Eulalie studied him. The cards on the table between them seemed to shift in the candlelight, though neither of them touched them. From the back of the house came a sound—a scratching, or perhaps a whisper.
“Why should I help you, Durand? You walk in here carrying a curse that’s drawing attention from every faction in the city. The vampires are circling. The pack is watching. The Thirteen are asking questions about you that they’ve never asked before.Helping you puts me on people’s radar, and I’ve spent fifty years staying off radars.”
“Because someone is killing vampires in patterns that point to old conflicts. Because the murders and the curse are connected—parallel tools in a design I don’t yet understand. Because if that design succeeds, whatever stability this city has maintained will shatter.” Bastien held her gaze. “And because Maman asked you to speak with me, and you don’t ignore Maman’s requests without good reason.”
Eulalie’s posture relaxed by a degree. “Fine. You want names, I’ll give you names. But I’m also going to give you information that the names won’t tell you.”
She rose and moved to a shelf at the back of the room, her fingers finding a specific jar without needing to look. The contents were dark, granular—something between sand and ash.
“Two weeks ago, someone bought consecrated grave dirt from a supplier in Tremé. Not a large amount—enough for personal protection, or for focused curse work. The buyer paid in cash and didn’t give a name.”
“That’s not unusual.”
“No. But the timing is interesting. The purchase happened three days before your first murder.” Eulalie set the jar on the table, its contents shifting with slow intention. “And the supplier mentioned that the buyer asked about sourcing iron from a threshold that hadn’t been crossed in fifty years. Very specific request. Very unusual component.”
Threshold iron. The kind of material Maman had described as necessary for the beacon curse. Someone had collected components in the days before the killing pattern began.
“Did the supplier describe the buyer?”
“Woman. Middle-aged. Quiet. Paid attention to everything and volunteered nothing.” Eulalie returned to her chair. “Not one of the regulars. Not anyone the supplier recognized fromthe usual circles. Someone new, or someone who had stayed invisible until she needed to stop being invisible.”
“That’s helpful.”
“That’s the beginning.” Eulalie’s fingers drummed against her armrest, rings clicking in irregular rhythm. “I’ve been hearing things, Durand. Whispers from practitioners who don’t usually whisper. Someone moved through the city’s magical community in the months before your bodies started appearing. Asking questions about old workings. About historical practitioners. About techniques that haven’t been used in generations.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Questions about beacon curses. About rituals that require vampire blood. About the families that held power before the tribunal in 1847.” Her eyes met his. “Someone was researching. Building knowledge. Preparing for something that required understanding the city’s oldest magical conflicts.”
The 1847 tribunal. The same historical marker that connected the murder victims. Someone had studied both the magical and the political dimensions of that old wound before deciding to reopen it.
“Did anyone identify the person asking these questions?”
“No. They were careful. Approached different practitioners with different pieces of the inquiry, never revealing the full scope of what they wanted to know. Classic intelligence-gathering technique—fragment the questions so no single source understands the whole picture.” Eulalie’s smile was thin. “But practitioners talk to each other. Eventually, someone notices that the same subjects keep coming up in conversations that shouldn’t connect.”
“And you noticed.”
“I notice everything, Durand. That’s why I’m still alive.”
Bastien absorbed the information, letting it settle into the framework he was building. A researcher. Someone who had spent months preparing for the murders and the curse, who understood that the work required historical knowledge and magical capability, who had moved through the city’s hidden communities gathering what they needed while staying invisible.
“The names,” he said.
Eulalie reached into a pocket and withdrew a folded paper. “Seven practitioners with the skill for beacon work. Four have the temperament for contract casting—they’d do the work if the price was right. Two have histories that suggest they might be vulnerable to coercion. One...” A pause. “One is a true believer in things I don’t discuss in my own house.”
Bastien took the paper. The names were written in small, precise script—he recognized three of them, knew two by reputation, had never encountered the others.
“The true believer?”
“Lavinia. No last name she’ll answer to. She runs in circles that worship old powers—entities that existed before the city, before the Europeans, before the tribes that the Europeans displaced. She believes that New Orleans sits on ground consecrated to something, and that something wants its worship restored.” Eulalie’s voice dropped. “She’s dangerous, Durand. Not because she’s powerful, though she is. Because she’s certain. The certain ones don’t stop until they’ve achieved their purpose or been stopped by someone willing to do what stopping requires.”
“Where do I find her?”
“You don’t find Lavinia. She finds people when she has use for them.” Eulalie stood, the conversation clearly ending. “Start with the others. Work your way through the obvious suspects.If none of them fit, then you might need to consider that the person you’re looking for is someone who shouldn’t exist.”
“Shouldn’t exist?”
“Someone too skilled to be unknown. Too capable to have avoided notice. Too prepared for work this complex to have arrived from nowhere.” Her eyes held something that read as warning. “The murkiness of your investigation isn’t accident, Durand. Someone created it. Someone who understands that clarity is dangerous and fog is safety. The witch you’re hunting may not want to be found. And they may have the skills to ensure they never are.”
