by Schulte, Liz
“That is quite strange.” Josephine picked off pieces of crust from her toast, letting them fall onto the plate. “The mirror could have been given to me by anyone then?”
I shook my head. “Not anyone, the person who wants you dead or the demon freed. Someone who knows about your experiments. Had you used it as just a mirror, none of this would have come to pass.”
“There are only two people who knew about my experiments and could have given me the mirror. My sister and Floyd.” Her shoulders fell. She looked miserable as she abandoned her toast completely.
“I don’t think it’s Floyd,” I said gently.
“My sister wouldn’t hurt me,” she insisted.
I nodded. “I agree with that too, but I think she knows something and she won’t talk to me. She doesn’t trust me. Maybe it’s like you. Maybe she’s not aware of what she’s doing. I was possessed once. You lose all control of yourself.”
“You think we’re possessed?”
I shook my head. “Possession wouldn’t come and go. Something else is doing this.”
“And Jeanette can help us figure it out?”
“It’s worth a try,” I said.
“She won’t understand,” Josephine said softly. “She doesn’t believe in things like this.”
“I never meant for you to get involved,” Jeanette’s voice came from the doorway. “I thought he only came to me.”
“Who?” Josephine asked.
“Granville,” Jeanette said. “He said he needed you to open the passage. He needed you to free him. That was all. Then we could be together.”
“What is he?” I asked.
Jeanette glanced at me, eyes narrowing. “This is all your fault. If you had stayed in your time, none of this would have happened. Granville would be free and we could all have carried on just as before.”
Josephine’s mouth fell open. “If Maggie had stayed and ignored me, I would be dead. That’s how this ends, Jeanette.”
“According to her,” she spat out. “Why do you trust her more than me? Granville says she is a liar. She isn’t even human. Has she told you that?”
“Sorry to break it to you, but neither is he.”
“Granville wouldn’t lie to me. He loves me and I love him.”
Josephine pressed her hands to the table. “Jeanette, you need to sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”
Josephine and I explained everything we knew, how the passage was opened, how it made us feel, and how and when Josephine would die. Jeanette listened, growing paler and paler as we spoke. “Maggie came from her time to help me. We didn’t understand how the passage worked and she got stuck. She’s been trying to help me figure out who is going to kill me.”
“And you think it’s Granville?” she asked weakly.
“We need to know what he is and what he wants,” I said.
“He just wants to be free.” Tears spilled from her eyes. “But I would never…” She grabbed Josephine’s hand. “I didn’t know. You believe me, don’t you? I didn’t know.”
Josephine hugged her sister, tight, both of them crying now. “I know,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“How long has Granville been trapped?”
“Years,” Jeanette said.
“How did you meet him?” Josephine asked.
“In a dream. He came to me. At first we talked, spending hours together until I couldn’t wait to fall asleep again.”
“And when did you know it was the mirror?”
She looked down. “The dreams didn’t start until I bought a new mirror for my bedroom. Not the one I gave you. It was an older mirror, but it matched my bedroom set. The first night I brought it home, he was in my dream. I wanted to help him. I wanted to… He said he wanted to be with me too. He isn’t like the others. He didn’t care about our money or position. He only loved me.”
A flood of sympathy for Jeanette filled me. The heart made us do many stupid things.
“I offered to help him. He didn’t ask me to. It was my idea.” She shook her head, squeezing her hands into fists. “How could I have been so stupid?” she whispered.
“You didn’t know,” Josephine said. “How could you?”
“We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all made bad decisions. You can’t go back, but you can do what you can to set them right,” I told her and Jeanette looked up, black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. “Finish the story.”
“I told him everything about myself and about Josephine. He was very interested in her work with ley lines. He said that they could help him finally escape. That a witch had banished him to the mirror when he broke her heart. All I had to do was give Josephine my mirror and he’d take care of the rest. I told him she wouldn’t want it. That she wouldn’t like it. The next thing I knew, there was a new mirror. I swear I never saw it until she opened the present, but the money for it was gone from my account. I’d purchased it, but didn’t have any memory of doing so.”
So it didn’t have to be the same mirror. I scanned the walls in the dining room, no mirrors only paintings. “Did you continue to see him in your dreams?”
She shook her head. “Once Josephine got the new mirror I didn’t see him at all. In fact, I never saw him again until you showed up. Then he appeared and told me not to trust you. He told me you weren’t here to help him. You were going to try to kill him and anyone else who got in your way. Josephine wouldn’t listen when I tried to talk to her about you, so last night, I confronted you and immediately you started asking about the mirror. It all fell into place exactly like he said, but I didn’t know the whole story.”
Baker would have known better about what to make of this than I did. Was a witch even strong enough to banish a demon to a mirror? I had fought more than my share of demons, and I had seen plenty of others do the same. They didn’t go down easily and witches were humans. The witch could have maybe trapped it by using some sort of trick. And if it was a spell, then it had to know how to break it if it thought it could get out. “Why would the demon take Josephine’s body into the mirror? What would it gain by that?”
