centuries.
But awakening the truth may cost him everything he's fought to protect.
A moody, slow-burn paranormal mystery set in a New Orleans where demons, witches, and fae itself walk unseen among the living.
Curse in the Quarter is the first book in the Bourbon Street Shadows series
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Prologue
NEW ORLEANS, 1906
The gas lamps cast dancing shadows along Royal Street as Bastien walked beside Delia through the humid November night. Their footsteps echoed against cobblestones still damp from the afternoon rain, and the air carried the mingled scents of jasmine, coffee, and the Mississippi River that wound its way through the heart of the city like an ancient serpent.
“You’re unusually quiet tonight,” Delia observed, her gloved hand tucked into the crook of his arm. “Even for my mysterious guardian.”
Bastien’s fingers tightened imperceptibly around the small velvet box in his coat pocket. Three months he’d carried it, waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect words. Tonight felt different—charged with possibility and the kind of hope that made even a fallen angel believe in second chances.
“Perhaps I’m simply enjoying the silence,” he replied, though his voice carried none of its usual steady confidence. “It’s not often we have the Quarter to ourselves.”
She laughed, the sound bright as cathedral bells. “Liar. You’re planning something. I can always tell when your mind is working through possibilities.” Her brown eyes sparkled with mischief in the lamplight. “You get this little crease right here.” She reached up with her free hand to touch the space between his brows.
The gesture was casual, intimate, born of months of such small familiarities. Yet it stopped him in his tracks. How could she know him so well when she didn’t know him at all? When the truth of what he was remained locked behind careful lies and half-spoken explanations?
“Delia.” Her name came out rougher than he intended.
“Yes?”
“What would you say if I told you there were things about me that might . . . surprise you?”
They had stopped beneath a wrought iron balcony draped with Spanish moss. The boarding house where she lived was still two blocks away, but Bastien found himself reluctant to continue. Once they reached her door, she would climb those narrow stairs to her small room, and he would walk alone through the empty streets as he had for decades before her.
“I would say that I already know you’re not entirely human,” she said simply.
The words hit him like cold water. His hand fell away from his pocket, and for a moment, the careful masks he wore threatened to slip entirely.
“Delia—”
“Oh, don’t look so stricken.” She stepped closer, her skirts rustling against the cobblestones. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed? The way you appear at precisely the moment I need you. How you seem to know things you shouldn’t know? How you never age, never change, while months pass around us?”
“Some truths are too dangerous,” he managed.
“And some truths,” she countered, “are the only things that make life worth living.”
Her hands found his face, drawing him down until their foreheads nearly touched. In the amber glow of the gas lamp, she looked like something from a Renaissance painting—all golden light and dark shadows, beautiful and ephemeral and utterly human.
“I don’t need to understand everything about you to know that I love you,” she whispered. “I’ve loved you since that first night when you found me lost in the fog near the cathedral. I loved you when you sat with me through my fever last winter, when you brought me books you claimed to have ‘found’ but I know you bought especially for me. I love the way you listen to my terrible piano playing as if it were opera, and how you always know exactly what to say when the world feels too large and too cruel.”
The ring box felt impossibly heavy in his pocket. This moment—this perfect, honest moment—was everything he’d dreamed of. All he had to do was speak.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he began.
But before he could continue, she had begun to hum.
The melody was simple, barely more than a handful of notes, but it wrapped around his heart like silk cord. She hummed it often while she worked, while she walked, while she sat reading by her window. It was uniquely hers—a little unconscious song that seemed to rise from some deep well of contentment.
“That tune,” he said, momentarily derailed. “Where did you learn it?”
“I don’t know.” She looked puzzled. “I’ve always known it, I think. My mother used to say I hummed it even as a baby.” Her expression grew thoughtful. “Strange. I never told you that before, did I?”
“No,” he said quietly. “You didn’t.”
But he would remember it forever. Every note, every gentle rise and fall of her voice. It would follow him through decades, through other cities and another life, an echo of this moment when everything seemed possible.
They resumed walking, her humming trailing behind them like a benediction. The boarding house came into view—a narrow three-story building squeezed between a bakery and a milliner’s shop. Mrs. Thibodeau kept respectable rooms for working women, and Delia’s was on the second floor, facing the courtyard.