Instead he turned back to the map, adjusted the lattice, tightened the northern quadrant. Reinforced the nodes closest to the archive. The tone grew louder, filling the room.
The work was all he had. The only thing that had kept her safe this long.
He told himself that was enough.
Outside, lights dimmed in windows. Streets emptied.
And in the glass of every surface that could hold a reflection, hairline cracks began to form—too fine to see unless you knew to look.
Patient.
Deliberate.
Watching.
Chapter
Twelve
Bastien pushed through the Archive’s entrance carrying two iced coffees, condensation already soaking through the cardboard carrier. The warm October afternoon in New Orleans meant the building was battling against humidity that made even the old paper smell damp. He’d learned months ago how Delphine took her coffee—cream, no sugar, extra ice because the walk from the café meant half of it melted before arrival. Delia had the same love of coffee, the same order even, minus the ice.
The reading room windows caught afternoon light at an angle that turned dust into visible currents. An oscillating fan in the corner moved papers incrementally with each pass, creating small avalanches in the stacks Delphine had organized along the windowsill. Somewhere in another wing, someone ran a vacuum that created a distant mechanical hum.
She was already deep in work when he found her. Hair twisted up off her neck with a pencil stuck through it, reading glasses perched on her nose—the ones she only wore when she’d been squinting at documents for hours. Her shoulders showed freckles from summer sun, and she had an ink stain on her thumb from where she’d been marking pages.
He settled into the chair across from her without speaking. She glanced up, and her smile reached her eyes before she saw the coffee.
“You’re a saint.” She reached for it without looking, fingers brushing his as he steadied the cup before she could knock it over. Both of them pretended not to notice the contact.
She took a long drink, sighed, and set it down carefully away from the open ledgers. “The Lacroix family was either very organized or very paranoid. These records go back to 1750 and they documented everything. Property taxes, business licenses, even receipts for mirror repair.”
“Mirror repair?”
“Three separate invoices between 1760 and 1762. All for the same glazier.” She tapped the page. “That’s what I wanted to show you. Pattern recognition.”
Bastien pulled out the ward lattice map and spread it across the remaining table space. Five intersections glowed faintly where he’d traced copper and silver wire markings—his containment network, if he could figure out what connected them. The fountain test had bought him maybe three days before Gideon’s Mirror Bleed spread past containment.
“Five addresses,” he said. “All showing mirror corruption. I need to know why these specific locations.”
“Charlotte’s property records.” She set down her coffee and pulled three stacks of ledgers closer. “If she built something, she documented it. Woman was meticulous to the point of compulsion.”
“Sounds familiar.”
She gave him a look over her reading glasses. “You know, for someone who keeps showing up with supernatural emergencies, you’ve got a heck of a way of vanishing between them.”
She kept her attention on the ledgers as she said it, organizing them by date, making it easier to be honest bynot looking directly at him. Bastien leaned back in his chair, affecting casualness while very aware of her proximity, the way her neck curved where her hair was pinned up.
“Investigative work requires following leads when they appear.”
“Mm-hmm.” She flipped a page. “And these leads just happen to appear at two in the morning? On Tuesdays?”
He couldn’t help the wry smile. “The city doesn’t keep regular business hours.”
She returned the smile, but concern lived underneath it. “Just want to make sure you’re okay. You look tired lately.”
Tired from protecting you. From mapping Gideon’s network. From loving you while pretending I don’t.He picked up his own coffee, let the cold against his palm ground him. “Says the woman who keeps Archive hours that would horrify the labor board.”
Her light laugh defused the moment, and she let the subject drop. But she’d filed it away—he could tell by the way she tapped her pen against her teeth once before returning to the ledgers. She knew he was hiding something. He knew she knew. They’d both agreed not to push.
