“And in the meantime?”
“Keep an eye on her. Quietly. Don’t crowd her, don’t tip your hand. You know the rules.”
“Rules change when the glass cracks.”
“Rules keep the worlds from eating each other alive. You remember what happens when we meddle too much.”
Baba Yaga did remember, the Paris incident in ’24 and the drowned train car in ’68. Whole towns had been erased from maps, and not because humans wanted them gone.
Fate tilted her head. “Still, she’s got fire. You can’t teach that. Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
“Or burn the place down.”
Fate pushed off the railing and slipped toward the shadows. “Sometimes the only way to know what someone’s capable of is to give them enough rope.”
“And hope they don’t hang themselves with it,” Baba Yaga called after her.
The wind stole the words. Fate was gone, leaving Baba Yaga with the ocean, the iron-tinted air, and the restless clouds pressing low over the bay. Somewhere down in town, a mirror was humming.
Chapter 14
Nate
Far below the lighthouse, in the place where reflections breathed and shadows bent wrong, I stirred. The Mirror Realm had been patient with me so far. That patience was running out.
I hadn’t fallen asleep, not really. My head felt foggy, like I’d been underwater for hours. When I blinked, I was still in the same warped version of the school I’d stumbled into after Jess kissed me and everything went sideways. The colors were still drained, the air still heavy and muffled, every sound swallowed before it reached my ears.
The hallway looked familiar, same lockers, same trophy case, but everything was drained, like it had been photocopied one too many times. My footsteps made no sound. The floor felt soft under my shoes, like carpet soaked in water, even though it looked exactly like linoleum.
Every movement seemed too loud in my head but made no noise in the air, as if the world itself had been muted. I passed a row of lockers, and the vents in their doors were breathing; slow, steady exhales that made the metal shiver. I didn’t want to touch them, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I did, something inside would break through. The silence pressed close, and every step reminded me I was still trapped on the wrong side of the glass.
“Hello?” I called. My voice went nowhere.
I started walking, because standing still felt worse. The hallway doors opened without a sound, each one revealing something that should’ve been familiar but wasn’t.
The art room looked exactly like ours at school, except every painting on the walls had my face. Some were smiling, some were crying, one had its mouth sewn shut.
Another door led into the library, but every book was blank. Pages fluttered as if they were trying to speak, but the only sound was a low, steady hum that rattled in my bones.
Then I met them; two figures, tall and bent, their skin like rippled glass. They didn’t have faces, just shifting patterns that made my eyes ache to look at. Something in the air shifted, just for a second.
A faint warmth brushed past me, carrying a hint of… something. Not salt, not metal, but a scent that made me think of sunlight on paper, the way my sketchbook smelled after it’d been sitting in the window. I didn’t know why, but it reminded me of Jess.
The figures tilted their heads, like they felt it too. Then, they stepped back into the shadows, though I could still make out their outlines.
For the first time since I woke up here, I felt certain I wasn’t completely alone.
I didn’t know how she could possibly find me, or what she could even do if she did, but Jess wasn’t the type to give up. If there was a way out, she’d claw through the walls until she reached it. Until she reached me.
“What are you?” I asked.
Their voices came as one, layered and strange. “We are what’s left when no one remembers the truth.” The words left a vibration in the air, like plucked strings that never stopped humming. Looking at them too for long made my eyes sting, as if their shapes didn’t fit the rules of what I was supposed to see. The glass of their skin reflected pieces of me, a hand here, my own eyes there, but jumbled and rearranged like a puzzle forced together wrong. When they stepped back, the floor didn’t creak, it sighed.
Before I could ask more, they vanished like they’d never been there.
I wandered through the school, out the front doors, and onto the streets of Hallowell Bay. The town was there, sort of. The buildings were in the right places, but the windows were black, the air cold and metallic, and the salty ocean breeze was gone. No smell of fried dough drifted from the boardwalk, no gulls screeched overhead.
I caught my reflection in a black shop window, and it wasn’t exactly me, The hair was messier, the eyes darker, and the mouth was saying something I couldn’t hear. The longer I stared, the weaker I felt, like it was pulling me into the glass. I forced myself to look away.
