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I brought Daya’s image to mind, holding her firmly in my thoughts.
The next moment, I was facing a mirror. The frame was wooded, with a gilt edge, and intricately carved snakes coiled around the edge of the frame, facing the top of it on either side. What looked like thorns were carved into the bottom half of the frame, and scattered at the base of the mirror were red roses, wilted and half dead. As I approached the mirror, I reached out and my hand went through the glass.
I pulled my arm back, then paused, waiting. Whatever I was looking for, it waited within. I stared at my reflection, surprised to see a cameo around my neck. I glanced down at the necklace. The white cameo was surrounded by rubies and white topaz. The pendant was set in an ornate filigree. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. The necklace was beautiful, but it feltwrong—it wasn’t mine. And I could smell blood. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the scent was coming from, but my intuition told me that the necklace was steeped in blood.
Holding my breath, I stepped through the mirror. I was here to find information, and I didn’t want to disappoint Rowan.
As I moved into the mirror, a strange shift rippled through my body and I began to shiver.
I found myself in an old, dusty room. It brought to mind old Victorian homes, and I began to feel claustrophobic. The energy bore down on me like a suffocating pillow and I looked around, trying to figure out how to get out of there. The mirror was on the far end of a long hallway now, and every time I moved, it felt like the room kept extending. I began to run toward the mirror, but it stayed just out of reach. I ran faster, but the faster I ran, the farther away from the mirror I seemed to get.
“Damn it, I’m the Red Queen,” I said. “Or Alice.”
At that moment, I heard something and turned around. Behind me, creeping out of the shadows, stood a tall shadow. The silhouette sent a rush of dread through me and I flashed back to when I was young. A shadow man had come after me, and though I’d forgotten about it for years, Aunt Teran had reminded me of the incident recently. And now, all that fear came rushing back and I realized thatthiswas the same shadow man who had come for me when I was a child.
I began to scream and back away as he moved forward. He was black as night, black as pitch, black as the void, and with every step I felt the icy embrace of oblivion coming closer. I couldn’t let him touch me—I couldn’t let him get near enough or he would suck the breath out of me. I began to whimper, trying to remember my magic, trying to remember the charms to invoke Druantia, my goddess. But all rational thought had fled, gone so far and so distant that I didn’t know if I could find it again.
The shadow man said nothing, but he darted to the side as I tried to veer down a hallway. I stopped—one look down the passage told me there didn’t appear to be an exit. I had to get to the mirror. I tried to avoid him backing me into a corner, so I slid along the wall, aiming for the mirror. He seemed to match my movements, following me as I edged my way toward the opposite wall. How was I going to get to the mirror and step back through without him catching me?
And then, the shadow man laughed. It was less audible and more a feeling, but his laughter shook the walls and the floor, sending an earthquake of panic to throw me off balance.
“What do you want?” I shouted, trying to startle him. “What the hell do you want with me?”
I didn’t expect an answer, but a cavalcade of images filled my head. Slithering cobras, a nest of scorpions, massive webs covered with funnel web spiders, and a swarm of wasps. These visions filled my head as I tried to fight off the energy. And behind it all, the vision of the shadow man, standing there and coordinating the attack. I tried to convince myself they weren’t real. The spiders and wasps and scorpions and cobras were all in my mind, but I could see them and it was hard to differentiate.
Then, I felt something in my hand and remembered—Rowan’s stone. I closed my fingers tightly over it and focused on my grandmother.
Lead me back, lead me back, get me out of here…Like a mantra, I kept repeating the words over and over, trying to focus on Rowan’s face in my mind. I glanced at the mirror and decided that I had to make a run for it. I wasn’t sure if I could reach the mirror before the shadow man caught me, but there was nothing else I could do.
I screwed up my courage and with my fingers firmly wrapped around the stone, I sprinted for the mirror. The shadow man and his army of creepy-crawlies scuttered to follow, but the next moment, I was at the mirror and thrust my hand out, screaming, “Rowan! Help me!”
The next moment, I tumbled through the mirror, falling into the mist, and then I opened my eyes as I re-entered my body and dropped the stone.
* * *
“January! January, what’s wrong?”Rowan was holding me by the shoulders, shaking me.
I shook my head, trying to figure out where the hell I was, but then I saw Rowan and everything came flooding back. I burst into tears and covered my face, rocking back and forth.
“What on earth? Here…” Teran scurried over to the liquor cabinet and poured a shot of brandy into a snifter. She knelt beside me, holding it to my lips. “Sip this. Come, dear, take a drink.”
I forced my lips open and let her dribble a few drops of brandy into my lips. The heat of it raced down my throat and I realized that I was freezing. I shivered. “Cold, so cold.”
Rowan grabbed a throw off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around my shoulders. “Here you are. What happened?”
I tried to calm down long enough to breathe. My head was starting to throb and I realized I wasn’t going to get away from the headache this time. “I saw the shadow man—the shadow man who tried to kill me when I was a girl.”
Rowan and Teran looked at each other and I could see the fear in their eyes. “Tell us everything that happened.”
“I will, but I need my medicine. I’m spiraling into a migraine. It’s on my nightstand,” I added.
Teran hurried to get the bottle of pills while Rowan took notes as I told her what happened. I described the mirror and the house and the shadow man, along with his menagerie. Rowan wrote everything down, but the further I went, the more concerned she looked.
“You’re slurring your words,” she said.
I blinked. The light was hurting my eyes, and it was getting harder to think. “I… I’m having a hard time putting words together.”
“Here, dear.” Teran sat down on the sofa behind me and handed me a pill and a glass of water. “Drink.”
