But suddenly, a bright purple light shot into the sky. Instantly, a faerie in a gray uniform with the FFR logo appeared in the sky, hovering like an avenging angel. He shot a spell on the scene below that froze every single Red Cap.
“They gave up,” I let out an incredulous laugh, relief surging through me like a powerful tide. “They’re going to be okay.”
“This is our chance,” Orin said, his voice surging with excitement. His words were muddled in my mind. I didn’t understand.
“The door is right there. The Red Caps are frozen. Come on!” Before I could think, he took my hand and pulled me to my feet, dragging me forward into a full sprint towards the faerie hill.
18
Getting inside the hill was surprisingly easy. I guess the obstacle was the Red Caps which, thanks to Yael and Duncan, we didn’t have to deal with.
I was feeling decidedly happier as Orin closed the door behind us. Two contestants were out of the race, which gave us two less people to worry about.
The room we’d walked into was really nothing more than an opening carved out of the hillside. The walls were mud and dirt, and the roots of plants and flowers hung from the ceiling above us. It smelled musty, of wet earth; although, the ground beneath my boots was dry. The only object of interest in the whole room was a mirror. With an antique gold frame, the floor length mirror was completely incongruent with its surroundings. It would have been better suited to a stately hotel than a hole in the ground, which is, essentially, what we were in.
“The next clue has something to do with the mirror,” exclaimed Orin, peering at his own reflection.
“What was it you said to me earlier? No shit, Sherlock?”
Orin narrowed his eyes at my reflection behind him.
“It seems we aren’t the only ones to get here either.” I nodded to the floor beside the mirror. There were two contestants’ backpacks tucked behind the mirror, barely noticeable in the dim light. Two bags, but no people.
“Where are they?” asked Orin, peering around the dark room. There was very little light, but the room was so small that it was obvious there was no one else here but Orin and me.
I looked over at Orin and gazed over his shoulder. A pair of intense eyes glared back at me, and I was shocked to find that they were my own. Did I really look that way nowadays? Thin and angry, a little wild? Pulling my features into a more suitable expression, I sidestepped Orin and touched the cold glass of the mirror. My reflection did the same, but there was something not quite right about it. It took me a few seconds before I realized what it was. Behind my reflection, almost invisible, was a lever in the dirt wall. Checking over my shoulder, I scanned the wall. There was no lever—yet it was definitely there in the reflection.
I backed up, keeping my eyes on mirror me and felt along the dirt wall. There was nothing there, but my reflection definitely had hold of something. I mimed pulling down and watched as my reflection pulled the lever. Immediately, the surface of the mirror began to shimmer. My reflection was still there, now complete with a self-satisfied smirk, but she was hazy with a slight ripple effect over her.
Orin goggled at me, and I couldn’t help myself. I shot him a wink and walked right up to the mirror.
“What are you doing?” Orin asked as I pressed my finger up to the watery surface.
I turned to face him. “Haven’t you ever read Alice through the Looking Glass?” As I said it, a very strong memory of Cass and I reading it together by flashlight under the covers when we were little hit me right in the pit of my stomach. Why was it that my memories of her were stronger than ever? Ever since we'd come into Faerwild, my dreams of her had gotten more intense. I could almost feel her, reach out to her, and touch her, but she was not there. She was never there. I felt like she was walking with me through this strange land. It was almost as though the FFR knew about her, but there was no way they could…was there?
“Alice who?”
“You’ve heard of some old German poet, and you’ve heard of Sherlock, but not Alice?” I narrowed my eyes at him. How was it possible to know about a fictional London detective and not a classic fairytale?
“Actually, I don’t know what a Sherlock is, I just heard the saying, but that hasn’t answered my question. What are you doing?”
I shook my head in disbelief. He knew about as much about the human world as I did about Faerwild. I wondered how he’d fare if he had to cross one of Burbank’s busy streets to buy a round of coffees for a bunch of studio execs. Now that really was a challenge!
