Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
“Because they are too visible. Too deliberate. Bodies left intact when they should disperse. Sigils carved with historical symbols. A pattern that anyone with access to the right records could eventually trace.” He felt the truth crystallize as he spoke it. “The killer wants to be found. Not immediately, not easily, but eventually. These murders are meant to be solved. They are meant to occupy attention while something else occurs in the spaces no one is watching.”
“And the curse on you?”
“The same function. Keep me visible. Keep me moving. Keep everyone’s eyes on the fallen angel investigating vampire deaths while the real work happens elsewhere. I am not the detective in this story. I am the board on which the game is being played.”
Maman considered this for a long moment, her fingers resting on the edges of the photographs. When she spoke, her voice carried something that might have been respect or might have been grief.
“Then what will you do?”
Bastien gathered the photographs and his notebook, returning them to his jacket’s interior pocket. They pressed against his chest, four faces he had failed to save.
“I will continue investigating. Let whoever placed this curse believe their plan is working. Let the factions circle me while I document murders I cannot prevent.” He moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the frame. “But I will also hunt the hunter. The killer and the curse-caster may be the same person, or they may be tools of the same architect. Somewhere there is someone who studied me, who understood my role in this city, who decided I would be useful in a design I have not yet seen.”
“And when you find them?”
A pulse from his forearm. Not warmth this time. Something colder, something that felt like anticipation.
“Then they will learn what it costs to make a weapon of an angel.”
He left Maman’s shop and stepped into the morning heat of Rampart Street. Humidity wrapped around him, thick and close, carrying the smells of the city waking. A brass band had begun rehearsal nearby. Trumpets and trombones drifted through the air, practicing a funeral march with the kind of joy that only New Orleans could bring to grief.
The darkened skin burned steady beneath his sleeve, broadcasting to anyone with eyes to see.
The beacon broadcast to anyone with eyes to see.
He would give them something worth watching.
SIX
The watcher on Chartres Street did not know he had been spotted.
Bastien counted three seconds between noticing the man and deciding to ignore him. The figure stood in the recessed doorway of a closed antique shop, positioned to observe the entrance to Bastien’s building without appearing to observe anything at all. Human, from the heartbeat. Hired, from the practiced stillness that suggested professional surveillance rather than personal interest.
Someone’s errand boy. The first of many, if Maman’s warning held true.
August dawn pressed against the Quarter, the air thick enough to drink. Bastien stepped onto the sidewalk and felt the pulse beneath his sleeve — steady, invisible, present. To anyone with magical perception, he now carried a lit flare in his forearm, announcing his position to every faction with eyes to see.
He walked toward Royal Street, and the attention followed.
By the time he reached Café du Monde, he had counted seven watchers. The man on Chartres had been the most obvious. Two others trailed at a distance that suggested coordination—a woman in a yellow sundress whose pace matched his exactly, and a young man pretending to read a newspaper on a bench Bastien knew had been empty thirty seconds before he approached it. Four more occupied positions throughout the Quarter: rooftops, upper-floor windows, the driver’s seat of a parked delivery van with tinted windows and no visible company logo.
Not all of them belonged to the same faction. The woman in yellow moved with the fluid awareness of vampire service—someone who reported to one of the houses, probably Chardon or Beaumont, given their losses. The newspaper reader’s shoulders carried too much tension; he smelled of gun oil and human sweat, which meant mortal interests. Private security, perhaps. A family member of one of the victims, paying someone to watch the investigator.
Bastien took a table in the outdoor section and ordered coffee and beignets he would not eat. A young waiter with café au lait skin and an earring that caught the morning light brought them without comment. Normal interaction. Normal behavior. The curse did not change how humans saw him—only those whose perceptions extended beyond the ordinary.
The thing in his arm warmed steadily. Patient. Satisfied.
This is what you wanted, he thought — not to whatever occupied his flesh, but to whoever had placed it there. You wanted me visible. You wanted me watched.
He sipped coffee that tasted of chicory and ash and considered the shape of the trap he had walked into.