“I told her she was letting her imagination run wild. That she’d been reading too many penny dreadfuls. That angels don’t exist and even if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be working as private investigators in the French Quarter.”
The cicadas were loud now. The jasmine scent thick enough to choke on. Afternoon sliding toward evening, shadows lengthening across brick, painting everything in shades of gold and amber.
“But she was right, wasn’t she?”
Long silence. He could lie. Should lie. Keep lying until she believed it or until she left, either outcome safer than truth.
“Yes.”
The word hung in jasmine-scented air.
Delia’s hand found his. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I love you anyway.” Her fingers tightened around his, warm and solid and alive. “Whatever you are. Whoever you were. However long you’ve been here and however long you’ll stay.” She met his eyes. “I love you right now, in this garden, with dirt under my nails and truth between us. That’s what matters.”
“I love you too. I hope you believe that. I’m not going anywhere; my life is with you.” He wanted to say more. To tell her, I have a ring that’s been burning a hole in my pocket for months. I want fifty years with you even though I know I’ll only get maybe forty if we’re lucky. I want to marry you knowing I’ll watch you age while I don’t, knowing I’ll watch you die, knowing every moment will be borrowed time.
He wanted to say, You’re Charlotte’s soul wearing a new face. I loved you in 1763 and lost you, and now I’ve found you again and I’m terrified of losing you a second time.
He wanted to say, The ring is gold with small diamonds and I had them set it in a pattern that spells protection in a language older than French or English or any tongue spoken in this garden.
They sat together as afternoon turned to evening. Shadows lengthened. The heat broke slightly. Mockingbirds sang and cicadas called and somewhere a dog barked. The city sounds filtered through, muffled by garden walls.
Not engaged. Not yet. But together. Finally. And in love. A love deeper than Delia would ever understand.
Her bare feet in the fountain basin. Jasmine blooming behind her on the wall. Her hand in his, warm and alive and mortal.
He could feel her pulse in her wrist where their hands joined. Steady. Human. Finite.
Only weeks later she died in the theater fire in his arms before the flames reached her. He’d arrived too late.
Bastien gasped back into present. Hand still gripping the iron gate, knuckles white from pressure hard enough that the metal bit into his palm even through leather gloves.
1906 had been so vivid he could still taste lemonade, still feel July heat on his skin, still hear cicadas singing their evening song. His throat hurt from jasmine scent that shouldn’t exist.
He checked his phone with shaking hands—no, steady hands, they didn’t shake, he didn’t allow them to shake.
Ninety seconds had passed.
Ninety seconds to live through an entire afternoon, an entire confession, an entire moment of almost-happiness before tragedy.
He looked through the gate again, forcing himself to see what was actually there rather than what memory insisted on showing him.
The garden was visible now in present moment. Moonlight showed what shouldn’t exist in this narrow alley between buildings: fountain, jasmine vine, even the broken wooden chairs where they’d sat. All of it rendered in perfect detail.
But colorless. Everything existing in grayscale, like old photograph brought to three dimensions and given substance. The garden existed but not in present time, not in proper space. Past bleeding through into physical dimension, visible but not quite real, not quite solid.
Ghost garden for a ghost memory.
He reached through the bars. His hand passed into the space beyond, meeting no resistance from air that should have been there.
Temperature shifted immediately. Warm July evening instead of humid October midnight. His fingers tingled with temporal displacement, a pins-and-needles sensation of existing in two times simultaneously.
He pulled back quickly, his skin crawling from the wrongness of it.
Looking closer now—because he had to look, had to understand what Gideon had done—his 1906 self still sat on the fountain edge. Perfect detail. Perfect stillness. Delia beside him, hand in his, both of them caught in amber, frozen in the moment when he’d chosen silence over truth, protection over honesty, fear over love.
