Chapter 4 #2
She stood with him, watching as he opened the pouch. Inside was silver powder, ground fine enough to dissolve on contact with water. He pinched a measure between thumb and forefinger and scattered it across the river’s surface.
The powder floated for three seconds. Then it began to glow—pale blue, the color of winter ice. The glow spread where the particles clustered, forming patterns that shifted and reformed too quickly to follow individual shapes. Geometric configurations that looked almost intentional.
“What are you doing?” Roxy asked.
“Testing for resonance. Silver reacts to the boundary between here and the Elsewhere. When that boundary thins, you get this.” He gestured at the glowing patterns. “The stronger the glow, the worse the contamination.”
The powder blazed brighter.
“That’s bad,” Roxy said.
“That’s very bad.” He stood and brushed his hands clean. The silver residue clung to his fingers, still glowing faint blue. “Same signature as the mirror shard from the auction house. The contamination’s spreading,” he muttered to himself.
Roxy crossed her arms. “How far?”
“Your pack’s catching it. That’s far enough.” He gestured toward the river. “Mirror Fever doesn’t travel through air or water. It spreads through any surface that can hold an image. This is one of the biggest in the city.”
“So every shifter who’s looked at the water—”
“Is at risk.” Bastien turned his back to the river and scanned the opposite bank. Lights from the Quarter glittered in the distance, doubled and tripled below. “How many in your pack?”
“Forty-three.”
“Quarantine everyone who’s shown symptoms. No mirrors, no windows, no standing water. Rooms with matte walls if you can manage it.”
Roxy’s arms stayed crossed. “You’re talking about caging them.”
“I’m talking about keeping them alive.” He met her eyes. “Mirror Fever moves in stages. First the reflections go wrong. Then the victim starts seeing themselves in places they’ve never been. Eventually they step through—into the Elsewhere—and they don’t come back.”
“Step through where?”
“The Shadowglass Mirror.”
Roxy said nothing for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped lower. “The pack elders told stories about that thing. I thought it was just a cautionary tale to get us to eat our vegetables and whatnot.”
Bastien tried to grin at the light joke, but the situation was serious.
“It was real. The Lacroix family owned it until it cracked during a summoning in 1847. The Archives sealed the fragments.” Bastien looked back at the water.
“Someone broke the seals.” Some of this was fact he’d surmised from the things he and Delphine had learned, but some was just now starting to add up as he talked it out and speculated how the things they knew fell into place.
“And you think it’s your fault.”
He didn’t answer, nor did he look at her. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
Footsteps approached from behind—lighter than Roxy’s, quicker. A third person coming up the levee access at a jog. Bastien turned.
Lark Rousseau emerged from the morning shadows wearing running shoes and a windbreaker.
Early twenties, built lean and angular, with black hair that fell past their jaw and dark eyes that registered everything in a single sweep.
They ran pack security—perimeter checks, intelligence gathering, the kind of work that required noticing details before details became problems.
They stopped three paces from Roxy and nodded to Bastien. Professional acknowledgment, nothing more. Lark didn’t waste energy on social pleasantries when information needed sharing.
“The wolves aren’t the only ones noticing,” Lark said.
No preamble. Just facts. “Vampires in the Marigny are asking questions. Three different covens have contacted brokers about buying mirror wards. Fae markets in Mid-City have tripled their protective charm inventory since Sunday. Everyone’s spooked, but no one’s saying why exactly. ”
Information spreading without coordination meant people were noticing independently. Which meant the contamination was visible enough to frighten anyone paying attention. “How long before it becomes public knowledge?”
“Days.” Lark pulled a phone from their pocket and showed him a screenshot—a local message board discussing “weird mirror glitches” in the Quarter. Thirty-seven replies. Posted four hours ago. “Maybe less. People are already comparing notes online.”
“Can you track who’s talking?”
“I can try. But suppressing this is going to be like suppressing sunrise.” Lark pocketed the phone. “Whatever you’re doing to fix it, you need to do it faster.”
“I’m aware.”
Roxy shifted her weight. “Other factions are talking, Bastien. The vampires in the Garden District say you’ve been asking questions about the auction.
The witches on Rampart Street say you took something from the scene.
People are starting to wonder if you summoned this thing instead of trying to stop it. ”
“Let them wonder.”
“That’s not good enough.” Her voice dropped. “If the pack decides you’re a threat, they’ll handle you the way they handle all threats. I’m here because I don’t think you’re the enemy. But you need to give me something to take back to them.”
