The Thief

by Aine Crabtree

  I step inside. Glass crunches under my feet.

  “The glass is all on this side,” I muse. “You think something from the floor was thrown through it? If it had popped from heat it would have been on both sides.”

  The floor creaks as Jul crosses the room gingerly. “That is not something that would have occurred to me,” she says, sounding impressed. There’s a pressed wood desk to one side that catches her interest and she works at tugging one of the drawers open.

  “Physics, my dear Watson,” I say, grinning. “Although I don’t know how useful that tidbit is.” I look up at the molding wallpaper. There’s some pictures and things hung up in this room that survived the fire, it seems. A tall, plain glass mirror, surface clouded with age. A company photo under cracked glass shows a couple dozen people lined up in front of the factory. The focus is too far out to pick out anyone’s face, but it’s interesting to see what the lumbermill looked like at its prime, without the forest looking like it’s trying to eat it alive.

  There’s a crash as the drawer suddenly comes unstuck and Jul loses her balance. She falls in a tangle of limbs, bits of notepads and paperclips raining down on her. She jumps up just as fast, brushing herself off frantically. “Oh my god are there spiders on me? Do you see any spiders?” she asks, voice pitched way too high. “Are they in my hair?”

  “Whoa, whoa, calm down,” I tell her. “Here, lean down, I’ll check.”

  “I keep forgetting I’m way taller than you,” she laughs nervously.

  Her hair is softer than it looks. This shouldn’t be as big a deal as my heartbeat seems to think it is. I run my fingers lightly over the ebony strands, briefly wondering if there’s a legitimate way I could extend the inspection, but I can’t think of it fast enough.

  “Mac?” she prompts.

  “You’re clear,” I say, backing up and hoping I’m not blushing.

  “Oh good,” she sighs, standing straight and giving the web in the rafters a wary look. “This place just creeps me out. I don’t think I’ve ever been around this many crawly things in my life.”

  “New York doesn’t have bugs?”

  “Mac, this place is like a setting for a horror movie. All that’s missing is the saw blades coming to life. We’ve already fallen victim to the first major horror mistake.”

  “Not having a strongly defined villain?” I offer, kneeling to sift through the fallen notepads.

  “Never go off alone,” she states ominously.

  “We’re not alone,” I point out.

  “Or split up! You know what I mean!”

  “I do. Sorry,” I grin. “I didn’t realize you were that into horror movies.”

  “I’m not, I’m interested in never being in one!”

  My fingers close around something solid under the flakes of paper. “Too late, Daphne, Fred’s found a clue,” I say, standing with a box in hand.

  “I thought I was Velma?”

  The box is made of faded blue velvet, shallow and rectangular. About the size that would hold a fancy necklace or a tiara, I’d guess. I take off the lid, but there’s nothing inside. The cushion is shaped to fit the form of an old-style hand mirror.

  “I was hoping for something a little more dramatic,” I admit.

  “Look, there’s a note,” Jul says, plucking out a piece of paper folded between the cushion and the rim. She unfolds it, and we read the cramped, meandering handwriting.

  Beatrix,

  I have fixed it, you see. You said I could, and I did. I gift you this creation, my debt to you repaid. The design has been improved. Not just for conversation, this mirror now offers protection, and possesses the singular ability of being able to locate anyone, anywhere.

  After all you have seen, you may not wish to see me.

  But if you do...

  ~ Soren

  “Okay,” I say, “is it just me, or is this guy totally hitting on your grandma?”

  I glance at Jul, expecting her to be embarrassed or something, but she’s gone pale, staring at the page.

  “I mean, if it’s creepy or whatever, I understand - ”

  A shadow looms from the doorframe, and I look up, expecting Destin. “Dude, where have you - ”

  But this is not my best friend. This is Meredith, the so-called Ender.

  The lanky tattooed woman leans lazily against the doorframe, a bottle swinging loose in her other hand. She blinks at us, as if not entirely sure we’re there, and upends the last of whatever’s in the bottle. Apparently satisfied we’re real, she gives us an unsteady, suspicious glare.

