He would get to her archive find when the investigation allowed. Whatever she’d found could wait one more day. He had already made her wait for too many things that mattered more.
Let them watch,he thought, looking out at the dark below.Let them see exactly what I want them to see.
He turned back to the desk and pulled out the photographs of Adelaide Renier’s workshop.
SEVEN
The bell above Maman Brigitte’s door struck brass against brass with a sound that carried more weight than physics allowed. Evening had settled over Rampart Street, the August heat softening into something bearable, and candles filled the shop’s interior with long shadows that stretched across shelves laden with things that should not exist near tourists and tour buses.
Maman looked up from her work. She ground something in a mortar, the pestle moving in slow circles, leaving trails of green-gold powder against dark stone. Her eyes found his, and calculation moved through her expression—an immediate assessment of why he had returned so soon.
“You have specific questions tonight.” Not a question.
“I do.”
She set the mortar aside and wiped her hands on a cloth worn soft by decades of use. The shop breathed around them with the quiet presence of accumulated power—jars and bottles and boxes containing components whose origins stretched back further than the city itself. Deep in the building, something shifted, finding new configuration.
Bastien moved to the chair he had occupied two days ago, when Maman had named the mark in his forearm for what it was. The beacon warmed in acknowledgment, patient, broadcasting his position through the city’s magical geography. Even here, within Maman’s wards, he could feel its reach—diminished but not silenced.
“The curse requires a caster,” he said. “Someone with the knowledge and the will to place it.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what kind of practitioner could do this work.”
Maman lowered herself into the chair across from him. Candlelight caught the silver in her hair, the lines that decades of practice had carved into her face. She had been old when Bastien first met her, a lifetime ago by human measurement. The sharpness in her eyes had not dulled.
“The beacon curse is not simple magic.” She folded her hands. “Not something learned from grimoires sold in tourist shops or passed down through families who dabble in protection charms and love workings. This requires education—formal training or traditional apprenticeship. Years of study. Decades, perhaps.”
“The Thirteen Coven?”
“Possible. The coven maintains standards for advanced practitioners, tracks those with capability for complex ritual work.” She paused. “But this curse carries no coven signature. No identification marks that practitioners learn to embed in their workings. Either the caster deliberately obscured their affiliation, or they never had one.”
“An independent.”
“Or someone trained within the coven who chose to work outside its structures. The distinction matters less than you might think. The skill demonstrated in the casting itself—that matters.”
Bastien leaned forward. “What did it require? Materials. Proximity. Time.”
Maman’s hands folded in her lap, fingers interlacing with deliberate care. “The materials would not be rare, but they would be specific. Iron filings from a threshold. Water drawn during a lunar eclipse. Blood—yours, obtained without your knowledge. Hair or nail clippings, perhaps. The elements of sympathetic binding that allow magic to recognize its target.”
“Someone collected pieces of me.”
“Someone studied you. Learned your patterns. Found moments when you were vulnerable enough to provide what they needed without your awareness.” Her voice carried clinical precision. “The curse was not placed in a single working. It was prepared, layer by layer, component by component, until the final casting required only proximity and intention.”
Weeks of observation before the first murder. Perhaps months. Someone watching him move through the city. Noting when he slept, when he was distracted, when his wards relaxed enough to allow collection of the intimate materials a beacon curse demanded. He went still.
“The final casting,” he said. “How close did they need to be?”
“Within arm’s reach. Perhaps closer.” Maman’s eyes held his. “The curse was placed directly. Physical contact, however brief. A brush in a crowd. A handshake. Something that allowed skin to touch skin while the final words were spoken.”
Bastien searched his memory—the weeks before the first body, the movements through the Quarter, the interactions with the city’s residents and visitors. Hundreds of contacts. Thousands of moments when someone could have reached him without registering as a threat.
“I don’t remember anything unusual.”
“You wouldn’t. That is the nature of such work. The caster would have appeared ordinary. Forgettable. Someoneyour instincts did not flag because they presented no apparent danger.” Maman rose and moved to her shelves, selecting a jar that held something dark and viscous. “The best practitioners understand that invisibility is a form of power. They move through the world without drawing notice because notice is the enemy of their craft.”
“Then I’m looking for someone who can disappear.”
