The Thief

by Aine Crabtree

  “Hayley’s no fun,” Sakamoto says. “Not for you. Want to play with me instead?”

  “Get out of my way,” I say. A rumble sounds deep in my chest.

  “Jul Graham is dead,” he says.

  What? My head spins. The angry red pulse in my mind blanks to white. He must be lying. He has to be. My friend.

  “What!” Hayley exclaims. “How?”

  “Well, honestly I had no idea what Simon wanted it for when he commissioned me to find the Tailor’s Sword, but it seems pretty clear now,” he says, offhand.

  My eyes travel unbidden to my overpale, pockmarked left arm. My friend.

  The red pulse kicks back in, building steadily.

  “Every day you walked through these doors with the only thing that could kill her strapped to your arm,” Kei says, amused. “Pretty heavy stuff. Her being dead, I mean, but man, that bracer was pretty heavy too.”

  I roar and dive at him. Hayley runs away into the night screaming.

  I swipe at him, and he ducks, spinning under my swing. How could he be so callous? Was this all really just some source of entertainment to him? Never mind. I’m busy. My vision is hazing red. When I paint the sidewalk with his insides he won’t find it all so funny.

  I leap at him and he falls to his back, planting his feet in my ribs and launching me over him. I land in an easy roll and spring back to my feet, ready for anything.

  But he’s not there.

  “Let’s play a game,” comes his voice. I can’t pinpoint it. It seems to come from the trees.

  “Hide and seek, maybe,” he says. I spin. This time it sounds like he’s behind me, towards the forest. But I see nothing.

  “Or better yet...”

  I spin again, furious, desperate for something to hit.

  “Tag,” he says, right into my ear.

  I swipe at him, but he’s already running, and fast, into the woods. I let out a roar of frustration and tear off after him.

  Hemlock

  “No!” I screamed, hauling myself up from the hole. I hadn’t seen him. He must have slid into the room when I was focused on her. Up through the floor, maybe. In through the window, maybe. Mirrormakers can change anything in this tower. Sneaky little abomination. I should have killed him when I had the chance.

  “I wonder if this has ever been used on a Tailor before,” Simon sneered, twisting the sword with a horrible squelching sound, combined with the crunch of broken glass. Juliet’s eyes went glassy as she slumped over the blade. He pulled it out, blood streaming, and she collapsed to the floor in a red pool of glinting shards. She looked up at him, her mouth gaping like a fish. He watched her life drain away, expressionless. She wanted to say something, it was clear, but her lungs were filling with blood.

  “You idiot!” I hissed, moving toward her.

  Simon pointed the Tailor’s Sword in my direction, and I froze. “That’s one less weapon for you to collect,” he said.

  I backed away, hands up. My final chance for vengeance was dying on the floor, but I wasn’t going to lose my soul for her. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” I told Simon.

  Her blood is sinking into the cracks in the stone floor, the glittering bits of glass along with it. Does he see the Tower devouring her life? Did he really hate her so much that he would be this stupid?

  “Rhys!” Juliet shrieked at last. A shockwave of power burst from her, rocking us both back. A dark violet-black energy curled up from the floor around her body, ghostly tendrils of power that sunk into her skin and vanished. Blood burbled from her lips and she went still. Juliet Graham was dead. The ever-present avarice I’d regained with my body gripped me with full force.

  “That was mine!” I roared.

  The Tower rumbled beneath our feet. The first look of confusion crossed Simon’s face. “You need earth for an earthquake.”

  Magic fizzled from the mirrors ringing the room, tiny little ghosts of static filtering through the air. Another shockwave rocked the Tower, and several of the mirrors cracked.

  I turned slowly, not quite prepared for the source. Lightning crackled around the Ryan boy I’d bound. My vines were dissolving into sand in front of my eyes. He was stock still, his colorless eyes wide and frozen on Juliet’s lifeless form.

  The ceiling burst. Hunks of glass skittered across the floor. Some folded into sand. Some embedded themselves against the floor and melded there. Crackles of electricity arced out from him through the room, lighting the drapes of the bed on fire.

  “Get out,” he murmured.