  This time I really take a good look at her. The red tattoos I’d thought were blocky look more like flames on second inspection, covering one side of her throat and down one arm. Bits also seem to peek from around her hairline, though her dark, tangled hair obscures it. She has a wide, small-featured face with grey eyes that seem over-large by comparison. About Jul’s height, but not quite as thin. She wears a sleeveless shirt and pants made of weathered, scorched brown leather.

  Pointing a finger at us, the woman says, “You shouldn’t be here.” She tosses the bottle into a corner where it shatters against the wall, and advances on Jul and I. We both take steps back, hearing the floor crack loudly. The timber beneath us buckles and collapses. My stomach sinks as we fall; then, a hard yank on my arm as it nearly comes out of the socket. The woman has a firm grip on my wrist, and on Jul’s, who’s dangling next to me, staring up in shock. The arsonist saved us?

  “That’s why you shouldn’t be here,” she says, chuckling. “You know this rat pit is condemned, don’t you?”

  I feel my wrist start to scorch. “Ow, ow, ow!” I yelp, almost wishing she’d just drop me, even though I can’t see what’s in the darkness below.

  “Minor burns or rocky death, your choice. Don’t be a pansy, reach up and help yourself,” Meredith says, slurring. “My hands are full and I don’t have super strength, you know.”

  Wincing, I reach up with my free hand and lever myself back onto the floor. I start to get up to help Jul, but Meredith is already pulling her over.

  “Are you okay?” I demand, as Jul gets to her feet, but she’s looking in confusion at the hand-shaped burn around my wrist. Her arms are unmarked.

  Meredith is intrigued, eyes roving over Jul. “Well now,” she says, running a finger under Jul’s chin. “That is a new development.”

  I take Jul’s hand and pull her away. There’s a fine tremor in her fingers and I grip tighter. We edge toward the wall.

  Meredith is still scrutinizing her every feature. “You seem familiar. Is it you? Several shades too pretty for the Wolf, if you ask me, but what do I know?” She laughs, as if at a private joke. She reaches a hand out for Jul, grinning widely.

  I hear a shriek and a tailed shadow falls from the rafters, tangling up in Meredith’s hair. The imp scratches at her face, leaving smoking red lines. Weaving as she tries to pull it off her, she bellows curses at the thing; long, impressive strings of profanity, some in languages I’d never heard. She stumbles, losing her footing, and falls over the edge. The imp leaps free, gliding to land on the edge of the sinkhole. It blinks its wide, yellow eyes at me, posture smug.

  Still in shock, I edge closer to peer into the hole. There’s a faint glow coming from what must be two stories down. Is there some sort of cave underneath this place? No wonder it’s condemned.

  In the yellowish glow, I can make out the shape of Meredith impaled on a stalagmite, the calcified rock poking up through her midsection. She groans, lifting her head, looking at the injury. “Son of a bitch,” she swears, but sounding more annoyed than anything else.

  That’s when I notice the glow is coming from her wounds. Magma seeps out around the hole in her chest, melting through the stalagmite. She wrenches the spike away, tossing it aside and standing with a groan.

  “That was my last shirt!” she yells up, a ragged circle showing just below her ribs where her flesh is reforming.

  Holy. Crap.

  I
look at Jul. “Um, make a break for it?” I suggest.

  She nods frantically, snatching up the velvet box where it had fallen.

  “Blighting mortals, can’t you at least toss down my other bottle!” Meredith’s petulant voice follows us as we hurry out to find Destin and Camille.

  “I didn’t hear her,” Camille bemoans. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Well the good news is, you saw how freaked Dez was and look! Not a single feather,” I say, thumping him on the back. “Mind over matter, right buddy?”

  “Huh? I wasn’t thinking about that at all,” he admits.

  We’d agreed that we needed to be long gone before Meredith found her way out of the cave, and Jul’s house was closest, and empty. Ms. Bea was working at the library again today and Jul insisted that she was going to find something to bandage my arm.

