Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
“You’re carrying something,” he said. “Something that wasn’t there before.”
“I’m aware.”
“Is it connected to the killings?”
Bastien kept walking. The crowd on Decatur Street flowed around them—tourists photographing street performers, locals navigating the foot traffic with practiced irritation. Normal commerce of a normal morning. None of them saw the wolf at his side, or the watchers maintaining position behind, or the witch across the square whose attention pressed against his skin.
“Tell Tib that the contamination on your territory is likely related to the murders,” he said. “The killer uses ritual magic that leaves residue. If that residue has reached pack lands, then the killer has expanded their reach beyond the city’s center.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer I have. If Tib wants more, he can meet with me directly. Tomorrow night. St. Louis Cemetery Number One, the Laveau tomb, after midnight.”
The wolf processed this. His hands flexed at his sides—a tell that marked him as newly turned, still learning to control the instincts that came with his other form.
“The pack doesn’t trust the vampires,” he said. “Half of them think this is house business handled in a way that splashes onto everyone else. The other half thinks something bigger is moving through the city, using the dead as camouflage.”
“The second half is closer to the truth.”
“Then why won’t you tell us what’s happening?”
“Because I don’t know yet.” Bastien stopped walking. The wolf stopped with him, and for a moment they stood in the middle of the sidewalk while the human traffic parted around them. “Someone is killing vampires in a pattern that traces back to a tribunal in 1847. Someone placed a curse on me before the first murder occurred. The two events connect, but I have not yet determined how. When I know more, I will share what serves the city’s stability. Until then, speculation helps no one.”
The wolf held his gaze. Then he nodded, once, and turned back the way he had come.
His phone buzzed—a text from Delphine. He glanced at the screen without breaking stride.
Found something in the Lacroix papers that might be relevant to you. No rush. Come for dinner if you get a chance.
The words sat on the screen, warm and specific, belonging to a life that felt impossibly distant from the one he currently occupied. She had been working the archive materials—the same records that had led her to the bloodline theory two nights ago—and something had caught her attention. Something she thought connected to him.
He should go. Should sit across her table and hear what she’d found, should let her see whatever the Lacroix papers held. She had earned that conversation. She had earned several conversations he had not yet found time to have.
He pocketed the phone. The trap worked precisely as designed—every hour he spent navigating faction politics was an hour Delphine’s text sat unanswered, was an hour the work they might do together went undone. He added it to the growing list of things the curse was costing him that had nothing to do with his investigation.
After the council, he told himself. Call her after.
The summons arrived at two o’clock.
Bastien had retreated to his office on Dauphine Street, hoping for a reprieve from the surveillance. The watchers had followed him home—he could feel them now, positioned at intervals around his building, their attention pressing against his awareness. But at least behind his own wards, he could think without interruption.
Three measured strikes hit the exterior door, spaced with deliberate precision.
He descended the narrow stairs and found Valentin Rousseau on his doorstep. Marcelline’s second stood in the afternoon shade of Bastien’s entryway, pale eyes catching the filtered light and reflecting nothing human. The pin on his lapel gleamed: a fleur-de-lis rendered in obsidian, the mark of the court’s inner circle.
“The council requests your presence.” Valentin’s voice carried the flatness of someone delivering information rather than making conversation. “Immediately.”
“I’m in the middle of an investigation.”
“The council is aware. This pertains to the investigation.”
Bastien considered refusing. The vampire court had no formal authority over him; his neutrality had been established decades ago through careful negotiation and mutual benefit. He could close the door, return to his office, continue the work of tracing bloodlines and mapping patterns.
But Valentin Rousseau did not leave Marcelline’s side for trivial errands. If the court had sent him personally, something had shifted in the city’s political landscape—significant enough to justify pulling their second from whatever duties occupied his nights.
“Where?”
“Preservation Hall. The council has arranged privacy.”
A jazz club. Neutral ground by long-standing agreement, one of the few spaces in the Quarter where vampire houses met without territory assertions.
Bastien retrieved his jacket and followed Valentin into the August heat.
The walk to Preservation Hall took twelve minutes. Valentin set a pace that allowed no conversation—fast enough to discourage questions, slow enough to avoid drawing attention from the tourists who clogged St. Peter Street. The watchers trailed at their usual distance, adjusting positions to accommodate the change in route. Bastien counted three new figures among them: two humans whose matching suits marked them as corporate security, and a vampire whose gaze tracked him from a wrought-iron balcony.