Maman studied him for a long moment. “You planning on telling her?”
“Not yet. Not until I understand what we’re dealing with.” Bastien picked up the envelope. “She just got her life back. Or what she knows of it, at least. I’m not going to poison it with threats she can’t defend against.”
“That kind of thinking is what got Delia killed.”
The words landed hard. True. Undeniable.
“I know,” Bastien said quietly. “But this time is different. This time I have a warning. This time I can prepare.”
“This time you’ve got a date with her you’re planning to keep while hunting a relic that could get you both killed.” Maman’s voice was gentle, but the truth in it cut deep. “You can’t protect her from everything, cher. At some point, you’ve got to trust she’s strong enough to handle the truth.” She paused and stared at him before she continued. Maman had Bastien’s attention. “Someday she will know everything, and if you think she won’t blame you for her lack of preparedness to address the things that go bump in the night—or the day for that matter?—”
Bastien cut her off. “At some point. Not today.”
Maman opened her mouth then closed it again and sighed again.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be short. We just repaired the Veil. We just began . . . connecting.” Bastien rubbed his large hand down his face, frustrated. He didn’t want to let his emotions lead his actions.
“Just remember that all women, not just the reincarnated ones who loved you in the past, expect honesty. You can’t build a future based on lies. Or omissions. So tread carefully.”
“Noted. Thank you, my friend.”
He left as the first hints of dawn began to gray the eastern sky. The streets were still mostly empty—delivery trucks making their rounds, a few early-shift workers heading to cafés thatopened before sunrise, the scattered aftermath of the night shift heading home.
Normal city. Normal routines. Everything desperately, viciously mundane except the envelope in his coat pocket and the knowledge that someone had just declared war using the one weapon guaranteed to make him respond.
The date with Delphine was supposed to start at six. Dinner at Jacques-Imo’s, maybe a walk through Audubon Park afterward if the weather held. Easy conversation. No urgency. The kind of ordinary evening that would be a gift after months of crisis.
Now he’d spend the day researching the Shadowglass Mirror, forging credentials, preparing for an auction that was clearly a trap—all while pretending nothing had changed, that the threat hanging over them was manageable, that he had everything under control.
He walked back to his office on Dauphine Street, where files and research waited, where he could begin the methodical work of preparation that had kept him alive through decades of impossible situations. But he stopped at the corner of Burgundy and St. Peter, arrested by his own image in a shop window.
The glass was old, original to the building’s 1830s construction, wavy and imperfect in ways that modern glazing never achieved. His image looked back at him from that antique surface—smoke-gray eyes, coat collar turned up against the October chill, expression locked in the careful neutrality he’d perfected over a century of walking among humans who couldn’t know what he was.
And behind him in the glass, half a breath late, the image moved.
Not much. Just a fractional delay, a hesitation where perfect synchronicity should have existed. His hand lifted. The glass followed a heartbeat after. He turned his head. The mirroredmovement tracked him with a lag so slight most would never notice it.
But he noticed. And he understood.
The mirror-forged ink had left a residue. Every reflective surface in the Quarter was now potentially compromised, showing truth on delay, reality filtered through observation that wasn’t his own. They were watching through the glass itself, through every window and mirror and polished surface, using Charlotte’s own theories about reflection to spy on the man who’d loved her across lifetimes.
Bastien turned away from the window and continued walking. Behind him, in the wavy antique glass, his image remained a moment longer than it should before following.
The fog had burned off completely now, leaving the Quarter sharp-edged and vivid under the rising sun. Street sweepers worked their routes. Shopkeepers unlocked doors. Artists hauled easels toward Jackson Square. Business as usual, the city waking to its routines.
Except his image in the glass, which no longer quite belonged to him.
A challenge had been issued using the one weapon guaranteed to make him respond—the threat of harm to a soul he’d failed twice already and could not—would not—fail again.
He had one week to find the Shadowglass Mirror.
One week to prepare for whatever trap awaited at the Rousseau Auction House.
One week before someone forced Delphine to remember everything at once and shattered her mind in the process.
He’d make it count.
Chapter
