by Cate Corvin
His soft words were mesmerizing as I gazed into my own eyes, wide and gray and more than a little afraid. I felt for my inner self, the spirit full of wildfire, and pushed her towards the mirror.
Inner Lu struggled a little, but wanted to go. My spirit was excited to leave my body and wander free on the deadside.
My physical form didn’t move, but the mirror was hard, slick, cool under my hands. I pushed against it, straining to break past the barrier of life and death.
Sweat pearled on my forehead. My heart jumped, thrumming my chest. With a gasp, my spirit plunged back into my body, every inch of me shaking with effort.
“You might not be able to cross, Lucrezia,” Dominic said. “Not every witch can.”
“I can do it,” I growled, staring into my own eyes harder than ever. My reflected pupils expanded into black pools, swallowing me whole as I pushed against that cool membrane.
With a psychic pop, it opened for me.
My spirit climbed through the frame, feet planted on a dusty dresser top.
I jumped down, landing lightly on my feet in even more dust. It seemed almost like snow, piled in gray drifts, and if I’d thought the hidden corridor was rotting, it was nothing compared to the deadside.
On this side of the mirror, everything was shades of gray. The bedding was threadbare rags, barely holding together, and the middle of the mattress sagged like a dark hole of a nest.
Dominic climbed through the mirror and jumped to the ground. His rowan knives flashed in his hands, the polished warmth of the wood the only true color here.
“You made it through,” he said, almost incredulous, and pushed me behind him. “Grab hold of my coat if you must, but whatever you do, stay with me.”
“How do we find Josephine?” I pulled out her finger bones and the locket. The bones were strangely warm in my hand.
Dominic’s eyes flicked to the mortal remains cupped in my palm. “You summon her with that, and hope she’s not playing us for fools.”
My fingers clenched around the bones, and I thought as hard as I could about the Josephine Locke, the dark-haired girl in lace.
After several long minutes, she still hadn’t appeared. “Where is she?” I whispered, my resolution shaken for the first time. She’d guided me to her bones for a reason, hadn’t she?
“It’s not a foolproof art,” Dominic said. In the half-light of Death, his dark hair and tawny skin were washed out and faded. “She could be bound elsewhere in the mansion… or held captive and subjugated by another spirit.”
I blinked up at him. His eyes were so bright next to all the gray. Had they always had such beautiful gold flecks in them? “Can we go further?”
He set his jaw. “Only as far as the library. I’m not taking you any further on your first excursion- especially not in a place like Cimmerian.”
“It’ll be fine.” I stuck close to his side as he eased the door open and slipped into the hall. “You checked for other mirrors, didn’t you?”
“Trust me on this, Lucrezia.” His voice was grim, a perfect complement for our desiccated surroundings. “You’re getting a much harder crash course in mirrorwalking than many witches who are born to it.”
I couldn’t remember if we’d shut the false door or not on the liveside, but on the deadside it was cracked open.
Dust floated through the still air of the library in silent motes, falling from the ceiling like snow. The light was a little stronger in here, milky white that pierced the stained-glass windows.
A titanic dark shape moved on the opposite side of the windows, darkening them and casting the entire library into shadow for just an instant. My heart jumped into my throat. “What was that?”
Dominic didn’t spare a glance for the windows. “A walker. Don’t worry about the windows, Lucrezia.”
Josephine stood at the bottom of the library, her pale face turned up to us.
“There she is!”
She strode under the balcony, disappearing from sight, the lace gown leaving a trail in the dust behind her.
Dominic scowled. “She’s leaving the library. I’m calling it. We’re going no further.”
“We’re already here! Please, Dominic!” I gripped his sleeve, gazing up at him pleadingly. “If I want to find out what’s wrong with- this mansion, I need to talk to her!”
“What is this place?” he suddenly asked, his cold, hawk-like eyes fixed on my face.
“This mansion? It’s… it just is,” I said, feeling unsettled in a way I couldn’t define. “It’s the manor we’re in.”
