The Demon in the Mirror.
Copyright © 2019 Jessaca Willis.
ASIN: B07VW3Y194
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Request,” at the address below.
Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Front cover designed by Jessaca Willis using Canva and PhotoFox. Editing and Formatting by Jessaca Willis.
Book published by Jessaca Willis on Amazon 2019.
Jessaca Willis
PO Box 66574
Portland, OR 97266
https://www.jessacawillis.com
To all the students starting school this time of year, with unseen burdens resting on their shoulders, but who continue through the motions anyways.
I see your heartache. I see your strength. I see your resiliency.
Know that you are not alone.
Contents
xxx DEATH OF A SISTER xxx
xxx DEATH OF AN ANGEL xxx
xxx DEATH OF A REPUTATION xxx
xxx DEATH OF A DEMON xxx
xxx DEATH OF A LONER xxx
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
xxx DEATH OF A SISTER xxx
PROLOGUE
When you’re sixteen and pissed off, and you just need to blow off some steam by lashing out at your twin sister, you don’t expect the hateful things that come out of your mouth to actually come true. It’s just mindless, sisterly raging.
I woke up this morning, ate some French toast and an apple, and as I was discarding the remnants of my food into the kitchen garbage, I find my favorite blouse crammed inside. Not just thrown away, but shoved down the side of the bag surrounded by leftover lasagna, vacuumed dog hair, egg shells.
You see, my sister has a habit of borrowing my clothes without asking and then returning them covered in stains, ripped to shreds, or otherwise trashed. But she never just comes out and tells me about it. I always have to find them stashed away behind the washing machine, tucked in the back of the closet, or, apparently, secretly thrown away.
With a huff, I stick my hand into the bin, pinch the yellow collar adorned by pink petals, and give it a gentle shake before storming up the stairs.
“Moirai!” Each step thunders beneath my feet. “What did I tell you about taking my things?”
Somewhere downstairs, I hear our mom utter something about not stomping around the house, too lazy to actually involve herself in the real issue at hand here. Who cares if I’m stomping? I’m sick of all of my things being ruined.
I hear the water running from behind the bathroom door and I pound my fist against it.
Moirai scoffs. “Oh my gosh, seriously?” The doorknob jiggles as she fumbles with the lock before she pops out from behind the door. “I didn’t take your things, Euri.”
My nostrils flare. She always does this! She can never just admit she is wrong and say she’s sorry.
“Oh yeah?” I sneer, wadding the shirt into a ball and launching it at her. “Then why was my favorite shirt—the one you always steal from me, even though I’ve told you not to—why was it buried in the garbage? I certainly didn’t put it there.”
Moirai squeals, jumping when the shirt smacks into her face before falling to the ground. “Don’t throw things at me—Mom! Eureka’s throwing things!”
Faintly I hear our mom reply. “No throwing things in the house.”
My vision flashes white hot. Typical! First, Moirai ruins my shirt—my favorite shirt, the one I wear during every exam because it’s good luck, the one I was wearing when Jake kissed me for the first time—but she’s also going to go crying to our mom just because I’m confronting her about it?
I push past the door but stop dead in my tracks when I see the outfit she’s put on for the day. Not only is she wearing another one of my shirts, but she’s also wearing my brand-new pair of flats, and—are those my earrings?
Heat rushes to my face. Anger snakes through me like poison coursing through my veins, fiery and unyielding.
“I can’t believe you!” I shriek, my fists and teeth clenching. I want to rip my shirt right off from her, but know I can’t without seriously ruining it. “You know what? Stay out of my things, Moirai! Better yet,” I growl, charging forward. Fueled by untamed rage, my palms slam into her shoulders. “Just get out of my life!”
It’s those words that I’ll grow to regret more and more each day. The second they leave my lips, I see my sister gawk at me, wide-eyed over their venom, as she stumbles backward into the shower curtain. We both know I’ve crossed a line in laying hands on her, but it’s not for another second that we realize just how far.
In that brief moment, the one that passes us like a fracture in time seeming to stretch over a lifespan, where we slow like two people caught in quicksand rather than turbulence, the one where our eyes lock together, frozen, I feel regret. Regret for not being able to control my anger. Regret for not yet fully understanding all the seemingly innocuous changes that were actually supernatural mishaps that have occurred since our sixteenth birthday. Regret for not telling Moirai one last time that I love her.
“Y-your eyes,” she stutters.
I break our gaze to look in the mirror and see that my pupils have grown. More than grown, they fill my entire eyeballs like two lagoons of midnight.
But I don’t have time to be shocked about it, because in the reflection the mirror offers, I see reality cracking behind my twin sister. I snap back to face her just in time to see a hole growing from the middle of the shower. At first, it’s just a speck. But the greater it rips open, the darker and deeper it becomes.
A shadow fills the room like smoke.
