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)
“So will I.”
The crack widened. Cold light leaked through—winter moonlight on water. The edges frosted over despite the shop’s warmth.
Bastien moved for the door, gathering his sketches and shoving them into his messenger bag. Behind him, Maman spoke words in a language that predated the city, protection layered over protection, blood magic and binding wards.
The wrapped mirror went dark inside its cloth. The cold light faded.
“Go,” Maman said. She crossed the room and unbolted the door, then paused with her hand on the frame. “Protection and prison look the same from inside, mon cœur. Make sure you know which one you’re building.”
Bastien met her eyes. Understood what she meant. What she was warning him against.
“It’ll track you through every glass surface in the Quarter now,” she continued. “Every mirror, every window, every puddle. Watch where you walk.”
“I will.”
She touched his shoulder briefly—the kind of gesture that meant both farewell and blessing. Then she let him go.
Bastien left. Full daylight outside, tourists emerging from hotels, delivery trucks making rounds. Normal morning in the French Quarter.
He checked his phone as he walked. Three missed texts, all from Delphine.
Found something interesting in the estate records. You free for coffee?
Never mind, heading to lunch. Call me later?
Seriously, call me. I think I found a pattern in the Lacroix documentation.
He should call her. Should meet her for coffee and see what she’d discovered. Should follow Maman’s advice and tell her the truth about what was happening.
Should. But first he needed to understand the scope of what they were dealing with.
Every shop window he passed showed him twice. Once moving with him, his actual reflection tracking his steps across the glass. Once lagging half a second behind, watching with eyes that held no recognition at all.
A car window showed him from an angle that didn’t match his position on the street. A puddle reflected him upside-down when he was clearly standing upright. A restaurant’s glass door showed him entering when he’d already passed it by.
The mirrors were responding before he did.
By the time he reached his car, he’d stopped looking at glass surfaces. Safer to navigate blind than see what watched back.
But as he unlocked the door, another thought occurred to him. Observation went both ways. If Gideon could watch through mirrors, could use the network to see what Bastien was doing, learning, planning—then maybe Bastien could use that same network to watch back.
Every mirror Gideon corrupted became a potential window. Not just for surveillance. For communication. For understanding how the network functioned and where its anchor points were.
He needed to move faster. But he also needed to be smarter about how he moved.
He drove toward the Archive. In the rearview mirror, his reflection smiled.
Bastien kept his eyes forward and didn’t look back.
Chapter
Eight
Bastien sat in his car outside the Archive, fingers resting loosely on the wheel, though the engine had gone cold ten minutes ago. The street outside was quiet—the kind of quiet New Orleans only offered in short bursts, between the echo of footsteps and the inevitable saxophone that would start up two blocks away.
He hadn’t answered Delphine’s texts, not out of malice, but because he hadn’t known how. What did you say to someone who looked at you with wonder while you remembered the weight of her body in your arms—lifetimes ago? How did you explain that the girl she used to be had traced constellations on his shoulder with fingertips dipped in candlelight?
The truth, Bastien thought, was often too heavy for words.
The folder on the passenger seat held sketches of the glyphs from the pentagonal pattern—simplified versions that wouldn’t trigger recognition in someone without training but detailed enough that an archivist might identify their origins. He’d spent the morning copying Charlotte’s original notations, removing the power signatures, reducing her complex mirror-binding theory to something that looked like historical curiosity rather than active magic.
A cover story. Research into decorative metalwork from colonial New Orleans. Trademarks used by artisan guilds. Nothing threatening. Nothing that would reveal how the same symbols now appeared in corrupted mirrors across the Quarter, or that someone was using them to rebuild Charlotte’s network for purposes she’d never intended.
He stepped out into the warm dusk and climbed the stairs.
Inside, the Archive buzzed with the low hum of ancient wiring and air conditioning working too hard. Delphine was behind the front desk, framed by shelves and the soft lamplight that seemed to follow her. She looked up, eyes wide, mouth pressed into a line that said she wasn’t sure whether to hug him or hit him.
“You finally decided to come,” she said.
“I never stopped intending to.”
Her gaze didn’t soften, but she stepped aside. “I found more journals. Charlotte’s. Some of the pages are encrypted, but the rest . . .” She pulled a small stack from a drawer and laid them out like offerings. “I think she started the mirror network with full belief in what it could be. But then something changed. She wrote this.”