Not long. Most people wouldn’t notice. But three seconds was enough to create echo bleed, enough for the reflection to exist independently before it dissolved. He watched three more groups. Same pattern. The lag was consistent, which meant it was structural, not random.
Bastien pulled his notebook from his messenger bag and sketched the lag pattern. Noted the angle of the sun, the depth of the water, the way the fountain’s copper basin might be conducting residual energy from the mirror network. He marked down the exact location where the reflections lingered longest—the northeast quadrant, closest to the Cabildo.
He moved on.
St. Louis Cathedral’s side door was unlocked, the interior dim and cool after the morning heat. Bastien stepped inside, and the temperature dropped further—not in degrees, but in density. Like the air remembered prayer.
He walked the center aisle slowly, letting his eyes adjust. Candles burned near the altar. Two people knelt in devotion, heads bowed. The quiet was not silence, but a hush threaded through with reverence. With watchfulness.
Afternoon light streamed through stained glass and painted the nave in fractured color—ruby and sapphire, amber and emerald. It spilled across the polished pews, catching on brass railings and gilded fixtures. Each reflection was like a memory retold out of order.
Bastien watched the surfaces carefully, tracking the subtle temporal shifts.
The reflections were desynchronized. A man kneeling in prayer appeared in the pew’s glossy wood half a second beforehis knees hit the cushion. A woman lighting a candle flickered in the brass holder’s curve after she’d already walked away. Time displacement. Small enough that no one would consciously register it, but large enough to fracture the mirror network’s stability.
He moved slowly down the aisle, pulse in tune with the echoes underfoot.Consecrated ground wasn’t supposed to amplify reflective memory.But the cathedral had seen too much—births and burials, blood and grace. Sacred didn’t mean untouched.
He studied each window, observing how the stained glass filtered and split the light. Red became crimson. Blue fractured into violet. Each frequency refracted differently, warping across the wood, the brass, the wax-polished stone. Some surfaces absorbed light. Others amplified it. A few seemed to hold it just a second too long.
He cataloged which surfaces showed the longest delays. Noted the wood’s age and finish. The brass’s patina. The mineral makeup of the glass.Nothing here was ordinary—and perhaps never had been.
A faint pressure rose in the back of his throat. Not heat, not cold—just awareness. Old, holy places always knew what he was. His presence hummed off-key beneath the choir loft, where angels once might’ve lingered. Where once, he might have lingered too.
He paused beneath a large crucifix. Not out of piety—but memory.The weight of what he’d left behindclung to the rafters. He’d traded wings for a trench coat and bloodstains. For a heartbeat that still skipped when she smiled. A slight ache between his shoulder blades formed, not so much pain, more like a feeling of loss.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
A priest approached from the sacristy, robes shifting with soft motion. “Can I help you?”
“Just admiring the architecture,” Bastien said, keeping his voice even. “Beautiful building.”
The priest nodded, but his eyes lingered.Not suspicious—just aware.As if something in Bastien’s presence tilted the compass of the room.
He left before more questions followed.
Before the mirrors decided to show something truer than reflection.
The storefront on Royal Street belonged to an antique dealer who’d called the city three times about his mirrors. Bastien arrived with a clipboard and contractor’s vest, introduced himself as a building inspector following up on electromagnetic interference complaints.
The owner—a man in his sixties with silver hair and tired eyes—led him to the back room. “It’s the mirrors. They show people who aren’t there.”
“When did it start?”
“Two weeks ago. First it was just customers from the day before. Woman in a red hat who’d bought a brass lamp. Then it got worse. Started showing people from last week, people I barely remembered.” His voice dropped. “Yesterday I saw my wife. Clear as day. She was standing by the Victorian dresser, smiling at something.” He paused. “She’s been dead three years.”
The man’s hands shook when he gestured at the largest mirror, an ornate piece with a gilded frame.
Bastien pulled a handheld meter from his bag—modified to measure reflection resonance rather than electrical fields. He moved it across each mirror’s surface, watching the readings spike and fall. The resonance was strong here, stronger than atthe fountain or cathedral. The mirrors weren’t just lagging. They were actively pulling images from the past.
“Is she—” The owner’s voice cracked. “Is my wife trapped in there?”
“No.” Bastien kept his tone matter-of-fact. “What you’re seeing is an echo. A preserved memory, not a presence.”
“Can you tell her I’m sorry? That I?—”
“It’s not her. It’s glass remembering what it saw.”
The owner nodded, but his eyes stayed on the mirror.
