“Your hands,” Isaac said, noticing the glow.
“Never mind my hands. The spirits are gone,” Alice said, and she tossed the empty Polaroids on the floor. They slid across the wooden laminate and came to rest across the room. She had thought she had more time, thought she may have been able to reach the Chest before anything got out. But they
had
gotten out without her knowing. She hadn’t even felt them leave. Not a hint.
“Are you okay?” Isaac asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“How did they get out?”
“I don’t know. This has never happened before, but I know the gasmask man had something to do with this. It wasn’t normal. It was one of
her
Pain Children
.”
“I think I did this,” he said, “When I fed you the soul, your house started going crazy. My magic must have empowered them.” He scanned the room, taking a pause to catch his breath, and said “We need to find them.”
“Don’t bother. We both know where they’ve gone, and we won’t be able to catch them now. The only thing to do is get to that mirror and do what we have to do.”
To Isaac, this meant
study
it and carefully assess the situation. Alice, however, was entirely clear on what she intended to do to that mirror when she saw it. She would smash it to a million pieces, and then she would never have to be afraid of Nyx again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Portal
Though Alice had assured him she was okay, had promised him she had her closet and her apartment under control, leaving her alone left Isaac feeling uneasy and shaky. He had wanted her to come with him, had suggested she grab her stuff and get changed in his office, but she was adamant that she was fine. Arguing with her wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere, so he decided to trust her, and he left her apartment with his uneasiness caught in his throat.
A couple of hours after Isaac left Alice’s place, he found himself standing at the threshold to the unlit, roped off Greek exhibit at the Ashwood Imperial Museum. He had his hands in his pockets, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a pondering look on his face. In his mind, playing like a song stuck on a jukebox, were the events of the last few hours of his life. It was hard to believe all of this—Alice, the soul, the attack—had happened before five in the afternoon. Some days just seemed to drag on.
Thinking back, it was hard to believe that the things which had happened, had indeed happened at all. Isaac had drawn a soul out of the River Styx and fed it to Alice, and then they had been attacked. But it wasn’t just what had
happened
in these last couple of hours that had Isaac’s mind in a state of turmoil, it was also the revelations which had taken place.
That Alice had been hiding a severe condition from him from the start really took the cake. How had he not known about her affliction? How had she managed to keep it hidden from him, especially during the time when they had been together? Either she was a better liar than he gave her credit for, or he wasn’t quite the Mage he thought he was.
Neither of these ideas provided any comfort or reprieve from his thoughts.
Isaac stepped beyond the velvet rope and into the dimly lit exhibit. Behind him, a shadow with a long beak for a nose followed, like a silent stalker closing on its prey. The tap, tap, tap of Isaac’s loafers echoed loudly in the vaulted room as he navigated around platforms displaying busts of bearded Greek men on them, glass cases showcasing miniature representations of grand Greek buildings, and a number of platforms with assorted pieces of pottery and fabrics on them.
When he arrived at the mirror, Isaac said, “I didn’t see it.” He was gaunt and tired, clearly observed in the dark patches around his eyes most of all. “Why didn’t I see it?”
“She didn’t want you to see her,” said the plague doctor. Its voice didn’t echo. It was a muted, strange sound which contradicted the acoustics of the vaulted ceiling.
“Like a chameleon melting into her surroundings, or a snake in tall grass, she revealed herself not because she wanted to, but because she had no choice. Even then, I thought nothing of it. What does that make me?”
“Human.”
Isaac scoffed. “I haven’t been human in a long time.”
“This is what you tell yourself. Yet you bleed like other humans, you need like other humans, and you love like other humans. Humanity is not a flaw, not a challenge to overcome.”
“I know some who may disagree with your opinion.”
“They are entitled to their opinions, as I am to mine.”
“Indeed.”
Isaac stepped over the second velvet rope, the one surrounding the mirror, and got within arm’s length of it. Unconsciously, his hand came up to his chin and he gently scratched the rough stubble, reminding him to shave in his office before tonight’s event. But when his bangle began to glow and the surface of the mirror rippled like water in a lake, his mind snapped back into full attention.
“Doctor,” Isaac said, “Are you seeing this?”
“It is reacting to your magic.”
“I’m not
using
magic.”
“Aren’t you?”
He reached his right arm, which had the glowing bangle, toward the mirror. As he inched closer, the ripples became more… violent. It was like watching a body of water being disturbed by a helicopter’s rotors, only this surface wasn’t water—it was liquid metal, and the ripples distorted Isaac’s reflection in strange ways.
Isaac closed his eyes and sent his intent into the roiling Tempest, drawing a sliver of magic out of its turbulent waters and pumping it through his magic bangle. “Show me your secrets,” he said, and when he opened his eyes he saw that the mirror was no longer rippling quicksilver, but a still image of a dark corridor with no visible end or features. His heart started to race and his Adam’s apple began to work, but he couldn’t swallow. When he felt a breath of cold air leave the mouth of the mirror and caress his skin, sending the hairs on his arms into a prickling frenzy, his heart began to pound even harder.
The mirror was tall, as tall as Isaac, and wide enough to accept a human body of about average size. Isaac’s feet were getting itchy, and he thought of stepping toward the mirror—stepping
inside
—but he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Not without proper testing.
My hand
, he thought, and he slowly inched his hand toward the mirror, but when he touched it he encountered a flat surface. It wasn’t a mirror anymore, but a window. What he was seeing was only an image, and not a true portal. Why? Why couldn’t he open the door?
