by Kyle Shultz
“Of course I did! I’ll never be able to un-see it!”
“To be fair, she kissed me.”
She shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She turned to her double. “Stop wearing my face, this instant. If you’re going to take human form, just use the one you’re famous for. The Wicked Queen.”
“The White Queen,” the wraith corrected. “Or the Snow Queen, or Queen Snow White the First. The more famous Snow White was actually the second in my family to bear that name.” Her eyes darkened. Clearly she was still bitter about that enchanted-coffin trick.
“Whatever,” said Cordelia. “Anyway, it wasn’t your family; you stole that identity too. But I’d greatly prefer it if you looked like somebody I don’t recognize.”
Mirrordelia smiled. “As you wish.” She passed her hand over her face, and her skin paled and withered, tightening against her bones until her face looked like a skull. Her modern clothing shifted to a white robe thrown around her body like a winding sheet. The garment floated behind her, as did her long white hair, despite the lack of wind in this bizarre place. Her fingers shriveled into bony talons as she lowered her hand.
I curled my lip. “Eugh.”
Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t mean what the Wicked Queen looks like now. You don’t have to mimic her corpse, do you?”
The wraith pulled her lips back from blackened teeth in a disturbing smile. “Too late,” she said in a hissing voice. “You asked for this, you’ve got it. I’m not changing again.”
“Fine,” I said, shuddering. “Let’s get this over with. My question got us into this mess, so I’d like an answer, if you don’t mind. What’s your price for the information we want?”
“Memories,” she whispered, savoring the word as if it were some delicious morsel.
I frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
“It’s perfectly simple. I give you a piece of my information, you give me a piece of yours. One of those lovely memories you’ve got stored up in your head. And I get to choose which one, of course.”
Dozens of shining hand-mirrors suddenly appeared in the air around me. Instead of reflecting our surroundings, however, they held many different scenes - images which, to my surprise, were very familiar. In one, I saw my teenage self, stealing food for me and Crispin from market stalls on the streets of Talesend. In another, I was solving my first case. In another, I was barely seven, helping my father set the stage for one of his elaborate deceptions.
“These are what you want?” I reached out to touch one of the mirror frames. “But why?”
“Because she’s an echo of a person, desperate to feel like she’s a human being,” said Cordelia, gazing at the wraith in disgust. “And memories are part of what define human beings. When she feeds on one of your memories, she’s feeding on a piece of you.”
A chill ran down my spine, and the fur on the back of my neck stood on end. “But if I give her one,” I reasoned, “I won’t remember it myself anymore.”
“Exactly,” said the wraith. “Now, for your first question - the one about my price? - I’ll just take a tiny memory. One you can easily live without. This one, for example.” She picked one of the mirrors out of the air. It showed me sitting at the dining room table in my flat, morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. I was shoveling kippers into my mouth and glancing at my watch every few seconds.
My brow furrowed. “I don’t remember this.”
“Breakfast, March 12 of this year,” the wraith explained. “And you do remember it, in the sense that the memory’s still in your head. It’s just not easy for you to access it right now.” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Not that it really matters. It’s only fair that I take an unimportant memory for that first question, given that you didn’t know the rules yet. Are we agreed?”
I nodded. “Fine.”
“Watch out,” Cordelia whispered. “She’s up to something.”
The wraith touched the mirror-glass. A swirling darkness, like ink poured into a glass of water, spread through it and obscured the image within. I didn’t feel a thing. The whole frame soon turned to black smoke, which the wraith sucked in through her nostrils. She closed her eyes and gave a deep sigh of contentment.
“Now,” she said, “to more important matters. What is your next question?”
I glanced at Cordelia. “We’ve got two, I suppose. About the Rose, and about your father’s plan?”
“I’ll ask them,” said Cordelia. “I don’t want you giving up any more memories.”
