Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
It also made her the most valuable target in the city.
Coffee, he decided, would have to include a conversation about staying away from mirrors and a crash course in Shadowglass. Knowing Delphine, she’d ask all the questions he wasn’t ready to answer yet.
Chapter
Four
Bastien poured his second cup of coffee at dawn and discovered his wards had faded overnight. Not broken—faded. The chalk lines around his apartment’s threshold showed pale where they should have glowed blue under celestial sight. He crouched and touched one with his fingertip. The protection sigil crumbled.
He’d drawn these three days ago. They should have held for a month. At least.
He straightened and looked at his reflection in the hallway mirror. It looked back at him with perfect synchronization. No lag. No distortion. But the wards wouldn’t fail without reason. Something in the Quarter was pulling harder than his protections could resist.
His phone rang.
Roxy Boudreaux. He picked up on the second ring.
“Bastien.” Her voice came through tight, controlled in the way that meant she was working hard to stay calm. “We have a problem.”
He carried his coffee to the window and looked out over Prytania Street. Early morning light, already warm. A jogger passed below. “What kind of problem?”
“The kind where three of my wolves shifted last night and their reflections didn’t match their bodies.”
Bastien stopped with the cup halfway to his mouth. “Explain.”
“Gabriel transformed at moonrise. Standard lunar trigger, no complications. But when he looked in the warehouse windows afterward, his reflection showed him still human. For about five seconds. Then it caught up.” She exhaled, and he heard traffic sounds in her background. She was already on the move. “Marie shifted an hour later. Same thing happened, but her reflection lagged fifteen seconds. By the time Connor transformed at midnight, his reflection was moving independently. Different posture. Different expression. It smiled at him when he wasn’t smiling.”
“Where are they now?”
“Quarantined. No mirrors, no glass, no standing water. I’ve got them in the safe house with matte walls.” A pause. “Bastien, they’re scared. We all are. This isn’t any natural shapeshifter variance. This is something . . . else.”
He drank his coffee and thought about the mirror shard in his workshop. The auction house. Gideon’s card with the silver sigil. “I need to see where it happened.”
“Levee near Algiers Point. Can you meet me there?”
“One hour.”
“Thank you.” She hung up without saying goodbye. Pack Beta efficiency—no wasted words when action was required.
Bastien stood at his window and finished his coffee. He’d known Roxy for six years, since a fae contract dispute had spilled into pack territory and required neutral mediation. She didn’t call unless the situation was serious. If the Crescent Moon Pack was asking for help, the mirror contamination had spread beyond contained relic zones and outside the Quarter.
He needed to see this for himself.
The drive from his apartment to Algiers Point took him straight through the Quarter. Tourists were already clustered on corners with to-go cups from Café Du Monde. A brass band set up on Royal Street, trumpet player running scales while his partner adjusted a drum kit. The city’s rhythm starting up for another day—oblivious to the fact that its mirrors were learning to lie.
Bastien crossed the Crescent City Connection as the sun climbed higher. The Mississippi stretched wide and brown below, its surface catching light in a thousand small fractures. He kept his eyes on the road. Looking at the water too long while driving seemed unwise given what Roxy had described.
Pack politics were delicate. The Crescent Moon maintained strict boundaries—both territorial and social. They handled their own problems, only reaching outside when those problems threatened to spill beyond pack control or had been brought to them. The last time Roxy had called him, two months ago, the pack had been affected by the tear in the Veil.
This felt different. Worse. Roxy only contacted him when things were dire. She didn’t leave the pack often.
He parked near the levee access under a broken streetlight and got out. The river smell hit him immediately—mud and rust and something organic rotting in shallow water. He’d never liked this particular stretch of bank. Too isolated. Too many shadows where the levee curved. But that isolation would serve them now. No witnesses to what he might have to do.
He walked toward the water. Behind him, the city hummed its perpetual note—traffic and music and voices layered over each other. Before him, the Mississippi moved slow and black even in morning light. The water looked thicker than it should, like liquid that had absorbed too much of what it reflected.
Twenty minutes early. He checked his watch—8:40. Roxy had said nine. The moon hung invisible in the daylight sky, but he could feel its pull anyway. Lunar resonance lived in his bones the way it lived in any creature born to respond to celestial movement. Tonight it would be full. And if what happened to Roxy’s wolves were any prediction, tonight would test whether the mirror contamination could kill.