“The stuff from the recipe. Moonstone. Hm, a little extra moonstone, honey, a rose petal…” My stomach knotted. “And a piece of my hair.”
His head snapped up. “Your hair?”
“It’s supposed to make it personal?—”
“Jess, that doesn’t make it personal to him. It makes it personal to you.”
“I’m sorry, I…”
But Raven was paying no attention to me as he carried on. “The gloss didn’t anchor to Nate at all,” Raven said, pacing. “It anchored to you. Your hair tied it to your energy. You overloaded it with moonstone, and the corsage petal pulled in the Mirror Realm. So, instead of harmless glamour, you built a glowing beacon that screamed ‘open seam here,’ and mirror boy answered.”
I groaned and marched around my room, pressing the palms of my hands into my eyes.
“If you’d been anywhere else, maybe the gloss would’ve just fizzled. Hallowell Bay is already sitting on enough magical seams to make the air hum, and you know your bedroom mirror had always been… twitchy. Tonight, apparently, it had been waiting for an excuse.”
My eyes flickered to the peach blobs still stuck to the mirror and I sank onto my bed. “What do I do?”
Before Raven could answer, the air above my rug shimmered like a heat wave. The room filled with a glowing purple smoke, and with a shower of rainbow glitter that smelled of hairspray, Baba Yaga appeared.
She was exactly as Mom had described her; towering, all sharp cheekbones and sharper attitude, in an electric-blue power suit with shoulder pads you could land a plane on. Her hair was a gravity-defying, teased-to-the-heavens, eighties masterpiece.
I cowered under the glare of the most powerful witch in the world.
“Jessica Knox,” she said in the kind of voice that made you sit up, even if you were already sitting up straight. “Explain yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I just wanted him to like me.”
“There are other ways to do that,” Baba Yaga snapped. “None of them involve abusing magic, endangering the veil between realms, and violating at least four Magical Council statutes before dinner.” She paused, eyes narrowing in a way that made the air feel colder. “I’ve dealt with your kind of mess before. Different face, same hunger. The last one wore a girl’s smile and walked out of a Paris boutique in 1924. She lasted nine days before she drained her counterpart dry. “Her voice went sharp enough to cut. “I had to drag her back through the glass myself. She didn’t go quietly.”
“I know. Please, help me get Nate back. I’ll never try anything like this again.”
Her eyes narrowed, but there was a flicker of something that might have been sympathy. “You have one week. One. If you fail, I will personally escort you to Magical Containment jail, and your mother will hear every detail. Raven will give you the information you need. I’ll be watching you.”
I swallowed hard. “One week. Got it.”
With another glittery shimmer, she vanished, leaving the faint scent of Aqua Net in the air.
Raven sighed. “Well, looks like you’re going to learn more about the Mirror Realm than you ever wanted to know.”
“Awesome,” I muttered. “Can’t wait.” I tried to match Raven’s glare with one of my own, but the mirror behind him rippled, just once, like it knew what was coming.
Raven’s beady stare tracked me like he was mentally chiselling my tombstone. “That’s day one gone, Jess. Six left before Baba Yaga redecorates your jail cell.”
Six days. The number clung to me like a burr.
Chapter 3
Nate
One second, Jess’s lips were on mine, hot with some strange static, the next, the hallway bent. Literally bent—the floor had tilted toward the trophy case. My stomach lurched, my vision filling with silver light. Before I could move, something yanked me forward, hard, right through my own reflection.
What. Just. Happened?
One minute, I was selling tickets to the school play. The next, Jessica Knox, the girl I’ve been low-key crushing on since eighth grade, was kissing me under the ticket table like we were in some indie rom-com.
For about ten seconds, it was perfect. She tasted like peaches and… maybe magic? Then, my lips went hot, and actual sparks shot into my face.
She bolted before I could ask what kind of lip gloss does that. Now, I was standing in the middle of the hallway, alone, trying to figure out if I’d just imagined the whole thing.