“I’m afraid,” said the wraith, gazing hungrily at the mirrors, “that I will have to insist that Nicholas here asks at least one question. There’s a particular memory of his I’ve got my eye on.” She reached for one of the mirrors and held it up for me to see.
I peered closer. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Absolutely not. No deal.”
The skeletal face twisted with mirth. “Oh, really? You’re willing to stay a beast just to hold on to this bauble?”
I snatched the mirror from her grasp. “It’s one of the only memories I have left of her.”
“Who?” asked Cordelia.
“My mother.” I gazed into the glass, watching as a tall, graceful woman tucked a little boy into bed. I could just barely hear the haunting strains of the lullaby she was singing; a folk song from her homeland.
“I may never see her again,” I said. “I can’t let go of this.”
“Take something from me instead,” said Cordelia. “I have lots of—”
“No, dear,” said the wraith, in an icy tone. “This is the one I want.”
I stood in silence for a moment, listening to my mother sing. Slowly, I handed the mirror back to the wraith. “Take it,” I said, my voice hoarse.
She snatched it from me, her bony claws instantly spreading darkness through the glass. I felt a sudden pang of sadness as I realized the memory was slipping away. I still remembered that the moment had happened; I knew that my mother had once sung me to sleep. But her face on that day, my emotions, the melody - all the details were gone. It was like a beautiful, priceless painting being replaced by a cursory description of the picture scribbled on a slip of paper. Losing something precious is bad enough. Not being able to remember it is far worse.
The mirror dissolved into smoke, and the wraith inhaled it greedily. “Mmm,” she said, closing her eyes as if she were smelling some heavenly aroma. “Excellent. Now, your question?”
I curled my lip at her in hatred. “Tell me about the Rose,” I snapped. “What is it actually for? What does it do?”
The wraith pressed her fingertips together in thought. “To answer that,” she said, “we’ll need to take a closer look at where the spell came from in the first place.”
Our surroundings suddenly changed, and we found ourselves standing in a very familiar room. It was the place where all this trouble had begun - the chamber in the Palace of Villeneuve where the Clawthorn Rose was kept. Only now, there were no claw marks on the walls and ceiling. Through the window, I could see stars blazing in a pitch-black sky. But they paled in comparison to the bright lights glowing inside the room. A woman in a long blue cloak stood at the table where we had found the Rose. The flower was there, but it was in pristine condition. Its blossom was crimson, its stem was green, and it stood upright, curving its menacing thorns toward the ceiling. It was held up by long tendrils that snaked down the table legs and across the floor, invading every corner of the room. The woman was waving her hands over the flower and muttering to herself. Runes appeared as she worked, falling into neat lines that curled around the flower.
“Where are we?” I asked in a whisper.
“You can speak up,” said the wraith. “She can’t hear you. We’re not really here, you see. Or rather, she isn’t. This is just a vision of the distant past.”
“Wait,” said Cordelia, “so that’s the fairy who created the Rose in the first place?”
“Precisely,” explained the wraith. “Her name was Ari
ane. She was famous for all sorts of nasty experiments - on humans, mostly. The monstrosities she created made her rather unpopular, even among her own kind. Which is saying a lot.”
At that moment, the door to the chamber burst open to reveal an armored man carrying a huge broadsword. He pulled off his battered helmet and flung it aside, revealing a youthful, handsome face. Blood trickled from a wound on his temple, and his skin was drenched with sweat. “Est-ce pret? (Is it ready?)” he barked in Contefais.
The fairy pulled back her hood. She appeared to be in her mid-forties, with long, golden hair, pointed ears, and blue-tinted skin. “Oui,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. “But I must caution you again, Prince Bastien—”
“You?” the young man spat. “Caution me? After all the lives you’ve happily destroyed, you balk at casting one of your loathsome enchantments on me?”
“I have always been careful in how I choose subjects for my work, Your Highness,” said Ariane calmly. “People who were unimportant; who would not be missed. Worthless peasants, hardened criminals—”
“They were my people,” the prince shot back. “And you made them into monsters. The least you can do to atone for your crimes is to help me now.”
