“Competitive pricing.” She started gathering the ledgers. “Give me twenty minutes to file these and close up. There’s a place on Decatur that makes decent espresso.”
Bastien helped her stack the volumes, their movements coordinated as though they’d done it a thousand times. While they had spent enough time working together over the past months that collaboration felt natural, her organizational system meshing with his research process without needing constant negotiation, the synchronicity of their actions was far more than that. The fact Bastien had spent two lifetimes with her, or at least her soul. Their bond, the soul tether, applied to even the most mundane activities like filing away books, a fact that made Bastien grin.
When they reached for the last ledger simultaneously, their hands met on the leather binding. Neither pulled away immediately. Delphine’s fingers were warm against his. Distant footsteps, the hum of climate control, pages turning somewhere in the stacks—he stopped tracking any of it.
She looked up, and whatever she saw in his expression made her still.
Then someone dropped a book on the floor two rooms over, and the moment broke.
Delphine pulled back first, smoothing her hair in a habitual gesture. “Twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the front.”
“I’ll be there.”
She left with the ledgers, and Bastien stood alone in the reading room. The lamp flickered. In the display case’s glass, his reflection moved slightly out of sync again.
He’d learned one thing clearly today. Delphine stabilized the contamination. Her presence normalized what should have been corrupted. Which made her the key to understanding how to contain what Gideon had started.
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.
