She’d built a network that could defend itself. That could teach across time. That could guide without compelling, protect without trapping, and preserve love’s possibility without demanding love’s surrender.
And she’d trusted him to recognize it when the time came. Which meant she’d trusted him more than he’d ever trusted himself.
Bastien sat on his couch in the darkness. Closed his eyes. Let exhaustion take him toward something that wasn’t quite sleep but wasn’t quite waking either—a state where mirrors rememberand reflections speak and the dead leave gifts for the living to find exactly when they’re needed most.
Three days until the convergence.
Three days to prepare.
Three days to decide whether trust was a risk worth taking.
Charlotte’s voice, barely a whisper, echoing from the mirror above his mantle.“It always is.”
Then silence. And rest. And the slow gathering of strength for what came next.
Chapter
Fifteen
Bastien walked the Quarter alone near midnight, testing the ward lattice he’d placed three days ago.
The route took him away from Bourbon Street’s noise—drunk tourists and cover bands bleeding out of open doors—and into residential blocks where balconies hung dark and quiet. His shirt clung to his back despite the hour. No breeze moved through the narrow streets. Distant jazz drifted from an upper window somewhere, mixed with garbage smell from tomorrow’s pickup and night-blooming flowers he couldn’t name.
He touched brick walls at intervals, sensing the wards he’d marked in chalk and intention. The copper-silver lattice should have held steady for weeks. Instead, each node registered weaker than it should.
Three days since placement. Should last three weeks minimum.
Something was draining them faster than he’d calculated.
He turned onto Dauphine Street, a block he’d walked for decades. Knew every gate, every doorway, every place where flagstone had cracked and been replaced. His feet found the route without conscious thought while his attention tracked the lattice degradation, trying to map the pattern.
The courtyard gate stopped him cold.
Wrought iron, old—1880s work from the scrollwork pattern. Vines grown through the metalwork, though he couldn’t identify the species in darkness. The gate stood between two buildings he knew well, in a space that should have been narrow alley, not courtyard entrance.
Impossible.
He’d walked this block a thousand times. Knew its architecture the way he knew his own apartment’s layout.
The gate didn’t exist in his memory.
Bastien approached slowly. Tested the lock. It was rusted shut and hadn’t been opened in years judging by the corrosion. But through the gaps in the ironwork, where streetlight should have penetrated?—
Darkness. Complete. Not shadow from obstruction but total absence, like the space beyond the gate actively consumed light.
He pulled his phone, activated the flashlight. The beam penetrated maybe three feet before being absorbed into nothing.
Then jasmine hit him.
Night-blooming jasmine, a specific variety—confederate jasmine. Dense enough to taste, the sweetness coating his throat. The scent didn’t drift on air. It pooled around him with weight, saturating the space until breathing felt like drowning in perfume.
His hand tightened on the iron gate.
Confederate jasmine was the kind Delia had grown.
Just a smell. Just chemistry. Just neurons firing in patterns they’d learned a century ago.
But scent bypassed rational thought. It was the most direct route to memory, as unavoidable as gravity. He gave himself ten seconds to remember, then he’d push it away and move on. Ten seconds to acknowledge what was trying to surface, then he’d focus on containment.
