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There were exactly seven mirrors in La Squadra de Esecuzione's hideout.
Illuso knew them all like the back of his hand.
Hard to expect anything less from a man with the power to enter them, of course. Considering the time he'd spent in the reflected analogue of the place, he was quite confident he'd be able to navigate either the real or mirror versions blindfolded. Maybe even walking backwards for good measure, too.
The first mirror he'd discovered had been before he'd even learnt to enter them. In fact it had been his first time stepping through the threshold of the hideout altogether. And that, unsurprisingly, was the main bathroom's mirror.
Every fullsize bathroom has a mirror, of course. Illuso had been in a big bathroom without a mirror before, and regardless of their presence removing some tension from his mind, a big bathroom without a mirror just seemed so wrong. There should be a reflective surface somewhere, be it above the sink, on the front of a raised cabinet, or god forbid, one of those weird scissor-like wall extensions for old people to shower with.
A bathroom without a mirror would feel like an eerie, incorrect space to anyone, he reasoned. So it was only natural that the main bathroom had one. It was a wide, frameless example, set above the sink as is common practice, and filling the space between the porcelain below and the white-painted wood of overhead cabinets above. It was only too easy to fit two, maybe three people's reflections quite comfortably within it - provided the bathroom was being shared by that many people.
Which, sometimes, it was. Usually in the mornings or evenings when several of them were getting up or going to bed at the same time. The sink was mercifully large enough for more than one of them to brush their teeth at the same time, but if someone had to use the toilet or the shower then everyone else got rightfully kicked out and the door shut. And locked too usually, after Melone had tactlessly walked in without a second thought one too many times.
Still, Illuso had been familiar with that mirror since the day he'd walked in, naturally. He knew its hard, clean edges well - not surgically precise, but stiff and prim enough for something as practical and standard as a bathroom mirror. He'd leant out of it plenty of times to grab his toothbrush or a hand towel or something similar, and felt the solidity of the tiled wall surrounding it poke between his ribs. He'd yet to actually pass fully through it - clambering over a sink on both sides was not very practical - but he felt comfortable and confident in that mirror.
The second mirror was in the entrance corridor. He was a little less familiar with that one. It was mounted high on the cream-coloured wall, and was perfectly circular, a beady reflective eye that carefully considered anyone who traversed the corridor. Brass arms branched out from the frame like arms, creating a sun-like appearance, each of the twenty-three appendages - Iluso had counted them - ending in another dull brass circle, like the beginnings of a peculiar fractal left wholly unfinished.
Formaggio had said it was a gift from Prosciutto's favourite aunt. Ghiaccio had insisted it was from Prosciutto's favourite grandmother. Iluso hadn't bothered to ask; that it was of some intrinsic value to Prosciutto was enough information to him - clearly not enough personal value that it would be hung in the man's bedroom, but enough that it made it to a wall nonetheless, if a second-rate one.
Prosciutto was quietly acknowledged as in charge of the mirror, of course. Illuso had very cautiously asked him if he could use it, worried that looking through it without the owner's permission would somehow damn his soul or something similarly cosmic. Prosciutto had said yes - it was a nice mirror, but not nice enough to be in his room - and Illuso had breathed like someone had turned his lungs into a vacuum for even daring to broach the subject.
It was a useful mirror nonetheless. Despite the height of its mounting, Illuso had found he could stand comfortably in the middle of the mirrored hallway, look up at the reflection, and have a perfect ricocheted view of the real dimension's front door.
And when you're a gaggle of assassins trying vaguely to keep your hideout under wraps, being able to see someone you let inside before they can see you is a valuable thing. A camera would have been far too conspicuous and out-of-place, but anyone who didn't know better thought much of a decorative mirror.
So in that respect Illuso was sort of their makeshift bouncer in a way. When he needed to be anyway. Passione business matters, be it of the blood variety or the more mundane paper ones, brought the occasional guest to their hideout and Risotto was only too glad to have a pair of hidden eyes on anyone entering long before they reached him and the central lounge.
Illuso would always remember the first time that had come in handy. He had only just asked Prosciutto for use of the mirror when Risotto had suggested he use it to watch a visitor due that afternoon. And, it turned out, that visitor had at least a full kilogramme of plastic explosive hidden under the back of his shirt he was presumably planning on throwing into the lounge and hightailing it out of there again.
