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)
“Arcane recursion,” Maman continued, her voice carrying the weight of knowledge gained through decades of watching the supernatural politics of New Orleans. “When the past refuses to stay buried. When magical patterns laid down generations ago start repeating themselves.”
Bastien studied the cards, noting troubling details. The Tower’s lightning bolt was silver, not gold. Death’s horse had eyes of burning coals. The angel above The Lovers wore an expression of profound sorrow rather than blessing.
“How long has this been building?”
“Started a couple days ago, subtle-like. Gained strength yesterday. Today . . .” She gestured toward the window, where rain continued to fall in patterns unlike any natural weather. “Today it’s announcing itself.”
“Connected to 1906?”
Maman’s dark eyes met his, and he saw centuries of accumulated knowledge there. She had been young then, barely more than apprentice to the woman who had held her title before. But she remembered the fires, the chaos, the way the Veil had torn and nearly shattered completely.
“Some wounds don’t heal,” she said carefully. “They scab over and wait for the right conditions to start bleeding again.”
She reached beneath her reading table and withdrew a leather journal bound with silver wire. The cover was scarred and water-stained, but protective symbols carved into the leather still held traces of power.
“Found this in my predecessor’s papers last night. Been looking for it since the recursion started.” She opened the journal to a page marked with black ribbon. “Notes about the 1906 incident. Mentions ‘soul-tethering magic gone wrong’ and ‘connections severed that should have held across lifetimes.’”
Bastien leaned forward to read faded ink, noting phrases that made his chest tighten with old pain. Spiritual convergence. Life-thread severance. The Lacroix bloodline and their experiments with forbidden magic.
“There’s more,” Maman said quietly. “Pattern suggests the original ritual wasn’t completed. Whoever started it was interrupted before they could finish the working.”
“Meaning it’s still active. Still trying to complete itself after all this time.”
“When the dead song plays again,” she said, closing the journal with finality, “you’ll have to choose. Between letting the past stay buried or accepting that some stories don’t end just because people die.”
The words struck him with the force of revelation. He saw Delia’s face in lamplight outside her boarding house, heard her voice asking him to stay for coffee, felt the weight of the ring he’d never had the chance to give her.
“I should go,” he said, rising with perhaps more haste than warranted.
“Bastien.” Maman’s voice stopped him at the door. “Whatever’s coming, whatever that old magic is trying to finish, remember that some chances don’t come around twice. But some do.”
He left without responding, stepping back into rain that had grown heavier during their conversation. The French Quarter around him felt different now, charged with potential energy. Whatever was stirring in the depths of the city’s magical ecosystem was building toward something significant.
The walk back to his office took him past the rebuilt Saenger Theatre, where tour groups gathered to hear ghost stories that were only stories because most people couldn’t handle the truth. The original building had burned in 1906, consumed by magical fire that left nothing but ash and regret. What stood there now was modern, clean, carefully designed to hold no memories of what had come before.
But as Bastien paused across the street, he felt it.
The same mystical signature that had surrounded the original theater on that terrible night. Ancient power, awakening after more than a century of sleep. Soul-tethering magic beginning to coil and gather strength, preparing to complete work left unfinished.
His hands clenched as phantom flames danced at the edges of his vision. He was twenty-six years old again, racing through gas-lit streets toward a woman who wouldn’t recognize him, carrying a ring he would never give and dreams that would turn to ash.
“Not again,” he whispered to the rain. “I won’t lose her again.”
But even as he spoke the words, he knew they were meaningless. Delia was gone, had been gone for 119 years. Whatever the resurgent magic was reaching for, it couldn’t bring back the dead.
Could it?
The question followed him up the stairs to his office. His desk was exactly as he’d left it earlier, but something fundamental had changed. The keepsake locket beside his coffee cup was no longer lifeless.
It was pulsing with faint silver light.
Bastien picked it up with unsteady hands, feeling the metal warm against his palm for the first time in decades. The engravings Charlotte had carved into its surface seemed to shift in the light, symbols that spoke of love transcending death and bonds that could survive any severance.
He knew what lay inside the locket’s hidden compartment—a pressed violet Delia had once tucked behind his ear. A flower that should have crumbled to dust long ago but remained mysteriously preserved, waiting for the day when it might bloom again.