Bastien folded the items back into the envelope. Left cash on the table. The coffee sat untouched, growing cold in the October air while tourists laughed at nearby tables and the city continued its nightly routines, oblivious to the threat that had just been delivered in the space between dinner and midnight.
He walked to his car. Got in. Sat in the darkness with the envelope on the passenger seat and the knowledge pressing against his chest that someone had just weaponized the one thing he couldn’t protect against: Delphine’s own memories.
The drive to Dauphine Street to drop off his car took twelve minutes. He walked to Rampart, where Maman’s shop was.
Maman Brigitte’s shop sat dark, but the door opened before he could knock. She stood in the doorway wearing a purple silk robe and an expression that said she’d been expecting him.
“Come in, cher,” she said, stepping aside. “And bring that cursed thing with you before it attracts more attention than we can handle.”
The gallery’s interior was a controlled chaos of artifacts, ingredients, and tools that spanned centuries of practice. Shelves held jars of substances that defied easy categorization. Worktables bore the evidence of ongoing projects: half-drawnsigils in chalk and silver, candles that burned without wicks, mirrors whose reflections showed places that didn’t exist.
The air smelled of sage and protection, of herbs hung to dry in corners where shadows pooled deeper than they should, of magic worked so often in this space that the walls themselves had learned to hold power.
Maman moved to her reading table, a massive slab of cypress wood scarred by decades of ritual work. She lit three candles with a gesture—no match, no lighter, just will translated into flame. The light they cast was warm and steady, revealing her face in familiar lines: dark skin weathered by time and power, eyes that saw through pretense to the truth beneath, mouth set in an expression that balanced compassion with absolute pragmatism.
Bastien placed the envelope on the table.
“Mirror-forged ink,” he said. “Professional work.”
Maman didn’t touch the envelope. Instead, she passed one hand above it, fingers spread, reading information that existed in dimensions the eye couldn’t access. The candles flickered. Shadows on the walls contracted.
“Lord have mercy,” she said quietly. “Haven’t seen work this clean in forty years.”
“Can you trace it?”
“Trace it to what? Whoever made this knew exactly how to obscure their signature. But I can tell you what they want you to know.” She withdrew a small vial from beneath the table, uncorked it, and tilted three drops of liquid onto the envelope’s surface. The liquid was pale amber, viscous, and it spread across the paper with geometric precision.
The seal blazed.
Light erupted from the wax—not heat, not flame, but illumination that had no source, that existed independent of fire or electricity. The glow revealed patterns in the paperitself, watermarks that formed words, a second message hidden beneath the first.
We see you seeing her. We know what you’ve hidden. Seven days to decide: truth or protection. You cannot have both.
The light faded. The liquid evaporated. The envelope looked exactly as it had before.
“They know about Delphine,” Bastien said. His voice came out level despite the tremor in his fingers. “They know about the tether. About Charlotte’s mirror network.”
“More than that.” Maman’s tone was grim. “They know Charlotte never finished what she started. The mirror network was supposed to have an anchor point—something to stabilize the soul tracking across incarnations. She died before completing it.” She finally touched the envelope, lifting it with two fingers. “Mirror-forged ink means they’re using reflective surfaces to track movement, maybe to observe. Every mirror in this city becomes a potential window.”
“So, whoever sent this has been watching.”
“Watching you. Watching her. Probably watching everyone connected to Charlotte’s unfinished work.” Maman set the envelope down again, this time with visible reluctance. “If they’re threatening to force all her memories at once, they understand what that would do. Three lifetimes colliding in one consciousness—Charlotte, Delia, Delphine—all trying to exist simultaneously. Her mind would shatter.”
The implications settled. Things already set in motion that couldn’t be stopped, only managed. Bastien looked at the envelope, at the hidden message now invisible again, at proof that his careful distance, his meticulous protections, his years of discipline had all been observed and cataloged by someone who understood exactly what they were seeing.
“The auction,” he said. “They want me there.”
“They want you somewhere public where they can control the variables. Auction house means witnesses; you can’t act without consequences.” Maman moved to her ingredient shelves, began pulling jars down with the efficiency of someone preparing for war. “You go, and you’re walking into a trap. You don’t go; they’ll escalate. Use Delphine to force your hand.” She sighed, and Bastien could feel the wheels turning as she thought. He needed Maman’s rational mind to help. He knew his weakness. Whoever this was also did. As much as Bastien wanted a cooler head to prevail, his desperation to protect her ratcheted up and in the moment he couldn’t think clearly.
“So I go. Under an alias. Prepared.” He was resigned, but confident.
“You’ve got one week.” She set the jars on the table—salt blessed under the full moon, silver dust harvested from broken mirrors, herbs whose names existed only in languages the Veil had made forgotten. “Seven days to forge credentials, study sigils, build wards strong enough to let you walk into that auction house without getting yourself killed or exposing what you really are.”
“And the Shadowglass Mirror?”
“Charlotte hid it for a reason. If what I’m reading is right, that mirror was supposed to be the anchor—the final piece that would let her track her soul across any distance, any lifetime. Without it, the network is incomplete. Vulnerable.” Maman met his gaze, her expression carrying the weight of decades watching him love and lose the same soul in different bodies. “But whoever this is, they understand reflection magic well enough to make mirror-forged ink. That means they can see through surfaces. Hide in glass. Use every window and puddle as a doorway.”
“Then we’ll make sure they don’t see what matters.”