Moirai can’t see what’s behind her, she’s too preoccupied by trying to keep her distance from me. But her golden eyes widen, and I know she can feel it, the way the room darkens, the way a chill replaces the air.
With a few shaking steps, my back collides against the door frame. I try to speak, try to say something, anything, to take back whatever I’ve just done. But instead, I just stare helplessly.
The black mouth continues to spread through the room, until it’s as large as the wall behind Moirai. In one final push, it unhinges, sucking my twin sister backward into nothingness.
Her dying screams fill my ears just as the fracture heals itself, and my bathroom resumes some semblance of normality.
That was the day I accidentally killed my sister.
That was the day I learned I was a nephilim, a demon.
xxx DEATH OF AN ANGEL xxx
The banshee-wail of a siren sends me racing to my window. Using my hips as an anchor, I fold over the windowsill, nearly knocking the tips of my newly sprouted horns on the frame.
I lean as far out into the damp morning air as my waist will allow, searching for the source of the alarm. My neck cranes. It twists and turns, but no matter where I look, my view is encumbered by the brick buildings I’m still not used to seeing. The view from my old bedroom window was one of manicured yards and cookie-cutter houses, but I guess that’s the price I pay for relocating to a boarding school in a bustling city.
If I were a mere human, when I strained my ears I’d likely only hear the homogenous collection of conversations from the streets below, the crunching rotation
of tires as they coast over the cobblestone streets, and the occasional sound of a bell whenever someone walks in or out of a café, or the arborist, or one of the other dozens of shops on this block.
But I am no longer a mere human, so the winding moan of the city’s warning toll grinds away at my nerves like it was blasting inside my head. I can’t say for sure, but I think it might be coming from the plaza. What I do know though is that there is only one reason why officials would sound the alarms this early in the morning.
Someone else has died, and I’d bet my right horn that it was another student from the Academy of the Forsaken—my school.
If Moirai’s death has taught me anything it’s that I don’t like people dying around me, and since the police can’t seem to figure this streak of murders out, well, I guess that means it’s up to me to do it.
I fly back into the room—this time more careful of the thick spirals of bone on my head—and toss Moirai’s tube of ruby red lipstick back on the vanity. What? It’s not like she needed it anymore…
If only I would’ve mastered teleporting by now, getting to the plaza would be so much easier. Since I haven’t, I rely on my feet and bolt for the dormitory door.
Despite my adrenaline, a yawn escapes my mouth, watering my vision, and I slow just enough to make sure I don’t run into the base of anyone’s bed. I’m still exhausted from the vernal equinox celebration last night, the one that led the students and myself on a blissful late-night stroll through town. I’m guessing it’s why everyone else is still asleep, otherwise our dormitory might be a little more alive by now. I tiptoe the rest of the way down the aisle of beds.
When I make it to the mahogany doorframe, my plan is to dart, but instead I find myself halting. Halted, really. The velvet cloak hanging on the rack next to the doorway taunts me. I can practically hear the Head Mistress’s voice emanating from it. “If you take leave now without that shroud, Eureka Belvedere, expect to be cleaning the lavatories until the next blood moon.”
I prepare to launch into my usual argument—only faintly aware that I’m getting combative with a voice inside my head—about how she has nothing to worry about because most people just think my curved, red horns are part of some get-up because of the way I dress nowadays. But then I glance down at myself.
Since I was already awake when the alarms first started, I have at least started the process of getting ready, but only just. My skull and crossbones tights are visible in patch-sized sections from beneath a pair of jeans that Moirai had ripped to pieces, but the black corset blouse I was going to wear today is still on my bed. The strings of jewelry that usually adorn my neck and fingers are also not on yet, a tangled mess waiting for me on the vanity. And my ankle boots, the ones with lace all the way from the point of my toes to the tops of my ankles, are stacked neatly on the floor by my bed.
I don’t even have any make-up on right now, aside from the lipstick I’d started with.
If I had more time to finish getting ready, there’d be no need to conceal myself in some ridiculous cloak. But unfortunately, there is no time, not if I want to follow the sirens that I know won’t be sounding much longer.
Sliding my feet into a pair of neglected flats, I tug the cloak free with a defeated groan, throwing it over my head before racing through the dormitory corridors, and leaving the compounds of the academy.
My legs burn as I dash over the uneven streets, chasing the last bursts of the alarms. I dodge merchant stalls and jump over rutted stones, cursing the billowing cloak I’m forced to clutch against my head as I sprint.
The crowd of the curious and the frightened thickens as I approach the town square.
Finally, I have to stop running. The mass of people has become too dense for anyone to keep going forward. Most everyone around me has resorted to trying to catch a better view from their tiptoes.
That’s not good enough for me though. I need to see.
Thanks to my thin stature, and peoples’ general discomfort of cramming themselves up too tightly next to strangers, I am able to squeeze my way through.
