by Cori Vidae
“A bad feeling, like—”
“Yeah, exactly like.” Michael’s eyes darted about once more before settling back on the glass. “Don’t you worry about it. There ain’t nothin’ you can do. I’m just glad I get to see you again before whatever happens, happens.”
“How can I not worry?”
“Just—I dunno, Mary, but what can you do? Unless you can call a truce—”
“Phillips! You got a girl over there?” a strange voice called, and Michael’s face crumbled like he’d just been punched.
“I’ve gotta go. Hopefully we can talk again? I love you, Mary.”
“I love you too, Michael.” His image winked out, leaving her to whisper to her own reflection. “Stay safe.”
* * *
The bread was cold and her soup tasted like glue, but Mary ate it rather than waste it. Waste not, want not, Mom always used to say. How she wished Mom could be here now. She had so many questions; about magic, about the mirror. She didn’t even know how the latter worked. Could she and Michael communicate any time they were both touching their respective mirrors, or were there only special times it would connect them? How long could they keep a connection open? Could she use it to move things from one place to another? How had Mom even crafted the mirrors in the first place?
If Mom were here, Mary thought as she washed her dinner dishes and set them in the rack, surely she’d know how to help Michael. There had to be something. What good was magic if it couldn’t save your loved ones?
Morning would come early, and chores along with it. She doubted sleep would come easily tonight but she might as well let her thoughts twist and whirl while she lay in her bed. The wind rattled the house and a cold draft swept across her toes as she padded down the narrow hallway toward her bedroom.
She paused outside her parents’ door.
What if—?
If the answers were going to be anywhere, that’s where they’d be. No one had been in there since the day of the accident. She and Michael had come home from the funeral, shut the door, and gotten on with the chore of living. They hadn’t even set foot inside. Neither said so, but they both knew emptying out the room would make it too real. Besides, what would they do with it?
The wood of the bedroom door felt rough beneath her calloused fingers, but warm compared to the chill of the floor. The Chinook shook the house once more, and her candle’s flame flickered and danced. Taking a deep breath, she curled her fingers around the knob and pushed the door open.
Time had left its mark on the room. Dust covered everything: the unmade bed, the toiletries and hairbrush on the dresser, the stacks of books on the bed stand. An empty glass with a white residue water line halfway up it sat beside the books on Dad’s side of the bed, a half-burned candle stub in a holder on Mom’s. The air tasted stale, and the movement of the door opening stirred up enough dust from the floor to tickle the back of Mary’s throat and make her cough a little.
“This isn’t right,” she said to the empty room, and made to close the door just as Eclipse darted between her legs. Little clouds of dust erupted around his paws as he pranced to the center of the room and plopped down. His big green eyes nearly glowed in the candlelight.
“C’mon out of there,” Mary hissed.
Eclipse lifted one paw to his face, licked it and scrubbed behind his ears.
“C’mon. Right now.”
He polished his whiskers.
It occurred to her that this was precisely how she’d come to learn about the enchanted mirror, but still, seeing everything like this, exactly how they’d left it… That day the same as any other, except Dad never got to finish that drink, nor Mom light her candle. Not ever again.
She’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to go into her parents’ room anymore, to disturb it, to invade their privacy. Whatever secrets they’d had, didn’t they have a right to them?
Mary closed her eyes and, as with every time she did, she didn’t see darkness, but sparkles, prickles of golden light which moved, nebulous, in the darkness behind her eyelids.
“One,” she whispered.
She was all the way across the world from Michael. If she was going to do anything to protect him from this impending battle, she would have to use magic to do it.
“Two,” she said.
The only place she hadn’t been since her parents died, nor spent much time in before that, was their bedroom. If there were any other magical artifacts around the farm, they would have to be in there.
“Three.”
If they were alive, her parents would do anything in their power to shield Michael from harm. They wouldn’t mind her searching their bedroom. It wasn’t a betrayal of trust.
When she opened her eyes the candle flame seemed brighter, and she entered the room with a sure step and a steady hand.
The chill from the floor cut through her thick wool socks, and yet Eclipse, who loved to be close enough to the fireplace she worried he’d singe his hair, sat on the floor looking as comfortable as you please. “Well,” she said with a sigh. “What’s in here that can help, hmm?”
Eclipse stood and stretched out his spine, then each back leg in turn. His tail curved into a question mark as he strolled beneath the bed. Mary waited, expecting him to emerge from the other side. He didn’t.
She sighed and set her candle on the floor. The shifting flame bent in half, casting low shadows across the room. Mary knelt beside it and peered beneath the bed. Eclipse sat comfortably upright in the space between the floor and the bed. His paws left tracks in the dirt, and dust bunnies surrounded him as he sat, regal as a monarch on a throne, in the middle of a trapdoor.
“You’re kidding me,” Mary whispered. Eclipse yawned and twitched an eyebrow. “A secret trap door in their room?”
Hope flared in her chest and her heart jumped like a deer’s. “Well, slow down there,” she said to herself. “You don’t know what’s under that door. Could be nothing.”
Could be anything, the voice in her mind whispered.