“I do not question your goals, my prince,” said Ariane. “I wish to defeat the Hollow Ones as much as you do. But for the crown prince of Villeneuve to subject himself to such a fate—”
“I have made my choice,” the prince insisted. “It is the only way to save my people.”
“Wait,” I said, “he wanted this?”
Cordelia looked astonished as well. “This war they’re talking about; who were they fighting? I’ve seen mentions of the Hollow Ones in old texts, but there were never any details.”
“Be quiet and listen,” the wraith hissed.
Ariane sighed. “You may never be human again, Bastien.”
“I know that.”
“If we survive this, I will try to restore you,” she went on. “But if I die—”
“You will,” muttered the wraith.
“—and you seek out another enchanter to break the spell, tell that person that this Rose is your only hope to change back.”
“I care not for what will happen after the battle,” said Bastien. “I am concerned only with winning it.”
“Are you ready?” asked Ariane.
The prince squared his shoulders. “Yes.” But I could see in his eyes that he was lying.
“Take off your armor,” said Ariane. “The thorns will need to reach your skin.”
“All right,” said Cordelia, her face paling, as Bastien pulled off the heavy metal plates. “I think we have everything we need. Do we have to watch this?”
“We don’t have to,” said the wraith. “But the transformation might give us some more helpful details. And besides, it’ll be fun.”
The prince had stripped down to a simple tunic. He stepped closer to the Rose and shut his eyes. “Do it,” he said, clenching his jaw.
Ariane held a trembling hand above the Rose. The flower writhed like an angry cobra, shooting long, thorny tendrils toward the prince. Bastien cried out in pain as they wrapped around his body, digging their sharp points into his skin. Streams of blood stained his clothes. I began to feel embarrassed about making such a fuss over one little thorn.
The prince’s cries grew more guttural. Bones shifted grotesquely beneath his skin as his whole frame warped and expanded. His clothes and boots tore apart, falling away from him in shreds as reddish-brown fur rippled across his body. Claws sprouted from his fingers and toes, and his handsome features twisted into a familiar, animalistic visage.
However, Bastien’s resemblance to me only lasted for a moment.
“What’s happening?” I exclaimed. “Why isn’t it stopping?”
The prince took on a stooping posture as his arms grew inhumanly long. His fingers lengthened hideously as well, now resting on the floor. His eyes grew and split until there were eight of them, like the eyes of a spider. He was now twice my size, so large that his head pressed against the ceiling. A barb, like that of a scorpion, formed at the end of his tail. He opened his mouth wide to reveal double rows of fangs, and let out an unearthly shriek.
I leaned over to Cordelia. “Am I just being vain, or does he look much more hideous than I do?”
She shook her head, gazing at the monster with wide eyes. “You’re not just being vain.”
“I will send you to the heart of the enemy’s camp,” said Ariane. “They have protective wards set up, but their magic cannot harm you in your new form.” She cast a cloud of runes toward him. “Fight well, Prince Bastien,” she said.
“No longer…Bastien,” hissed the creature, his voice so distorted that I could barely make out the words. “I am…Beast.”
As the runes swirled around him, he faded away like a ghost.
Ariane leaned on the table for support, staring down at the Rose with a stricken look. “What have I done?” she whispered.
“I think we’ve seen enough.” The wraith’s spectral voice broke the silence, causing me and Cordelia to jump in surprise. The scene around us blurred and vanished, and we were back in the strange, misty garden.
I shook my head, trying to clear the disturbing images from my mind. “That was horrible.”
“That was a fairy tale,” said the wraith. “Fairy tales are horrible.”
“But he was saved, right?” asked Cordelia.
“Ah, ah, ah,” said the wraith, waving a gnarled finger in the air. “Do you really want to pay the price for that question to be answered?”
Cordelia glared at her. “Never mind.”
