Forever

by Chanda Hahn

  Mina struggled under the weight of the mirror. Brody noticed and ran up the stairs to take it from her.

  “Here, I got it.” He gently took the mirror from her hands.

  “Thanks.” Mina smiled at him, surprised at how there was no awkwardness between them. Once she’d compelled him, it took only minutes to find his true love. How could Mina not feel good about that?

  She walked by the front room and noticed Charlie passed out on the couch again. She stopped and brushed his hair back from his forehead. He wasn’t warm anymore, just exhausted and sleeping.

  Ever called her into the kitchen. Nix followed, carrying another mirror that Mina recognized from her mom’s bedroom.

  Ever directed the positioning of the mirrors around the kitchen, so they reflected across the island and back at each other.

  “We know Teague has Mina’s Godmother mirror,” she said. “So he can watch her whenever he wants. But I remembered something from my gran about how to block the mirror from seeing true. We dilute her reflection by reflecting the images back at each other, within each mirror. He’ll see a kaleidoscope of images, but they will be reflecting so much it will be hard for him to see or hear her.” Her grin grew wide in self-appreciation.

  “Like a really bad cellphone connection,” Nan realized out loud.

  “Exactly. Hard to make a connection if the call keeps getting dropped.” Ever winked. “All plotting must be done within the safety of this mirror prism.”

  They sat around the kitchen island, and Mina crossed her arms and hugged herself. She took a deep steadying breath and looked over her group of friends. All of them in this together, to help her. She had to do what she could to save them, but that meant she mustn’t tell them what she sacrificed to do so.

  “Teague stopped his attack at the fairgrounds very suddenly. I’m not sure why. It could be that he saw the police arrive, and he wasn’t ready to reveal himself yet.”

  “That’s dumb, since hundreds of people saw his monsters attacking the school. There must be another reason,” Nan spoke up as she slapped a large grayish poultice from Nix on her bruised cheek.

  Nix went back to the kitchen stove to put together another poultice for Brody. She’d seen him do this before—make a mess in her kitchen, going through her cupboards mixing healing herbs.

  “Teague won’t stop here. He will destroy everyone unless he gets what he wants,” Ever spoke firmly.

  “Well, what does he want?” Nan mumbled. “Obviously it’s not world peace.”

  “Turtle peas?” Nix asked loudly from behind his boiling pot of water. He dropped the lid, and it rattled.

  “Not turtle peas—world peace,” Ever snapped. “If you could keep it down a bit, maybe you could hear.” She sighed dramatically and continued. “No one is safe. I believe the only reason he hasn’t done more damage is that he’s fixated on Mina. Maybe we can use that to our advantage.”

  Brody didn’t look pleased at Ever’s suggestion. His fists closed angrily. “No.”

  Ever just laughed. “You don’t get it, do you? She’s the best chance we have, and she’ll probably have to face him in the end anyway.”

  “Find another way,” he said.

  “Okay, sheesh,” Ever replied. “But you’re kind of tying my hands. So our other option is that we can bring in Ferah to help us.”

  “Anyone except for Ferah,” Mina added.

  Ever made a sour face. “Yeah, well, I don’t really want her on my team. I’d rather eat nails than partner up with her, but you do have a point. We’ve only got one shot at this, and I think I have an idea.”

  “What do you need us to do?” Nan jumped in. “We can help. I can—”

  “No,” Mina interrupted harshly. “I need you to do something else for me.”

  Brody’s posture stiffened, and it mirrored Mina’s defensive one. Would he interfere if he knew what she wanted, or would he help?

  She sent Ever to gather the things she bought and asked Brody to pick up the sleeping bags from the living room. Nix was so preoccupied with banging around in the kitchen, he couldn’t possibly hear Mina.

  Mina pulled Nan closer while they were still within the mirrors.

  “You’re my best friend, right?”

  “Duh, of course.”

