by Casey Lane
Bianca returned her attention to the locked door. Though she doubted it would work, she held her hand over the lock and whispered a spell. A spark ignited between her palm and the keyhole, but it fizzled away almost instantly. She tried again, scrunching up her forehead with the effort to release magic.
She heard a click.
Quickly, she pushed the door open and stepped into the room. In her haste to shut the door, she didn’t look for a light switch before she found herself plunged into utter darkness. A shiver crawled up her spine. Her hands fumbled against the wall in search of a light switch, but she made it to the end of the wall without finding anything. She jerked backward when her fingers brushed against something, but it was only the fabric of the curtains. Well, if this was the only source of light she could find, she’d take it. With a sweep of her hand, she drew the curtain aside, pulling it right across the floor-to-ceiling glass.
Bianca looked out at the cityscape, and the lights winked back at her like artificial stars against a night sky that never grew completely dark. She was so separate from the silent, endless activity down below. So trapped way up here in her tower.
Slowly, she turned away from the lights and faced the mirror on the far wall. Her feet moved in careful steps across the polished wooden floor. Not dull or dusty, because it wasn’t as though the room had stood neglected in the years since Bianca’s mother’s death. No, Riona had discovered the mirror, and she visited the room frequently now. Bianca found herself hoping that if indeed it was the mirror that had driven her mother mad that it would drive Riona mad too. That Riona would waste away in front of it just as Bianca’s mother had done, and Bianca would be free of her step-mother’s cruelty. It was a terrible thought, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. Not when the thought of Riona’s cruel taunts and stinging magic was enough to make Bianca shiver in fear.
Her heart fluttered faster as she approached the mirror. Swallowing, she clutched the round pendant that hung at the base of her throat. When only a foot or so of space remained between Bianca and the mirror, she stopped. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d been expecting to see in its surface. A glow of magic, perhaps, or a shadow of her mother looking back at her, but it was just a regular mirror. A beautiful one, with a decoratively carved gilt wood frame that did a good job of concealing the small crack along the lower edge of the glass, but a regular mirror nonetheless.
She raised her hand and waved it in a brief circle. Her reflection did the same. She tossed a handful of sparks at the mirror’s gleaming surface, but the magic rebounded and vanished instantly.
This had been a stupid idea. Her risky mission to somehow feel closer to her deceased parents was never going to accomplish anything aside from possibly landing her in enormous trouble. But it had taken a lot of nerve to get in here, so she would stay just a few moments longer. Then she’d slip out and never come near The Dark Room again.
Gingerly, Bianca reached out and touched the mirror’s ornate frame—not the reflective surface, because fingerprints would alert Riona to the fact that someone had been in here. She stood there for a moment with her eyes closed, mourning the family she’d lost.
As she opened her eyes, warmth rushed from her chest and down her arm. A warmth she was familiar with. She’d felt it when she’d held the vintage clock in her father’s study and it had started ticking once more, and when she’d touched the broken coffee machine in the kitchen and all the lights had come back on, and when the cell phone she’d accidentally dropped in the fountain in the atrium downstairs began working again while she held it.
That was the warmth that spilled from her hand now as the crack on the lower edge vanished and the mirror’s gleaming surface slowly clouded over. She snatched her hand away, but the magic didn’t stop. The glass surface rippled and gave way to a swirling cloudy vortex, and beyond the grayish purple wisps, she thought she could make out trees.
And that was when the door clicked open behind her.
Chapter 2
Bianca whirled around and found Hunter standing in the doorway. She sagged with relief. “You scared me,” she breathed, raising one hand to her chest.
“What are you doing in here?” he whispered. “You know my mother will—” He cut himself off as his gaze traveled past her. “What … the …”
“I know,” she said, swinging back around to look at the mirror. “I think … maybe … it was broken and I fixed it.”
She heard the door close. Seconds later, Hunter appeared at her side. “You fixed it?” he repeated quietly, reverently. “I didn’t know it was broken.”
“I didn’t either. I had no idea this mirror could do anything. Well, I thought perhaps it might have the power to make people crazy, because of …”
“Because of your mother,” Hunter finished gently. “But I guess not. My mother must have known about this. Why else would she close herself in here all the time? She must have been trying to get the mirror to do … this.” He gestured to the swirling magic.
“What do you think it is?” Bianca asked. Hunter was her older, wiser brother. He often knew the answers to things she did not.
“I don’t know, but we probably shouldn’t touch it.” He took her arm and pulled her back a few steps. “It could be dangerous.”
Bianca looked up at him, a frown creasing her pale brow. “But if we leave it like this, your mother will know I came in here.”
“She won’t. I’ll say it was me. You know she won’t hurt me.”
Bianca searched his grey-green eyes—so much softer than the bright poisonous green of his mother’s gaze—for any hint of deception. But Hunter had never lied to her before, and he wouldn’t lie now. He’d stood between his mother and Bianca countless times already, taking his role as big brother seriously almost from the day their parents married.
“Besides, it’s not as though we have any way to hide this,” he added, nodding his head toward the swirling wisps of magic.
