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Evie screamed.
“A monster!” she said.
“What is it?” Mal asked, following and looking over Evie’s shoulder. Then Mal screamed too.
Carlos and Jay bumped up next.
“A beast,” Evie yelled. “A hideous beast!”
Evie was still screaming and pointing to her reflection. In the mirror, an old woman with a crooked nose and wearing a black cape pointed right back.
The hag was her.
“What’s happened to me?” she asked, her voice, rough and quavery. Worse, when she looked down, she saw that her formerly smooth skin was saggy, wrinkly, and dotted with liver spots. She looked at her hair—white and scraggly. She was an old beggar woman, and not just in the mirror.
She wasn’t the only one.
Mal was frowning at her reflection. She had a warty nose, and her head was mostly bald except for a few white strands. “Charming. It’s got to be some kind of spell.”
Jay shook his head. “But—once again, and let’s say it all together now—there’s no magic on the island.”
“There was a moment—for a single second—when my machine burned a hole in the dome, and I think maybe that was what did it.”
“Did what, exactly?” Evie asked, looking spooked.
“Brought Diablo back to life, sparked the Dragon’s Eye and the gargoyles and the Cave of Wonders, and probably everything that used to be magical in this fortress,” said Carlos. “I mean, maybe. Or not.”
“I don’t know, I don’t think I look THAT bad,” said Jay, who grinned at his reflection. He was chubby and pasty, bearded and gray, and looked exactly like his father. He too was wearing a black cloak. “I look like I got my hands on a whole lot of cake in my life, at least.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Carlos, who was frightened to see that in old age he resembled his mother, feature for feature: knotted neck, high cheekbones, bug-eyed glare. “I think I’d rather face the goblins than this.”
“I’m with you.” Evie couldn’t look at herself for another moment.
She began to panic; her throat was constricting. She couldn’t look like this! She was beautiful! She was—
“Fairest,” agreed the mirror.
“Not the voice!” Evie shouted, before she realized what, exactly, she had heard. Because this time, it wasn’t her mother doing her Mirror Voice, as it so often was.
It was an actual Magic Mirror. On an actual wall.
They all turned to the mirror, whose human-esque features had appeared as a ghostly presence in the reflective glass.
“Fairest you are, and fairest you will be again,
If you prove you are wise
and declare all the ingredients needed
for a peddler’s disguise,”
said the Magic Mirror.
“It’s a word problem!” said Carlos, gleefully. He loved word problems.
“No, it’s not. It’s a spell,” Jay said, looking at him like he was crazy.
“I knew it!” said Mal.
