The church was heavy with heat and grief.
Candles lined the aisle, their wax bleeding slowly downward, like time itself had lost interest in staying clean. The air smelled of incense and damp stone, thick enough to cling to the back of my throat.
I stood beside my parents, hands folded, posture perfect—boy-perfect, I realized absently—while my eyes scanned the front.
And then I saw him.
Louis de Pointe du Lac.
Not the man I remembered from pages.
Not the voice stitched together by memory and narration.
This Louis was alive in the worst way.
Tall. Still. Beautifully restrained. His face held together by sheer will, grief packed so tightly beneath his skin it looked like it might split him open if anyone dared speak too loudly.
Dark eyes. Controlled breathing. A jaw set as if pain were a thing that could be disciplined into obedience.
My chest tightened.
Series-Louis, my mind whispered.
That's... him.
That was point two.
His family clustered around him—his mother rigid with propriety, his sister pale and hollow-eyed. And there was something else, something not visible but unmistakably present, as if the air around Louis were heavier, denser, like grief had weight here.
I swallowed.
Okay. Okay. So this is that world.
My gaze flicked to the coffin.
I forced myself to breathe.
And that was when New Orleans exhaled back.
The feeling slid over my skin without touch.
Not cold.
Not hot.
Aware.
I stiffened.
It was the same sensation I'd felt during all-nighters in the library, when someone stood too close behind me—but there was no body here. No sound. No shadow.
Just the unmistakable certainty of attention.
My pulse spiked.
Don't be ridiculous, I told myself. You're jumpy. This is grief. This is nerves.
But the pressure didn't lift.
If anything, it sharpened.
As if the city itself had turned its face toward me.
I lowered my gaze, my heart hammering now, instincts screaming to become small, invisible, uninteresting.
And somewhere—somewhere I could not see, could not name—a thought brushed against mine.
You don't belong.
The words weren't sound.
They were recognition.
My fingers curled slowly into my palm.
I didn't know yet that my mind was already being tasted.
That curiosity had brushed curiosity.
That something ancient had noticed the way my thoughts moved differently.
All I knew was this:
I had asked for a date.
I had seen a man who would one day kneel in blood and regret.
And the city had answered by looking back.
Fine, I thought, steadier now despite the fear.
I'm here.
🩸
I found that I could not stop watching him.
Louis stood near the front long after most of the mourners had passed, accepting condolences with the same careful restraint I'd already memorized. He moved like a man holding himself together with thread—every gesture precise, every nod measured, as if grief were something that might spill if he bent the wrong way.
I compared him without meaning to.
The Louis I had watched on a screen had been handsome—of course he had—but there was something sharpened here by reality. This man was quieter. Nobler. His beauty wasn't styled or framed; it lived in his stillness, in the way sorrow had settled into his bones and made him... solid.
This, I thought, is the Louis someone could fall for.
Not the dramatic suffering.
Not the speeches.
This gravity.
I watched his hands—long fingers, steady despite the tremor he could not fully hide. Watched the way he inclined his head to every person who spoke, as if each grief deserved its own space.
And for the first time since waking in this world, I forgot to be afraid.
I forgot the watching city.
Forgot the wrongness humming just beneath my skin.
My thoughts drifted, unguarded.
I see it now, I thought.
Why Lestat would love you.
The name formed fully in my mind.
Lestat.
The air changed.
It wasn't sudden.
It noticed itself.
Cold slid between breaths, subtle enough that I might have dismissed it if the candle flames hadn't wavered—just once, just barely—as if a door had opened somewhere far away.
My skin prickled.
Louis lifted his head.
Not sharply. Not in alarm.
But the way someone does when a room goes quiet without reason.
I swallowed, my heart suddenly loud in my ears.
Idiot, I scolded myself. Why would you think that name here?
Too late.
A shadow passed across Louis' expression—not fear, not recognition, but something deeper. A memory stirred. Something old brushing the surface.
Still, he stepped forward when my turn came.
"Thank you for coming," he said, his voice low, controlled. "My family appreciates it."
