He should insist she leave. Should maintain the distance that kept her separate from work that could pull her into forces shedidn’t understand. But exhaustion made argument difficult, and the lattice needed more than his efforts alone could provide.
“Ward network,” he said. “You know I have been anchoring sites across the Quarter to contain mirror resonance. Someone’s learned how to corrupt them. This one’s inverted—drawing power in instead of bleeding it out.”
“So we fix it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then we make it simple.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and opened the notes app. “Tell me what you need. I’m good at organizing data. That’s literally my entire profession.”
The offer surprised him. Just practical help from someone who understood that some problems required methodical work instead of heroic intervention.
He pulled out his own phone and showed her the map where he’d marked each lattice site. “I need to know which locations are still active, which have failed completely, and which are showing signs of inversion. The inverted ones are dangerous—they’re feeding power into whatever’s trying to destabilize the network.”
“Got it.” She stood and brushed dust from her knees. “I can check the ones in here and here.” She pointed to the two on the outskirts of the Quarter. “You handle the Quarter proper.”
“Delphine—”
“If you’re about to say something protective and infuriating, save it.” Her expression carried determination he recognized from arguments they’d had about research methods and proper citation format. “I know there’s risk. I can feel it. Something’s been pressing against my thoughts for days now, this awareness of glass surfaces and reflections that shouldn’t matter as much as they do. Whatever you’re trying to contain, it was made clear the other day that it’s already noticed me. Pretending otherwise just means I’m less prepared when it escalates.”
She was right. He’d known it for weeks but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the truth. Her bloodline made her part of this whether he involved her or not. Keeping her ignorant wouldn’t keep her safe.
“All right,” he said. “But if the mirrors start showing anything unusual—delays in reflection, images that don’t match reality, voices that sound familiar but aren’t—call me immediately and leave the area.”
“Promise.” She took a photo of his map. “Meet back at your place in two hours?”
“Two hours.”
She left the alley with purpose, already focused on the work ahead. Bastien watched her go. Affection and fear, too close to separate. Then he turned back to the inverted sigil and got to work.
The next twohours passed in mechanical repetition. Check site. Catalog status. Attempt reinforcement if possible. Move to next location. His hands cramped from drawing chalk patterns. His shoulders burned from crouching over sigils that resisted every attempt at repair.
By the time he reached his apartment, his hands cramped and his vision kept blurring at the edges. The stairs felt steeper than they should. He climbed to the third floor and found Delphine already waiting outside his door, two coffee cups balanced in one hand while the other held her phone displaying a detailed spreadsheet.
“You beat me here,” he said.
“I walk fast when I’m nervous.” She offered him one of the coffee cups. “Thought you might need this.”
The cup was still warm. She’d timed her arrival perfectly, stopping at the all-night place on Decatur to get coffee right before meeting him. A small consideration that mattered more than grand gestures.
He unlocked the door and gestured her inside. The apartment looked the way it always did; maps covering the main table, books stacked on every horizontal surface, morning light just beginning to filter through windows overlooking the Quarter’s rooftops. She’d been there before, but usually during daylight hours when visits could be framed more friendly, casual. Something about her presence in pre-dawn darkness felt different. More intimate, despite their clothes staying on and their focus remaining on work.
Delphine set her coffee on the table and pulled up the data she’d collected. “Good news. Most of your sites are still functioning. Bad news? Three more have inverted since you started checking, and two show early warning signs.”
He moved to stand beside her, examining the spreadsheet over her shoulder. Her hair smelled like the lavender hand lotion she kept in her office. Familiar. He made himself focus on the data instead of proximity.
“The pattern’s accelerating,” he said.
“I noticed.” She zoomed in on the map section showing the Garden District. “These three sites formed a triangle. When the central one inverted, the other two started destabilizing. It’s spreading through geometric relationships.”
“Which means the entire network could collapse if enough nodes invert simultaneously.”
“Yes.” She met his eyes. “What do we do?”
We. Not you.She’d claimed partnership in this without asking permission. Two people against city-scale forces wouldn’t make much difference mathematically, but mathematics had never accounted for stubbornness.
“We shore up what we can,” he said. “Reinforce the sites showing early warning signs before they flip completely. And we figure out what’s causing the inversion so we can stop it at the source instead of playing defense.”
“I might be able to help with that.” Delphine pulled a leather-bound journal from her bag. “After Maman called, I went to the Archive before coming to you. Found this in the restricted collection—Lacroix family records from the 1780s. It mentions mirror networks and containment protocols that used geometric anchoring.”