Bastien knew the threat was empty as much as Roxy did.
The wolves—even all of them—couldn’t take on Bastien.
His fall may have diminished some of his resonance, but his power was vast and far reaching.
The wolves were no strangers to Bastien’s nature.
“Tell your Alpha to call if the symptoms get worse. I’ll come. ”
“What are you going to do?”
“Seal the breach before the next full moon.”
“That’s four weeks.”
“I know.” He held her gaze. “I’ll handle it.”
Roxy studied him—weighing, measuring. Finally she nodded.
She turned back toward the road. Lark fell into step beside her, phone already out, scrolling through data. Their footsteps faded across the levee. Voices carried back—Roxy giving instructions, Lark responding with coordinates. Pack business. Efficient and contained.
Bastien waited until he couldn’t hear them anymore.
Then he pulled a glass vial from his other pocket and crouched at the water’s edge.
The Mississippi moved past, brown and thick with sediment.
He uncapped the vial and dipped it below the surface.
Water flowed in, carrying river smell and something else underneath it.
Something that tasted metallic when he breathed through his mouth.
He capped the vial and held it up to morning light.
The water inside swirled with particles too small to identify.
But when he focused, using his celestial sight—that secondary way of seeing that revealed resonance and power—the water glowed faint blue.
Same color as the silver powder. Same signature.
The contamination had seeped into the river itself.
He pocketed the vial and walked south along the levee. Morning traffic picked up behind him on the bridge. The city was waking up. People heading to work, starting their days, living normal lives in a city whose mirrors were learning to lie.
He stopped every twenty paces to check his reflection in the water. Most times it matched him perfectly. But twice—just twice—it lagged half a second behind his movements. And once, when he raised his hand to check his watch, his reflection raised the wrong hand.
Left instead of right. Mirror image becoming something other than reflection.
Bastien cataloged the locations in his mental map. Three points of severe contamination within a hundred yards of bank. The pattern suggested concentration—something below the surface anchoring the effect, drawing power and amplifying it through proximity to water.
He needed more information. The auction house shard.
Gideon’s notes. Charlotte’s network diagrams. Everything connected, but he couldn’t see the shape yet.
Couldn’t identify the mechanism that would let him sever the links before the next full moon rose and three werewolves tried to transform while their reflections lived independently.
His phone buzzed. Text message. He pulled it out.
Delphine: Found something in the Lacroix family inventory. Cross-referenced with city records. Can we talk?
He looked at the message for longer than necessary. She’d been digging into Charlotte’s family since he visited the Archive. Whatever she’d found was probably relevant. Possibly critical.
But bringing her deeper into this meant exposing her to more danger. The mirrors already knew her face. Letting them know she was actively investigating might draw attention he couldn’t deflect.
Bastien: Working a case. Can it wait until tonight?
Delphine: You’re avoiding me. I don’t need protection.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard. She wasn’t wrong.
He’d been avoiding her—keeping distance, scheduling work around her Archive hours, making excuses when she suggested coffee or lunch or any of the dozen small interactions they’d fallen into over the past months.
Not because he wanted to. Because every hour spent near her while this was going on unresolved felt like gambling with her safety.
Delphine: Whatever you’re protecting me from, I can help. I know you know that.
He stared at the words. She was right about that too. Delphine was capable, intelligent, resourceful. She’d proven that multiple times. But capability didn’t insulate her against mirror contamination. Neither did intelligence.
He didn’t answer. Just pocketed the phone and turned back toward his car. She’d forgive him later. Or she wouldn’t. Either way, she’d be alive to make that choice and her safety was the most important thing to him of all.
At the base of the Crescent City Connection, he stopped.
His reflection stared up at him from the water—coat, dark hair, pale face. Nothing unusual.
Then it blinked.
Bastien didn’t move. His reflection smiled.
The image split down the middle like a curtain parting. For a second, he saw something behind it—another version of himself standing in a room full of broken mirrors. The other Bastien raised one hand, palm out, pressing against glass that wasn’t there.
The reflection reformed. Normal. Whole.
Bastien stepped back from the edge. The fog thickened behind him as he turned toward the city.
Behind him, in the water, his reflection stayed at the river’s edge. He knew without looking back—could feel it the way he felt eyes on him in a crowd. The image held its position, staring after him while he walked twenty paces, then thirty.
It didn’t follow.