  A light rustle in the dead leaves makes me glance back, and for the first time I’m relieved to see those unnatural yellow eyes instead of something else.

  “Why is it following us?” Destin asks, unnerved, looking over his shoulder at the imp. It darts between the barren trees, keeping mostly out of sight and about twenty feet back, but it’s definitely following us.

  “I don’t know, maybe it’s checking to see if we run into any more fire-breathing immortals on the way to grandmother’s house. And speaking of, what was she talking about, the wolf?”

  “Wolf?” Camille repeats.

  “Yeah, she wanted to know if Jul was a wolf. Is that like a metaphor, or...?”

  “Monster,” Camille says.

  I raise my eyebrows at her, my surprise almost masking the steady throb of pain in my wrist. “Oh yeah? What do you know about it?”

  “Story Gabriel tells. Once upon a time,” she says slowly, as if trying to remember the words, “there were seven heroes. They fought many monsters and saved many kingdoms. Won treasure, fame, love - even some kingdoms for themselves. With time, they became arrogant. Lazy. Selfish. It was...nan no itta...” she mutters to herself, “they ah, ‘bought into their own hype.’ So, the gods cursed them, making them into the same monsters they once swore to destroy. Cursed them to return always, to remind all mortals.” Her gaze is distant as she looks up at the roof of Jul’s house rising above the treeline.

  “Remind them what?” Destin prompts.

  Back to earth, she glances at him. “This is what happens when you waste a gift,” she says.

  I scrape my shoes on the doormat at the back door, certain that Ms. Bea will murder me if I track anything into her house. I leave my mud-spackled jacket outside for the same reason. The interior looks no different from before Jul got there - same peeling floral wallpaper, same faded decorative china hung on the walls. Same little old lady smell of dusty porcelain and regular baking.

  “There’s got to be a medicine cabinet somewhere,” Jul says, pulling open drawers in the kitchen. “I’m sure I can find something for your arm.”

  “I’m totally fine, don’t worry about it,” I say, but it’s a blatant lie. Meredith’s handprint around my wrist is a blistered, angry red. I hold the arm gingerly, trying not to wince.

  “There’s nothing here,” Jul frowns into the last drawer. “It’s all ladles and potholders.”

  “Check the bathroom?” Destin suggests.

  “There aren’t any cabinets in the half-bath on this floor,” Jul says, then hesitantly, “but there is a bathroom attached to Bea’s room.” She looks down the hall, as if the idea of going in there is sacrilege.

  “Really, I’m fine,” I say again.

  “You’re not,” she insists. “I’ll...I’ll be right back.”

  I glance around the kitchen, lifting the lid on a jar. “Think she’s got cookies stashed somewhere?”

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Destin reminds me. “That means leaving things the way we found them.”

  I replace the lid and go to the window, eyeing the imp perched on the porch railing. “Yeah, I guess. If that’s even possible. Hey, where’d the gold ranger get to?”

  “Baka no ebi,” Camille grumbles from down the hall. “Just looking.”

  “Oh, please tell me you are not in the teacup room,” I say, standing and crossing the hall, Destin on my heels.

  Sure enough, she’s in the only room in the house where everything inside is insanely fragile. The chairs and tables are ancient and look like they’re built of toothpicks and velvet tissue, and glass cabinets all around full of china cups that don’t look strong enough to handle a mild insult, much less a cup of tea.

  Every single cup and saucer is different, and to my surprise, Camille seems totally fascinated by them. She peers through a cabinet at a shelf devoted to cups in the shape of different flowers.

  “I would never have pegged you for a tea party kind of girl,” I say.

  “Party?” she says, without inflection. “I just like tea.” There’s a spot of color on her face. I’m betting that’s as close to embarrassed as she gets.

  Destin stands in the middle of the room, arms close at his sides, as if afraid that one touch will cause a chain reaction and the whole room will implode in burst of porcelain. Which frankly, I would pay to see.