He'd made it about as far as the end of the corridor before, with Illuso's warning, Risotto had stabbed his eyes out with their own blood content. It'd taken a lot of investigative work to find out how exactly he knew where he should take all that explosive, but with Sorbet and Gelato's skillsets in that area, it had been concluded without much fuss.
Also Mrs. Cannella, the old lady who lived next door, always came round once a week, knocked on the aforementioned front door in a peculiar personal pattern, and left something she'd no doubt cooked herself the day before on the doorstep. Illuso knew her knock perfectly in the echoey sound of the mirror dimension, and while the sun mirror was only thirty centimeters wide - far too small for his one-hundred-and-ninety-tall form to fit through - he'd gotten very, very adept at throwing Man in the Mirror straight through it for whatever goodies were right there. The only person who could hope to compete with him was Pesci, who had gotten similarly adept at punching Beach Boy's hook through every wall in the building straight to the front door. It had become a bit of a friendly competition in a way - even if Mrs Cannella always made plenty enough for all nine of them.
Now, the third mirror. Illuso didn't like this one nearly as much as the useful second and the stout first.
It was a little old hand mirror. Illuso didn't mind small mirrors - it was still plenty easy to manipulate things through them even if they weren't large enough for a proper passage. But this mirror was of particular annoyance for other reasons.
Hand mirrors are, of course, usually a bathroom or bedroom item. Perhaps a dressing room if one was so wealthily inclined. But this one? It was, in fact, outside - on the hideout's single balcony. Illuso had at first thought it would be useful - a way to see out, if quite small, to what was going on in the courtyard behind the place - but it had been totally useless.
For one, it had no way of standing up. Just the standard handle. Alright, manageable difficulty, he tried leaning it against something else. But that didn't work - the frame was glossy plastic, and it slid down everything he'd tried it against - plantpots, the chairs and table out there, the old chest of drawers it had been moved with at some point in time to serve as extra tablespace. Even the bars of the balcony railing served no use, and when Illuso had finally lost his patience and duct-taped it in place to the humiliating laughter of his coworkers, its sight had been obscured by the reinforcement anyway.
So he'd decided; sod it, the stupid thing could stay out there being useless. But, unfortunately, it had only proven itself even less than useless. First of all, air still existed in the mirror dimension, and was one of the few things that didn't need Illuso's explicit permission to traverse the gap between both dimensions. And this thing was outside.
So yes, he hated it because it let a draught through into the otherwise-still air of the mirror dimension. Petty reason perhaps, but nonetheless annoying.
It always seemed to be a cold draught too, frigid and chilling even in the summer months when every fan the nine of them could find was on full blast.
On top of that, one of said nine of them kept turning the damned thing to be reflective-side-up. Illuso hadn't worked out who it was yet - and had hesitated every time on asking around for fear of embarrassment over something so seemingly 'minor' - but they would get a solid punch in the jaw when he did.
And that was because something else it does outside is rain.
It doesn't rain in the mirror dimension.
Water, unlike air, for some reason gave Illuso the sensation of something passing into his space. The mirror dimension wasn't some universal alternative reality - it was a sustained dimension supported by Man in the Mirror's abilities, which in turn meant it was intrinsically linked to him and his existence.
Illuso enjoyed the rain. It was soft, calming, cleansing - and left a lovely smell in its wake.
Unless someone had turned that mirror over.
Then he'd wake in the dead of night, the only things he could sense being the pattering of raindrops on the roof and the sharply uncomfortable sensation of water running down the back of his neck and through the valley of his spine.
More than once he'd had to go out onto the balcony with a towel or shirt draped loosely over his head in the middle of a freezing late-Autumn downpour and turn the mirror over as rain and wind lashed at his totally-inadequate bedclothes.
If that happened one more time, he swore to god-
Anyway. That was why he hated mirror number three.
The fourth mirror was, unfortunately, similarly of little use, but much less actively irritating.
It was a big, fisheyed reversing mirror on the side of the building, installed with a commanding vantage of the small alley separating their hideout from Mrs. Cannella's house. It was there for any poor sod who drove his little Fiat, or worse yet, his big Mercedes or BMW into the narrow gap thinking it was a through-route to the much larger road on the other side of the rustic cafe that capped its end.