“What is the manor’s proper name?” he pushed.
I scowled at him, releasing his sleeve. “It’s the mansion. You’re wasting our time. We need to talk to her!”
“You’re losing your memories,” he said, pushing a hand through his hair as he sighed. “It’ll only get worse the further we get from the mirror we entered. We should go back. Let me do this alone, Lucrezia.”
“You know I can’t do that. She’ll run from you, and I can’t risk not finding what I need to know.”
I settled my feet in the dust and crossed my arms over my chest. The clock was ticking. The finger bones felt like a brand in my palm.
Dominic sensed it was a losing battle, his handsome face tightening. “Let’s hurry, before you lose any more of yourself.”
I followed him down the stairs, the dust kicked up by our footsteps billowing out into open air and found the fading trail Josephine had left behind.
The corridor outside the library was dark, but Josephine stood halfway down, staring at us expectantly.
“Wait!” I called, and immediately regretted my outburst. In the flat air of Death, my own voice cut through the hall like a knife. I immediately felt like a thousand unseen eyes had turned on me.
The professor turned on me. “It’s not against the rules, Lucrezia, but I would advise you keep your voice down. Some spirits are opportunistic- they wait for the living to come to them.”
“Sorry,” I mouthed. The trail in the dust turned left, towards a hallway labeled C WING with a faded sign. “This place is enormous. I bet the folks who live here get lost all the time.”
The professor gave me a strange look. “You live here, Lucrezia.”
I shook my head a little, as though it could shake off the strange foggy entropy creeping up in the back of my mind. “Right. I know that. We’re looking for Josephine.”
“Yes. Hold onto that.” He stepped into the hall, still looking back at me with concern.
A shape rose from the dust, powder spilling everywhere as it unfurled like a corpse-white blossom with human faces.
Too many faces.
My mouth falling open was his only warning. My vocal cords had completely locked up with fear the moment the spirit rose.
The professor slashed at a grasping hand as the spirit rose into the air, all six mouths screaming like a chorus of damned souls. The wails echoed through Death, rebounding and reverberating through the halls.
He shoved me back into the hallway as the spirit renewed its attack. A pale severed hand plopped into the dust.
The spirit in white lace strode down the hall towards me, wringing her hands in front of her. “Follow,” she croaked. Dark eyes darted towards the hall, where the professor slashed at the spirit with snapping jaws.
“I can’t leave him,” I said, shaking where I was crouched on the floor. My knees felt like water, unable to hold me up.
“Must.”
In Death, she was no longer blurred but solid. Blood stained the front of her robe in a freshet of scarlet, and her throat had been opened in a wide, ragged gash.
“What’s your name?” I asked. It danced on the tip of my tongue, frustratingly unplaceable.
The spirit smiled and touched my arm. “Follow.” Her voice was raspy and low, her words forced past the red ruin of her neck.
The spot where she touched me felt like burning ice, and the urge to go with her came over me. I had to see what she wanted.
She was what I’d come here for, wasn’t she? Or was it something else?
We moved through silent halls, the sounds of the fight fading behind us. My stomach lurched when I thought of the man with the rowan knives, but the girl tugged me along.
She stopped in front of a door covered in peeling black paint and touched it, running her fingers over the splintered surface. “Down,” she said, catching my eyes. “Down far.”
“Down where?” I whispered. I had no idea where we were, but the fog was rolling in over what was left of my fear, leaving me feeling empty and numb.
“Below. Blood… on… stone.” She touched her opened throat and grimaced. “My blood. Brother couldn’t… stop him.”
“Whose brother? Yours?” She looked so familiar, like someone I thought I knew…
“Elijah… Locke. My brother.” The spirit tried to smile. “Always love him.”
“Elijah Locke,” I repeated, trying to commit the name to the swirling fog in my head. I had to repeat it several more times before even a hint of it remained lodged in my memories.
