The spell pulled him backward, his edges blurring into light. Around us, every wrong reflection screamed, fractured, and dissolved. Nate’s image in the nearest mirror reached toward me and this time, I reached back.
Etan’s last smile was almost human before the magic swallowed him whole.
The maze collapsed. The flamingo mirror went still. I dropped to my knees, the empty gloss tubes clattering to the floor like tiny plastic tombstones.
Raven hopped down beside me. “You did it.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. But it doesn’t feel like winning.”
Chapter 22
Jess
The world didn’t so much snap back into place as tilt into it. One heartbeat I was in the mirror maze, light splintering in a thousand directions, Etan’s voice echoing through the glass. The next, I was on my knees on the floor of the cupboard, my palms pressed into the cool wood, my ears ringing like I’d been standing too close to an explosion.
The flamingo mirror lay beside me, perfectly still. Too still.
“Jess!” Bianca’s voice was the first thing I locked onto. She was crouched next to me, one hand on my shoulder, the other gripping her salt pouch like she was ready to fling it at the first suspicious shadow. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, but it felt like my head was stuffed with cotton. My mouth was dry, my heartbeat uneven. Every breath tasted faintly metallic, like the air after a lightning strike.
Raven landed on the edge of a shelf, feathers ruffled. “That was too close.”
“You think?” Bianca snapped, but her grip on me tightened in quiet reassurance.
I looked at the mirror again. For a second, just at the edges, the glass seemed to shimmer, not a ripple, but the faintest suggestion of movement. Like something on the other side was still leaning close, watching.
Then it lurched.
A shadow surged forward, resolving into a shape as Nate—the real one—stumbled out of the glass and collapsed to his knees beside me. His face was pale, his breathing ragged, but he was here warm, solid, real.
“Jess…” His voice cracked like it hadn’t been used in days — like it had been scraped raw in that other place. He caught my hands in his, clutching them with a kind of desperate reverence, as if letting go might send him tumbling back into the mirror world. “You found me.”
I wiped at the sweat dripping into my eyes, my breath catching in my throat. “Of course I found you,” I said, the words shaky but certain. “Somebody had to drag you back so you could return my library book.”
That earned me a weak laugh, but his eyes didn’t let me go. They searched my face like he was memorizing every line.
“I’ve liked you for a long time,” he blurted, the words ragged, urgent. “Not the Etan way…just… me. And if you hadn’t—” His breath faltered, and for a heartbeat I thought he might break apart right there. “I thought I’d never get to say it. I thought I’d lose you before I?—”
My fingers tightened around his, grounding myself in the heat of his grip, not ready to hear the rest. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” I cut in quickly, because if he kept talking, the rush of relief and the aching truth underneath it would undo me completely.
We leaned in at the same time, the world narrowing to his breath, the ache in my chest, and the faint tremor in his hands. No sparks, no supernatural push, just a kiss that was warm and human and perfect, which tasted of salt and survival. The kind that made me believe, for one fragile moment, that maybe we’d actually get to keep this. Nate was home and Etan was back where he belonged.
When we broke apart, Bianca made a gagging noise. “Can we go home before the squirrel shows up again?”
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling as I pushed to my feet, pulling Nate up with me, his hand still reluctant to let go. “We need more wards. More mirrors covered. And I’m not leaving the flamingo in my room.”
Bianca adjusted the strap of her bag and snorted. “Good. It’d look better in my place anyway.”
“I’m serious,” I said, my voice sharper than I meant, the echo of that other world prickling under my skin. “If he’s still out there, he’ll try again. Next time, he won’t let me hesitate.”
The room lights hummed overhead, but beneath it, I swore I could hear something else, a slow, steady knock, too far away to be real, too close to forget.
We walked out of the storage room together, Nate’s hand warm and solid in mine, his thumb brushing over my knuckles like he was reassuring himself I was real. Bianca and Raven followed close behind.
On the way home through the streets of Hallowell Bay, a blur of motion made me jump, but it was the hot dog squirrel, dragging an entire pretzel twice his size across the sidewalk like he’d just pulled off the heist of the century.
Bianca muttered, “Still less creepy than Etan.”