“I’m going in.” I pressed my hand forward, and as I expected, it passed through the shimmering surface as easily as dipping my hand into a pond.
And without waiting for his objection, I walked through the magical surface of the mirror. Or…I tried. When my backpack hit the mirror, it seemed to resist moving through. I backed up, unshouldering my pack and tossing it behind the mirror with the two others. Apparently, where we were going, we couldn’t take supplies.
I pushed through again, and a cold shiver passed through me before I found myself in an identical room to the one I’d just left…although, now I was standing next to the mirror Orin. He copied the exact movements of the real Orin at the other side of the glass. It was weird. It was like there were two of him, but only one of me. I was quite glad when the real Orin plucked up the courage to follow me through.
I looked back to see Ben pushing through with his red-blinking camera light, coming out the other side with no problem. Yet another rule of the race that didn’t apply to him, I guess.
“What is this place?” Orin asked. “There are legends of faerie paths that could be accessed through mirrors, but I always thought that was an old wives’ tale.” I could see the fear in his eyes.
“Maybe you should start thinking of those fluffy bunnies again,” I replied, stepping towards the door. Either it would be an exact, but opposite replica of outside, or, like Alice’s looking glass world, it would be completely different. When I opened the door, I saw that it was firmly in the second category, but this was no wonderland.
My heart seized in my chest. It was my bedroom. Not the one I had in the apartment I shared with Christine, but the small attic bedroom Cass and I shared as kids. My heart jumped into my throat as I took in the detail around me. It was exactly the same down to the faint smell of perfume that had lingered for months after Cass stole a bottle of our mother’s favorite perfume and accidentally spilled it all over the carpet. I ran to the bed and threw back the covers hoping I’d find Cass there, but there was only Peaches, the raggedy doll she used to insist was hers, but really, it had been given to me by my mother when I’d fallen out of a tree and broken my ankle. We’d fought for so long over that stupid doll…I think it had ended up in the garbage about the time we got interested in boys, and our childhood toys meant nothing to us anymore. Now, I wished more than anything that I still had Peaches. I picked up this mirror copy and held it close to me.
“This was my room. I shared it with Cass…my sister.”
I walked to the bedside table and noticed a book with a strange symbol on the front—one of Cass’s. I recognized it immediately, but it was out of place in this room. The timeline was wrong. Peaches had stayed with us throughout our childhood, but I’d only seen Cass with this book when we were much older—when she started working with her coven. I’d known it had something to do with magic, but I’d never asked her about it. Now I wished I had. For it was the one thing the ICCF had taken from our house when they questioned us about her disappearance.
My heart leapt into my throat as I picked it up. The ICCF had refused to tell us why they were confiscating the book or why it was important to their investigation. We’d never gotten any answers. I opened the book, wondering if it would finally provide some clue as to why she left or where she went, but all the pages were blank. The only thing I found inside was an origami flower. Smiling, I remembered it well. It was how the two of us passed secret notes to each other, hidden in pla
in sight. I unfolded the flower carefully and on the back in childish writing were the words LOVE U JACQ.
It was only when Orin asked why I was crying that I realized I had tears running down my face.
I felt closer to her here than I had since the day she left. It was almost as though she was within reach.
With that thought in mind, I jumped up and ran to the other door in the room. Behind it, stood the stairs that led down to the home we lived in until I’d moved to L.A., wanting more than anything to leave Montana, and its memories of Cass, behind. The stairs were exactly the same as I remembered, down to the creak on the third one from the bottom, but when I stepped into the room that should have been the living room with its rustic fireplace and my dad sitting on his Lazy-z-Boy chair filling in the crossword and my mother reading some soap opera digest, instead I found a long dining room.
I skidded to a halt, almost dropping Peaches on the floor as I took in the scene in front of me. The room was almost macabre with its long black table and gothic architecture. It reminded me of a room in a haunted house.
