His existence challenged certainty. His connection to Delphine demonstrated that some bonds persisted across fundamental categories if desired enough. And someone had decided to weaponize that fact.
“I’ll be judicious in my pursuit,” Bastien said.
“You need to be ruthless. This man understands you better than you think, and he’s using that knowledge to position you exactly where he wants you. We have no idea how long he’s watched you. Don’t give him what he’s looking for.”
The morning heathit him the moment he stepped outside. October that felt like August, air thick enough to resist motion. His car sat where he’d parked it, sunlight bouncing off chrome and glass with optical accuracy that suddenly felt suspicious.
He drove back with attention divided between traffic and constant monitoring of polished surfaces. Every storefront window, every puddle, every chrome bumper became potential threat. The city had transformed into panopticon built from ordinary materials.
His apartment felt different when he returned. Still secure, still warded, but those protections had already failed once, and the breach was likely to remain until this problem was addressed head on. The journal entry proved that glass-based penetration worked despite celestial safeguards, which were previously thought to be impenetrable.
Bastien set the shard on his desk and resumed documentation. The journal accepted his entries without interference with no phantom text appearing beneath his words. Whatever message the surveillance network had wanted to deliver, it had been transmitted. Now the observation continued in silence, collecting data for purposes he could only hypothesize.
He wrote for two hours, documenting every detail he could extract from the shard’s structure and behavior. The temporal playback. The network topology. The frequency matching boundary resonance. Evidence compiled with academic thoroughness without the scientific proof.
Light shifted as morning progressed toward afternoon. Shadows shortened, then lengthened. His image appeared in the window glass whenever he moved past it, synchronized perfectly. No lag. No distortion. Which only proved the network could hide its operation when it wanted to.
The city outside continued its Tuesday routine. Delivery trucks navigated narrow streets. Workers conducted maintenance on infrastructure older than most cities. Tourists photographed architecture whose significance exceeded their understanding.
And through it all, glass watched. Recording. Documenting. Feeding information back to analyst who understood exactly what he was observing.
Bastien closed his journal as afternoon gave way to evening. The shard sat on his desk; an artifact whose presence suggested the threats were still developing toward manifestation.
Someone had built surveillance network capable of monitoring his research, his movements, his connection to Delphine. Someone who understood celestial mechanics well enough to theorize about tether dissolution. Someone who’d demonstrated their capability and invited response.
The hunter had become the hunted. The observer, the observed. And somewhere in the city’s glittering landscape, it seemed a human, Gideon Virelli, wanted something from him.
Bastien’s image moved in the darkened window, synchronized perfectly with his physical motion.
For now.
Tomorrow night meant dinner with Delphine. Conversation that didn’t require constant editing. The warmth of her laugh when he said something that surprised her. The careful dance they’d been doing for weeks.
And beneath it all, every window she passed, every puddle she stepped over, every polished surface she glanced into—all of it fed information back to someone who understood exactly what she meant to him.
Reflective magic always cost more than practitioners expected.
He wasn’t letting her pay the price for his past, even if Charlotte was her in another life.
Chapter
Three
Bastien found Delphine in the Archive’s reading room, three ledgers spread across the table and a cold coffee at her elbow.
She looked up when he entered, and her smile carried equal parts welcome and accusation. “The case that stole our dinner plans.”
“Rain check?” He set his notebook on the table beside her research materials.
“You owe me beignets now. The price went up.” She pushed one of the ledgers toward him with a smile. “I pulled these when you texted. More Lacroix family records, 1755 to 1790. You said you were looking for mirrors?”
“Anything connected to Charlotte Lacroix specifically and yes, mirrors.” He sat next to her, close enough to read the same pages. “An incident at the auction house keeps circling back to something in her work.”
Delphine’s expression shifted from teasing to focused interest—the expression she got when a research puzzle caught her attention. She pulled the middle ledger closer and flipped to a marked page. “I found a reference this morning. Estate liquidation, 1764. Listed a mirror with ‘peculiar propertiesunsuited to normal household display.’ Those aren’t standard inventory terms.”
Bastien leaned over to read the entry. The handwriting was eighteenth-century copperplate, dense and formal, but the language Delphine had flagged stood out.
Item offered 3 September 1764. Estate of Charlotte Marie Lacroix, deceased. One mirror of exceptional manufacture, approximately three feet in height, framed in silvered wood bearing the Lacroix family crest. Properties noted by executor as ‘peculiar’ and ‘unsuited to normal household display.’ Mirror reflects with unusual clarity but is said to show truth rather than mere appearance. Purchaser: Anonymous representative of the Archdiocese. Price: Fifty livres.
