18. Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
By the following week, caution has become routine. A camera sits in Jasmine's palm when I come through her door, a black square as small as a cufflink.
"It was in the smoke detector," she says. "It wouldn't sit right when I changed the battery. How long has it been watching me?"
"I can't be sure yet."
"You mean it wasn't you?"
"No."
"Then dig until it bleeds" She holds it out, steady. "It pointed at my bed, Sebastian?"
The lens is still warm when I touch it. "You called me before anyone else?"
"Yes, because you'll tell me the truth." Her eyes don't avoid mine.
Gid comes through behind me, Elias a step after, already drawing a scanner from his coat. "Window frames," Elias says quietly. "Then the vents."
"I want everything you find. Every wire. Every dirty little tooth." I say.
They work the rooms while I stand with her in the kitchen, and I leave my fingers loose, harmless by performance only. Elias lifts two more from the bookshelf and the bathroom mirror. Gid finds nothing in the bedroom, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.
"Sebastian." Elias is at the counter, a pill bottle in his gloved hand.
Tylenol. He tips one tablet onto a square of cloth and crushes it.
The powder beneath is faintly purple. "These aren't hers.
Coating's right. Stamp's wrong." He turns it to the light.
"Something to drop her. Blood pressure, motor control.
She takes two for a headache, she's unconscious in twenty and can't call out. "
Jasmine's face empties of movement. "I took one Tuesday."
"That means Tuesday's bottle was clean. This was swapped after."
"After what?" Her voice holds. "Someone was in my bathroom. Touching the things I put in my mouth."
"Yes," I say. There is no point softening it.
"Come stay with me," I make the request behave. "Tonight. Until I close this."
"And if I wanted to stay here with your people on the door instead?"
"Then I'd try to talk you out of it." A breath. "But I'd allow it."
Her attention drops to the crushed tablet like it has teeth. "Okay." She lifts her own bag before Gid can reach for it. "I'll pack."
At the house the quiet is a lie, and all four of us know it. Jasmine goes upstairs to change. Gid sets two men on the grounds. Elias pulls her building's feeds up and frowns at something he doesn't say aloud.
My phone lights. Millie.
Two of Dain's people near the building in the last hour. Gone now. Watch yourself, Bash.
I'm typing back when Jasmine screams. I'm up the stairs before the sound finishes — too fast. She's against the far wall, pointing.
"Outside," she says. "There was someone outside."
The window is four stories up. The latch is turned halfway. Four smear marks the outside of the pane — fingertips, dragged down. Beyond them, only dark and the long drop.
"He wasn't standing on anything," she says. "He was just there, working the lock. When I screamed, he went up. Not down. Up."
"You're safe. Come, you are safest not leaving my side. Not in this house, not anywhere. I need you where I can reach you."
"Reach me," she repeats.
"At all times."
"Sebastian."
"Jasmine, I need you alive. Your pulse matters more to me than your approval."
Her face changes. Not fear. Worse. Recognition.
Gid appears, silent. Elias behind him, phone already at his ear. Neither of them speaks.
Jasmine lowers her hand from the wall. "Listen to what you just said."
"They put poison in your medicine."
"And someone came to my window. I know. I was here." Her voice fractures once, then steadies.
She glances toward Gid and Elias, then fixes on me. The room tightens.
I turn to Elias. "Camera supplier. Pharmacy access. Rooftop route. Whoever carried her address out of our files."
"Understood," Elias says.
"Sebastian," Jasmine says.
I face her again.
"That sounds like a war," she says. "What happens to me while this goes on?"
The honest answer is ugly. I give it to her anyway. "You stay here tonight. Not hidden. Not locked away. Here, where I can defend the walls myself."
"And tomorrow?"
"We'll see."
She studies that. Not satisfied. Not softened. But still here.
"Good," she says. "Because if you start deciding past tomorrow without me, Cyrus won't have to break us. You'll do the job for him."
Gid's eyes move to mine, sharp and quiet. I don't say anything, he can do as I say.
"Seal the grounds," I say. "Then find me the hand that touched her medicine."
We do not wait for dawn. Elias has the first piece of information in twelve minutes. "Camera shell was bought through a clean vendor."
"Name."
"Not yet. But the delivery route crossed one of Dain's couriers."
Gid looks toward the staircase, where Jasmine has refused to go back to sleep and sits on the third step in my shirt, barefoot, angry, and listening.
"Say it properly," she says.
Elias does. "Someone used a Dain courier line to put the camera where you sleep."
"And the pills?"
"Pharmacy footage was wiped," Gid says. "Whoever swapped the bottle found a way to access the building, and the service stairs."
Her fingers tighten around the banister. "So this wasn't a scare."
"No," I say. "It was a rehearsal."
I set my palm on the wall, and it parts, revealing the network. Jasmine watches it part, shock in her eyes from not knowing it was there.
"Sebastian," Gid says.
"Trace all the couriers from the last seventy-two hours. Flag the pharmacy wipe as a regulatory breach. Any clan shelter that was involved loses power, access, and pure silence tonight."
Elias goes still. "That goes beyond Dain. Some of those shelters are neutral."
"Neutral ended when people tried to harm her."
Jasmine rises one step. "What does that mean?"
"It means old houses have places the city doesn't see. Rooms without leases. Roofs without owners. Doors that open for the right blood." I focus on the console. "One of them let someone get close."
"And you're going to expose them?"
"Not to humans. To each other."
Gid curses quietly. "That is still exposure."
"It is consequence."
"No," he says. Not loud. "It is you telling every clan in New York that the network has a God."
I send the command anyway. The first shelter goes dark in Harlem. The second loses its access tunnel under a clinic with no public name.
Jasmine watches the screen, colorless now. "You can do all that from here."
"Yes."
"Then they were right to be afraid of you."
I ignore her comment. Gid's phone sounds before sunrise. Once. Then again. By the third call, he stops rejecting them.
"Gregory's office wants to know why three protected routes just went blind," he says.
"Tell them to ask Dain why they were open."
"Adriana's people have withdrawn their cooperation from the courier trace."
"Expected."
"Two families who'd have given Elias names yesterday are suddenly remembering old protocol."
"Let them remember."
Then he turns the phone toward me. Cyrus has sent no threat. He has done something smarter.
An old system survives by restraint. A broken one spends secrecy on appetite. Tonight, protected routes were burned, neutral doors punished, and ancient agreements damaged because one human woman was frightened. Ask yourselves who governs the network now. Ask what governs him.
No name. No accusation. No blood. Just a blade dressed as principle. Jasmine reads it from the stairs.
"He's talking about me," she says.
"No, he's insinuating things about me."
"No. He's using me to talk about you." She descends the last step. "And you're letting him, because you're angry."
Gid says nothing. He doesn't need to. His silence has teeth.
I close Cyrus' message. "He put a camera in your bedroom."
"He tried to poison me," she says. "I know. I was there for the horror show." Her voice thins, then firms again. "But if every answer you give tells them I'm the lever, they'll keep pulling."
Elias' phone lights. He reads, and his expression empties.
"What?" I ask.
"The handler is dead. Ash already. Someone reached him before we did."
Cyrus cleaning his own board. Jasmine glances at the morning sun.
"So the next one won't be a camera," she says.
"No."
"And it won't be pills."
"No."
She faces me again, steady in a way that makes fear useless. My instincts pull, put walls around her until nothing in New York can touch her.
Outside, the day opens over a house that already failed to leave her untouched. Cyrus has lost a handler, three routes, and the comfort of believing I will answer violence with manners.
But he has gained the only map he needs. He knows where I stop being careful.