  He could have been his uncle. For a moment, I felt actual fear, and backed away. I hadn’t expected this. He was unproven, he shouldn’t have this much power...

  “Who the hell are you?” Simon demanded, shifting his grip on the sword. But it wasn’t until he stepped into Rhys’s line of sight, between him and Juliet, that Rhys reacted.

  “GET OUT!” he howled.

  A violent wind ripped through the room, rocketing in through the window. It whipped both Simon and I against the walls but left Rhys and Juliet untouched. The glass debris in the room whirled; I held up my arms to shield myself from the razor-sharp fragments.

  “Know your exit, rookie,” I said, inclining my head toward one of the standing mirrors. Simon could activate it and we could escape the grief-stricken boy. The last time I’d seen someone this berserk, he’d destroyed the entire city of San Francisco. But that had been a Wolf. Mirrormakers were something else entirely.

  Simon hesitated, but Rhys was gaining focus, and his focus was on Simon and the sword still dripping his girlfriend’s blood.

  “YOU,” the boy roared. Lightning crackled and glass whirled around him.

  With no further hesitation, Simon pressed his hand to the mirror. The surface shimmered and he jumped through. I dove after him, uncaring of the destination.

  I rolled across a dusty wood floor, with moonlight filtering through a hole in the roof overhead. Stacks of old boxes and rows of bottles were scattered around. The lumbermill? It connected to the storeroom of the old lumbermill? I looked back at the mirror I’d exited from. Static arced from the frame like grasping fingers. Eyes wide, Simon picked up the closest thing, a broken chair, and hurled it at the mirror. The crash resounded through the mill and into the forest. The broken glass twitched on the ground for a moment, as if animated, but as the static dispersed they fell still. Silence ruled again. Simon took a steadying breath, pushing his hair back from his face. So he was at least intelligent enough to fear the boy’s raw power. I wondered which of them was stronger. Time would tell, I supposed.

  Simon reached for the iron sword he’d set aside, but it had vanished. He spun, turning on me, but I held up my hands innocently.

  “You stole it once already,” he stated.

  I hesitated. I remembered stealing it from the Tailor household, but I didn’t remember why. I shook off the confusion. “And I’d do it again,” I said, “but you don’t have to be the Thief to steal.”

  “Who said I’m stealing?” said a voice from up in the rafters. “It’s more like borrowing. But permanent.”

  We both looked up; an Asian boy was perched on the edge of the hole in the roof, turning the sword over in his hands. He was a student at the school - one of Umino’s minions, if I remembered right. When I thought of the school, my mind felt hazy, like large parts were blanked out.

  “We had a deal, Kei!” Simon yelled up at him.

  “You got what you wanted out of it,” the boy said, looking with interest at the blood coating the blade. “It doesn’t belong to you, anyway.”

  “What could you possibly want with it?” Simon demanded.

  “What does a scarecrow need with a brain, or a tin man with a heart?” Kei postulated. “Ciao.” He vanished with a little salute, taking the sword with him.

  Simon looked at me across the room. His expression changed as he realized he was alone with me, and without the only weapon in the world that could do me permanent harm. The shards of the bro
ken mirror rose to twirl around him in a protective barrier. “So,” he said. “You want to do this now?”

  I smiled at him. “Do you even know who I am?”

  “Hemlock,” Simon stated. “I’ve been researching mirrors and the Afterlands for fifteen years. Give me some credit.”

  “So you’re aware you’ll lose.”

  The shards whirled faster, in time with Simon’s breath speeding up. Hybridize lines as disparate as the Grimms and the Ryans and you were bound to get some awkward results. He had the power and neuroses of a Ryan and the single-mindedness of a Grimm. And the bullheadedness of both. Too complicated to keep in play.

  I smirked as he backed away. No one would mourn this one. What would be easiest? Strangle him? Poison?

  “She said you’d do it,” he said. “She said you’d kill me just to remove the complication.” Fear oozed from his pores.

  Of course that was why Simon had taken my mirror. To find her. It could locate anyone, speak with anyone, and there was only one person he’d ever been that devoted to.

