“We can still drive on the rim for a minute, but we have to get away from them,” I insisted. “Kallie can’t portal us away right now, which means Charlie is the only one who can.”
A singular Union squad car had managed to keep up with us the whole time, and they were still sticking with us. It wouldn’t be long before my car gave out, or they caught up to us.
“I need a mirror!” Charlie yelled.
“Where the hell are we gonna findthat?” Marcus cried.
I was debating on pulling this bitch over and convincing the others to scatter out of the car and make a run for it while I held the cops off with my magic, until Oberi stood on Charlie’s lap.
There! That skyscraper has a reflective surface, Oberi said, pointing with his nose.
It did. There was a building straight ahead that had a mirror-like surface coating the entire building. We could use it.
Drive through it, pidge.Charlie’s thoughts were full of determination.I’ll get us home.
I didn’t think twice as I pushed the car in a straight line toward the skyscraper, the odometer climbing past one hundred and twenty. If Charlie said he could do it, he would do it. There was no fear, only complete and absolute trust. I’d put my life in this man’s hands more times than I knew, and he’d never let me down before. He asked, I answered. He ordered, I complied. That was my role, and that was who we were. I’d crash this car and kill us all before I denied his command.
Yeah, I was fucking crazy. I loved it.Heloved it. And riding this high and feeling alive, playing with the lines between life and death, was the most exhilarating thing we’d ever known.
Kallie and Marcus hadn’t heard our conversation, and had no idea what we were planning. Kallie’s voice got nervous. “Ava, what are you doing… AVA!”
I closed my eyes and braced myself, fully expecting to feel the car collapse around me as we crashed into the building.
But… I didn’t. I pried open my eyelids, and my mouth dropped open in amazement as I observed the space around us. Mirrors surrounded us everywhere, reflecting our appearance millions of times. My face flew by in a blur as the car continued moving steadily past. It appeared we’d steppedintothe mirror… like we’d entered another world.
Charlie had done it. He’d opened up a portal through the reflective surface in the skyscraper.
But we weren’t the only ones who’d driven through it. The squad car who’d followed us was sailing behind us through the Mirror Realm, almost like we were moving in slow motion.
A portal blossomed ahead of us, and I saw the sea that surrounded Ilamanthe. We drove through the portal and came out at ground level on a highway outside of the Elven city.
I stopped the car on the side of the road. I turned to see what we had come through, and saw that the mirror behind us was some sort of reflective billboard, welcoming refugees fleeing The Mission to the city of Ilamanthe. On the right side of the highway was a cliffside, lined by a guardrail. Beside the cliff was the open ocean, a wide expanse of the Mediterranean Sea.
Charlie leaned out the car window, aimed his pistol, and fired a shot at the mirror we’d come through. Disbelief pierced my chest as I watched the bullet shatter the billboard into pieces.
The last thing I saw as the portal closed was the shocked faces of the two Union representatives as the portal slammed shut.
The fragile bits of the mirror fell to the pavement. My heart stuttered. A broken mirror couldn’t reflect clearly enough to make a portal. Those people had no way out.
Marcus turned green. He swallowed thickly as he asked, “Are… are those Union cops stuck in the mirror?”
“I had to seal off the portal. Otherwise, they’d follow us and expose Ilamanthe,” Charlie said roughly. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Something gnarled inside of me like jagged thorns.A lie. He did have a choice, and he’d made it.
But Charlie was right. We couldn’t afford to put the Elves in danger again, not for anything…we couldn’t. The city was more important than whoever had been in that patrol car, even if they were now stuck in the mirror world. The lives of thousands meant more than the existence of a few, and they’d chosen to chase after us when they knew we were demigods and what we were capable of. We’d done all we could.
I opened the car door and bent down to pick up a large fragment of the broken mirror lying on the road.
In its reflection, I could see the pale, terrified expressions of the Union representatives stuck inside the mirror. They were screaming.
Charlie stumbled out of the car and took the broken shard from my hand. Then he walked to the edge of the cliffside, beside the guardrail, and pulled his arm back to toss the broken mirror as far into the ocean as he could.
Nobody said a damn word.
When Charlie got back in the car, I managed to rasp, “We can’t leave Chancey and Ivy.”
“We have to. We can’t go back for them,” Charlie said heavily. “Whatever happened, we’ll put ourselves in danger if we try to find them now.”
