The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Sweetheart, listen to me,” McDermott pressed. “It’s not her. It’s a trick.”

  Sweetheart. Elizabeth’s mother and his wife. Doyle swallowed and tasted acid. That is Meredith McDermott. But then Black Widow …

  “A trick?” Black Widow rounded on McDermott. “Oh, that’s very good, coming from you!”

  “What are you talking about? Of course it’s her,” Meredith said to McDermott. “I told you she was alive. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No.” McDermott tried to gather her. “She isn’t who you remember.”

  “My dear woman, you should listen to your husband. Quite astute,” Kramer said. “But then, he always was.”

  “Shut up, Kramer,” McDermott said. “Where’s Battle? What have you done to him?”

  “Me?” With his half-mask and serpent’s hiss, Kramer looked as innocent as a viper coiled about a clutch of fragile baby birds: Oh, not to worry; I’ll care for them while you pop out for a pint. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Doyle, then.” McDermott transferred his gaze to him. “Constable, where’s the inspector? I demand to see Battle.”

  He knows my name. Doyle’s insides shriveled. This was like that moment Elizabeth had called him Arthur. How did either that girl or McDermott know him?

  “Honey?” Meredith was still calling to the girl. “Sweetheart?”

  “Not so fast there.” Black Widow gave Meredith a dark look before turning to Kramer. “What have you done?”

  “Doyle, answer me, damn it!” McDermott wrenched at the bars of his cage. “Where the hell is Battle?”

  Too many people, too much noise; everyone, plug yer damn cakeholes! Doyle gnawed a knuckle to keep from screaming. McDermott, in league with Battle … Given what Doyle had discovered, he could see that.

  “You’re in no position to demand anything, Franklin. If Doyle is here, I’d say that the good inspector’s usefulness is past. Although your concern does confirm what I’ve long suspected: Battle was your creature, wasn’t he? Solving murders was never his goal.” The doctor tilted his head toward the exam table. “His sole aim was to preserve them, wasn’t it? What I don’t understand is why he kept after Elizabeth so, unless it was to make certain that she couldn’t give away your whereabouts, or reveal too much of the process, so that only you would retain the power over life and death? Or … was the unfortunate Battle looking for you, too, waiting on his master to return and wondering what was taking him so long, why you’d abandoned him in this godforsaken place? Well …” Kramer almost seemed to puff up with pride. “Take a good look. I’ve been quite the apt pupil, yes? I am close, very close to mastery. All I require is the Mirror, and I will set this world to rights—or leave it for another Now where we can be whole.”

  McDermott was shaking his head. “The Mirror wouldn’t work for you. It’s not in your nature, Kramer.”

  “Both of you can sod all.” Black Widow scythed air with the side of a bladelike hand. “Kramer, what did you mean when you agreed that Elizabeth isn’t who that woman remembered? Did you …” Black Widow’s jaw went slack. “My God, you let one take control. Damn you, we had an agreement.”

  “Things have changed,” Kramer said to Black Widow.

  “Honey?” Meredith called again.

  “Oh? What?” Black Widow bit off the words. “We were to gather these pieces together and purge her of them. You said you’d perfected a serum. You promised to get rid of them!”

  “He can’t,” McDermott said. “You have to trust me on this.”

  “Trust?” Black Widow seethed. “You? The one man responsible for all this?”

  “What’s wrong with Lizzie?” Meredith sounded confused, though Doyle didn’t think she was really listening to the others. Her eyes were only for the girl. “Honey?”

  “What about Bode?” Rima said.

  “I told you. He drowned.” Kramer aimed a forefinger at Elizabeth. “He was dead until she breathed life back into him.”

  “You know, guys, it was only CPR.” Elizabeth’s words were toneless yet burred a little, as if having the same trouble settling down as her features.

  “Don’t be modest. You’re a slip of a girl, and you hoisted the boy from that pool with your bare hands. I’d say that’s a touch … unusual?” Kramer inclined his head toward the last person just now materializing from what had been solid stone. “And there is, of course, your effect on Weber as well.”

  Weber? Doyle recognized the general shape of the man’s body, although Weber’s head, still in partial shadow because of distance and grainy light, looked a touch misshapen and off-kilter. Doyle squinted as Weber tottered a little closer. Very unsteady on his … Oh. Gasping, Doyle gripped the worktable so tightly the edge bit his flesh. What is this? What’s happening? Rock that moves, doppelgängers, men with no faces.