Fortunately whichever government contractor had presumably installed it had been an unintentionally thoughtful person, and the big orange plastic frame holding it onto the wall also had a smart little peaked visor over it - saving Illuso from similar rain-borne irritation as the third mirror in all but the poorest of weather.
But, granted, it was mounted high - far higher than the second sun mirror in the corridor - and its fisheye shape meant seeing anything in it until you were stood right below it, or as designed, your rear bumper was about to hit the wall, was quite a challenge. Illuso also had to be outside the building in the mirror dimension for it to be of any use with its convex shape.
However, that didn't mean it was totally useless. There was one particular time it had saved the day in fact.
It had been a lazy summer afternoon only a few months back. Some hooligan from one of the minor Naples gangs - that were so far below Passione their squad knew barely a thing of them day-to-day - had decided he would rob the cafe at the end of the alley, and when the poor young girl on the till had given him a dissatisfyingly small amount of euro, a close friend of Mrs. Cannella who had been just leaving the place too.
Illuso and Melone had been the only ones home that afternoon - the latter enjoying a nap on his favourite couch while the former was stretched out on the mirror of the same couch reading.
The unmistakable aggressive shouting and the clattering of something plastic or metal against cobblestones had Illuso up on his feet in moments, taking no time to leave the mirror dimension and bounding down the stairs a full four at a time. The screech of tyres pierced through the panicked voices just as Iluso flung the hideout's side door open.
Still in the mirror dimension and with the car and assailant in the real dimension, the movement of the vehicle in the reversing mirror snapped his eyes up to it just as it started to move away from where it was mounted.
Ford Escort Mk II. Sky blue, black wheels. Number plate was the old seventies type, white on black background with the province name in yellow - 'NAPOLI NA E48872'.
And then it was gone in a cloud of tyre smoke, the echoed sound of its racing engine and the fresh streaks of rubber burnt through into the cobblestones of the mirror dimension.
Risotto was furious. Illuso wasn't sure if he'd ever seen him so angry before or since. Especially when he'd been faced with the girl on the till crying and Mrs. Cannella's friend, in high spirits and angry for the perpetrator's head despite his broken arm sustained as he was knocked over.
Those details on the car the reversing mirror had given him made all the difference. He'd been out of the city five days later when Risotto and Formaggio had tracked down the sky-blue Ford Escort, but the detailed anecdote of a man shrunken to a size where his bones were easily snapped merely by a pinch of the finger and thumb left almost no detail to the imagination.
So perhaps mirror number four wasn't useless after all.
The fifth mirror was how he'd been laying on the couch that day, incidentally.
It was his primary point of mirror dimension access in the hideout and by far the mirror that had seen his reflected and real selves in its image the most.
Risotto had it added shortly after Illuso had joined the team, in tacit acknowledgement of his new stand abilities. Ghiaccio had complained it was an ugly and uncomfortable addition to the room, but he soon got used to it.
Illuso liked that mirror a lot. It was broad, tall, and had a crisp, clean refractive quality to its frameless form, attached to the wall with handsomely-capped steel bolts at each corner. Not to mention it was mounted to the wall in such a way that to enter it all he had to do was walk behind one of the couches and step right through.
It was especially useful when all nine of them were in the lounge at once - typically whenever Risotto had gathered them together for a meeting on one subject or another, or it was a Friday night and everyone was done giving a shit about their work for a few hours. It was utter simplicity for Illuso to admit the entry of any of the team for the extra seating space, rather than awkwardly stand about with nowhere to sit.
It also served a good use when Illuso wanted to be around the others without actively getting involved in whatever they were up to. For instance if Melone was playing some atrocious music of one type or another again, he could simply swap dimensions, close off the audial connection, and enjoy whatever music he wanted to while neither technically leaving the room or having to commit to headphones. Sometimes he'd bring Formaggio or Prosciutto across too - lack of appreciation for Melone's musical taste was something more than a little common amongst them.
It was also useful for when Ghiaccio had decided to blow his stack or there was a post-assignment piss-up going on. Everyone knew he was an introvert who appreciated his quiet and alone time, but he didn't need to disclose that he felt at home with the team right beside him for them to understand. Even if Ghiaccio's angry rants on trivial topics were something none of them particularly enjoyed.