  “And you love Charlie, like he was your own brother.” It wasn’t a question. Mina knew the answer. No one doted on Charlie more than her best friend. Nan was the only person who truly got him and his unique personality and language. She’d even punched Savannah White for calling him a name and faced out-of-school suspension.

  “I’d kill anyone who touched a hair on his quirky little head,” she said fiercely.

  “Good, then I need you to take him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take my brother and run. Hide him from the Fae. I can’t focus on what’s coming next if I’m looking over my shoulder for Charlie. Is there somewhere you can go, somewhere your family owns that you can hide him?”

  “Well, yeah maybe the—”

  “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” Mina gripped Nan’s arms. “No one can find him. No one can know, not even your parents.”

  “But I can’t kidnap him, Mina. I’m not his legal guardian.”

  “Nan,” Mina shot out. “Our mother’s gone. He’s going to end up in the system. They’re going to take him. But that’s the least of my worries. What if the Fae come after him? When this all dies down, you can bring him back. But remember, if something happens to me, Charlie becomes the next Grimm. He trusts you, Nan. You’re the one he’d want on his side. And he’ll need protection—help. He’ll need you.”

  Nan’s eyes turned glassy with tears. She left the circle of mirrors, paced the hall, rubbed her hands across her face in worry. She cried. Then she got angry. Every emotion crossed her face as she battled with what she was about to do.

  Mina knew the minute Nan had made the decision to take and hide Charlie. Her posture straightened, she held her head high, and she looked Mina dead in the eye.

  “No one will harm Charlie on my watch. I swear it.”

  “Good.” Mina hugged her friend and cried.

  She was asking a lot of Nan. It was illegal, and she would have to hide from her family. But Nan was used to living on her own. Her mom and stepdad were hardly ever home. When this was all over, Mina knew that he’d be taken care of, she’d see to that. If they won this battle.

  “Mina. What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

  “Try and survive.”

  There was more strategizing and planning schedules as they figured out what they were going to do about Teague. Ever had a plan that honestly might work, so Mina got Nix and Brody to agree to carry the mirrors upstairs and arrange them in her room.

  Chapter 12

  While Ever and Nix positioned the mirrors in her bedroom, Mina and Nan threw things into suitcases as quickly and quietly as they could. Charlie only woke up once, and that was when they were shuffling him out to Nan’s Volkswagen beetle. When he saw Mina, he immediately closed his eyes and started crying.

  He was mentally exhausted, and she felt terrible about it. She stopped in the middle of the yard and wrapped her arms around him. “Listen up, bud. Nan is going to take care of you. You’re going off on an adventure together. You like adventures, don’t you?”

  Charlie’s head bobbed yes.

  “Well, she’s got the best one planned, and when you get back, we will have this all figured out. Okay? Can you do this for me? Can you listen to Nan and be a good kid?”

  Charlie sniffed and looked over to Nan, who sat back watching them. Hands shoved in her coat pockets, her head dipping down. Nan was crying as well.

  Charlie let go of Mina and walked over to Nan, sliding his smaller hand into hers. He smiled wanly up at her and said. “I’ll protect Nan.”

  Nan looked at their clasped hands, and the tears flowed freely.

  “Ah, little buddy.” She met Mina’s eyes, her voice filled
with promise. “You know I’d give my life for him. You know that right?”

  “That’s why it has to be you.”

  “You give the word, and we’ll be back,” Brody said as he packed their sleeping bags into the back of the car. She never had any doubt that once he knew what Nan was doing, he’d go with and watch over her. That was why Mina needed to get Nan to agree before she told Brody.

  “You have to go quickly.” Mina tried not to look at her watch in front of them.

  They had spent hours packing and getting ready for this trip. She had only a few hours left. She wanted her friends far away. She didn’t want Teague to stop her—or to find them if he changed his mind.

  Nan opened the car door, and Mina buckled Charlie into the backseat and ran her hand over his hair. He’d need a haircut soon, and his birthday was coming up. She hoped she’d be alive to celebrate with him. She had packed his suitcase with clothes, jackets, and his favorite toys—even his Star Wars light saber.