The spirit reached out, shimmering through the still air, and touched her icy hand to my face. My teeth instantly started chattering. “Remember. Blood binds. Fire cleanses.”
Her dark eyes bored into me, my insides as cold as if she’d frozen me from the marrow out, and then she disappeared.
Alone now, everything was so gray. The hall seemed to run for miles in either direction, and I couldn’t remember if I’d walked here, or just popped into existence right where I stood.
The peeling black door in front of me creaked open and I stepped back.
A young man stared up at me with wild eyes from the edge of a nearly solid darkness, his short, sandy hair and appealingly crooked lips ringing another distant bell in the back of my mind.
But he wasn’t living. He was another spirit, with black and violet bruises mottling the white skin of his naked chest, panting as he clawed his way out of the dark.
“He’s looking for me,” he said, his voice rising to me from a distance. “I need to tell him to leave- don’t let him get caught in this!”
“Who?” I asked dreamily. I thought I’d just been talking to someone else, but it was so hard to remember.
The young man clawed his way up another step, his face distorted with strain.
“Warden Steele! Tell him to save himself- don’t make this sacrifice for nothing. Tell him I’m at rest if that’s what it takes.” He labored to push out every word as he fought against the darkness sucking him back down. “There’s only death below.”
A flare of white-hot recognition was born and died in the back of my mind almost instantly. “Steele?” The word prompted a visceral response to back away from the door. I needed to get out of here and go.
But the dreamy lethargy rippled through my bones and I stilled. I might have been standing there for years, becoming part of the dust as the boy’s spirit struggled.
“He came for me.” Exhausted, glittering eyes looked like marbles in his white face. Even though he was struggling, a clear vindication shone through on his bruised features. He let out a barking laugh that ended on a sob, and the darkness dragged him back a few inches. His nails scored the wood of the stairs. “I thought they forgot. He came for me, but he can’t stay.”
“I’ll tell him,” I promised, even though I had no idea who ‘he’ was, or this spirit’s name.
The spirit vanished another inch, sucked back into the darkness, but when I promised to tell this unknown Warden the truth, the boy’s shoulders relaxed.
“Thank you,” he said, years of fatigue built up behind his ephemeral words, and let go.
He disappeared into the grasping shadows, and the black door slammed shut.
Dust rained down from the ceiling. I held out my hand and watched it pile up in my palm.
I felt nothing. This place was nothing, only dust and ashes and decay.
“Nothing,” I said. My voice was as flat as the air, blending into the environment and becoming one with it. If I laid in the dust, would I eventually become one with it, melting into the walls around me?
Stillness. Silence. Death. It was so peaceful.
A living person plunged into the hall, eyes wild and frantic and a brilliant hazel in all the somber flatness. His clothes were shredded and torn.
“Lucrezia!”
I frowned as he drew closer, still holding my palmful of dust. A hollow, almost painful thump reverberated through my chest.
“You need to come with me now.” The living man took my arm and led me down the hall. I couldn’t find the energy to resist. Everything was empty.
We moved through the halls and up stairs, and my heart thumped again when we found ourselves in a library, surrounded by walls of rotting books. “I used to love libraries.”
“You still do, Lucrezia. Hold on to yourself, we’re almost back.”
He led me through a gap in the shelves and down a hallway to a bedroom.
I sighed when I saw the four-poster bed and its sunken mattress. “Can I sleep? I’m so tired.” I touched the decaying lacy quilt and the man pulled me back.
“No. This isn’t a place for the living to sleep. Look in the mirror.”
He positioned me in front of a dresser with a clouded mirror and I squinted. “What am I supposed to look at?” There was nothing there, just the reflection of the room. The bed called out for me, cajoling me to lay down and just rest for a little bit.
I was so tired.
The man squeezed my shoulders, his fingers digging in. “You need to look on the other side and see yourself. You’re not dead yet, Lucrezia Darke. You’re just on the other side of that glass.”
I eyed the stained mirror doubtfully. “All I see is this room.”