The fifth mirror was like that. It was a thin, voluntarily-breachable portal between Illuso's own dimension under his explicit control and that of reality where everyone else dwelled until he allowed them in. It was the perfect balance between a degree of isolation necessary for his continued functioning, and the reality that good company meant a lot to him too and the others were part of his world - or worlds - as well.
The sixth mirror served a similar purpose but in a different manner. It was a tall, thin dressing mirror, mahogany-framed with a simple depressed edge, that stood smartly in the corner of Illuso's bedroom. He'd picked it himself not long after he had been blessed with his stand abilities, similar to the fifth - and rapidly found having access to the mirror dimension close at hand at all hours was a tool that made him feel vastly more comfortable in a space.
Bad dream? Dive headfirst out of bed through it, into the mirrored version of his bed, slam the entryway shut of sound, light, even smell if necessary - and appreciate the calming silence and stillness.
An argument with Prosciutto or Formaggio's idiot sense of humour too obnoxious to stand? Slide through and cool off practicing with his electric guitar for an hour or two.
Sorbet and Gelato thoroughly rattling eachother's bones at god-knows-what awful time in the morning on the other side of the wall? Drag himself through and escape out of the fifth mirror to the kitchen for coffee to help him not tear his own hair out.
It was a very handy mirror and one that not only did Iluso feel much more at ease to have in his presence, but also one that the others tacitly understood was a point of comfort and stability to him. That had been perhaps best exemplified when Formaggio, Melone, and Sorbet had thought it hilarious to rearrange every piece of furniture in his room - except that mirror, which stood pristine and untouched in its corner. It had pissed off and upset Illuso of course - as had been the intention; he liked his things exactly how they were - but they all seemed to understand that the mirror was not to be touched. Whether that was from practical experience - Illuso had strangled Ghiaccio in front of everyone for making a joke about him being vain and poor enough in self-confidence to need a full-length mirror in his bedroom - he didn't know. Maybe Risotto understood he was much more psychologically vulnerable that he projected and had made sure the others stayed in line. That was equally disconcerting to consider, being so overtly weak and malleable even amongst his friends.
Nonetheless, that mirror was his item of comfort, a beacon of stability. The permanent and everlasting gateway to a safe place, a window into his soul.
Not that he'd be inclined to use such descriptive language about it, but it did the trick.
The final, seventh mirror. Oh, the seventh mirror. That mirror.
Illuso did not tangle with that mirror. He knew it, but he did not touch it.
It was no fancy or artistic mirror by any means. It was plain. Flat, square, framed with featureless, smooth pine, varnished to a light bronze. No aesthetic presence at all. Meant solely to reflect the visage of the viewer in a polite but dreary manner.
It was set dead-straight on a segment of wall otherwise totally unoccupied, not a single other item set above, below, or directly beside it - repelling them all like some sort of terrifying creature. It served one single purpose, and it served it well with no trouble.
That mirror terrified Illuso.
Perhaps it was where it was hung.
For the blank white wall it was attached to was the back wall of Risotto's ensuite bathroom.
Now that might not seem like much. Sorbet and Gelato, Pesci and Prosciutto all shared two small ensuites of their own between them, cramped and mirrorless with only a toilet, shower, and sink installed.
But Risotto's was the full package. And that included that mirror.
Iluuso had precisely one experience with it.
It had been a quiet Thursday afternoon of otherwise no mention at all. A couple of them had been home and a couple had been out, as usual. Illuso had worked with Pesci and Prosciutto the previous day, giving the former support with his new stand on a simple assignment to bump off a low-ranker in Passione's Naples enforcement group who'd been credibly discovered stealing wine from a vineyard under the gang's protection. Prosciutto had been the one to actually despatch the man, but Pesci had done a remarkably resourceful job in preventing his escape after the mirror in his bedroom Illuso had planned to attack from had been accidentally knocked face-down to the floor.
Illuso had been writing a short report on what had transpired - simple records proved time and again very valuable for retroactive investigation work of Sorbet and Gelato's practice - when he realised he couldn't recall exactly what the group's pay for the work had been. Undoubtedly some pathetic amount considering what the boss had been sending their way recently, and the small-fry status of the target, but nonetheless he'd gotten an earful from Gelato two weeks prior, still clearly stamped in his memory, of how details like that could really matter.