In the excitement, Isaac hadn’t realized just how cold the mirror had become. His fingers were starting to go numb, causing him to quickly withdraw them. Immediately, the image began to collapse, and Isaac was left staring at the typical solid, reflective surface. He saw himself in the mirror and frowned. He reached for the surface again, but this time it remained inert and his bangle didn’t glow.
“Show me your secrets,” he said, but nothing happened. For a moment he stood there, with his fingers pressed against the mirror, wondering if anything had happened at all. But his skin was still prickling and numb, and his Guardian had been there to watch it all.
Isaac rounded on the plague doctor. “It was a portal,” Isaac said.
“It was.”
“Question is, a portal to where, exactly?”
Maybe the portal went to wherever Nyx was. Maybe it was a way to get to Emily. Maybe it was neither of the two, and the portal went somewhere else. The Reflection, most likely, given everything Alice had said. But she had also said the mirror had a twin inside the Reflection, and that mirror could be anywhere.
Whatever it was, the point was moot; the mirror was inert and hadn’t opened again when he had asked it to.
“I want you to watch the mirror,” Isaac said. “If the portal opens again, if anyone gets too close, or if anything strange happens in this room, I want you to alert me at once.”
“Of course,” said the Good Doctor in his strange voice which cast no echo.
“That includes Alice.”
The plague doctor nodded. Isaac turned and made for his office, but before he walked away from the mirror he rolled the sleeve of his shirt down, breathed on the mirror, and wiped the spot he had just touched with his fingers.
Much better
, he thought, and he headed for his office where he had a date with a razor and a clean suit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A Last Resort
While Isaac was staring at his reflection in a mirror, Alice was staring at hers. Like Isaac, Alice also wasn’t sure about what she was looking at. She had dug into her wardrobe and produced a slim little black number she had intended to wear to a police ball the year of her resignation from the force. The dress was gorgeous, truly—backless, flattering, and slimming. But Alice had cared way more for it two years ago than she did now, yet it was too late to go and buy a new one.
It occurred to her then—as she unpinned the curlers from her hair, giving her dark hair a kind of tumbling quality—that it had been Isaac who had bought her the dress. He had bought it specifically for her to wear at the ball, an event they were to attend together. She had never been the type of girl to want dresses and expensive jewelry, preferring to wear clothes she could run in if she needed to. But Isaac was a man of class and taste, and the dress did look damn good on her.
This dress had been the last gift Isaac had ever gotten her while they were together, and he had never seen her wearing it.
Alice spun around, hoping her curves were still in all the right places—they were. But the dress was backless, and she saw the scars. A large section of her back was run through with lines of pale and disfigured skin. The thing was an eyesore that she didn’t often have to look at. The scarring was obvious and prominent, and as she looked at it now the entire area seemed to almost throb dully.
He cut me open with a scalpel.
The thought came randomly, along with a flash of memory and pain. Alice winced and shut her eyes, but the sound of her own screams flew out of the Chest of Haunts in her mind and struck her hard. She tried to push the memory back, to swat it away as if it were a bat—a really big bat—trying to get into her hair, but the thought of lying face down on a table, bound, and screaming, was too strong.
She closed her eyes tightly and grimaced until the moment passed and the memory abated. She wasn’t sure if Isaac remembered the extent of her scars, or if he remembered them at all. But with this dress on, he and everyone else would get a good eyeful tonight.
Dammit
, she thought, but there was nothing else to say on the matter. She could either wear her scars with pride or not go at all, and she was no coward.
Still, she decided to put on a shawl to cover her back, at least a little bit.
Her phone suddenly rang and Alice jerked around to look at the screen.
Nate
. She had tried calling him earlier but the phone had gone to voicemail. Twice. Alice picked it up and answered.
“Hello?” Nate said, before Alice could speak.
“Hi Nate...”
“Alice… you haven’t found her yet.” It wasn’t a question. Of course, it couldn’t have been. If Alice had found Emily, Nate would have been the first to know.
“No,” Alice said, “But we’re close. We’re real close. That’s why I’ve called.”
“What is it?”
“I saw Emily last night. I saw her, and called to her, but she didn’t come to me. I think it’s because she doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t trust my voice. I might need your help.”
“I’ll do anything I can.”
She swapped ears. “Look, this whole thing is really dangerous. More dangerous than I thought at the beginning. I don’t think you understand just what’s going on here.”
“I don’t care. I can help. I want to help.”
She didn’t want to bring Nate into this mess, didn’t want to make him a target too, but he was probably already a target having been there on the night of Emily’s disappearance. Why he hadn’t been whisked away to the Reflection yet, Alice didn’t know. Maybe Nyx didn’t have enough strength to pull him in. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it was only a matter of time before she dragged more people into her realm.
When Alice had called to Emily last night at the theater, Emily had ignored her. At first she thought Emily hadn’t heard her voice, but there had been a moment of recognition later—an acknowledgement, and then dismissal. Alice thought the problem was that Emily’s senses were so screwed up she didn’t know what she could and couldn’t trust. But she would trust Nate.
“I need you to be sure about what you’re getting yourself into,” Alice said. “You need to understand that I… don’t know if I can protect you.”
“I’m already involved, and I don’t want you to protect me. I want to help get Emily back.”
She considered what may have happened if she had allowed Nate to come to the theater last night. Maybe if Nate had been there when Isaac ripped open the portal to the Reflection… no, they wouldn’t have gotten Emily out. Nyx wouldn’t have allowed it, not that easily. But they may have gotten closer than they were now, may have had more of a chance than they did now.