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)
“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.