Updated Mar 24, 2026 • ~6 min read
Chapter 10: What the panther says
ROMAN
Celestine told him at the end of the week.
She waited until Sunday — waited the full week after his account of the briefing session, waited through the Thursday evening when he’d arranged the Garden District meeting, waited until Sunday morning with the particular patience of someone who had more information than she’d indicated and had been deciding how to release it.
She said: “She is not a problem to be managed.”
He said: “I know.”
She looked at him with the expression that meant she’d expected him to say something else.
He said: “I’ve known since day three.”
She said: “What changed?”
He put down his coffee. He looked at the Garden District garden through the Sunday morning window, the old growth and the heat-thick air and the city settling into its Sunday tempo.
He said: “She asked about her grandmother.”
“Yes.”
“She asked about 2005.”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t asking as a historian or as someone under the agreement who wants the full information.” He looked at the window. “She was asking because it was her family. Because her grandmother stayed when half the Tremé left and she needed to know why.”
Celestine was quiet.
He said: “She’s not approaching this like an outsider who has been given access. She’s approaching it like someone who has always been adjacent to it and is finally close enough to see.” He paused. “That’s different.”
“Yes,” Celestine said. “It is.”
He said: “What did you find? About the family.”
Celestine held her coffee. “The Delacroix line has been in New Orleans since the eighteenth century. French Creole, like most of the old Tremé families. The grandmother — Eugenia Delacroix — was known to us. Not as a formal contact — not under any agreement. She was known the way certain people in the city are known: she understood the shape of things. She kept her own counsel. She had, on at least two occasions, provided information to the clan that was significant enough to be documented.”
“Documented where?”
“In the elder records,” Celestine said. “Which I reviewed on Friday.” She paused. “She knew. Not the full picture — she was never inside the agreement. But she knew the shape. She navigated accordingly.” She looked at him. “She died in 2011.”
He said: “Ines was twenty-one.”
“Yes. She was already on the music circuit. The grandmother knew she was musical — the records have a note, in my predecessor’s handwriting, that Eugenia Delacroix said: *my granddaughter hears everything. She’ll know what she is eventually.*” She paused. “My predecessor wrote: *acknowledged, monitor.*”
He was quiet.
“She was being watched,” he said.
“Not intrusively,” Celestine said. “The monitor notation is standard for legacy families — people whose lineage is adjacent to the knowledge. The clan tracks them at a distance, makes sure they’re not approaching the line without support.” She paused. “Three years ago, one of the monitoring reports noted that the musician on Royal Street had the specific quality of someone who was going to find the edge of the picture eventually.”
He said: “That was the night at the Royal Street bar.”
“I know,” she said.
He looked at her.
She said: “I read the report. The report was written by one of the junior members who was on the monitoring rotation. He noted: *the subject’s music produces an unusual effect on the panther. Recommend elevated contact tier.*” She held his gaze. “You declined the elevation.”
He said: “I made a decision.”
“You made the decision to let her come to it herself rather than to engineer contact,” she said. “Which I understand. What I want you to understand is: she was always going to come to it. The grandmother was right. She was going to find the edge of the picture eventually.” She paused. “Gabriel’s corridor mistake moved the timeline up by possibly a year. That’s all.”
He sat with that.
She said: “Your panther already knows.”
He said: “My panther has known since Royal Street.”
“Then—” She spread her hands.
He said: “She’s under the agreement. I brought her in. The power differential—”
“Roman,” she said. Not impatiently. With the specific weight of a woman who has been old enough to say things with full authority for a very long time. “You did not engineer the alley. You did not engineer the agreement — she signed it of her own will after reading it carefully. You did not engineer her grandmother’s history or her family’s three-hundred-year presence in this city or the monitoring report from Royal Street.” She looked at him. “What you did was keep your distance for three years out of respect for a person you hadn’t yet been introduced to. That is not a power differential. That is decency.”
He was quiet.
She said: “Your panther knows who it recognizes. Trust it.”
He said: “It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple,” she said. “The complicated part is everything you’ve been doing to convince yourself it isn’t.”
He looked at his coffee.
He thought about the back table on Thursday evening. She’d played the bridge section — the new piece, the one that was about the alley and the back step and whatever she was working out — and the direction of it had been not the room but a specific part of the room. He’d sat at the back table and held still.
He said: “She’s going to find out about the panther. The recognition. She’s going to figure out what it means.”
“I expect so,” Celestine said. “She figured out section three on the first read.”
He looked at his aunt.
She was watching him with the complete, unhurried patience of someone who has seen this exact situation in different configurations for many decades and knows how it ends.
He said: “When she asks—”
“Tell her the truth,” Celestine said. “You’re very good at that. It’s been the only thing working in your favor this entire month.”
He looked at the garden.
He said: “Thursday evening, after her set. I went around the back.”
Celestine said nothing.
He said: “I was going to go around the back.”
“I know,” she said.
He said: “I went around the front.”
“I know that too,” she said. “But you were going to go around the back.” She paused. “Next week, go around the back.”
He picked up his coffee.
He thought: stop managing. Start.
He thought: *she plays toward the back table and I know what she’s addressing and she knows I’m there and neither of us has said it yet.*
He thought: *that’s the piece she’s composing. The one she hasn’t named.*
He thought: *I know what that feels like.*
He thought: *next Thursday. The back step.*
He thought: *enough of the front door.*
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