Standing, Mary grabbed hold of one of the posters at the foot of the bed and pushed. The end of the bed slid easily across the floor, stirring up a cloud of dust. Eclipse trotted off once the trap door had been revealed and leaped onto her parent’s bed. He curled up and laid his head on his paws to watch her.
“After the thing with the mirror,” she told him, “I guess it’ll take something pretty spectacular to surprise me today.”
With a half-laugh she hooked her finger through the latch and lifted the trapdoor. It moved as easily as if the hinges had been oiled. Steps disappeared steeply into the darkness. Mary eyed Eclipse. “Well, you coming?”
The cat wrapped his tail around his nose and blinked sleepily.
“Right. I should have guessed.”
The room below was large enough that her candle left more in shadow than it illuminated, but small enough to be cozy instead of frightening. The dirt floor chilled her feet, though not as much as the floor above. Shelves lined three of the hard-packed earthen walls and she could have pressed the entire palm of her hand to the ceiling joists if she reached up. A massive support beam stood at attention in the northeastern corner. A lantern and pair of black robes hung from hooks upon it.
Examining the lantern, Mary discovered it wasn’t empty and traded its light for her candle’s. It illuminated the entire room, including the traces of bizarre symbols scratched into the floor and rubbed out again.
“Wow,” she breathed, scanning the shelves packed with books, jars, and branches whose leaves had long crumbled to dust. Loose sheaves of paper and things she couldn’t begin to identify stuffed every last space. Unexpectedly, a wave of despair came over her and she wanted nothing more than to sit on the steps and sob. How could this help her save Michael? She didn’t have even the vaguest idea of where to start.
Well, she thought, repeating words her father had loved to say, when you don’t know where to start, one place is as good as another.
A gre
at book with a reddish-brown leather spine drew her attention. It dominated the shelf in front of her, so large it protruded obscenely off the edge, jutting out from between its fellows as though daring her to read it.
“Well,” Mary said, “I’ve never been able to resist a dare.” This was a fact both Michael and Pete had taken advantage of many times over the years. They’d challenged her to do everything from jump off the chicken house roof to, in Pete’s case, give him a peek under her blouse back before there was anything worth seeing.
Mary set the lantern on the work table, among various stains, pools of wax and splatter from half a dozen candle stubs, then used both hands to tug the book free and carry it to the table.
Thick, heavy paper, as textured as canvas and covered with gorgeous, looping script filled the tome. She didn’t recognize the handwriting but it reeked of femininity. She flipped through the pages, skimming them at random. A faint odor, which tickled her memory but she couldn’t identify, wafted up and teased her as she read. The book seemed, primarily, to be a journal interspersed with recipes and poetry. Potions and spell incantations, perhaps? Still, should she really start her search for a spell to help Michael with some woman’s diary?
Snapping the book closed, she shoved it out of the way and grabbed another from the shelf. Before long she stacked it, a book about plant uses and identification, with the diary. Soon a third joined them. Then a fourth, and a fifth…
Eclipse wound himself around her ankles, his gravelly purr penetrating her consciousness and tugging her out of the book she’d been squinting at. She squeezed her eyes closed and pinched the bridge of her nose before petting him. Her eyes and lower back ached and she had no idea how long she’d been reading. The pile of discarded books reached her shoulder and leaned precariously.
“Not a thing,” she said to the cat, who leaped to the table top and rubbed his head under her chin. So far there had been pages and pages of love potions, spells to call the rain, bless the soil, or honor the Lady, but not a single thing to save Michael.
“Not a thing,” she muttered. “Not a single thing that could help!” She slammed the book she held onto the table. Eclipse puffed up like a bottle brush and scrambled past the leaning tower of books. They tumbled to the floor as he streaked up the stairs.
“Darn it.” Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. Her voice cracked, shattering the last of her control. She sat down and cried.
There was nothing she could do. Here she was, in the middle of the Canadian prairies, while her twin was God-only-knew-where in France.
And something big was about to happen.
And he had a bad feeling about it.
And even learning their mother had been a witch, and discovering her secret room and all it contained, didn’t help.
A spell to help.
Mary blinked at the book open at her feet, and the words curling across the page. The thunderstorm raging inside her quieted. The flame in the lantern stopped flickering. Everything stilled but the hope which leaped to Mary’s heart as she read those words.
She closed her eyes, but did not count. “Please, please, please,” she whispered before peering down at the page again. The words really were there. She hadn’t imagined them.
Mary dashed the remnants of her tears away with her sleeve and scooped up the book, the very first one she’d picked up, the woman’s diary. She placed it back on the table, read, and then jumped up to scan the shelves. This didn’t seem too tricky, assuming Mom had all the ingredients.
* * *
It was nearly dawn before things were ready, which she only knew because she’d had to make a trip upstairs for salt and candles, and she’d peeked at the clock at the same time. She’d also tried summoning Michael by touching her mirror, but it hadn’t worked.
She’d scratched the shapes the spell instructed into the ground, placed the candles and herbs as directed, and surrounded the whole thing with a circle of salt. Now she only had to speak the incantation.