  I frowned. How dare she try to anticipate my moves! She thinks she can get in my head? That child?

  “And how is Kyra? Oh wait, I’ll ask her myself,” I said, sliding my hand inside my jacket to retrieve the handmirror. “Show me Kyra Harman,” I told it.

  The surface wavered, but then reverted to normal reflection. Access denied.

  “What did you do to it?” I snapped at him.

  “Insurance,” he said, licking his lips nervously. “It only works for me now. If you kill me, that mirror is useless.”

  “You really think,” I said, advancing on him, “that I value this object so highly that I would drag your miserable hide around with it?”

  He swallowed.

  I smiled, and tucked the mirror back into my jacket. “You had better hope that it remains valuable.” I grabbed Simon’s wrist and said, “Proxima.” His glass shards sliced lines across my face and forearm but they were little more than annoyances. My skin knit back together before blood could even ooze out.

  Simon jerked as a thorny green design wrapped around his skin. “You chained me?” he exclaimed.

  “To me,” I affirmed. “As if I trust you to follow me around otherwise. You have a leeway of a mile. Don’t make me shorten it. Now come on, we’re leaving town before the cavalry arrives.”

  An odd feeling of wrongness overtook me for a brief moment, the ragged edges of the hole in my memory rubbing raw. I recalled the primary side effect of returning from a body switch. Something was missing in my head, something I’d left behind when I left Gohei’s form. I’d known this would happen, that I would be giving up part of myself, but I had no idea what that part was.

  Camille

  The forest swallows me whole, and I welcome it. Had I thought of this place as alien? No. This is home. My vision adjusts to the darkness, and my hearing sharpens. Everything would be perfect, if I could only smell him.

  I skid to a halt in a small clearing, frustration getting the better of me.

  “Coward!” I yell at the trees. “Show yourself!”

  I hear only the wind in the boughs and the blood in my own veins. The silence is too much. I wrench a thick branch off of a nearby tree and hurl it away. Still dissatisfied, I wrap my arms around the tree trunk and twist. With a loud crack, it comes apart, crashing to the forest floor. A distant part of me registers the action as being far off the scale of my abilities, but right now I’m only angry that it wasn’t him I twisted in half.

  “You miss me that much?” He materializes out of dark whorls among the fallen branches, grin first like the Cheshire Cat. “I ran a quick errand.” Sakamoto holds up a sword. It seems to fold in on itself, curling into an object that he tosses in the air. I’d know that iron cylinder anywhere. My right hand reflexively scratches at my left forearm. The blood that Gabriel had reforged it to siphon off pumps fast through my veins.

  “I changed my mind,” he says, in answer to a question I hadn’t asked. “You’re no fun like this. Your brain is completely gone. This isn’t even going to be hard.”

  I won’t let him distract me. “Who?” I roar. “Who killed her?!” I lunge at him, and this time he stays solid, twisting in my grip to bear me down to the ground. The wind goes out of me as I hit the earth. Body pressed along mine, he snaps the bracer over my arm, the internal lock sounding with a loud metal click. Immediately I feel pricks in my skin, and I shriek, feeling my power draining away. Furious, I throw Sakamoto so hard he flies through the air. Just before he ought to splatter against a tree, he disperses, reforming to stand at my feet.

  The bracer is hungry, eating me alive. I’m breathing hard, sweat running down my face. The bright red clarity drains away, leaving me hollow. Dizziness overwhelms me as I lay back. I mutter a curse at Sakamoto in Japanese and see him smirk before I pass out on the forest floor.

  “Mac, Destin, I found her!” Tailor called, sounding both close and far away.

  Camille’s eyes fluttered open. Her limbs felt dull and limp, and her throat was dry. The air was bright around her, but it was the bright yellow blaze of the cafe. Somehow she was back, lying in the grass at the edge of the parking lot.

  Tailor knelt at her side, checking her for injuries. “You have the bracer back?” he noticed. “When did you get that?”

  Camille groaned, not even having enough energy to form an explanation. Mac and Destin came out from the treeline to stand over her too. So they’d been looking for her. The idiots, she could have killed them. She’d almost attacked Hayley. And Jul was...

