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)
“Yeah.” He was already planning the route. Start at dusk, work through the night while the corruption was strongest. Test each node, see what responded.
“You’re going tonight, aren’t you?”
He glanced up. She was watching him with that expression she got when she’d figured out something he hadn’t said.
“The corruption’s worse after dark,” he said. “Better to see what I’m dealing with when it’s active.”
“And you’re going alone.”
“Delphine—”
“I’m not arguing.” She held up a hand. “Just observing. You do this thing where you calculate risk and decide to handle it yourself. Very noble. Also very annoying.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time.”
“I know.” She gathered the ledgers, stood. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
The reading room felt larger with her standing while he sat. He rolled up the maps, secured them. “I’ll be careful.”
“You’d better be.” She headed for the door, then paused. “For what it’s worth? I think Charlotte would’ve appreciated having help too. Even if she was too stubborn to ask for it.”
Before he could respond, she was gone, footsteps fading down the corridor.
Bastien sat alone with the maps for another minute. Through the Archive’s entrance doors, visible in the glass, he caught Delphine’s reflection as she walked past a corridor window. She turned the corner, but her image stayed in the glass for three full seconds—holding there like an afterimage, like the glass couldn’t let go fast enough.
Echo Bleed. Her connection to Charlotte’s work ran deeper than she knew.
He gathered his things and left. The afternoon sun turned the entrance door into a mirror. His reflection moved with him, nothing unusual except what he carried—maps that might save the city or prove Charlotte had built something that couldn’t be saved.
Outside, evening was settling over the Quarter. He walked to his car while tourists navigated toward dinner, delivery trucks finished their routes, and street performers set up for the night shift. All doing ordinary routines that had nothing to do with corrupted mirror networks or five-point geometry.
He checked his phone. No new messages from Gideon, which somehow felt more threatening than threats.
One window in the Archive still showed light—she’d stayed inside for something. He resisted the urge to return, to check on her, to tell her everything.
He started his car. Tomorrow he’d have to map the pentagon’s interior points, see what ritual geography Gideon had inherited from Charlotte’s work. Tonight, he just had to accept that protecting Delphine meant keeping her close enough to anchor the magic but distant enough to deny what the mirrors already knew.
Every hour with her made containment more difficult and separation more impossible. A balance that grew harder to maintain with every synchronized reflection.
His phone stayed silent. No messages appeared in nearby glass.
But the pattern had shifted. Five nodes to test, and somewhere Gideon was watching, waiting for him to make the next move. The geometry had changed. And Bastien couldn’t go back to working this alone, not after this afternoon proved some partnerships built themselves regardless of how carefully you tried to maintain distance.
Chapter
Thirteen
Bastien pulled the map from his jacket for the third time in as many blocks. Five points forming a pentagon across the Quarter. Delphine had identified the pattern just as Bastien had, tracing connections between Lacroix properties while he’d watched her work and pretended not to notice how she tucked her hair behind her ear when she concentrated, or that he’d already known the locations.
Now he had to ground them. All five, tonight, before Gideon found another way to make the city’s reflections do things glass shouldn’t manage.
The first address was a boutique on Dauphine and St. Ann. Vintage clothing in the windows, mannequins dressed like they were waiting for Mardi Gras parades that had happened eighty years ago. He’d documented this corner three days back. The display hadn’t changed—same gloved hand, same tilted parasol, same arrangement the sign claimed rotated monthly.
Either the owner had gotten lazy, or something else was keeping things in place.
Bastien stood across the street and watched. Tourists moved past, breaking his line of sight, but the display stayed visible in fragments. A lace collar. A velvet jacket. All of it perfectly still the way objects were supposed to be.
Then one of the mannequins moved.
Subtle. Nothing most people would catch. Just a weight shift, one foot drawing closer to the other. The parasol’s angle changed maybe two degrees.
The figure settled back into stillness. Bastien had seen a tourist make that exact gesture three days ago, posing for a photo before moving on down the street.
Mirror Delay. The window had stored the motion and was playing it back on loop.
He crossed the street. His reflection appeared in the polished glass—coat, dark hair, the neutral expression he wore like armor in public spaces.
Behind his reflection, the figures stood still. He stepped back. Three feet. Five. At six feet out, motion flickered in his peripheral vision. The same mannequin, repeating its weight shift.