Chapter 6 #2
“Because I don’t know yet.” Bastien stopped walking.
The wolf stopped with him, and for a moment they stood in the middle of the sidewalk while the human traffic parted around them.
“Someone is killing vampires in a pattern that traces back to a tribunal in 1847. Someone placed a curse on me before the first murder occurred. The two events connect, but I have not yet determined how. When I know more, I will share what serves the city’s stability. Until then, speculation helps no one.”
The wolf held his gaze. Then he nodded, once, and turned back the way he had come.
His phone buzzed—a text from Delphine. He glanced at the screen without breaking stride.
Found something in the Lacroix papers that might be relevant to you. No rush. Come for dinner if you get a chance.
The words sat on the screen, warm and specific, belonging to a life that felt impossibly distant from the one he currently occupied.
She had been working the archive materials—the same records that had led her to the bloodline theory two nights ago—and something had caught her attention. Something she thought connected to him.
He should go. Should sit across her table and hear what she’d found, should let her see whatever the Lacroix papers held. She had earned that conversation. She had earned several conversations he had not yet found time to have.
He pocketed the phone. The trap worked precisely as designed—every hour he spent navigating faction politics was an hour Delphine’s text sat unanswered, was an hour the work they might do together went undone.
He added it to the growing list of things the curse was costing him that had nothing to do with his investigation.
After the council, he told himself. Call her after.
The summons arrived at two o’clock.
Bastien had retreated to his office on Dauphine Street, hoping for a reprieve from the surveillance.
The watchers had followed him home—he could feel them now, positioned at intervals around his building, their attention pressing against his awareness.
But at least behind his own wards, he could think without interruption.
Three measured strikes hit the exterior door, spaced with deliberate precision.
He descended the narrow stairs and found Valentin Rousseau on his doorstep.
Marcelline’s second stood in the afternoon shade of Bastien’s entryway, pale eyes catching the filtered light and reflecting nothing human.
The pin on his lapel gleamed: a fleur-de-lis rendered in obsidian, the mark of the court’s inner circle.
“The council requests your presence.” Valentin’s voice carried the flatness of someone delivering information rather than making conversation. “Immediately.”
“I’m in the middle of an investigation.”
“The council is aware. This pertains to the investigation.”
Bastien considered refusing. The vampire court had no formal authority over him; his neutrality had been established decades ago through careful negotiation and mutual benefit. He could close the door, return to his office, continue the work of tracing bloodlines and mapping patterns.
But Valentin Rousseau did not leave Marcelline’s side for trivial errands. If the court had sent him personally, something had shifted in the city’s political landscape—significant enough to justify pulling their second from whatever duties occupied his nights.
“Where?”
“Preservation Hall. The council has arranged privacy.”
A jazz club. Neutral ground by long-standing agreement, one of the few spaces in the Quarter where vampire houses met without territory assertions.
Bastien retrieved his jacket and followed Valentin into the August heat.
The walk to Preservation Hall took twelve minutes.
Valentin set a pace that allowed no conversation—fast enough to discourage questions, slow enough to avoid drawing attention from the tourists who clogged St. Peter Street.
The watchers trailed at their usual distance, adjusting positions to accommodate the change in route.
Bastien counted three new figures among them: two humans whose matching suits marked them as corporate security, and a vampire whose gaze tracked him from a wrought-iron balcony.
Word of his movements spread through the city’s hidden networks, and every faction with interests in the outcome had positioned observers to watch the angel investigate.
Exactly as intended. The curse did not merely make him visible; it made him the focus of attention that should have been directed elsewhere.
Preservation Hall occupied a building that had weathered two centuries of New Orleans heat and politics.
Its exterior offered nothing remarkable—weathered wood, faded paint, a doorway that generations of jazz musicians had passed through on their way to performances that had shaped American music.
But the interior held layers of agreement and accommodation that ordinary eyes could not perceive.
Valentin led him through the entrance and into a space emptied of its usual occupants. Chairs sat stacked against the walls. The stage held only shadows. At the room’s center, arranged in a rough semicircle, the council waited.