The man at my shoulder looked frustrated. “No. You are there. Lucrezia Darke, from Ashdarke coven, only three hours away in Claremont. Full of wildfire, and insatiable curiosity, and you’re one of the few truly good-hearted people who have walked into this covenstead. You love a therianthrope and a vampire, and books, and taking the world’s most annoyingly tidy notes, and I love you, Lucrezia. I won’t allow you to become dust. You need to look closer and pull yourself out of here.”
I sighed, my breath blowing a cobweb off the dresser with a gust, and leaned in closer. There were bubbles in the antique glass.
“Nothing,” I said sourly. He certainly couldn’t be describing me.
“You get frustrated when you don’t get something right the first time,” the man added with a quick grin, like he’d had a thought that pleased him. “And when you do get it, you practice until it’s perfect. You hate mint tea with a passion. You have Roman Frost on the other side of that mirror, waiting for you-”
“Roman?” My mouth filled with the phantom taste of too-sweet mint tea, and a faint memory slid from the dust of my mind and came forward: blue eyes, cruel words, an unstoppable force who pushed too hard until I pushed back.
A faint shape resolved in the mirror and warmth bloomed in my chest. I pressed a hand over my heart, puzzled by the sensation, and the man who stood in Death with me let out a sigh of relief. “You feel it. Roman holds the candle binding you to Life, Lucrezia. Follow it.”
I grasped that warmth and held on for dear life. This wasn’t nothingness, it was Death, and I’d come so close to giving in and laying down.
My reflection shimmered up from the depths of the mirror and my spirit climbed through, shaking off the dust as she went.
Falling back into my body was like being hit with a riot of sensation and color: the heat of Roman’s arm around my shoulders, the feel of my own heartbeat pounding behind my ribs, the smell of decay and mice and wood polish mixed with the masculine cologne of my protectors.
And the memories. My knees buckled and I dropped to the floor, clutching my temples with a hiss. I was Lucrezia Darke, and I’d almost lost myself.
Roman blew out the candle and knelt, wrapping his arms around
me from behind. “I’ve got you, Blondie,” he whispered. “You’re back now.”
Dominic stretched stiffened limbs and joined us, cupping my face. For once he didn’t look in control of himself or anything else; relief and fear mingled on his face.
“Never again, Lucrezia,” he said, his voice becoming a low growl. “Never again. Was it worth almost losing you?”
I blinked at him, taking shelter in Roman’s arms. Most of my recall of Death was fuzzy, burned out of my mind like morning mist in the sun.
Only one thing stood out clearly: Josephine, her throat wide open and spilling blood down her front. “Blood on the stone. Her brother Elijah… couldn’t stop it.” My face screwed up as I struggled to remember the last of what Josephine had said to me before the memory vanished entirely.
Blood binds. Fire cleanses.
“Would that I’d been with you,” Dominic muttered. “Unfortunately, you’re not a natural mirrorwalker. You’ll likely remember none of this tomorrow.”
“Notebook,” I said, crawling out of Roman’s grip and snagging my satchel. I uncapped a pen with shaking hands and began scrawling everything I remembered, heedless of good handwriting. It only mattered that I got it on paper before it vanished entirely.
I did recall one thing clearly: “What do you mean, I take annoyingly tidy notes?” I demanded. “Is there such a thing?”
“You’re the most academically annoying person in this place.” Roman held up a hand when my glare landed on him. “Not that that’s a bad thing.”
I huffed, finished scrawling the last of my memories of Death and frowned at the page. I’d written ‘tell him he can’t stay’, but I didn’t remember Josephine saying anything about that. Maybe she meant her brother Elijah.
Now that the fog of Death was no longer taking over my mind, another puzzle piece clicked into place. I patted the locket in my breast pocket, and flipped my notebook shut.
“It was worth it, Dominic. Thank you.” I rose to my feet and pulled them up with me, then rose on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He turned his head at the last minute to catch my lips with his, and my fingers found the shredded front of his jacket.
