Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Bastien found Delphine in the Archive’s reading room, three ledgers spread across the table and a cold coffee at her elbow.
She looked up when he entered, and her smile carried equal parts welcome and accusation. “The case that stole our dinner plans.”
“Rain check?” He set his notebook on the table beside her research materials.
“You owe me beignets now. The price went up.” She pushed one of the ledgers toward him with a smile. “I pulled these when you texted. More Lacroix family records, 1755 to 1790. You said you were looking for mirrors?”
“Anything connected to Charlotte Lacroix specifically and yes, mirrors.” He sat next to her, close enough to read the same pages. “An incident at the auction house keeps circling back to something in her work.”
Delphine’s expression shifted from teasing to focused interest—the expression she got when a research puzzle caught her attention.
She pulled the middle ledger closer and flipped to a marked page.
“I found a reference this morning. Estate liquidation, 1764. Listed a mirror with ‘peculiar properties unsuited to normal household display.’ Those aren’t standard inventory terms.”
Bastien leaned over to read the entry. The handwriting was eighteenth-century copperplate, dense and formal, but the language Delphine had flagged stood out.
Item offered 3 September 1764. Estate of Charlotte Marie Lacroix, deceased.
One mirror of exceptional manufacture, approximately three feet in height, framed in silvered wood bearing the Lacroix family crest. Properties noted by executor as ‘peculiar’ and ‘unsuited to normal household display.’ Mirror reflects with unusual clarity but is said to show truth rather than mere appearance.
Purchaser: Anonymous representative of the Archdiocese. Price: Fifty livres.
“Fifty livres.” Delphine tapped the figure. “That’s furniture money. Quality furniture. Nobody spends that on a mirror unless it’s . . .” She looked up at him. “You think this is connected to your case.”
“The Archdiocese buying occult items isn’t standard practice.”
“No, but they confiscated them regularly. Especially mirrors used for divination.” She pulled the ledger closer, her fingers tracing the margin notes. “There’s more. See this?” She pointed to faded ink barely visible along the edge. “Someone added a notation later. Can you make it out?”
Bastien tilted the page toward the lamp. The writing was smaller, cramped, added decades after the original entry. “Shadowglass. Sealed per Bishop’s order, 1791.”
“Shadowglass.” Delphine repeated the word slowly, testing its weight. “I’ve never seen that term in any of the other estate records. What does it mean?”
He wanted to deflect, but her eyes held the particular focus that meant she’d already started building theories. Delphine was too good at her work to feed comfortable lies. “It’s a type of mirror that reflects more than physical appearance. Allegedly shows what someone tries to hide.”
“Soul mirrors.” She sat back, expression shifting from curiosity to concern. “I’ve read references in grimoires. They were supposed to reveal truth—the kind of truth people build their entire lives avoiding.” She met his gaze. “That’s dangerous.”
“Very.”
“And someone brought one to auction last week.” Not a question.
Bastien didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
Delphine exhaled slowly, then reached for the second ledger without breaking eye contact.
“Then we need to find everything the Archive has on Charlotte Lacroix. Because if she owned one of these mirrors, she probably documented how it worked.” Delphine already knew Charlotte was an ancestor of hers and was “special” but they’d silently agreed to continue researching without bringing up the connection.
They worked in comfortable silence, an amenity from spending enough time together to not need constant conversation.
Delphine found connections he might have overlooked—a property transfer here, a business partnership there.
She had an archivist’s instinct for patterns, seeing how information scattered across decades might connect.
Bastien provided context she couldn’t access through documents alone.
When she found a reference to “celestial motifs” on a commissioned mirror frame, he explained how those symbols appeared in divination practices.
When she questioned why the Church would pay premium prices, he walked her through ecclesiastical politics without making it sound like a lecture.
All the while, Bastien watched out of the corner of his eye any reflective surfaces, and how reflections lagged by moments only he could detect but were certainly present.
She reached across the table for a third ledger, her hand passing over the Lacroix family crest embossed on the leather cover.
The green-shaded lamp steadied, its usual flicker smoothing into constant light.
In the glass surface of a nearby display case, their reflections sharpened—movements synchronizing perfectly where Bastien had recognized they’d been slightly delayed before.
Delphine didn’t notice. She was absorbed in a property inventory from 1773, tracking mirror purchases through the Lacroix household accounts, most of which were ordinary household mirrors.
Bastien noticed. The contamination spreading through the city’s reflective surfaces had calmed in her immediate vicinity, settling into normal function.
Not magic exactly, but something in her presence stabilized what had been corrupted.
He’d suspected it since the auction house, but seeing it here, watching glass remember how to reflect honestly while she worked—
“Here.” Delphine pointed to an entry. “Another mirror. ‘Newly commissioned, celestial designed frame, twenty livres.’ That’s six months before Charlotte’s death.” She looked up. “She was collecting them. Building a set, maybe?”
“Or experimenting.” He kept his voice neutral. “Testing different configurations.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She studied him with an expression that meant she knew he was holding back but had decided—for now—not to push. “You’re buying me more than beignets at this rate. I’m thinking Commander’s Palace.”
“Ambitious.”
“I found you mirrors in eighteenth-century estate records. I’m worth it.” She smiled, brief and warm, and Bastien had to look away. His desire to pull her into his arms like he had in other lives washed over him.
His hand reached for the same ledger she was closing. Their fingers brushed—brief contact, nothing deliberate. Delphine stilled, and for three heartbeats neither of them moved.
Then she pulled back, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in the gesture she always used when trying to look composed. “I should pull the correspondence files. If Charlotte was documenting her mirror work, she might have written about it.”
