by Alex Rivers
Hot wrath erupted in my skull, and I lunged for the first mayor, swinging. My fist went right through her, the reflection flickering, and I nearly lost my balance. Immediately, I whirled, kicking the second, meeting only air. A jab to the third got the same result. When I scrambled for the fourth and fifth, my fist hitting only air, she laughed.
“Just reflections,” I said. “Smoke and mirrors.”
“You should know a lot about that,” the eight mayors giggled. “Smoke and mirrors, Siofra’s getting nearer.”
The closest reflection turned, slamming me in the face with her fist, and I staggered back. It seemed that sometimes, the reflections were tangible. If I could just catch them at the right time, could just sink my fingers into their wretched skin…
As I whirled, another reflection lunged and aimed a kick at my gut. Even as the air left my lungs, I caught her foot and flipped her. But my victory was short lived as pain exploded in the back of my skull, and I stumbled forward. The reflections were strong, their bodies sometimes solid. But every time I tried to hit one, my fist just swung through the air. Siofra was toying with me. Want to play with me?
Dizzy, I staggered, and another blow slammed me in the back of the skull, knocking me over.
“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,” they trilled.
Another one kicked, slamming me in the stomach with her foot and I folded in two.
“A murderer should drown in grief,” they sang.
A mayor kicked me in the face, and agony ripped through my jaw.
“Monster.” Her voice was still high-pitched and girlish, but there was an edge to it now.
And as she grew angrier, the voices slipped out of sync, the reflections beating me with a rising fury. Curling into a ball, I took the blows, took the pain. The little mob of clones devolved into incomprehensible shouts, kicking and spitting at me.
Just as I felt as if I couldn’t take anymore, the attack stopped, the reflections looking down at me.
I coughed, rolling to my back. She’d bruised several of my ribs, and blood filled my mouth.
“Okay,” I wheezed, staring up at her. “I get why you call me thief. I stole your life, right? No daddy and mommy for poor Siofra. But I don’t recall murdering anybody.”
Around the hall, the mirrors flickered, all showing the same place: the stone vaults of a medieval church, shadows dancing around them. Cassandra Liddell lying on the floor, the Rix on top of her. A knife in her hand. With one sharp, brutal slash, she slit the Rix’s throat.
“Murderer,” said the mayors.
“Well, he was an asshole.” I forced myself to sit up. Slowly, clutching my gut, I rose. Pain splintered my left leg. Probably fractured as well. “I’m sorry, do you miss your daddy?”
“Do you miss yours?” They inched in closer, reaching for me, their girlish smiles faltering. “Let’s meet him again!”
Two mayors lunged for me, fingers hard as rock. They shoved me, slamming me back into the curved mirror. Then, they swarmed around me, holding me in place, fingers digging into my flesh. Everywhere around me, I could see the mirrors—the half-dome, the shard, the gilt-frame mirrors. Siofra had something she wanted to show me.
“Remember this, Cassandra?” one of them whispered in my ear.
Around the hall, the mirrors shimmered to life, the reflections shifting to show me a blue-walled room, and a sharp pang of longing pierced me to the marrow. A living room. The table where I’d cracked my chin open when I was four years old. The sofa where I used to curl up with a book, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows that mom made for me. The carpet, with its intricate patterns that I loved to follow with my eyes as my parents watched the news. I froze, staring at it, unable to move, the breath leaving my lungs. Even if the mayors hadn’t been pinning me, I didn’t think I’d be able to move.
My old house. In my parents’ bedroom, portraits hanging on the wall, my mom’s red bathrobe tossed across the bed. My parents stood with their backs to the wall, mouths open, expressions confused. A woman stood in front of them, holding a large knife. Not a woman. A girl.
I could see her face clearly—a face like my mother’s, but younger. So much younger. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen, her hips just slightly curved, her face full. Her vicious smile and dead eyes jarred incongruously with her baby-like features.
I needed to stop watching, needed to tear my gaze away, but I couldn’t. Even if I could free myself from the mayors’ rigid grasps, I wouldn’t be able to stop staring. I had to see what had really happened. All these years, I’d been so certain my father had ruthlessly slaughtered my mom, and now I needed the truth. I needed to know.