  “I love you, Charlie,” Mina whispered as she gave him one last hug and kissed his forehead.

  “Love you back,” he whispered with a bear hug.

  She wouldn’t have let him go ever, except that he was the one who let go of her first. She wrapped the blanket from the sofa around him, and his head started to droop. Exhaustion was catching up with all of them.

  “You’ll explain everything to him, right?” Tears fell down Mina’s cheeks as she softly closed the back door.

  “I wouldn’t have to if you’d let us stay to help.” Nan’s blue eyes were glassy but on fire with determination.

  Mina shook her head. “You know this is for the best.” Mina closed the passenger door, but Nan rolled the window down.

  “I’ll take care of them,” Brody said across the roof of the car. “And I’ll find a way for you to get a hold of us if you need to.”

  “Don’t tell me. It’s best if I don’t know.”

  “Mina, it’s just…” Brody trailed off.

  “It’s okay. I’ll always love you, just not the way you deserve. But Nan will.”

  Those words seemed like the confirmation that Brody needed. He came around the car and pulled Mina into a hug. “Be safe.”

  He was going to make her cry. Mina gently pulled away, “You need to go. Get them somewhere safe.”

  He climbed into the driver’s seat and started up. Nan leaned forward and waved as he backed her car up and drove down the driveway. Mina watched the taillights until she could no longer see them in the darkness. She knew the car would turn left, away from town and onto the highway.

  She stood frozen in the middle of her driveway. Tears poured freely down her face. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she collapsed onto the gravel. It was for the best, she kept trying to tell herself.

  But if it was for the best, why did it feel like she’d just ripped out another part of her soul?

  The screen door slammed, and Nix stepped outside. “Mina? What’s wrong?” He rushed to her side.

  “He’s gone,” she whispered sadly.

  “Who?”

  “Charlie.” She sniffed, wiped at her eyes, and slowly stood up to face Nix.

  “How’d this happen? I promise we’ll get him back.” His voice grew angry, but he gathered her into a hug.

  Mina took comfort from his hug but gently pulled away. “No. We won’t.” She watched his eyes frown in confusion. “I sent him away.”

  “What?”

  “It’s better this way. I begged Nan to take him away, and Brody went with.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Wrong,” Ever’s voice cut in. “It’s exactly what she should have done. She was smart.” She had come out to stand on the porch and listen. “She’s cutting her losses, before Teague can use them against her. She’s thinking of what’s ahead. And this war is no place for a young Fae boy that just lost his mother.”

  Nix scowled. “There could have been another way.” He reached for Mina’s arm, but she wrenched it free and took a step back.

  “I just lost my mother,” Mina hissed between clenched teeth. “I almost lost all of you. I’m not about to lose my brother. He’s the only family I have left. Don’t judge me. You would have done the same thing, if you were in my position.”

  Nix stared at her, his eyes filled with pity. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

  “I guess that makes you better than me.” She didn’t really mean it, but it was easy to lash out when she was in so much pain. She stormed inside, away from Nix’s pity and Ever’s shock.

  Mina stormed up the stairs to her room. Locking the door, she pressed her back to it and tried to hold in the sobs that threatened to tear her chest apart.

  She moved toward her bed, trying to ignore the plethora of mirrors that now surrounded her room. She pulled back the covers, and something soft slid to the floor, landing with a thunk. Mina picked up the petal dress she had worn to the ball the other night and felt along the side for the hidden pocket. Her hand reached in and pulled out the dagger.

  She dropped it to the floor and stared at it. She’d forgotten that she slipped it in there. It wasn’t the sight of the dagger that startled her. It was the rust colored spots of Teague’s dried blood on it.

  She wiped it off as best as she could, placed the dagger in her bedside table, and shut the drawer. Mina crawled under the comforter and rolled over to stare across the room and into the mirror that faced her bed.