“I know,” Bianca said, but she looked at the mirror with longing as Hunter headed back to the door. Is this what her mother had been hoping for every time she stood before the mirror? As she’d pressed her hand desperately against the glossy surface, had she been reaching for whatever lay beyond the vortex? Didn’t she owe it to her mother to find out what was on the other side?
“Come on,” Hunter said.
She heard him open the door. She looked back at him over her shoulder, and while she recognized that she loved him and would miss him, it wasn’t enough to hold her back here where only suffering remained. “I’m sorry, Hunter,” she said as she returned her gaze to the mirror and walked toward it.
“Bianca, no!” he shouted.
As she plunged both arms into the cloudy mass, she felt his grip on her waist. But rather than pulling her back, they were both sucked forward into the vortex. They spun around and around, purple, blue and grey flashing all around them, until eventually everything became dark, and a hard surface struck her back.
Chapter 3
Bianca blinked and sucked air into her lungs before pushing herself slowly into a sitting position. Leaves and twigs dug into her palms. She brushed them away subconsciously as she looked around, too stunned to fully take in her surroundings. Dim light filtered through gnarled, tangled branches, spots of light pulsed in several of the trees, and a clump of toadstools larger than armchairs stood nearby. Raising her eyes, Bianca saw ice-like crystals hanging from the branches of one of the trees, the leaves of which shimmered with iridescence. As she watched, a leaf detached itself from the tree and floated downward, spinning this way and that on the breeze, until it landed on the ground beside her. Carefully, she picked it up and placed it on her palm. She swiveled her hand around, looking at the leaf from different angles and marveling at how the color appeared to change.
A sharp intake of breath beside her reminded her that Hunter had also fallen through the mirror. “This … this is impossible,” he whispered.
Bianca lowered the leaf and looked
around once more. “Do you think …” she began, but found the words too crazy to utter out loud. She tried again. “Are we in …”
“Another world?” Hunter said. He pushed his hair back off his forehead and scanned their surroundings. “I think we might be. I’ve heard my mother speak of a magical world, but I thought—I mean—I never imagined this. I thought she used the term ‘the magical world’ in the same way one might say ‘the sporting world’ or the ‘the literary world.’ You know? Not an actual, separate realm.”
A squeal beside her made Bianca flinch and whip her head around. A group of small humanoid creatures with greenish brown skin and pointed ears bounced across the tops of the toadstools and onto the ground. The toadstools wobbled and groaned, and their domed caps split across the middle, revealing pointed teeth in wide mouths. “Oh!” Bianca gasped. Each toadstool snapped its jaws shut, but the little creatures were too fast—all except the last. As it made its final somersault toward the ground, the toadstool stretched upward, clamped its jaws together, and closed around the tiny creature’s foot. The creature wriggled and shrieked and tore itself free as Bianca scrambled toward it.
“Bianca!” Hunter shouted in warning, but she was already kneeling beside the whimpering creature. It clutched its mangled leg. Uncertain of what to do, only knowing she wanted to help, Bianca reached out to the creature. “Don’t touch it,” Hunter said as he came toward her, but she paid no heed. Her fingers brushed the creature’s foot. It shrank away from her, causing the rest of its companions, gathered in a tense group nearby, to whisper feverishly amongst themselves. Again, she reached for the creature’s foot. She had never had control of that warm magic that raced from her chest and down her arms, but she willed it more earnestly than for any other broken thing she’d ever wanted to fix—and this time it worked.
The creature sprang to its feet and tested its leg by jumping a few times. It laughed. Then it reached for Bianca’s finger with its small hand and held on while it bowed to her. Its companions rushed at her then, and she sucked in a breath in fright. But they were only hugging her, latching onto whatever part of her body they could reach and clinging briefly to her before running off with high-pitched shouts of glee.
“That was dangerous, Bianca,” Hunter said as he helped her to her feet. “We don’t know anything about this place. What if that had been a trap?”
“Hunter, that poor creature almost had its leg bitten off. That can’t be faked.”
He frowned at her before raising his eyes to the trees around them. “This world is full of magic. It’s far easier to be deceived here.”
“This world is beautiful,” she said, tilting her head back and staring through the interlaced branches at the stars that were beginning to blink against the purple-grey sky. Stars so much brighter than any she’d ever seen. “It’s so full of life. Even the air itself feels more alive than back home.”
A butterfly flitted past her, coming close enough for its blue and yellow patterned wings to briefly caress her pale cheek. As it danced away upon a gust of air, she saw that its body was a tiny woman, not an insect. “Was that … a faerie?” she asked in wonder.
“No,” said a voice from behind her. “We are faeries.”
Bianca spun around and found herself face to face with her nightmare.
Riona.
Chapter 4
Riona stood there in her cocktail dress and heels, staring around in wonder. “Creepy Hollow,” she murmured. “After all these years, I’ve returned to you.” Then she fixed her acid green gaze upon Bianca. “You fixed the mirror, didn’t you? Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. We thought the mirror lost its magic once it reached the humans’ world, but instead it was simply broken.” She shook her head as she took a step toward Bianca. “So much time wasted in a drab world when we could have been here instead.” She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “That is the smell of home, Hunter,” she whispered. “The smell of magic.” She opened her eyes and looked at her son. “We’ve finally reached the last part of our plan.”