The girl—Siofra—was talking, pointing the knife. My dad was talking back, looking scared and angry. And then he lunged for the knife.
As he did, my mother screamed. I couldn’t hear her voice, but her words had been seared into my soul for a long time, and I could see her lips form the words. Horace, Don’t!
My heart slammed against my ribs, so hard I was sure Siofra could hear it.
The girl’s hand moved fast, so fast. Grabbing my father’s wrist, pulling him closer. Their eyes met. For a moment, it almost looked as if she was about to hug him.
I stared as little Siofra lunged past him, plunging the knife into my mother’s chest. I let out a sob as my mother’s mute face twisted in pain. Blood sprayed from her chest, covering the girl. My father’s bulging eyes suggested a heart attack. Aghast, he wrapped his arms around my mother to keep her from falling.
While he gripped onto my mother, gently lowering her to the ground, Siofra reared back the knife again, and thrust it into his neck. He collapsed, my mother’s limp body falling along with him. Blood pumped hard from my father’s throat, arcing over the floor, the bed. His eyes were wide, shocked. Still alive. My mother clutched her chest, gasping for breath. Siofra had missed her heart, I knew. She had punctured her lung, instead.
The girl crouched down, then grabbed my father’s hand, wrapping his fingers around the knife’s handle. Just then, the life went out of my dad’s eyes, and his head slumped to the side, fingers limp on the knife’s hilt.
Monsters aren’t real, princess.
They are, Daddy, but you didn’t raise one. You simply spawned one.
Grief ripped me apart. Tears were flowing down my cheeks, and my body shook. All these years…
The investigators should have realized that this wasn’t a murder suicide. My father’s autopsy should have uncovered the bruises on his wrist. A skilled crime scene technician would have observed the traces Siofra had left behind. The angle of the knife thrust was all wrong, too low for a grown man to have done it.
But no one cared enough. My father had been struggling with some mental illness. Depression, perhaps. He didn’t sleep well, and had to take pills. I remembered overhearing my parents arguing. He’d nearly lost his job after lashing out at a coworker, the result of weeks of insomnia.
An unstable man, medicated. History of personal problems. The classic scapegoat. Murder-suicide, and a daughter who’d hate him for years to come. An open-and-shut case.
The mayors’ fingers tightened on my shoulders, pulling me out of the nightmare. “And where is the great Cassandra Liddell?” Their singsong voices giggled in my ear, eerily high-pitched. “About to storm in and save her parents? Or maybe just call the hospital? Ooooh!” Some of the mayors clapped their hands. “Your mother moved. She’s still alive! Maybe if you move fast enough, you can save her! How will it end, Cassandra?” The mayors’ eyes flashed with excitement, then they pouted. “But you know how it ends, don’t you?”
Sorrow and shame gnawed at my chest, and the reflection changed, shimmering to show me a teenager’s room. Messy, a backpack dumped out on the green carpet, a half-finished art project on the floor. And under the bed, a blond girl, shutting her eyes, her hands on her ears, trembling in fear.
I didn’t try to save my mother. Didn’t get help. I had just lain there, until someone
came.
“Awww. Little Cassandra didn’t want to help.” The mayors pouted. “Maybe she liked all the fear her parents were feeding her. Too good to interrupt that rush, wasn’t it? That’s when you learned your dark little secret. That you got off on terror, that you’d rather soak it up then save those you love. Because the truth is, Cassandra, monsters can’t really love. You know that, don’t you?”
The mayors let go of me, and I sank to my knees, the memories of that night swirling through my skull, poisoning my mind like acrid smoke. I tried to block out the memory of that sound my mother had made when that knife had punctured her lung—a wheeze, a gurgle—but the sound hammered in my skull. A sharp tendril of sorrow coiled through me, threatening to break me. Monsters can’t really love.
Siofra stroked my hair from behind me. “My parents should have known.” She spoke in her light, singsong voice. But this time, it was just one voice, not eight. “As soon as they looked at you, they should have known that someone had taken their baby. Their little girl. They left behind a monster. A creature of nightmares. A terror leech.”