“But,” the wraith added, “because I’m feeling generous today, I’ll answer this one for free. No. The prince was not saved.”
I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “But - I thought Beauty—”
“Ah, yes. ‘Beauty.’ Her real name was Anwen of Caradoc. She was one of the most powerful enchantresses of her day. And she did defeat the Beast - but she had to kill him in the process.”
“So much for the kissing and crying ideas,” I muttered.
“It’s a powerful enchantment,” said the wraith. “So powerful that it has a life and a will of its own. It won’t be defeated easily.”
“Which brings us to my question,” said Cordelia. “How do we stop my father?”
The mirrors containing her memories appeared before she had even finished speaking. The wraith leapt forward eagerly, seizing one of the frames. “This one.”
“No,” said Cordelia. “Sorry. All my memories of him are off the table. You can have this one instead.” She held out another mirror. I couldn’t quite make out the scene inside, and I felt uncomfortable about moving closer to get a better look. These were Cordelia’s private moments, after all.
“This is a memory of your father,” the wraith scoffed. “How valuable can it possibly be to you? You don’t even like the man.”
Cordelia held the wraith’s gaze. “You’re right, I don’t like him,” she said. “But I still love him. I always will. And this is one of the only happy memories I have of him.” She thrust the mirror forward. “Take it or leave it.”
The wraith’s eyes flitted from Cordelia to the memory, then back again. “Fine,” she said, taking the glass as darkness filled it. “Let’s have a look at what your father’s doing right now, shall we?”
“All right,” said Cordelia.
The wraith grinned. “Though I should warn you…it’s not a pretty sight.”
CHAPTER TEN
Surprises
The garden dissolved into a stone-walled chamber with high, vaulted ceilings. A long table carved with intricate designs took up most of the room, and torches blazing with green fire hung on the walls.
I blinked in confusion. “Isn’t this still Villeneuve? I thought we were going to spy on your father.”
“We’re in the right place,” said Cordelia, frowning in concern as she looked around the room
.
“You live here?”
“Not in this room. This is the secret meeting hall underneath the house.”
I rolled my eyes. “Secret underground meeting hall. Of course.”
“All the best megalomaniacal-sorcerer-crime-bosses have them,” the wraith pointed out.
“I don’t recognize him, though,” Cordelia added, motioning to a figure at the other end of the room. A young man with a few days’ growth of stubble, his arms shackled to metal rings set into the wall. A swollen, purple bruise obscured one of his eyes, and blood oozed from a cut on his lip. I felt an icy hand clutch my heart as I recognized him.
“Crispin?” I whispered.
Cordelia gasped. “Your brother?”
I charged forward, grabbing for the manacles that bound him. But my hand passed right through him as if he were a ghost.
“Remember,” said the wraith, “we’re not really here. We’re simply watching a vivid projection of events in the real world.” She sounded as if she were enjoying herself immensely.
I turned on her. “Then let us out of this mirror,” I snarled, “so we can go save him!”
“Nick, wait,” said Cordelia, laying a hand on my arm. “I know this is hard, but we need to know what we’re dealing with first.” She pointed to an arched doorway at the other end of the room. Lord Whitlock was just stepping through it. Behind him, I could see a curving staircase leading up into thick shadows.
Whitlock looked very different from the last time I had seen him. For one thing, instead of his dapper suit, he was wearing long, flowing robes that were pitch-black in color. For another, he looked at least ten years younger - though this didn’t make him look better by any means. His face was deathly pale, and there was a strange gleam in his eyes. Veins throbbed in his forehead, and his mouth was frozen in a maniacal grin.
Cordelia stared at him in confusion. “What has he done to himself?”
“I don’t care,” I said, clenching my fists. “I’m going to kill him.”
Whitlock stopped in front of Crispin. “Back again,” he said in a sing-song voice, his words echoing eerily through the gloomy chamber. “Ready to tell me more, Mr. Beasley?”
