Her gaze lingered on me, sharp as a scalpel. “Hmm. Maybe. I’ll check with the office.”
I did what any innocent student with nothing to hide would do: I bolted. Out the front doors, down the steps, straight into the woods behind the school.
The trees closed in fast, and the air smelled like pine and damp earth. My boots crunched twigs as I ran, replaying everything in my head.
The kiss. The sparks. The other Nate.
Magic 101: mirror creatures are bad news. Dangerous, manipulative, and illegal to summon. The Magical Council had very clear rules about keeping them locked in their own creepy parallel dimension.
And I had just accidentally invited one out for a smooch.
I tripped over a root and landed hard on my knees. The sting helped me to think. If The Council found out, my mom could lose her job. I could lose my magic, and even worse, end up in witch jail. I’d heard they had a special block for witches who misused magic. Plus, if that silver-eyed Nate was here, where was the real Nate?
I didn’t have answers, but I did have a sarcastic talking raven who’d probably yell at me until my ears fell off. So, I picked myself up, brushed the dirt off my skirt, and headed for home.
The deeper I went into the trees, the quieter it got. Not peaceful-quiet, wrong quiet. The usual chorus of crickets and distant traffic faded until all I could hear was my own breathing and the soft crunch of boots on dry leaves.
A cold ripple settled over my skin, like walking through a doorway I couldn’t see. The shadows between the trunks seemed thicker, bending at angles that made no sense. I thought I saw movement—a figure, too tall and too still, half-hidden behind a pine. When I blinked, it was gone.
Raven always said the veil between realms was like old fabric. Most days, it was strong enough to keep things on their side. But sometimes, the threads thinned, and if you weren’t careful, something could slip through.
I picked up my pace, desperate for the familiar creak of my bedroom door and the sarcastic welcome of Raven. As I tore through the woods toward home, I told myself not to think about the kiss. Not the sparks, not the way Nate had looked at me, and not the dazed, blinking confusion on his face as I bolted.
Somewhere back at the ticket table, he was still standing there.
By the time I made it back to my room, my boots were muddy, my knees hurt, and my heart was staging a rave in my ribcage.
Raven was waiting on my desk, perched beside the now empty peach-gloss cauldron. His beady eyes tracked me like I’d just walked in wearing a neon sign that said, ‘I Ruined Everything.’
“Well?” he said, in the tone of someone who already knew the answer and was just fishing for the confession.
I shut the door. “You know how you said the gloss might be a bad idea?”
“Yes.”
“And how you warned me that love magic never works?”
“Yes.”
“And how you mentioned that it can result in unintended magical mayhem?”
Raven’s feathers puffed. “Jessica.”
“So, I might have accidentally made out with a mirror creature and lost the real Nate in the process.”
Raven made a sound like a dying accordion. “Might have?”
“Okay, fine. Did.”
He hopped to the edge of the desk, talons tapping the wood. “Do you have any idea how dangerous mirror creatures are? They’re parasites, Jess. They feed on real-world sensations. They replace people. The Magical Council has banned all contact with them for centuries.”
“I didn’t plan to contact one! It just showed up and kissed me.”
“That’s how it starts. Show me the gloss.”
I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up for him. His beady eyes studying the swirling peach-gold liquid.
“What else did you put in this?” Raven asked as I turned the tube over.