The fury burning through my blood nearly simmered away the pain of my broken bones. Slowly, I turned to look at her. She didn’t look like the mayor anymore, but someone much younger, and almost exactly like my mother. The woman who’d told me bedtime stories and fixed my hair in the mornings, who’d brought me flat ginger ale when I’d been sick and put blankets over me when I’d slept on the sofa, who’d had the most beautiful laugh. Maybe they had the same features, but the expression was pure Siofra: a childish grin that never reached her eyes.
I looked at the mirror again. Siofra was showing me the same image: Little Cassandra, cowering under the bed.
“How does it feel?” Siofra giggled. “To know that you could have saved them, but didn’t? That you hid underneath the bed, a coward?”
“I was just thirteen,” I said through gritted teeth.
“So was I, and look what I managed to do. I changed everything for them.”
I stared at the girl under the bed, her eyes wide, body shaking. For the first time, I had an inkling of how young I’d been. I hadn’t known what had been happening in the next room, or why I could feel their fear coursing through my veins. I hadn’t known anyone was dying. I knew something terrifying was happening: a brutal argument between adults, noises I couldn’t explain, and emotions I didn’t understand.
Siofra raised her eyebrows, all innocence. “You could have saved them.”
“You could have not killed them.” And in one sharp motion, I pulled my collar to reveal the crystal that Alvin had given me.
Chapter 32
Her eyes widened as she saw the crystal. “Oh.”
I took a step toward her, rage igniting my veins like a volcano.
“Please, Goddess,” she fumbled back. “Forgive me. I’ll do anything.”
I took another step, blazing with fury. “You killed my parents.”
She averted her eyes. “I didn’t know they were the Goddess’s parents.”
“Now you do.”
“What would you want me to do, Goddess? I can atone for my sins. I’ll do anything you want to repent. I’ll flay myself.”
There was something in her voice that made me hesitate. A certain tone…
Lightning-fast, her hand shot out and she reached for the crystal, snapping the cord around my neck. Grinning, she held it up to her eyes. The breath left my lungs. That had been my plan. My one and only plan.
“Perhaps I should make a sacrifice to you, Goddess?” She pivoted, hurling the crystal though the reflection. “Oops. I seem to have lost your trinket.”
Shit shit shit. Still, it wasn’t over yet. I crouched, grasping for my knife in my boot, but as my fingers curled around the hilt, my own reflection crawled from underneath the bed, out through the glass, moving at the speed of a storm wind. My heart slammed against my ribs as I rose.
But the reflection—Little Cassandra—was already grasping for my hand with frozen fingers. She twisted my wrist until I cried in pain, dropping the knife. In horror, I stared as a second Little Cassandra crawled from the reflection.
“That was your plan?” Siofra asked in her childlike voice. “You thought you could control me with a bauble?” Biting her lip, her face all innocence, she crossed to me.
Her expression darkened, and she slapped me hard.
“Is that what you thought? That you could defeat me with a trinket from a gutter fae, you worthless bitch? I will end you.” Darkness slid through her eyes.
Pain wracked my body from the beating I’d taken, the broken ribs and the cracked leg bone. The Little Cassandras pressed their icy fingers into my flesh, jabbing at my cracked ribs.
Siofra shook her head. “So disappointing. You stole my life. And you’re pathetic.” Her features had shifted, now vicious, snarling. “You wasted it!”
Reflections shimmered around us: moments from my own life flickering in the mirrors. My pulse raced as I stared at them. All the reflections starred Siofra. Siofra going to the zoo with my parents, squealing excitedly when she saw the giraffes; Siofra at her sixth birthday, clapping her hands gleefully at the red bike she’d always wanted; Siofra aged eleven, dressed as a vampire, trick or treating, collecting candy; Siofra having her first kiss with Ryan Mahoney in the back of the movie theater, then wiping the drool off on the back of her hand; Siofra and Scarlett, drunk in a Dunkin’ Donuts on St. Patrick’s day, wearing stupid green hats, with donut jelly on their chins, and Scarlett threatening to pee on their floor if they wouldn’t let her use the employee bathroom. Dozens of memories, shimmering over the mirrors.