“I’ll photograph these entries.” Bastien withdrew his phone, grateful for the excuse to focus on something other than the warmth still radiating from where they’d touched.
“Ten minutes.” Delphine stood, gathering the ledgers with movements that suggested someone buying time to steady themselves. “The older files are in the climate vault.”
She left the reading room, and the lamp resumed its faint flicker. The reflection in the display case lagged again, just slightly out of sync.
Bastien photographed what he knew as the Shadowglass entry from three angles, then added notes to his documentation.
Location, date, description, Church involvement.
The same methodical record-keeping that felt inadequate against what he’d just confirmed.
Delphine didn’t just correlate with stability in the mirror network.
She generated it. Her presence normalized what Gideon’s work had corrupted.
The question was . . . could Gideon see that? Did he know?
Delphine returned with two more ledgers and a folder of loose correspondence. “I found letters. Personal ones, not business records.” She set them down gently. “Charlotte Lacroix’s private papers. The Archive acquired them in the 1960s from an estate sale.”
“Have you read them?”
“Skimmed. Most are social correspondence—dinner invitations, condolences, that sort of thing. But there are three letters that reference ‘the work’ in ways that seem deliberate. Coded, almost.” She opened the folder. “I marked them.”
They read together, Delphine pointing out phrasing that struck her as unusual, Bastien recognizing techniques Charlotte had used to discuss her research without being explicit.
One letter mentioned “preparations for extended observation.” Another referenced “acquiring the necessary instruments for clarity.”
“She was systematic,” Delphine said. “Whatever she was doing with these mirrors, she approached it like an experiment. Controlled conditions, documented results. She was like a true scientist in a way.”
“That matches everything else we’re finding.”
“So where’s her documentation?” Delphine looked up from the letter. “If she was this methodical, she kept records. Detailed ones. But I’ve yet to find them in the Archive.”
“The Church bought the mirror and sealed it. They might have taken her papers too.”
“Three years after her death?” Delphine frowned. “That’s odd timing. Unless . . .” She pulled the first ledger back, checking the dates. “Unless they didn’t know about the mirror’s properties until later. Maybe someone found her documentation and brought it to the Bishop’s attention.”
Bastien watched her build the theory, each logical step following the previous one. She had good instincts—better than most researchers with twice her experience. “That would explain the delayed sealing.”
“It would also mean her papers might still exist somewhere in Church archives.” Delphine’s expression shifted from theoretical to determined. “I have contacts at the Archdiocese. I could ask about historical acquisitions from that period.”
“Carefully.”
“I’m always careful.” She met his eyes and paused. “You think there’s danger here. Real danger, not just academic interest.”
He could lie. Should lie, probably. But Delphine was already involved, already asking the right questions. “The mirror that showed up at auction last week wasn’t a coincidence. Someone wanted it found. Someone who understands what it can do.”
“What exactly can it do?” she asked. No emotion, no expectation, just a simple question.
Bastien studied her lips as he contemplated what to tell her. Maman’s voice rang in his head. He did need to be forthcoming. The pause he took was longer than comfortable.
“You can explain it later. When you feed me.” She smiled.
Resigned and relived, Bastien replied, “I think that’s fair.”
“So, you’re trying to stop the person who wants this glass.”
“I’m trying to understand what they’re after first.”
She nodded slowly, processing. Then she replied, “I’m helping.”
“Delphine—”
“You came to me for Archive access. You’re getting Archive access.
Plus institutional knowledge, pattern recognition, and contacts you don’t have.
” She smiled, but her eyes held steel. “And before you start with the ‘it’s too dangerous’ speech, remember I watched you walk into a burning building last month and come back out with not a burn to be found. I know what your work involves.”
Bastien wanted to argue. Every protective instinct demanded he find a way to keep her out of this. But she was right—she’d seen enough already to know the risks. More than that, she’d chosen to help anyway, more than once.
“Coffee first,” he said. “Before we start poking through Church archives.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Asking. Definitely asking.”
Her smile warmed. “Then yes. And you’re buying, since you canceled dinner.”
“I thought beignets covered that.”
“Beignets are separate. That’s the ‘you made me work on my day off’ fee.”
“Extortion.”
“Competitive pricing.” She started gathering the ledgers. “Give me twenty minutes to file these and close up. There’s a place on Decatur that makes decent espresso.”
Bastien helped her stack the volumes, their movements coordinated as though they’d done it a thousand times.
While they had spent enough time working together over the past months that collaboration felt natural, her organizational system meshing with his research process without needing constant negotiation, the synchronicity of their actions was far more than that.
The fact Bastien had spent two lifetimes with her, or at least her soul.
Their bond, the soul tether, applied to even the most mundane activities like filing away books, a fact that made Bastien grin.
When they reached for the last ledger simultaneously, their hands met on the leather binding. Neither pulled away immediately. Delphine’s fingers were warm against his. Distant footsteps, the hum of climate control, pages turning somewhere in the stacks—he stopped tracking any of it.
She looked up, and whatever she saw in his expression made her still.
Then someone dropped a book on the floor two rooms over, and the moment broke.
Delphine pulled back first, smoothing her hair in a habitual gesture. “Twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the front.”
“I’ll be there.”
She left with the ledgers, and Bastien stood alone in the reading room. The lamp flickered. In the display case’s glass, his reflection moved slightly out of sync again.
He’d learned one thing clearly today. Delphine stabilized the contamination. Her presence normalized what should have been corrupted. Which made her the key to understanding how to contain what Gideon had started.
It also made her the most valuable target in the city.
Coffee, he decided, would have to include a conversation about staying away from mirrors and a crash course in Shadowglass. Knowing Delphine, she’d ask all the questions he wasn’t ready to answer yet.