  He was winning. The Story was winning, and she was losing the will to fight. She heard knocking on her bedroom door but ignored it. She needed to mourn, to sink into her feelings and feel the pain, the betrayal, and the anger. Anger at her mother, anger at herself. When she had thought through every scenario, it always came down to what was best for her brother.

  She was down to two hours when a crazy idea came to her. She climbed out of bed and got dressed. This time, she was going over-prepared. She changed into jeans, boots, a white t-shirt, and her olive green jacket. In her backpack, she loaded food, water, and a flashlight. She looked at her nightstand, debating on whether to bring the dagger. She needed a weapon, but having one on her might make her life forfeit sooner than she had planned. When she was as packed as she could be, she grabbed the seam ripper from the top of her dresser.

  There was more to using the seam ripper than just opening up a gate between the planes. With enough willpower, maybe she could direct where it opened a gate. How else could she explain her fall from the tower to land in Wilhelm Grimm’s hospital room? Or how Queen Maeve was able to zone in on her and show up wherever Mina was with the seam ripper.

  Now, it was Mina’s turn to do some popping-in-uninvited of her own.

  She held the silver lipstick-sized tube and clicked the small gem. The Fates. Take me to the Fates.

  The seam ripper glowed, and she drew a large oval, creating a gate between her world and the Fae one outside of the mirror-circle. The portal glowed, and she tried to look through to the other side.

  Worry and doubt wedged themselves in the bottom of her stomach, but Mina pushed those feelings aside. She needed help, and she wasn’t going to sit back and let her friends do all the work.

  Taking a deep breath, Mina closed her eyes and stepped through the gate.

  Chapter 13

  It was night, and Mina was not surrounded by the normal sweet aroma of the Fae plane, but by an odorous sulfur-like smell that burned her nose and made her gag.

  “Ugh.” Mina covered her nose with her shirt. Had she ended up in the wrong place? Was she even on the Fae plane? She would have doubted it, but she looked up at the night sky and saw continually moving stars above. The Fae plane could be as fantastic as stories made it out to be, but it was also as deadly—with sea witches, giants, trolls, ogres and more. She couldn’t let her guard down for one second.

  She pulled her small flashlight out of her backpack and began walking. Mina didn’t get far before she slipped and sunk into mud. She struggled to regain her footing on the path, but
then the very next step, she was knee deep in the mud again.

  She flashed the light around in an arc to see that she was surrounded by swamp and curly green grass. Maybe it hadn’t worked? Maybe trying to direct the seam ripper had failed. She wasn’t anywhere near the Fates’ palace. She was in the middle of a stinking swamp.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. The odd chirping and grunting noises of the swamp creatures suddenly stopped. All was silent, except the slushing and sucking noises she made as she tried to free herself from the mud and get onto the path. Once in the grass, she froze and crouched low, listening in fear as she tried to silence her frantic breathing.

  After a minute of silence, Mina stood up and carefully continued her trek through the swamp grass. A squelch and popping sound followed each of her steps, but something warned her to move, to run. Mina tried, but suddenly slid waist-deep into water. She tried to wade through it, but she was too late.

  Lights exploded around her, blinding her. She was unable to blink or even cover her eyes from the onslaught of the bright light. But that was their way of keeping her from seeing them.

  She could hear voices, see shadows move beyond the light, but she couldn’t identify her captors.

  “So you have returned, have you?” A woman’s voice echoed with authority through the swamp. “Do you see the mess you have caused, child?”

  Mina couldn’t see her, but she recognized the voice of Queen Maeve. The balls of light dimmed, and she could see the queen standing in front of her. Her dark brown dress lacked the finer adornments and was a sharp contrast to the shimmering silver colors she preferred. Her hair was plaited in a long simple braid down her back. King Lucian came up next to her in similar clothes in earth tones.

  Mina suspected it was to help camouflage them in the swamps. She wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling that they weren’t here by choice. They were hiding.

  The hold on Mina’s body lessened, and without the support of the power holding her in place, she slipped and fell into the muddy water, barely catching herself before her head went under. She stood up to face the Fates and tried to keep her body from shaking with the cold.