Delphine:I’m heading to the shop. Meet me there.
Bastien:On my way. Don’t touch any mirrors.
Delphine:Why would I touch mirrors?
Bastien: Just don’t.
He pocketed the phone and started walking. His boots splashed through standing water, each puddle a reminder of what he’d lost. The Quarter was waking around him—shopkeepers sweeping water away from their doorsteps, tourists emerging tentatively to assess storm damage, the smell of coffee and wet stone mixing in air that felt scrubbed clean.
Three blocks to Maman’s shop. He walked faster than his exhaustion wanted, driven by the need to see Delphine’s face when she looked at him. To know if she could sense what had shifted, or if the change was invisible to everyone except reflective surfaces.
The shop’s door was propped open when he arrived, morning light spilling across the threshold. Delphine stood just inside, her back to the street, studying something on the counter. She turned when his shadow fell across the doorway.
“There you are.” Relief and irritation mixed in her voice. “I was about to send out a search party.”
He stepped inside. Maman Brigitte sat behind the counter in her usual chair, a cup of tea steaming at her elbow. Her eyes found him immediately, traveled from his face down to his mud-streaked boots and back up again.
She saw it. He watched recognition move across her features—subtle tightening around her eyes, the way her fingers stilled against her teacup.
Delphine saw none of that. She crossed to him, her hand lifting toward his jacket. “You’re soaked. What happened? Your note said you were checking on Maman, but clearly you went somewhere else first.”
“The vault.” No point lying now. “The storm created flood conditions in the tunnels. I needed to stabilize the last anchor point before the water reached street level.”
“You went into flooded tunnels during a hurricane. Alone.” Her voice stayed level, but anger threaded through the words. “That was monumentally irresponsible, Bastien.”
“It was necessary.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive categories.”
Maman set her teacup down with a soft clink. “Come here, petit ange.”
He moved toward the counter. Delphine followed, staying close enough that he could feel her frustration radiating.
Maman stood. She was shorter than him by nearly a foot, but when she stepped around the counter and looked up at his face, he felt examined by something older than the city around them.
“Let me see your hands.”
He held them out. She turned them palm-up, studied the cuts from where he’d braced against limestone walls, the faint burn marks from channeling too much energy through sigils. Thenshe reached up and pressed two fingers against his sternum, just above his heart.
Energy pulsed. Brief and searching.
She exhaled slowly. “Oh, mon cœur. What did you do?”
“I integrated the network. Collapsed the lattice around a new anchor signature.” He kept his voice neutral, reporting facts. “It stabilized. The mirrors are no longer pulling energy from volatile sources.”
“And you became invisible to them.”
Delphine’s head turned sharply. “What?”
Maman’s fingers remained against his chest, reading something in his energy that required physical contact to interpret. “He’s woven into the foundation now. The network can’t observe what it contains.” She dropped her hand and met his eyes. “You can’t see yourself anymore, can you? Not in any reflective surface.”
“No.”
The word landed in the shop with weight.
Delphine stepped around to face him directly. Her expression had shifted from anger to something more complex—concern mixed with dawning understanding. “Your reflection is gone?”
“Completely.”