The words twisted awkwardly on her tongue, all hard angles and extra consonants. She stumbled through them like a preschooler in a spelling bee, feeling a change in the air as she battled through each syllable. It began as a faint scent, like ozone, which grew and grew. Energy swirled around her and emanated out, rippling away like circles in a pond. The hairs on her arms stood up, lifting the sleeves of her nightgown from her skin, and the room grew warm enough she began to perspire.
As the power of the spell grew, so did her confidence, and with it, the volume of her voice. She nearly shouted the last words of the spell and wasn’t the least bit surprised when the windowless cellar lit up as though by lightning before every flame in it went out, plunging her into darkness.
The sound of her breathing was oppressive in the darkness, and she could hear the blood pulsing in her ears. Then she heard another sound, the sound of something—someone—moving.
A candle flamed to life within the circle.
Mary watched, breathless, as golden light pooled around the candle. A hand, a distinctly masculine hand, curled around the pillar candle and lifted it.
There was a man in the circle.
As the candle’s light moved up over his body, she saw him in flashes. Toned calves, well-muscled thighs, rippled abs, a well-developed chest… His hair was wavy, black as a raven’s wing, and his eyes the palest shade of green she’d ever seen.
There was a man in the circle.
A naked man.
“My God,” she gasped, and he grinned.
“If you insist.”
* * *
She didn’t look like Erzsébet. In fact, she looked ridiculous—mouth gaping, eyes wide, and posture screaming stupefaction—but she smelled divine. Layers of scent cloaked her, and he experienced them like no human ever could. He detected the aroma of fresh bread that clung to her clothes, along with wood smoke, cattle, and sweat. Beneath it all wafted the musty scent unique to her gender.
She smelled like a woman, and he was starving.
His need hit him like a fist to the belly. He reached for her, but his knuckles struck the circle’s barrier. Liquid wax from the candle he held spilled onto his hand and he cursed.
The woman who’d summoned him took a step back, which made about as much sense as lighting a fire to stay cold. His cockiness melted like a snowflake in a forge and Cairn tilted his head, bird-like, to study her.
Where Erzsébet’s locks had been chestnut, this woman’s were reddish gold, and the eyes so wide before him now were a dramatic hazel rather than Bets’ sapphire blue. This girl had muscles where Bets had been soft, and was significantly younger than Bets when he’d last seen her.
The woman closed her eyes, lips moving soundlessly. Panic flared in his belly. Was she sending him back? She couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t return. Not again. Not now.
Just being near her, smelling her, fed him. Eased the never-ending ache in his core, loosened the invisible fist around his torso, and soothed the pounding in his skull.
“Miss?” He tried his best to sound calm, to keep the desperation from his voice. He couldn’t risk scaring her off, or showing his weakness. A tough line to walk, especially after so long without sustenance, but he could do it. He had to do it. “Forgive me, but I cannot hear you—”
She opened her eyes and met his gaze. His breath caught in his throat and swelled in his chest until it hurt to hold it; yet still, he did.
When she wasn’t gaping like a fish, she was beautiful, but there was something more than that. Something between them he didn’t recognize. A connection he’d never felt before, not even with Erzsébet.
His breath escaped in a gush that obscured the woman’s response. “I’m sorry, did you say you were counting?”
Her cheeks flushed and instead of answering she snatched a robe from where it hung on the pillar beside her and handed it to him.
“Here,” she said. “Put this on.”
He frowned down at his naked body. “Does this form not p
lease you?”
Truth be told, he hadn’t the energy to affect a transformation, not even an illusionary one, which might, he considered, be ironic. If he couldn’t seduce the woman because his form repelled her, but hadn’t the power to change it until he seduced her—
* * *
“It—” Mary cleared her throat. “What?”
“Does this form not please you?” he repeated, speaking slowly, as if to a child, or an imbecile.
“Just take the robe,” she said, shaking it at him.
He accepted the robe, though not, she noticed, until it had crossed over to his side of the circle. His fingers brushed against the back of her hand, and she sucked in her breath as a squadron of butterflies set her belly a-flutter.
She stepped back and wiped her damp palms down the front of her skirt while the man pulled the robe over his head. It fit him poorly, stretching tight across his shoulders and only coming to his knees, but at least it hid his nudity. Now what? How could a nearly naked man in the cellar help Michael?
“Why have you summoned me to this place?” His voice was crisp as the stars in winter, and smooth as the prairies.
Finally! A question she could answer. Almost. “I don’t think I meant to.”
“What did you think you meant to do?”
The laughter in his voice sounded warm, not mocking. “I was trying to help my brother. The book said it was a spell to help. I didn’t expect—” She narrowed her eyes as her loosened tongue also loosened the gears in her mind. “Who are you? What are you?”
* * *
He could tell his proximity affected her, but not as much as it should, as it could, if his power were restored to him. He’d put some effort into the seemingly accidental touch as she’d passed him the robe, enough that, if he’d been at full strength, Bets would have been panting for him, but it only earned him a gasp from this woman. This woman whose expression kept alternating between bewilderment and suspicion. This woman who summoned him here, spoke his true name to do it, and now demanded to know who he was? Could it be possible she truly didn’t know?
