Chapter 5 The Weight of the Memory
Iris Beaumont
He shouldn’t have been here.
No mortal should have crossed my threshold uninvited, and yet Detective Morrow stood in my parlor like he belonged there—one hand resting on the table where Javier’s glass still waited, half full, lipstick on the rim. My lipstick. The stain of a life that had ended hours ago, maybe less.
His questions came softly, wrapped in civility, but I heard the steel beneath them.
Every syllable was a blade.
Every heartbeat is a countdown.
He asked how the body came to be upstairs. I told him it wasn’t my doing, but my words didn’t sound like truth—not even to me.
The scent of blood still clung to the walls. The house remembered what I tried to forget.
I can still feel Javier’s hands.
They were warm—human, warm, the kind of heat that draws even the undead closer without meaning to. He’d come to deliver wine, or maybe he’d been paid to deliver something else; the details blur now, softened by the haze of hunger and the strange comfort of his voice.
He’d touched my wrist while laughing at some forgotten joke, and the pulse beneath his fingers had made me ache in ways that had nothing to do with blood.
It had been centuries since anyone had dared to touch me like that—without fear, without reverence.
Just touch.
And then the laughter turned to silence—my silence.
His body, slack against the velvet sofa, his heartbeat fading under my palm.
I hadn’t meant to—God; I hadn’t meant to. The hunger had been distant for years, contained by rules, rituals, and self-control. But lately, it stirred in me at odd hours, restless, louder.
Occasionally, I'd wake up with blood under my fingernails, not remembering the chase.
Occasionally, I dreamt of Javier's voice cutting through the fog, calling my name.
Morrow’s voice pulled me back.
He stood close enough now that I could see the faint shimmer of ink beneath his sleeve—protective symbols, old ones. I recognized the markings.
So he wasn’t simply human after all.
That realization should have unsettled me. Instead, I found it… comforting. The city had grown full of false things; at least this man carried his truth on his skin.
“I think you know what’s behind that door,” he said.
He meant Javier.
He meant my sin.
But I was watching his throat as he spoke, the pulse just below the jawline.
That living rhythm—the whisper of mortality—called to me stronger than any accusation.
“I think you should leave,” I said, though we both knew he wouldn’t.
Men like Morrow never left when they should. They stayed, and they dug, and sometimes they bled.
He looked around my parlor, cataloging the artifacts of my existence—the mirrors that no longer reflected me, the roses wilting in crystal vases, the photographs that stopped aging a century ago.
“Tell me about the Coterie,” he said.
“Tell me why their rules matter to you.”
I smiled, small and cold. “Because they’re the only thing that keeps our kind from extinction. We’ve learned to coexist with your kind by pretending we don’t exist at all.”
He studied me for a long time, eyes unreadable. “Pretending isn’t working anymore.”
He was right. It hadn’t been for a while.
My hunger was changing. It wasn’t just for blood now—it was for the before, for touch and heat and mortal imperfection. For Javier’s laughter and even for Morrow’s judgment.
It was dangerous to crave those things. They made the hunger deeper. Wilder.
They made me feel alive again.
He stepped closer. The air between us pulsed.
“Whatever’s happening,” he said, “it’s affecting more than just you.”
I wanted to laugh. I tried to tell him that whatever lived inside me now didn’t care about logic or containment. It only wanted to feed. And part of me—an honest, awful part—wanted him to let it.
Instead, I said, “You’re trespassing, Detective.”
“So arrest me,” he murmured.
The room tilted. For a heartbeat, I saw Javier again—his hand slipping from mine, the red rose falling from his pocket, petals crushed against the floorboards.
Morrow followed my gaze to the rose, now brittle with dried blood.
“I didn’t kill him,” I whispered.
“Then who did?” he asked.
I looked back at the door, at the silence waiting beyond it.
“Something that wears my face,” I said.
He took the armchair opposite mine, notebook balanced on one knee, pretending civility.
It amused me—this performance of procedure in a house that had outlived every law he could quote.
“Let’s start with the bartender,” he said. “Javier Delacroix.”
The name was a blade across my skin.
I let it show only for a heartbeat, then smoothed the mask back into place.
“I knew him,” I said lightly. “Half the Quarter knew him. He poured whiskey and secrets in equal measure.”
“And when was the last time you saw him alive?”
“Alive?” I repeated, tasting the word. “Such a fragile distinction, Detective. I believe it was three nights ago, perhaps four. He delivered a case of Bordeaux from the cellar on Dauphine. After that, I assumed he returned to his usual life—whatever that was.”
Morrow’s gaze didn’t waver. He had the kind of eyes that belonged to men who didn’t blink when the truth looked back at them.
“Witnesses place him here the night he disappeared.”
“Witnesses often see what they want,” I replied, crossing one leg over the other. “The human mind is remarkably suggestible after midnight.”
He wrote something in his notebook, though I suspected it was for show. He wasn’t gathering information—he was studying me.
Every shift of my posture. Every breath I chose to take or withhold.
“You have quite the reputation, Ms. Laroque,” he said. “Private salons, exclusive clientele. Late-night gatherings that never appear on record.”
“Are you asking for an invitation?”
The smile I gave him was deliberate, languid. The kind that made most men forget the question.
He didn’t. “I’m asking whether those gatherings involve blood.”
I laughed softly. “Everything in New Orleans involves blood, Detective. The city bleeds for its music, its art, its hunger. Surely you’ve noticed.”
“Some of us prefer ours to stay inside the body.”
“Some of us don’t have that luxury.”
He froze at that, pen hovering mid-air. I could almost hear the thought forming—she slipped—but I saved him the satisfaction.
“I’m referring to philanthropy, of course,” I said smoothly. “Charitable work can be draining.”
He smiled, thin as a paper cut. “Of course.”
His questions shifted to the Coterie, to the rumors that circled us like vultures.
“How long have you been a member?”
“I’m not.”
“Then you won’t mind explaining why your name appears on their registry?”
“I imagine there are many Laroques in Louisiana. We breed like ghosts—always one more than you expected.”
Each lie slid from my tongue like silk, practiced, effortless.
The trick was to lace every falsehood with a trace of truth, just enough to scent it human.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Do you believe in monsters, Iris?”
I let the name linger in the air. He’d stopped calling me Ms. Laroque.
A small victory.
“I believe in appetites,” I said. “Yours. Mine. The city’s.”
“And what kind of hunger is yours?”
I smirked, “Tonight, it’s you.”
The response was a brief, subtle flicker. But I saw it.
A mortal pulse betraying something dangerously close to interest.
He recovered quickly. “You’re toying with me.”
I tilted my head. “Would you prefer I bite?”
He didn’t answer, but his heartbeat did.