He extended his hand.
I took it.
His grip was warm. Solid. Real.
And the moment our hands met, the cold deepened.
Not biting.
Not hostile.
Present.
Louis' fingers tightened—just a fraction. His breath caught, so soft I almost missed it.
His eyes flicked past my shoulder, scanning the church as if he expected to find someone standing there.
No one was.
I forced a polite smile, my pulse racing now. "I'm... sorry for your loss."
Louis looked back at me—really looked this time.
For a heartbeat, his composure cracked.
Not grief.
Confusion.
"...Thank you," he said again, slower. Then, as if to himself, "It's strange."
I didn't ask. I didn't dare.
The cold receded as suddenly as it had come, leaving behind the echo of attention—curious, sharp, aware.
Louis released my hand.
As I stepped away, I knew three things with bone-deep certainty:
This Louis was real in a way fiction had never captured.
The name I had thought carried weight here.
And somewhere—unseen, unannounced—
Someone had heard it.
🩸
Louis didn't ask right away.
I noticed that first.
He waited until the church had thinned, until the murmurs softened into echoes and the candles burned lower, as if patience itself were a discipline he'd learned too well. I was halfway down the aisle when his voice reached me—not loud enough to draw attention, not soft enough to be accidental.
"Excuse me."
I stopped.
When I turned, he stood a few steps behind me, hands folded loosely in front of him, posture impeccable. Grief still clung to him, heavy and undeniable—but something else sat beneath it now.
Focus.
"I don't believe we've met," he said. "You're... the Aldrich boy, yes?"
My stomach tightened.
"Yes," I answered, and the word came too easily. "Cade."
Louis inclined his head. "My condolences aside," he continued carefully, "I wanted to thank you again. You seemed... attentive."
Attentive, I thought. That's one way to put it.
His eyes never left my face.
Not rudely.
Not accusingly.
Just... studying.
And that was when I felt it—the shift. The tiny recalibration in his gaze. The moment something clicked, not as certainty, but as question.
For the first time, Louis noticed it.
The way I held myself—not sloppy enough to be boyish, not rigid enough to be performative. The softness at the edges of my expression. The way my eyes moved, tracking not just him, but the room, the exits, the weight of other people's emotions.
Effeminate, some would have said.
Different, Louis thought instead.
I saw the realization land.
And it unsettled me more than the cold ever had.
In another life, I'd spent years reading people—professors, classmates, strangers on sidewalks. I knew the exact moment someone noticed the wrong thing.
Louis's gaze sharpened now. Not invasive. Intent.
As if I were a door he hadn't realized existed until it was already open a crack.
"Forgive me," he said slowly, "but have we met before?"
My pulse spiked.
"No," I said immediately.
Too fast.
The corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, not suspicion.
Curiosity.
"I see," he murmured. Then, gently, "You look as though you'd rather be anywhere else."
That did it.
"I need air," I said, the truth cutting through before I could stop it.
I bowed my head—polite, abrupt—and turned away before he could respond.
I didn't walk.
I escaped.
🩸
Outside, the heat hit me like a wall.
New Orleans breathed around me—horse hooves on stone, distant voices, the river's damp pulse. The church doors loomed behind me, heavy and closed, as if sealing something inside I wasn't ready to face.
I pressed my hands to my thighs, grounding myself.
What am I doing?
Why am I here?
I stared at the street, at the unfamiliar buildings, the wrong century pressing in from every side. I had been a student. A girl worrying about deadlines and footnotes and whether my argument in Chapter Three actually made sense.
Now I was standing outside a funeral in 1910, wearing a boy's name, catching the attention of a man whose grief would one day rewrite his entire existence.
And I didn't know why.
I didn't know what I was supposed to change—
or if I was here to change anything at all.
I closed my eyes, the city's hum filling my ears.
If this is a story, I thought, I don't know my role yet.
But somewhere behind me, within the thick stone walls of the church, Louis de Pointe du Lac was still watching the door I had fled through—
and wondering why the absence I left behind felt louder than the crowd.