Chapter 15
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.
He looked through the bars again. Still darkness, but now with suggestions of shapes—furniture, plants, the outline of something that might be fountain.
His phone’s beam still died after three feet. No visible source for the jasmine. No vines on this gate, no gardens visible in neighboring yards.
But mixed with the jasmine now was the scent of mint. Lavender. Sun-warmed soil.
“Impossible.”
Mirror Bleed was now affecting more than reflections. Gideon’s network was pulling past into present through sensory channels, using scent as anchor the way it used light and reflection.
Knowing that didn’t stop the memory from surfacing.
The scent pulled him under.
New Orleans, July 1906. Late afternoon.
The courtyard garden behind Delia Moreau’s boarding house.
Brick pavement warm under his feet, fountain in the center—broken, hadn’t run in years—garden beds along the walls bursting with controlled chaos.
Light filtered golden through magnolia leaves, creating patterns that shifted with the breeze.
Trolley bells rang distant. A vendor called something about fresh fish on the street beyond the wall. Cicadas were starting their evening song, building toward the crescendo they’d reach at dusk.
Heat had broken in the garden shade. Bearable here, almost pleasant.
Delia appeared carrying a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses, ice clinking against ceramic.
Late twenties. Dark hair pinned up with several curls already escaping in the humidity. Cotton dress with dirt on the hem from morning gardening. Bare feet on warm brick—she never bothered with shoes in her own garden.
“You’re late.” She crossed to the fountain where he’d been examining her mint plants. “I’ve been keeping this lemonade cold for twenty minutes.”
He straightened. “Your mint is taking over the lavender.”
“I know. They’re negotiating territory.” She set the pitcher down on the fountain’s edge. “The mint will win.”
“The mint always wins.”
Her smile reached her eyes. “Then why do I keep planting lavender?”
“Optimism. Or stubbornness.” He took the glass she offered. “With you they’re the same thing.”
They sat on the fountain edge. Her bare feet dangled into the dry basin, toes flexing against ceramic that still held afternoon warmth. His boots stayed planted on brick, heels grinding small circles in accumulated dust.
Comfortable silence first. The kind that developed over three years of courtship conducted in gardens and on doorsteps, never quite progressing to the question neither of them would ask. Three years of careful proximity, of boundaries respected and desires unspoken.
The lemonade was perfect—tart enough to cut the heat, sweet enough to drink quickly. Ice clinked in her glass when she moved. A bead of condensation ran down the side, leaving a wet trail she traced with one finger.
Delia broke the silence. “Mrs. Landry asked me again if we’re engaged.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That you’re on your own schedule and I’m too proud to suggest it.” She drank, looking at him over the rim of her glass. “She didn’t believe me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a ridiculous answer that happens to be true.”
His almost-smile. “Accurate.”
She bumped his shoulder with hers, casual touch that nevertheless sent awareness through him. “Most men would take that as an invitation.”
“I’m not most men.”
The engagement ring was in his coat pocket, wrapped in velvet that was probably crushed by now from being carried in and out of the boarding house. Victorian setting, gold band with small diamonds. Purchased months ago from a jeweler on Royal Street who asked no questions about a man who paid cash.
But how could he ask her to bind herself to someone who would watch her age and die while he stayed unchanged?
How could he explain why he never aged without revealing what he was?
And if he revealed what he was—fallen angel, Heaven’s exile, something that shouldn’t exist in her mortal world—how could she possibly say yes?
The answer was she couldn’t. Shouldn’t. The responsible thing was to walk away, let her find someone human and uncomplicated, someone who could give her normal life with normal endings.
But here, in this moment. Her hand near his on sun-warmed stone, close enough that moving his pinky finger would touch hers. Garden drowsy with afternoon heat and the weight of unspoken things. Jasmine blooming on the east wall, white flowers like stars against dark green leaves.
“Delia, I—”
She turned toward him. Hope visible in her expression.
He lost courage. “I think your mint is eating the basil too.”
“Probably.”
A cicada landed on the fountain rim, sang three notes, flew away.
Delia stood, crossing to the jasmine vine on the east wall. Her bare feet made soft sounds on brick. She walked the way she always did, unselfconscious, grounded. Like someone who belonged exactly where she was.
“This one bloomed early this year.”
He followed, because not following would have been worse. “Confederate jasmine. You planted it when you moved in.”
“Four years ago.” She touched a white bloom carefully, thumb brushing petals that looked fragile but weren’t.
Confederate jasmine could survive almost anything—frost, neglect, drought.
Kept blooming regardless. “It finally decided to trust me.” A pause.
“My mother used to say jasmine only blooms for gardeners who tell the truth.”
The weight of that statement settled between them, heavy as the humid air.
He could feel the ring in his pocket. Could feel the lie growing roots in this garden, spreading like the mint she let run wild.
“What truth do you tell it?” he asked.
She didn’t look at him, kept her attention on the flowers. “That I want something real instead of something careful. That I’d rather have five years of honest than fifty years of maybe.” Now she turned. “What truth do you tell it?”
“That I’m afraid what I want will destroy what I love.” The fear of losing her again was almost more than he could bear.
Her expression softened, anger draining away to leave something gentler and more dangerous. “Bastien. Whatever you’re protecting me from—”
“You don’t know what I’m protecting you from.”
“Then tell me.” Direct. No room for deflection. “Tell me the thing you think will make me leave. The thing you’re so certain I can’t handle. Tell me and let me decide.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
A mockingbird sang from the magnolia tree, running through its stolen repertoire. Trolley bells again, closer now. The city moving around them while they stood frozen in this garden, this moment, this conversation they’d been circling for three years.
Delia returned to the fountain. Sat on the edge, but farther away now. Careful distance where there’d been casual proximity. Her feet stayed out of the basin this time, planted on brick.
Her voice went quiet. “Mrs. Landry says you’re some kind of angel. That you’ve been in New Orleans longer than anyone remembers. That you don’t age like natural folk do.”
His stillness became absolute. Even his breathing stopped.