The twins looked at me blankly. I really did need Baker or a library or something. “Okay, if you dream of him again, play along. Don’t let on that you know anything other than what he has told you. Tell him I have met a man and decided to stay in this time and that Josephine is giving up her research. Meanwhile, we need to research every type of demon we can to prepare for whatever he has planned.”
“There are different types of demons?” Jeanette asked.
I nodded. “Some are slightly more social than others, and at times interests could even align for one to help you.” At least I had to believe that. Jinn had been considered to be pretty much like demons for centuries, but it wasn’t entirely true. They still weren’t card-carrying good guys, but they definitely made up their own minds these days. “But in the end, they’re all still demons and they still answer to hell’s agenda.”
Josephine sprang to her feet. “I have books on demonology. I don’t know how accurate they are, but I have them.” We followed her into her study, cleared out every single mirror, then put on a record just in case Granville could hear us some other way.
“Let’s not worry about that. We can see what we can find, then run it by Baker tonight when he comes by. Now, what do we know about Granville? What are his distinguishing characteristics?” I paced in front of the window. “He’s living between worlds, he’s visiting and possibly controlling you two from your dreams, but his reach doesn’t last—”
“He is magic. You said he can feed off of you without you knowing it. He isn’t how you would picture a demon. He looks just like anyone else,” Jeanette said.
We scoured Josephine’s books for hours, each of us periodically getting up to move around, but nothing we read seemed to fit what we were dealing with.
“What about this?” Josephine asked finally, her eyes darting back and forth as she read the book in her hands. “I have a dream demon here. Th
ey break down barriers between the real world and the dream world and while you’re asleep they can possess a person or plant ideas in your subconscious. But it doesn’t look like the creature can leave the dream world. So freeing him wouldn’t be possible. Also it doesn’t say anything about mirrors.”
Still it was the closest we had gotten to an answer. There was a knock on the door. “Baker,” I said, standing up. “I’ll get it.”
I rushed to the door, careful not to look at the mirror in the hallway. Who knew how much Granville could see or hear from inside there. Just in case, I’d have to play along. “Baker,” I exclaimed, opening the door wide and throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him.
“I could get used to this,” he said, smiling even as his eyes questioned me.
I leaned in once more, brushing my lips against his ear. “Go with it.”
Chapter 16
Baker listened to everything we told him, and by the end he was grinning from ear to ear. “I know exactly what he is. You’ve got yourself a cambion.”
“That wasn’t in the book,” Josephine said at the same time I asked what that was.
“You were close with the dream demon,” he said. “A cambion is the child of a demon and a mortal. If I had to place a guess, his dear ol’ mother was the dream demon. No witch trapped him in a mirror. Had a witch done that, he would be confined to a single mirror. Since he can move between them, that isn’t the case. She would have given birth to him in her realm and without a way out, he would be stuck there.”
“For how long?” Jeanette asked.
“For as long as he lives. But this fella is a smart one. He’s found himself a way out. He has already figured out how to possess you, but not for any length of time because being out here would drain the energy from his demon half, which was never meant to exist on our plane. While you get stronger as you recover from being in his realm, he would die.”
“What’s his plan?” I crossed my legs, bouncing my foot in the air.
“Search me,” Baker said. “I haven’t the first idea how he will get out. I just know that he has a plan and won’t look kindly on anyone who stands in his way. Looks like you were right, Maggie. He’s probably the one who takes Josephine. She’s obviously part of his plan.”
“Then all we have to do is never open the channel through the mirror again. He won’t be able to reach us or take Josephine,” Jeanette said. “Problem solved.”
Baker shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about this, even if it isn’t Josephine’s time to go, she can’t stay here. We don’t know what that would do to the future. Life must carry on without her.”
“We’re not letting her die, Baker.” I had already gone through too much to just let it go now.
“That’s not what I’m saying, but for the very same reasons you won’t stay here with me, Josephine cannot stay. If you want to save her, you have only one choice.” He looked at each of us, finally settling his gaze on Josephine. “If you want to live, you have to go back with Maggie. This isn’t your time anymore.”
“No,” Jeanette gasped. “I will not lose my sister over this. The world will be fine. It might change a bit, but that’s not our fault.”
“You lose her one way or another. I gotta think if she stays and we save her, fate will find a way to settle accounts and I seriously doubt she’d make it through 1923. But if you want her to have a longer life, let her go back with Maggie. At least there, her destiny isn’t foretold.”
Josephine finally looked up, eyes shining with fresh tears, but she had a smile on her face. “I have spent the last few weeks certain I was going to die. I told myself it was okay, that my time had come, but, Jetty, I’m not ready to give up on this life. Everything Baker says goes with everything I’ve ever read about time travel. This is a loophole. This is a way I can carry on. Maybe you will still be alive when I get there. We can see each other again.”
“She isn’t,” I said softly because they had a right to know.
Jeanette pressed her hand to her sister’s cheek. “I will make sure I leave everything to you.”