At the front of the crowd everything quiets. If it was snowing, I swear I’d be able to hear the snowflakes as they landed on the ground. Up here, people’s voices are hushed as we peer out into the opening to confirm what we already knew we’d find.
At the base of the jagged glass monument—known by the townspeople as the Reflect Your Soul statue—lies another dead body.
Another teenager from what I can tell.
Her body is perfectly flat and poised, just like all of the others. The only thing unruly about her is the nest of auburn hair cradling her skull. But that’s all I can really see from here. Two constables are bent over her, blocking most of my view with their hill-like helmets.
Avoiding the other officers along the perimeter, the ones shooing off the spectators, I inch around for a better view of the girl’s face. Not that I want to see her eyes, glossed-over and frozen in death, but I need to know if they are eyes I recognize, if she’s another student. Now that she’s dead, it’s the only way I will be able to tell if she is from the academy. After all, we lose our horns—or our wings, if we’ve got ‘em—when we die. I think it’s nature’s way of keeping us hidden from the world.
At the opposite side of the circle, I finally get the view I want.
My gasp is muffled by all the others in the crowd when I recognize Hazel’s face. I didn’t know her well since the seraphim—angels, they’re called colloquially—mostly take different classes than us nephilim, but I remember seeing her around the grounds.
As is the nature of a seraphim, she was bright—and I don’t just mean intelligent. Hazel was a vibrant force of energy that lit up any room she entered. People glommed onto her because she was so friendly and upbeat—not my kind of thing, but even by my standards she seemed pretty cool.
Why anyone would want her dead is beyond me. Her, or any of the others.
Hazel marks the fifth student murdered from the Academy of the Forsaken, but the first body found off campus. The strange thing is, because of some ancient, binding, unbreakable enchantment over the academy, none of the staff or students can cause life-threatening harm to each other, which has almost everyone thinking that the murderer is human, someone in the city who knows about seraphim and nephilim and wants us all dead.
The only thing I can’t figure out though is how a regular human could kill so many otherworldly beings? I mean, I know we’re all students and so we haven’t quite yet mastered our abilities, but someone like Hazel—who was nearing graduation and specialized in healing and chronokinesis—should’ve had no problem handling an attack by a mortal.
It has me wondering if the murderer might be closer to us than we think.
Suddenly, a hand grasps my wrist.
I jump, ready to send a blast of dark energy into whoever has approached. Thankfully, I recognize Damaris’s face before I blow both of our covers.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I exhale, turning back to face Hazel’s corpse. I take mental note of the rigid placement of her body and the eyes that, no matter what the officers do, won’t close. Just like the others.
“My bad,” Damaris says softly, inching beside me. When his eyes fall to our dead classmate on the wet ground, both hands run through his blond hair. “Hazel… The world could’ve used someone like her.”
I nod, thinking of all the ways in which a talented seraphim could’ve contributed to society, the light she would’ve brought with her wherever she went… It makes me think of Moirai, and what she might’ve done had she lived long enough to actually live.
Before my voice has the chance to crack, I look back to Damaris. “Someone’s targeting us.”
“That’s impossible.” His elbow bumps me as he crosses his arms. “No one knows about angels and demons except other angels and demons—”
I shush him so loudly that spit flies from my mouth, splattering the finger I’ve pressed against my lips.
Pivoting,
I grab his elbow and barrel back through the crowd, tugging him in my wake. We make our way through the silent mob of people, unspeaking, until we finally reach a street where everyone looks oblivious to what’s happening just around the corner.
When I’m sure no one will hear us because our voices are blending in with the usual sounds of the city, I stop. It’s so abrupt that Damaris nearly runs into me.
I turn to glare at him, my eyes as sharp as arrowheads. “You keep talking about nephilim and seraphim like that in the open,” I warn, making sure to correct his usage of the terms angel and demon. Considering the negative association that the word demon attributes to me and people like me, and the virtuous one associated with angels, I haven’t exactly warmed to either idiom. “And it won’t be a secret much longer.”
He smiles apologetically. When he shrugs, I hear his wings shift against each other, crammed under his cloak. “I just mean it’s gotta be something different. If you think someone is targeting”—he catches himself this time, eyes widening like they’re going to bulge if he doesn’t get to say the actual words—“you know, us, then that means it would either have to be one of us, which is impossible because of the enchantment, or it would have to be a human. But humans don’t even know we exist, so that’s not possible either.”
Being raised by a human family, I know exactly what he means. I didn’t even know nephilim existed before becoming one, and even then, even after I accidentally murdered my sister, it wasn’t until I arrived at the Academy of the Forsaken that I found out what nephilim were—or seraphim, for that matter.
Still, the deaths are too consistent to be a coincidence. So far, every one of the murders has been one of the students here, and their bodies are always found flat on their backs with their eyes frozen open.
I’ve started reading the newspapers, always on the lookout for more information, or searching for any other deaths that might have a similar description but not lead back to the school. There’s been none.
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