"When power moves, it leaves reflections rather than footprints."
The message on the burner phone kept pulsing all morning. I didn't answer it until the third vibration, when I was certain I was alone.
Meet where glass becomes water. Noon.
The phrase was one only my family used. I took the coastal tram to the museum district, where the old aquarium's curved façade still caught the light like a ripple. Inside, beneath tanks of slow-moving fish, a woman waited. Her hair was silver though her face was young; her suit, gray, unremarkable.
"You shouldn't have come here," I said.
"I was already here," she replied. "My name is Selene. Your mother sent me."
I hadn't spoken to my mother in years, but the name struck like a hidden chord. Selene handed me a card—a thin strip of black glass etched with coordinates. "We've traced Cassian's private accounts. They fed money into an entertainment trust registered under a foundation in your husband's name. A foundation that never existed before his death."
"So they used him as a screen."
She nodded. "And they think you're grieving too deeply to notice."
Outside the glass, a shark drifted past us, its shadow crossing her face like a veil. "There's something else," she added. "One of the signatures belongs to an old partner of your family. We're cleaning it quietly, but it will draw attention."
I watched the shark circle again. "Let them notice," I said.
Selene smiled faintly. "The Council will back you, Maya. But they prefer subtlety."
"Subtlety," I echoed, "is my native language."
We left separately. On the tram back to the city, I scrolled through the files Selene had transferred: photos, coded emails, invoices written in euphemisms. Every document smelled of Elias—his handwriting used to annotate budgets, his initials in the margins of forged letters. Someone had used his kindness as camouflage.
That evening I walked to the studio where he had recorded his last album. The building was closed, the glass doors reflecting the city's neon arteries. Through the reflection, I saw a figure behind me—a man, tall, hat pulled low. I didn't turn.
"I know what you're doing," he said. His voice was smooth, a practiced actor's tone. "Walk away. Valmere eats its ghosts."
I answered without looking. "Then let it choke."
He vanished into the blur of traffic lights. Only his cologne remained, the same scent Elias used to wear when performing. It made the night feel like an echo of itself.
When I reached home, a package waited at the door: a small glass cube containing a single gold coin—the twin of the one I'd used in the Whisper Market. No note, just the coin resting on velvet.
I turned it over. Scratched into its surface was one word: Continue.