“Not the house,” Josephine said. “If you leave me the house, Maggie will never get the mirror.”
Jeanette wiped at her eyes. “I hate all of this.”
Baker looked at me. “When you go into the between world, you will have to find him and fight him in his own world. He probably already knows something is going on because you’re suddenly blocking his access to you all. All of this happens on the first, right?”
I nodded. I would finally be able to go home and it was our only chance to save Josephine.
“Good, we have some time. We’ll keep working on your ability to manipulate memories, Maggie—and we all need everything to stay as it was as much as possible, so Maggie’s visit changes very little. Girls, you need to get Floyd here, we need to start collecting blood from Josephine—a little each day will do—and there needs to be a gunshot, which I can take care of. Jeanette, it will be up to the two of us to pull this off. Can you do it?”
She nodded, composing her face. “Yes.”
“Okay. The night of the celebration you will need to be seen. I’m talking belle of the ball here. Everyone needs to see and hear you. Maggie, take us through the time line.”
I tried to recall the vision in detail, even though my brain was stuck on the idea that Josephine was going to have to leave her home and her life. “Um, the clock was chiming to ten. At five, I heard the gunshot. At the ninth, Floyd ran out of the room. That’s all I know, other than what was in the article. It said the party was over when Jeanette found the blood and called the police.”
“Good,” Baker said, patting my knee. “We need to make sure Floyd goes into the office and something scares him out at the right time. I will take care of the gunshot and frightening the professor. Jeanette, your job is to get him to me on time and to call the police after the party. I’m going to need your blood, Josephine.”
She nodded. “I can take a vial or two a day. Would that work? Is it really that easy to recreate my murder?”
“Absolutely, doll. The simpler the better, that’s what I always say. Too many details in the mix will trip ya up. Maggie and I will go over the crime scene in detail and I will recreate it. Make sure you say your goodbyes before the party, but don’t make them obvious. No one can suspect anything is amiss.”
“Surely, there’s another way,” I blurted. Watching another life knocked off course was too much. That wasn’t why I came back here. It wasn’t fair that Josephine had to give up her entire life just because something in the Abyss targeted her sister. I’d come to help her, and damn it, that’s what I was going to do. What if she hated my time? None of it was fair.
Josephine shook her head. “Not you too.” She gave a gentle laugh. “If my choice is this or dying, then I want this. I do not regret anything. In fact, it’s all quite a marvelous adventure. I don’t know how I will manage without my sister, but knowing that she will have a full life without me will make me brave. You kept asking why you were brought here, if not to save me. Perhaps you were brought here because I was always meant to return with you.” I started to shake my head, but she cut me off. “You yourself know angels, Maggie, and have travelled through time. How can you deny that there is a greater force or plan in action here? There is no other explanation. Didn’t you tell me that everything happens for a reason? You found the mirror for a reason. Just because you don’t care for the answer doesn’t make it any less true. You have told me of your life. Look no further than your own story, your own heart, to know that I speak the truth.”
“There is no proof. From my life and the people I know, the only lesson that I’ve learned is that you only have to follow destiny if you choose to do so.”
Baker smiled. “You’re right, baby, but are you willing to go back to an unknown future? This story has already been written. If you change it now, there’s no guarantee what will be waiting for you when you get home.”
My stomach sank.
“Maggie, I don’t want to change the future you described. I’m excited to see it.”
I looked back and forth between them. Either decision was bad, but ultimately it wasn’t mine to make. If Josephine wanted to do this, I couldn’t stop her—just like my friends couldn’t stop me when I wanted to become a vampire. She might hate it and be miserable or maybe she’d love it. Either way…
“If you hadn’t met Baker, how would your life be different? Would you honestly still want that life knowing what you can do now?”
I met Josephine’s eyes. “I can’t do anything. I make a mess out of everything I try to help with.”
She shook her head. “That may be, but you still change lives. You’ve changed mine already, just as Baker changed yours. Are you honestly telling me that hasn’t been positive?” She didn’t wait for me to reply. “Because of him you met your family, you have saved lives, and you met your love. None of that would have happened had Baker not taken you into his life.”
I could feel Baker’s gaze locked onto me. It was a question I had thought about often, mostly when I was feeling resentful. “I wouldn’t choose a different life.” I looked at Baker. “Not anymore. I am growing to like the Abyss.” And it was in no small part due to Phoenix.
Phoenix had told me that together we could change the world without starting a single war. I never believed him. I thought he wanted to use me and likely that was part of it, but removed from my time and my world, if I looked at it as destiny then it wasn’t a hard future to imagine. And in that case was it something I could continue to ignore? Was I ready to change the world? Did I even want to? Did I have a choice? So much about Phoenix frightened me. It was like closing my eyes and stepping off of a cliff with nothing but the mere promise that he would catch me.
Then I looked at Josephine. She was confronted with the same type of life changing event, and she wasn’t flinching from the unknown. She was doing exactly what I should have done, grabbing onto any chance at life rather than clinging to the past.