“No…no, no, no.”
I turned to find Orin staring past me, his eyes wide. The fear I’d seen in them before was nothing to what I was seeing now. He looked positively terrified.
“I can’t be here, this place was destroyed…” His words were a whisper, almost too quiet to make out. “I burned it.”
I recoiled, looking at him. So this was a place from his past? That’s what the mirror did. It took you to places of high emotion in your past. In my case, it reminded me of a better time, a time before Cass disappeared. If any memory was sure to get me, it’d be one with Cass.
Judging by Orin’s face, his memory was much more sinister. He’d destroyed this room? I wondered why, but couldn’t find the words to ask him. Not in front of the cameras. Not here.
Instead, I tried to bring him back to the situation at hand. “This isn’t real. We just need to find the clue. For a minute back there, I thought it had taken us back in time, but I think the mirror shows what’s in our heads. For me, it took me back to my happiest place.”
“Lucky you,” snapped Orin, “because it’s brought me to my worst nightmare. I need to get out of here. He’ll be back in a minute.”
“Who?”
I followed Orin’s gaze to the door at the other side of the room. Something behind that door terrified him. Whatever it was, it was from Orin’s past, not mine, and so I wasn’t scared of it. I left Orin where he was and marched past the long table to the door. When I opened it, I wished I hadn’t.
Cass was standing there. My breath hitched in my chest at the sight of her. But not in surprise and delight—in horror! She looked nothing like I remembered her. Gone was the youthful beauty with hope on her face and light in her eyes. Now she was pale and painfully thin with welts and scars all the way up her arms and legs. Manacles on her wrists and ankles tethered her to the wall. All she wore was a dirty rag tied around herself. When she looked up, her eyes locked on mine. She opened her mouth and began to scream. My blood surged through my body in double quick time. I needed to get to her! As I stepped into the room, a tall faerie male with heavy features and thick eyebrows materialized, swinging a sword at me.
The faerie sliced at me with his blade, but I was too quick for him. Despite his height, he was almost as thin as Cass, and his movements were slow.
I reached Cass, but there was nothing I could do for her with the crazy man swinging his sword around. I ducked again, weaving under his bony arms as he swung the sword around and around, trying in vain to hit me.
I screamed out, adding to Cass’s voice. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of black.
Orin pushed me to one side as the man swiped at me with his sword.
“You didn’t beat me the first time, you’ll not do it now,” screamed Orin, lunging at the male, sending him to the ground. The sword clattered to the floor with a loud clang. Both Orin and the old man turned their heads from their positions on the floor to look at it.
Orin lunged for the sword, his fingers closing around it. He reared back and plunged it into the faerie’s chest.
“Thank you!” I called out, relieved it was over. “We need to free Cass.”
Orin swung the sword down towards the manacles chaining her to the wall, but at the last second, he changed trajectory, and the sword went clean through Cass’s neck, sending her head flying across the room.
Somewhere, someone screamed, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was me. All around me, the room was getting hotter. Orin grabbed my hand and tried to pull me back into the weird dining room. “You’ll die if you stay here,” he shouted as I struggled against him.
My mind was churning, and the pain in my heart was unbearable. I couldn’t have come all this way to see my sister die in such a horrific manner.
“You killed my sister!” I screamed as the room heated up even more. What was causing it? I wondered in some recess of my shocked mind.
“Think Jacq!” he yelled back. “That wasn’t your sister, and it wasn’t….” He trailed off. “All I killed was a figment of both our imaginations. I don’t know where your sister is, but she’s not in here any more than that male is. But I think there’s a fire, a real fire. So let’s get a move on before we get roasted.”
Cass was still alive? I looked back at her body, uncertainly. “I don’t see any flames,” I protested, moving back towards her. But the air was feeling thick, and the smell of smoke was overpowering.
“I think someone lit it in the real world,” Orin said, taking my hand.