Marcelline Renault occupied the central position, her midnight blue dress absorbing the ambient light.
Beside her sat representatives of the five major houses: Béat, Chardon, Lavigne, Rousseau, and Fontenot.
Each wore their house pins and carried themselves with the stillness that marked vampires of significant age.
Séverine Chardon occupied the far right seat, her silver hair precise in the dim light, the scar along her jaw casting a faint shadow.
The air smelled of dust and old wood and the faint copper undertone that accompanied gathered undead. His forearm pulsed in response to the concentrated power — a slow, heavy throb that matched his walking rhythm.
“Mr. Durand.” Marcelline’s voice filled the space without apparent effort. “Thank you for accepting our invitation.”
“I wasn’t aware refusal was an option.”
“It always is.” The corners of her mouth lifted. “We simply find that those who refuse our invitations tend to discover complications in their future endeavors.”
Bastien took note of the position they had left for him: a single chair, set apart from the semicircle, facing the assembled council. A supplicant’s arrangement. A subject’s.
He remained standing.
“You asked me here regarding the investigation,” he said. “I have murders to solve and limited time. Speak plainly, or I’ll return to work.”
Murmurs rippled through the assembly—affronted pride at his tone, surprise at his directness. Marcelline raised one hand, and the sound ceased.
“Four murders,” she said. “Armand Fontenot, Solange Vidal, Thierry Arceneaux, Marguerite Deschamps. Unless you have information the council lacks?”
“I have a pattern the council has chosen to ignore.” Bastien kept his voice level.
“The victims share bloodline connections to a tribunal held in 1847. They descend from families that witnessed the beginning of the Marchande-Levesque family’s destruction.
Someone is working through that list with purpose and patience. ”
“We are aware of your theory.”
“Then you’re aware that the pattern predicts additional deaths. Eight bloodlines remain. The killer is accelerating. Another body will appear within days—possibly hours—unless I find them first.”
Marcelline’s fingers drummed once against her armrest. “And that is precisely why we have summoned you.”
She nodded to her right, and Valentin stepped forward carrying a folder—actual paper, actual photographs. The use of physical documents in an age of digital communication marked the contents as sensitive enough to avoid electronic record.
Valentin placed the folder in Bastien’s hands without comment.
Inside, Bastien found photographs of a crime scene he did not recognize.
The victim lay in what appeared to be a workshop—tables covered with electronics, walls lined with equipment whose purpose he could not immediately determine.
The positioning matched the others: on her back, arms at her sides, eyes open to a ceiling she could no longer see.
Sigils traced paths across her forearms. Blood had drained into channels carved into the concrete floor.
The Marchande-Levesque symbol sat over her heart.
“Her name was Adelaide Renier.” Marcelline’s voice came from a distance. “She ran a radio repair shop in the Seventh Ward. Ninety-one years undead, descended through her sire’s line from the Fontenot family. Her body was discovered forty minutes ago.”
Bastien stared at the photographs. His forearm flared — not the usual pressure, but a sharp spike that spread to his elbow and the heel of his hand before subsiding. Recognition of a death that had occurred while he walked the Quarter, fielding questions and navigating politics.
While he had been occupied, the killer had moved.
“When did she die?”
“Based on blood deterioration, sometime between ten and noon.”
The hours when he had been most visible. The stretch of morning when every faction in the city had positioned watchers to track his movements, when representatives had approached him on streets and in cafés, when his attention had been pulled in a dozen directions at once.
The killer knew.
The truth landed with certainty. The killer had waited for him to be seen, had timed the murder to coincide with his maximum exposure, had used his visibility as cover for actions taken in his shadow.
“You believe I should have prevented this.” He kept his voice flat.
“We believe the investigation has produced no results.” Séverine spoke from the far end of the semicircle, her rasping voice carrying without effort. “Five dead. Pattern established. And you have given us nothing but theory.”
“Theory requires evidence. Evidence requires time. Time requires freedom to investigate without constant interruption.”
“Your interruptions are not our concern.”