“W-what plan?” Bianca stammered.
Riona smiled faintly. “Get rid of my sister, marry her husband for his sizable fortune, end his life, claim said fortune, and find a way back into the fae world. Thanks to you, we’ve achieved our final step.”
“Wait—did you say—did you kill my father?”
Riona’s smile was twisted. “Magic can make the cause of death impossible to detect by human standards.”
“You—despicable—” Bianca stammered over her words, too horrified and sickened to get them out.
“Yes, despicable. I’ve heard that one before.”
“And what do you mean, your sister?”
Riona sighed in impatience. “Your mother was my sister. I’d call you a fool for having missed the resemblance, but I know there wasn’t much of one.” Her lips stretched into a grim smile. “That was the source of the initial disagreement.”
Bianca shook her head. “But that’s—my mother didn’t have a sister.”
Riona’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know the first thing about your mother.” Her gaze turned back to Hunter. “Come. Our suffering in the non-magical world has ended, and it’s time to get on with our lives. But first, you know what needs to be done.”
Her words held such an ominous tone that Bianca turned immediately to Hunter, fear sending a shiver along her arms. “What needs to be done?”
Instead of answering her—instead of even looking at her—Hunter said, “You don’t have to hurt her, Mom. She’s no threat to you.”
“Oh, but she is. She is a threat to my everlasting peace of mind. Don’t you remember what I told you? About how this all began? My sister was always lovelier than I, and everyone praised her for it. And every time I look at her—” she jabbed a finger in Bianca’s direction “—I am reminded of that. Skin as fair and unmarred as clean snow. Hair black like a raven’s wings. Lips as red as blood.” Riona’s own lips curled up into a sneer. “But I will wipe this forest floor with her blood, and the rivalry will be gone for good.”
Bianca took an involuntary step backward just as Hunter said, “No! I won’t let you hurt her. Not only are we related by marriage, we’re related by blood. The three of us are family. We don’t kill family.”
“Whether I kill her or not, I will still take what I want.”
“I know,” Hunter said quietly, leaving Bianca’s mind to race through the possibilities of what, exactly, Riona wanted from her. “But first,” he added, “you owe her an explanation.”
“I owe her nothing,” his mother said in icy tones.
Hunter took a step forward. “I say you do.”
Riona picked her way across the leaves and twigs and leaned her elegant frame against the nearest tree. “Well then, Bianca. If it will make my dear son happy, I’ll tell you your history.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Your mother and I grew up here in Creepy Hollow with our family. Our family of faeries, in case you missed that bit just now. I was always the plain one, while she became lovelier every day.”
Plain? Bianca thought. She didn’t think of Riona as plain. Her bright eyes were like poison, her icy smile promised punishment, and her intimidating presence was to be feared. Plain didn’t terrify Bianca, but Riona did.
“We argued constantly,” Riona continued. “Eventually, when we were seventeen, our mother became so tired of our bickering that she created a portal and sent us through it, saying we could not return until we had figured out how to reconcile our differences. Without a stylus, the mirror portal was our only way home. Unfortunately, when we reached the other side and found ourselves and the mirror on a warehouse floor, the portal was gone.
“We tried all the magic we could think of, but nothing made the mirror work again. Our mother was the one who knew portal magic, not us. Because we could not agree on a course of action, we ended up parting ways. My sister stayed with the mirror, determined to come up with the right combination o
f magic to reopen the portal. I decided to travel the world, searching for the naturally occurring gaps between the fae and human realms. If I couldn’t find one, I hoped to stumble across a magical being in possession of a stylus.”
“A stylus?” Bianca asked.
“Similar to what humans would call a wand,” Riona said in a dismissive tone. “It can be used to open doorways to the faerie paths, by which we travel within and between worlds. Portals are complex, which is why faerie paths are the more common mode of travel.”
“But didn’t your parents come looking for the two of you when you didn’t return after some time? If you had just stayed in that warehouse, your mother probably would have found you.” Riona’s mother. Bianca’s grandmother. Bianca wondered fleetingly if the woman might still be alive.
Riona clicked her tongue as if Bianca had suggested something stupid. “We could not stay in the warehouse. It was demolished. Bulldozers and demolition vehicles ripped the area apart and closed it off so that development could begin on a gated community. Our magic couldn’t stop that.
“I traveled the world, never finding one of those openings. I never married, but I did have Hunter. When eventually I came into contact with your mother again, it seemed from the outside that she had the perfect life. She was married to one of the wealthiest men in the city, and she had a daughter the tabloids called ‘the fairest of them all.’ But she had the mirror too, and I could tell she was beginning to lose her mind. It was easy enough to finish her off and make it look as though madness drove her to take her own life.”
“You monster,” Bianca whispered—a second before she lunged at Riona. Hunter caught her before her outstretched hands could reach Riona. He tugged her back as Riona tilted her head to the sky and laughed.