I backed away slowly.
That’s when I heard it, a laugh I knew too well. Warm, confident, nothing like my own.
Etan.
If he was here, maybe Jess wasn’t far.
I just had to survive long enough for her to find me.
The streets kept shifting. Buildings leaned toward me, their windows bending and stretching until I wasn’t sure if they were glass or just pretending to be.
That’s when I saw her.
Bianca, or what was left of her, stared out at me from a cracked shop window. She was older, hair hanging in uneven clumps, skin pale as frost. Her eyes were pools of mirror-silver, and they didn’t blink. She pressed one hand to the inside of the glass. Her lips moved, but the sound was just static, rising and falling like a badly tuned radio.
I stepped closer before I could stop myself. The crack in the glass traced down her cheek like a scar. A ripple passed through the reflection, and in a blink, Bianca was gone. Jess stood there instead.
Not my Jess.
Her hair was soaking wet, dripping black water that pooled around her shoes and seeped into the floor. Her gaze locked on mine, and a drop rolled off her chin in slow motion, hitting the glass with a sound like a nail on metal.
The longer I stared, the harder it was to remember they weren’t real. My hand was halfway to the window when movement in the street broke the spell.
A group of faceless figures glided around the corner. Skin like rippled jelly, limbs too long, their heads tilting toward me in unnatural unison.
I ducked into the nearest alley.
It was narrower than it looked, the walls closing in until I could barely squeeze through. The air was warmer here, heavy, and the brickwork flexed under my hand, slow, steady, like the alley was breathing.
Something whispered behind me.
“Nate…”
My own voice.
I didn’t turn.
The whisper came again, closer this time. “Nate. Stay.”
The walls seemed to pulse, heartbeat-fast. I shoved myself forward, scraping my shoulder against the brick, and burst back onto the main street.
When I looked back, the alley was gone. Just a solid wall where it had been.
I didn’t know what was hunting me, but I knew one thing—I couldn’t stop moving. Not here. Not for anything.
The streets blurred past, the same corners looping again, the same silent buildings, until I turned down an unfamiliar block. It was wider, emptier, the cobblestones slick like they’d just been washed, though no rain had fallen here in… maybe ever.
That’s when I saw it.
A mirror, standing alone in the middle of the intersection.
Not mounted to a wall, not part of a shop window, just a tall, free-standing rectangle of glass with a thin brass frame, catching light from nowhere. The air around it bent faintly, as if heat was rising off invisible pavement, but the air here was cold enough to sting my lungs.
I stepped closer.
On the other side was Jess’s bedroom. The desk by the window, the worn paperbacks stacked on her nightstand, the tangle of fairy lights drooping over her headboard.
My pulse jumped. If I could see her room, maybe she could see me.