He pulled me forward, and we ran through the dining room and up the stairs that would take us back to the mirror, Ben following close behind. What I wouldn’t give for whatever protective enchantments he had.
We dashed through the mirror, into an inferno of flame. The little dirt antechamber was alight with magic flames licking in from the floor to the root-covered ceiling.
Our packs, I thought with horror, but there was no stopping. Not if I wanted to live.
Orin pulled me through the licking flames out the front door to freedom, where I took in great lungfuls of air, patting down my hair and clothes to be sure there were no eager sparks left on me.
Black smoke plumed out of the hillside behind us, so we stumbled up the hill until the air was clear and we were able to breathe.
“We’ve lost everything,” I cried, slumping to the ground and closing my eyes. Weariness threatened to overwhelm me. The memory of Cass, broken and chained, left me hollow and raw. What if that’s what she really looked like now? What if she was a prisoner somewhere in Elfame and I was here doing a ridiculous TV show?
“Not quite,” I heard Orin say. I opened my eyes to see him examining the sword that he still held in his hand. “This is magic, and I’m pretty sure it’s the next clue.”
19
We crested the hill into the safety of the trees, away from prying eyes.
“We need to stop for a minute,” Ben said, lowering his camera off the rig on his shoulder to the ground. “I think the smoke and heat got to the camera. It’s not working.”
Orin and I both turned to him. “So the camera is off right now?” I asked.
Ben nodded, and a smile crept onto my face. I felt strangely liberated, knowing no one was watching me. That I could say things that wouldn’t be relayed for the whole world to hear.
“So you’re going to try to fix it?” Orin asked.
Ben nodded, sitting down cross-legged on the ground, pulling a tiny screwdriver out of his pack. “But if I can’t, they’ll be along real quick with a new one. They don’t want anything going unrecorded.”
Orin and I looked at each other helplessly, and I shrugged, sinking onto the ground. I pulled my wild hair out of its ponytail and did my best to comb it with my fingers, braiding it over one shoulder.
Orin was rubbing his face with sooty hands. “I can’t believe someone set that fire. Those assholes. It’s a race, not t
he Hunger Games.”
“What, that one you’ve heard of?” I scoffed. “But not Alice?” I shook my head. It didn’t matter. “Why do you think someone set the fire? Who?”
“It had to be whatever team went in before us. Their packs were gone. They came out of the mirror with their clue, saw our packs, and knew we were close behind. So they burned everything.”
“We could have died!” I said incredulously. Anger bloomed to life in me. “When I find out who did this…” The other competitors raced through my mind. I knew Gen and Zee wouldn’t do that, even if they hadn’t known it was us in the mirror. Tristam and Sophia? No, they were too cocky to stoop to murder. They thought they had it in the bag. Yael and Duncan were out…Dulcina and Phillip? I just couldn’t see a sparkly-purple-haired Pegasus shifter as an attempted murderer. Maybe that was biased…but it left goth-girl Molly and too-sexy-for-his-own-good Ario. “I bet it was Ario and Molly,” I said blackly.
“Based on what, your extensive experience profiling?” Orin countered.
“It just…seems like them.” I said. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
“I’m a quiet one,” Orin pointed out.
“Exactly,” I said under my breath.
Orin sat down across from me, pinning me with his black eyes. They were almost so dark that you couldn’t see where the pupil left off and the iris began…but no…there was a slight difference in shade. Deep brown. I blinked and looked at my dirty fingernails, wondering why the hell I was analyzing the color of Orin’s eyes.
“You want to tell me what the hell was going on in the mirror with your sister? Is there a reason you think she would be tied up in some faerie dungeon somewhere?”
I looked away, chewing on my lip. I turned back to him. “Is there a reason why you’re afraid of some dining room and creepy faerie male that you apparently destroyed?”
Orin met my stare with a challenge of his own. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
The Sorcery Trial (The Faerie Race Book 1) Page 13