“I want my life back, Cassandra! That was my life you stole.” Her voice was high-pitched, hysterical. She was no longer in control. “I should have been Cassandra Liddell. I was Cassandra Liddell until you stole my life, drowned me in grief.” Her cheeks were pink, and spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke. “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief!”
She was losing it, no longer in control of the images, and yet they played on behind her, taking on a life of their own. As rage consumed her, her mind simply leaked into the mirrors. Her bond with the reflections was so complete, they’d become part of her. When she was emotional, her own thoughts began to spill onto those reflections.
How could I use that?
My body aching, battered, I struggled against the Little Cassandras, desperately trying to think of how I could use Siofra’s reflections and emotions against her.
Think Cassandra. Think through the fury. What did I know about her? She felt abandoned, robbed of a life she deserved. Forced to grow up as a slave in the Rix’s household, yet strangely loyal to him. What did that mean? She must have been desperate for his attention, for his love. Starved of affection, vying for it even after his death. Still trying to imitate him, to impress him. I’d robbed her of the chance of getting his approval.
“I didn’t rob you of a family,” I said. “You had the Rix. He raised you. He taught you.”
Her body began to shake. “And you took him from me too. Because of course, Cassandra Liddell had to take everything from me.” The visions in the mirrors disappeared as she got her emotions under control.
One of the Little Cassandras grabbed my throat. She squeezed, and I struggled for air.
I elbowed her in the gut, knocking her off. “You can have him back!” I shouted. “The Rix still exists!”
The Cassandras were at my throat again, squeezing, fingers like shards of ice.
Siofra curled her lip in distaste. “I’m done playing, Cassandra. Fun’s over. Your time is up.”
Frantically, I thrashed, freeing myself from the Cassandras’ frigid grasps. “Check it out.” I gasped. “His soul… captured in the knife.”
Slowly, the Little Cassandras relaxed their icy grips. Siofra frowned at the knife on the floor. “One last game?” she trilled. “You know, the iron won’t hurt me. Unlike you, I’m human.”
“Not a trick. Not a
game.” I rubbed my throat, swallowing hard. “Pick up the knife. See for yourself.”
One of the Little Cassandras kicked the knife over to Siofra. Narrowing her eyes at me, she crouched and picked it up.
The effect was immediate. Her face softened, and she stared at the blade in amazement. A girlish smile brightened her features. “It is him,” she whispered. “He’s alive!”
Around us, the mirrors flickered to life again. Memories of Siofra and the Rix materialized everywhere. The two of them, eating dinner at a round table beneath a willow tree. Siofra walking behind him on a gleaming Trinovantum Street, as other fae cowered before him, bowing low. The Rix, seen from below, staring up at the stars,
Tears shimmered in her eyes as she stared at the knife. “My King.”
I searched at the visions, searching for something I could use.
The Rix sitting in a throne-like chair by a hearth, and Siofra handing him a goblet. The Rix whipping a woman in a cellar, while Siofra looked on with fascination. The Rix walking briskly down a hallway, and Siofra hurrying after him.
Those were her fondest memories of him, and he didn’t show the tiniest spark of warmth in any of them.
I stared at her, taking in her reverence for the knife. “He didn’t really care about you, did he?”
Her gaze darted to me, anger burning through the tears. “He cared.”
“Really? My parents kissed me before I went to bed. They hugged me in the morning. They bought me presents—”
“He bought me…” She heaved a sob. “You have no right… he gave me…” She could hardly talk, her entire body tense, her face crumbling. The mirrors flared to life, showing me her grief.
Burning into the mirrors was an image of the Rix, handing her a doll.
She was crying, a little mop-haired three-year-old, desperate for attention. Hiccupping, her chest heaving in irregular breaths, dirt or food smeared around her mouth. She sat on a stone floor, and he turned to shout at her, his voice mute in the reflection. And then, as an afterthought, he grabbed a wooden toy that lay discarded on his desk, some sort of carved doll with hollow eyes, and threw it at her.
