JAX FOLLOWED HIM into the conservatory. The room held the kind of charm only old houses earned—floor tiles worn smooth by decades, plants in mismatched pots, a desk cluttered with sheet music and mechanical pencils. Near the center of the room, a baby grand waited beneath a lace-draped cloth, its curved silhouette catching the spill of moonlight from the glass panels overhead—an instrument slightly out of tune, perhaps, but still holding the echo of every melody ever played on it.

Jax gravitated toward it without thinking; Julien watched him with an amused tilt of his head. “You play?”

“A little,” Jax lied; the truth rested in years of piano recitals and dozens of awards to show otherwise.

He lifted the cover. The keys were yellowed, one or two chipped. When he pressed down experimentally, the note wavered—flat, a little sad, but warm. He played another. Then a few more. A simple progression he hadn’t touched since high school. Something about its out-of-tune imperfection made it easier to breathe.

Julien leaned against the doorway, arms folded loosely. “It seems music grounds you.”

“Something about it always has,” Jax admitted. His fingers drifted over the keys again, softer this time. “Haven’t played in years, not since I started spinning.”

“Feel good?”

Jax hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.”

BY THE TIME Jax dropped the tempo and let the last track bleed into something softer, the night had blurred into heat and motion. Elysium still pulsed beneath his boots, but the crowd had thinned. The reckless ones had drifted downstairs to Inferno or spilled into the Quarter in search of food or trouble or both; the rest clung to corners and barstools, sweating under the cathedral’s golden glow.

Jax eased the volume down another notch, let the playlist take over, and slipped his headphones around his neck. His heart still beat a little too hard, nerves lit with the leftover high of the set. Normally that energy felt clean—earned.

Tonight it felt… wrong. Tilted. Like it belonged to someone else.

EVENING SETTLED OVER New Orleans like a slow inhale, the sky deepening to bruised violet as the last gold light slipped behind the rooftops. The city shifted with it—subtle at first, then all at once—as music, voices, and heat curled through the Quarter like they’d been waiting all day for permission.

Jackson Remy Baptiste hit the bottom step of his apartment and paused. Something in the air vibrated—quiet, precise, like a plucked string only he could hear. It wasn’t unusual for him to feel the city before he heard it, but tonight the sensation struck sharp and sudden, running under his skin like static.

He exhaled, shook it off, and kept walking.

From the outside, he didn’t look like someone who felt anything unusual. Jax moved with easy confidence, all lean muscle stretching the limits of his jeans and a fitted shirt that showed off the right amount without trying. Warm mahogany skin; short, dark curls that caught the fading light; and green-gold eyes that always noticed more than he admitted. People tended to watch him twice—once for his looks, again because something about him felt… magnetic. Charged.

He blamed the DJ life. People loved anyone who commanded the night.