Page 178 of Bone Year

Please.

I turn it. The lock clicks open, and I step inside.

Thank you.

I close the door behind me as quietly as I can and lean my back against it for one held second, my heart hammering so hard I’m sure he can hear it across the campus.

The cottage is dark.

A single oil lamp burns low on a table near the door, its flame guttering in the draft I let in. The rest of the room is shadow and shape, slowly resolving as my eyes adjust. There is a faint smell I cannot place, something dry and herbal, like the back room of an apothecary.

I take three steps in and stop.

The study is long and narrow. The walls are lined floor to ceiling with shelves, books packed so tight in some places that they bow the wood.

A leather chair faces the massive desk at the center of the room. Above the desk, on the wall, hangs a portrait.

I don’t have time to look at the portrait, not properly, but my eyes go to it before my mind decides to look at it, and I get a half second of impression before I force myself to look away. A woman. Curly hair. Eyes I cannot make out from this distance. The frame is plain dark wood, no plaque, no name. The portrait has been hung at the eye level of someone sitting in the leather chair.

He looks at her every day.

I put the question away.

I’m not here for the portrait. I’m here for the mirror.

I cross the room. The bookcase on the right is taller than me. The shelves are organized by subject, anatomy texts, fissure reports, what looks like a row of old journals bound in matching leather, a small collection of older books in a language I do not recognize. I put my hand against the side of the bookcase and feel along the seam of the wood. There.

A small iron handle, recessed into the side, hidden unless you know to look for it.

I pull, and somewhere in the back of my mind I want to know how Draven knew all of this.

The bookcase swings inward on a hinge, exposing a narrow door behind it.

The wards hit me immediately.

I feel them before I see them. The air in front of the door has gone thick, and my breath catches in my throat. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

I close my hand around the key.

I close my fist tight enough that the edges bite into my palm.

I step forward.

The wards push back.

It’s not a physical pressure. It’s something deeper behind my eyes, a feeling of being seen by an intelligence that doesn’t have a body. My ears ring. My pulse jumps in my throat. I take another step and another, and the pressure builds, and I understand suddenly what Draven meant when he said not to let go of the key.

One more step.

The wards peel back.

I cross the threshold.

The pressure releases all at once, like a hand letting go of my throat, and I stumble forward two steps into the warded room and catch myself against the wall with my free hand. My breath comes ragged. I am sweating despite the cold.

I straighten and look up.

The mirror.