  Tears leaked out the side of her eyes. Sakamoto had to be lying. He just had to be. He had been trying to get a reaction from her, that’s all he ever did.

  “What happened?” Mac exclaimed.

  “I just found her here,” Tailor said. “I think she’s okay - ”

  “Then why is she crying?” Mac demanded, kneeling on her other side. “Hey, you’re alright, right? Come on, gold ranger, you’re fine, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Camille croaked. He really wasn’t so bad for a loudmouth shrimp.

  He sat back in relief. “I knew you weren’t Hulking out on us.”

  Except she had been. If Sakamoto hadn’t replaced the bracer...

  “Oh, this is unfortunate,” said an unfamiliar voice. “I’m going to have to start over completely from scratch.”

  Summoning all her energy to turn her head, Camille saw a strange man standing on the edge of the forest, not far from them, looking up at the burning cafe. He had long, tangled green hair and threadbare, outdated clothing. His expression was petulant as he looked at them.

  “Well, John, how did you talk Meredith into burning my cafe?”

  His cafe?

  Tailor voiced her question. “Who the hell are you?” he said, standing to face the man.

  “I’m exactly who you always thought I was,” he grinned, a smirk that Camille recognized from the paintings Jul had revealed. The third immortal.

  “I’ve gotten used to you calling me Gabriel, so you can keep that up if you like,” he said, “but now that I have my real body back you may as well know that I also answer to Hemlock. Or the Thief. Hmm,” he considered, tapping a finger against his chin. “Gabriel Hemlock. I like the sound of that.”

  Camille’s mind whirled. No. No, it couldn’t be. It was his expression, his stance, his cadence, but the form was all wrong. The narrow face, the wide cruel mouth, the glittering green eyes. He had the sort of beauty that was harsh enough to cut yourself on. He was not Gabriel.

  Tailor’s eyes were wide and disbelieving. “A body switch? You mean you were hiding in that form for - ”

  “Nineteen oh six,” the green haired man said lightly, “was the last time I was fully myself. It’s been a rough century, I’ve got to tell you.” He stretched his long limbs. “And I’ve got your Juliet to thank for fixing me. Ah, that’s right, I should tell you - Simon went and ran her through with that infernal sword of yours.”
r />   Everyone reacted.

  “An utter waste, I agree,” the man claiming to be Gabriel said, “but what’s done is done. I thought I’d left something here...” his face twisted in confusion, “but whatever it was, no doubt it’s burnt up in the fire. Ah well. Good news for you, John, you won’t be seeing me for some time. I’ve got so much work to do. I’ll let you get back to,” he looked at Camille curiously, “the blonde girl.” There wasn’t even a hint of recognition on his face.

  That proved it. It wasn’t Gabriel.

  “Give my best to Charlotte,” he said, waving as he disappeared into the trees, without a look back. She wanted to get up and follow, yell at this stranger, demand answers, but her body would not respond.

  It wasn’t Gabriel.

  Tailor’s cellphone was in his hand and he was dialing. “Bea?” he said into it. “Bea, did you get home? Tell me - ” He was silent for several moments, expression going distant as he listened. “We’ll be right there,” he said, finally, and hung up.

  “She’s found her,” he said.

  Chapter 22

  Mac

  We burst through the door at the Graham house to see Ms. Bea pacing in the living room.

  “I found her in the orchard,” she says, “lying at the foot of the tree. The mirror is gone.”

  I’m not sure which she sounds more upset about. Me, I couldn’t give a crap about some mirror. Jul is dead on the couch.

  Camille, somewhat recovered, immediately stumbles to her side, but I’m frozen. The front of Jul’s dress is coated in dried blood, cascading from the tear in the fabric by her heart.

  Camille gasps. “There’s no - uh - ” She puts her hand over her own heart, trying to telegraph a word she’s forgotten.

  “No heart?” I exclaim. Oh God. I’m going to be sick.

  “No wound?” Bea says tersely. “Yes, I know. She has a pulse, too - an incredibly weak one, but it’s there. She just won’t wake up. Her body is there, but she’s not.”