She traced a line from one point to another. “Sacred geometry. Golden mean. This is cathedral-level precision.”
They both reached for the same ledger. His hand pulled back.
“Could you mark the central point?” she asked.
“Already done.” He tapped the map with his pen where Jackson Square sat.
She leaned even closer to see, her shoulder pressing firmly against his for three full seconds. Dust motes hung suspended in the light. Traffic sounds faded. The specific hush of an archive at closing time wrapped around them.
The air settled. In the glass display case across the room, reflections steadied—no lag, no distortion. The effect radiated outward from where they sat. Mirror Anchoring. Her presence calmed the corruption again.
Delphine straightened suddenly, breaking contact. “I should make copies of these before we go.”
“Good idea.” Relief and disappointment in equal measure.
He watched her walk to the copy machine in the corner and caught his reflection in the window beside him. His face looked raw, unguarded. He smoothed the expression before she turnedaround, but not before noticing how the reflection had shown him what he worked so hard to hide.
The copy machine hummed. Delphine returned with documents, started packing up research materials. A glass document case sat between them on the table, and when she reached to close a ledger, her reflection appeared in its surface.
Bastien glanced at his own reflection out of habit—checking for lag, the constant monitoring that had become second nature. But instead of seeing distortion, he caught sight of her reflection meeting his in the glass.
Their reflected eyes locked.
Her reflection synchronized perfectly with her movement—unusual given the general mirror contamination across the Quarter. His reflection also synced when looking at her reflection. A moment of perfect stillness: both real and reflected, all four images frozen.
Delphine went still. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“The glass. It felt . . .” She touched the case’s surface. “Like it was paying attention.”
“Probably just the light.” But internally he knew.The glass recognized us. Together. Recognized her stabilizing effect on resonance. Recognized me recognizing her.The mirrors were learning relationships, not just individuals.
She shook it off. “Long day. Ready to get out of here?”
“After you.”
They walked out together. He stole glances at their reflections in every window they passed—the entrance doors, the display cases in the corridor, the glass partition by the stairs. Each reflection showed them in perfect sync. No lag, no distortion.
Gideon’s network had just confirmed what he’d tried to hide. Delphine wasn’t just an anchor. She washisanchor. And now the mirrors knew it.
“So.” Delphine pulled out her phone to check the time. “We should check these addresses tomorrow. See if the sites still hold whatever Charlotte put there.”
“Yeah.” He was already planning the route. Start at dusk, work through the night while the corruption was strongest. Test each node, see what responded.
“You’re going tonight, aren’t you?”
He glanced up. She was watching him with that expression she got when she’d figured out something he hadn’t said.
“The corruption’s worse after dark,” he said. “Better to see what I’m dealing with when it’s active.”
“And you’re going alone.”
“Delphine—”
“I’m not arguing.” She held up a hand. “Just observing. You do this thing where you calculate risk and decide to handle it yourself. Very noble. Also very annoying.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time.”
