“44th Street, east of the library, is considered the best viewing.”
Atlibrary, Mom’s interest perked up even more. “Is that the library with the lion statues?”
“Patience and Fortitude, yes,” Victorine said.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take you to see the sunrise.”
Mom made a happy noise and bit into another cookie.
I swear, they get to a certain age and you can’t tell who’s the parent and who’s the child anymore. “Now could we possiblyfocus?”
Poppy had already dived back into one of the books. “Most of it seems to be about setting the mood. There are a few objects mentioned—”
I looked up. “Oh?”
“Mirrors, for one. You wait for an apparition to appear. Or you can try to tempt them out with what’s called a ‘trigger object.’”
“What’s a trigger object?”
Poppy finger skimmed the text. “A trigger object is an object used to lure a ghost into interacting with you. It could be something that belonged to the person, or something important to them. It can work even better, supposedly, if you are in an environment familiar to the ghost.”
“Prospero’s apartment,” I said.
“Daniel’s apartment,” Victorine murmured.
“What could be a trigger object?”
While Victorine was considering, Poppy jumped in. “The sword canes!”
“Yes. Good,” I said. “What else?”
“The Mirror Seal,” Victorine said.
“It’s in pieces,” I said. “What good would that do?”
“It was the most important thing to him.”
The shattered glass had made me so uncomfortable that I’d shoved it in a closet and tried to avoid looking at it. The idea of hauling it to Prospero’s made the tea and cookies tumble around my stomach like it was a Kitchen-Aid mixer. “Okay…” I said. “Let’s say I summon him. Great. But the point isn’t actually summoning him—it’sbanishinghim.”
Poppy flipped ahead. “Destroy the trigger object.”
“Destroy—the Mirror?” I tried to wrap my mind around destroying something so powerful, with so much history.
“It’s symbolic,” Poppy said. “Scares them off.”
“How would you destroy it?” Mom asked.
“That’s something elemental magic would work for,” Poppy said. “Burn it. Melt it down.”
I pictured the beautiful carvings on the empty frame, all decorated with sparkling crystal dewdrops. Burning it would be like burning art, or books. “Just the glass?”
Poppy shrugged.
I looked at our resident vampire expert. “Victorine?”
Her shrug was more elegant, but just as lacking in answers.
“Fine,” I said. “Prospero’s apartment. The Mirror, or what’s left of it. Fire.”
