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)
Bastien stepped onto the sidewalk, allowing the door to close behind him with a soft click. October air wrapped around him, humid despite the late hour, carrying scents of the Quarter after dark. Coffee from all-night cafés. Alcohol from bars whose business thrived in darkness. Something floral from courtyards hidden behind walls.
He walked toward where he’d parked three blocks away, mind cataloging everything he’d witnessed. The mirror shard in his pocket pulsed with each step, maintaining rhythm with his heartbeat. Gideon’s card radiated warmth through his jacket. And somewhere in the network of reflective surfaces that composed the Quarter’s architectural landscape, something watched him through glass that showed more than it was meant to reveal.
His phone buzzed again. This time he pulled it out.
Delphine: Still on for tomorrow? I found something in the Lacroix estate papers you’ll want to see. Also, you promised me dinner. I’m holding you to that.
Bastien typed his response as he walked
Bastien: Dinner. Tomorrow. I promise. Can you show me the papers tomorrow?
Delphine: Fingers crossed. You say that every time. I’m starting to think you’re avoiding me. Except I had to cancel that one time too for work.
Delphine: We’re not all private investigators making our own hours.
He stopped walking, thumb hovering over the screen. She was teasing—her texts always carried a thread of humor that made even her complaints feel light—but underneath the levity, he heard the genuine concern. They’d been building something careful and slow since the crisis that nearly tore the Quarter apart, and he’d promised himself he wouldn’t let his work interfere with that growing connection.
But the envelope had named the Lacroix bloodline. The threat had invoked Delphine’s heritage deliberately, and until he understood why, until he knew whether Gideon Virelli represented intellectual curiosity or something darker, he couldn’t afford to draw her closer to this investigation.
Bastien: No excuses. Promise. Will explain tomorrow. Text you when I get home.
He pocketed his phone and continued walking. His reflection appeared in darkened shop windows as he passed—normal, synchronized, moving exactly as mirrors should portray the world they faced.
But the observation continued. Somewhere in the glass, something watched him with the focused attention that required intention rather than accident.
He reached his car without incident—a black sedan that maintained the kind of anonymous profile that served his work better than flash or distinction. The door opened beneath his hand, interior light activating automatically to illuminate leather seats and dashboard instrumentation.
Before he slid behind the wheel, Bastien looked once more at the building that housed Rousseau Auction House, visible three blocks distant between structures that framed Chartres Street. Light still glowed from its windows—staff members completing the administrative work that followed successful sales.
In the glass panels of a shop front halfway between his position and the auction house, he saw movement that didn’t correspond to any physical presence on the street. A figure in the reflection, standing where no one stood in reality, watching him with the kind of focused attention that required intention rather than accident.
Then it was gone. The reflection returned to empty street and sodium light, leaving only the uncertain testimony of his celestial awareness to confirm what he’d seen.
Bastien got in his car, started the engine, and pulled away from the curb. The Quarter’s streets unfolded before him—narrow passages between buildings whose history stretched back to when New Orleans was still negotiating its identity between French, Spanish, and American influence.
But his mind remained fixed on the auction house and the trap that had been laid there with his name attached to its trigger.
Gideon Virelli knew who he was. Knew what he was. And judging by the sigil work on that calling card, understood mirror magic in ways that indicated either deep research into forbidden techniques or direct contact with someone who’d practiced Charlotte’s methods.
The shard pulsed against his side, warm through the fabric and jacket lining. He’d need to get it home, seal it in a warded container, and run diagnostics that would reveal its purpose and how it connected to the broader pattern of mirror distortion clearly spreading through the Quarter.
But first, he would need to call Delphine when he got home and figure out how to keep his promise about dinner without explaining that someone who understood her ancestral magic was orchestrating events that named her bloodline as leverage.
His reflection moved in the rearview mirror, synchronized perfectly with his actual position.
For now.
Chapter
Two
The black shard sat on Bastien’s desk where he’d left it at 2 a.m.; the surface reflecting nothing.
He’d managed three hours of sleep before giving up. The apartment above his office occupied converted space that had once served as storage for the antiquarian bookshop that previously operated at street level. Exposed brick, tall windows that let in too much light during summer, wards worked into the threshold and window frames. Private enough for the kind of research most people didn’t acknowledge existed.