So, he'd decided to talk to Risotto.
The report was being written in the mirror dimension of his bedroom - fortunately his abilities seemed to make text legible in both dimensions - as Melone had chosen some godawful music to put on in the lounge again. He was still there as Illuso passed by the fifth mirror; sat typing furiously on Baby Face's keyboard, as the stand's unblinking eyes followed Illuso across the mirror from beneath the keyboard.
Risotto had been in his room himself all morning. It was implicit that he was doing work of some sort as usual - being the coordinating capo of a team exclusively assigned to assassination meant there was a lot of management and communication to be done.
The oaken door was slightly ajar, but Illuso knocked in the interest of politeness. A few moments of silence heralded no response, so he pushed carefully inside.
Risotto wasn't anywhere to be seen. His desk was empty, but his chair was well-ajar, pen left atop a few spaced-out pages of printed text - he'd obviously just paused work.
The door to the ensuite bathroom was similarly ajar, and amber light shone from the inside - dropping the audial seal between dimensions, the flat hum of the bathroom's running extractor fan mixed with the strain of Melone's music filtering in from the lounge.
Risotto would shut the door if he was using the toilet, and the shower would be obviously noisy, so a few long strides took Illuso to the doorway and the door itself pushed open.
Unsurprisingly, there was Risotto. His back faced directly to the door, and he had a piece of floss between his fingers, tied around little sticks of the characteristic dull iron created by Metallica.
He had paused mid-flossing, his red irises looking into the mirror, out over his own shoulder, to Illuso present in the mirror dimension's reflection.
Before Illuso had put together a sentence to say, Risotto pulled the floss out from between his teeth and spoke flatly and clearly.
This is the first time you've done it, so I'll forgive you, he'd stated, but if you ever come into my bathroom uninvited again, you will regret it, Illuso.
His voice echoed in the mirror, connected between dimensions, Illuso's own name repeated over and over in the fading harshness of Risotto's low pitch tone.
Illuso stood still in place, unsure what to say, mouth suddenly locked shut tight and language processing centre filled with brainwave static.
Go, Risotto had interrupted the silence with, I'll talk to you later.
And that was that. Illuso's motor functions returned, his legs rotated him, and he was out of the bathroom and bedroom, into the corridor, and back to his own room.
He felt quite like a scolded child. Horrendously embarrassed and also angry because how was he supposed to know not to do that? An open bathroom door is distinctly a different message than a closed one.
He ultimately left the Payment gap empty on the sheet, more concerned with whatever Risotto was going to say to him later.
But later never came.
The next time he saw Risotto was a few hours later. He'd told him what the payment for the job had been, but nothing more. Illuso had been left stewing, wondering if he'd be talked-to in the evening.
But that didn't happen either. Then before he knew it those hours had stretched into a day. Then two. The three. Then before he could blink it was a week later, and he'd stewed enough that all the water had evaporated from his mental pot and he no longer dreaded what words might come because there never were any, just the normal talk about the usual things.
And still he would lay in bed at night, real or mirrored, and think about Risotto's face reflected in the seventh mirror.
Bathrooms were private places, but why was Risotto so strongly-opined that nobody intruded on his? Sure, nobody liked being walked in on, but he'd only been flossing his teeth. What was up?
No answer came. It had been six months ago now. Illuso had only seen the seventh mirror one more time since - peeking from inside the unlit ensuite when he'd gone to see Risotto in his room about other matters, the clean surface reflecting only the white block of light that the door let in, himself and Risotto distantly visible as black shapes within.
He'd resisted any drive to investigate the mirror dimension version of the ensuite. His curiosity always died when he thought of that seventh mirror looking back out at him, as if watching, as if daring him to try his luck and go looking inside.
But he never did. Risotto's business was not his business. And while the way he was so intimately connected to the other six mirrors in the hideout made it feel as though he had a fragmented seventh part of himself inserted directly into the middle of Risotto's intimate business - yet completely blind to whatever that business was - felt quite uncomfortable.
Still, he could survive on six shards out of seven.
Hopefully number seven would sit in situ, quiet, indefinitely.
Illuso knew all seven mirrors in La Squadra de Esecuzione's hideout like the back of his hand.
Just that the seventh was a game of feeling his hand, not seeing.