  “Guys!” Jul exclaims, standing at the door, holding a box of gauze. “Please come out of there, what if you break something?”

  “You say that like we’re accident-prone or something,” I say. “...Alright, you have a point.” But my eye is caught by a series of frames hung on one wall. I’d always known this room was here, but I’d never gone inside for obvious reasons, so I’ve never seen this wall.

  Most of the black and white photographs feature one or both of two girls with wide smiles - one pale with black hair, one dark with what looks like white hair, despite her youth. Picnics, a day at the beach in old-style bathing suits.

  “That can’t be Ms. Bea,” I say, blinking at a picture of them sitting with legs dangling off the back of a pickup truck, grinning at the camera.

  “You didn’t think she’d always been old, did you?” Destin asks.

  “I didn’t think she’d be a babe,” I reply. “That’s just weird.”

  Destin looks at a picture of them in an office, with two guys. He leans back in surprise. “I think that’s my grandfather,” he says.

  “What, seriously?”

  “Yeah, I recognize the police uniform he’s wearing. I didn’t know he was friends with Ms. Bea. Who’s the other guy? He looks pretty young, like our age.”

  Despite Jul’s soft sound of protest, I carefully lift the picture off the wall and pop off the back cover. Omen’s first day of work, is scrawled across the back of the photo in looping script. Bea, Zinnia, Omen, Marco - 1976.

  “This is him!” I say, fitting the picture back together and turning it around to get another look. “This is the guy who died in the fire. This must have been taken at the mill - it burned down the next year.” He was younger than the rest, Destin was right - maybe fifteen, while the other three were about twenty. “He looks normal enough to me,” I say.

  “Kinda reminds me of you, actually,” Destin says. Omen’s hair and skin are as dark as mine are pale, but he’s about my height - Destin’s grandfather towers over him, with a hand on his shoulder. Omen’s grin at the camera is wide, oblivious that his death is a mere year away.

  “Morbid, dude,” I tell him.

  “What? He has the look of someone who’d walk right into certain danger and drag his friends with him.”

  Jul, however, is transfixed by a small portrait propped up on a side table. It’s painted, not a photograph like the others. The face is almost familiar, but the expression is wrong, and the hair. Mentally I switch out the blue-white hair for a dark brown, and trade the far-off, detached smile with a disapproving frown.

  “Is that Rhys with white hair?” I ask, standing at Jul’s shoulder.

  “I don’t think that’s him,” Jul says, but her expression is strange as she stares at it.

  “Distant relative,” sa
ys a cold voice from the door. Ms. Bea stands there, arms folded. “What are you doing in my room?”

  “Um...” I offer, “...scavenger hunt?”

  Chapter 15

  Jul

  My grandmother had caught me and my friends snooping in an off-limits room when we were supposed to be at school for detention. And yet, I was the one feeling righteous indignation.

  “What happened at the mill?” I asked, shocking myself with my own forwardness.

  “The mill?” She managed to not even glance at the photos on the wall.

  “Meredith burnt it down forty years ago,” I said. “You were there. Your friend died. And now she’s come back.” I trembled, remembering the woman’s scalding fingers reaching for me. But I hadn’t burned. “You knew a Mirrormaker - ” I pointed at the portrait, “didn’t you? I bet you know everything. You certainly can’t forget, all Grimms are Hunters, after all - ”

  “Busy girl,” Bea said angrily. “So this was Simon’s plan? Did he send you here to play the innocent, all the while grooming informants out of your friends?”

  I gasped as if punched. “What?”

  “You think I don’t see you, greedily turning over every leaf in Havenwood? He’s sent you for the Tower mirror, and he’s never getting it. I swore he’d never have it.”

  “This isn’t about the mirror!” I cried.

  “Why else would you dig up the past with such fervor?”

  “Because I want to know who I am!” I shouted. “I have to sneak, and hide, and lie, because no one will give me a straight answer.”