  And now, Weber.

  2

  LIKE THE HAG, a portion of Weber’s skull pulsed with the undulation of pink brains beneath as a milky white membrane unfurled over a tracery of red capillaries and blue veins. The edges were a quivering bristle of sharp spicules, like miniature darning needles that nosed toward one another, lacing and darting like fingers, the filaments of moist muscle drawing together like the frayed threads of worn socks.

  “Jesus.” It was the scruffy boy, Chad. “Look at his face, look at his face!”

  “It’s regenerating,” Black Widow said, awed. “But how?”

  Regenerating? He remembered what Battle had said: McDermott was obsessed with the science of revivification. Then Weber had been dead? His head broken to pieces? This is madness. It’s the fog. We’re all mad here.

  “From Elizabeth’s blood and what’s bound to her from the Dark Passages.”

  “Bound.” Fumbling out her purple spectacles, Black Widow jammed them on. “Good God. Are they …”

  “Yes, they gave her power. They are her shadows, creatures of the Dark Passages, and with them,” Kramer said, “I will remake this world.”

  EMMA

  The First

  1

  SHADOWS? DARK PASSAGES? Emma hugged poor, sick Tony a little tighter, though mostly to comfort herself. That new girl, Elizabeth, scared the heck out of her. The way her face didn’t want to be any one person kind of reminded Emma of when her craniofacial doc showed her what faces fit her own deformed skull: I can give you any number of looks.

  Until that second, Emma had been convinced she was way different. While the nightmare linked them all together, she’d figured she was unique, the one and only. Hadn’t the crazy lady said she was singular in her construction, whatever the heck that meant? But that was kind of close to the truth, too, wasn’t it? Her face was a reconstruction. So was her whole head. But still, she thought she was the only Emma.

  But now she looked at Elizabeth—at the eyes that were an exact match to hers, and what were the chances of that, like ten trillion to one?—and thought, Maybe not.

  2

  ANOTHER THING: THAT McDermott guy, the one with the black hair and glasses, seemed awfully familiar. The way he stared like he recognized her or something. If she let herself think about it too much, he almost matched the mental image she had of a dad: kind of handsome, looked real smart, seemed calm.

  His wife, though … In Emma’s school, there were a couple cutters everyone whispered about, but everything they did was where you couldn’t see. Like under their blouses and on their stomachs and thighs and stuff. There was nothing hidden with this lady. Her arms looked like she’d taken a meat cleaver to them; they were that bad. So she must be really messed up. Like locked-in-the-hospital messed up.

  Still, Emma felt a tug of sympathy for that woman, too. Heck, one look at that crazy lady in black, and she’d have felt like screaming her head off, too.

  3

  THAT CREEPY, HALF-FACE guy, Kramer, said he would remake this world with what was in Elizabeth’s blood. Seemed to Emma that he’d been trying, like with the rock-morphing bit, although rock was way different than a person
. Not as complicated, and you didn’t have to get all the different moving parts to work together. He did know how to make some things from scratch—those ooky android-looking guys with Silly Putty blobs instead of faces, for example—but maybe he couldn’t get beyond a certain point? Like give them faces and personalities and stuff? And somehow Elizabeth’s blood, these shadow-things, will help? But how? She looked over at the big, ugly guy with the cratered skull. (If all this were a movie, she’d definitely be watching through her fingers.) She bet if she was close enough, she’d hear the high smee-smee-smee-squee of all that muscle and junk screwing itself back into place. Beneath a latticework of new bone, the insides of his head still boiled, like his brains needed more elbow room.

  The guy’s head gets all smashed. Then Elizabeth’s blood, what, organizes all the pieces? Like these shadow-things were the final ingredient, or a … come on, what was the word? A … catalyst. Right. Something that sped up a reaction because the catalyst had a lower activation energy.

  Energy was super important here, too. Probably why everything wobbled and wavered, like looking through heat shimmers radiating from superheated blacktop on a hot summer’s day. Here, people wandered around with tin arms, no legs, glass eyeballs. Creepy old Kramer, with that mask. But they’re breaking down. So is this whole London, and that means there’s a ton of free energy down here.

  She wondered if that was why the crazy lady said there were blind spots. Light was energy; the colors were different wavelengths, and people couldn’t see every single wavelength, like UV. So what if some spots were blind because you couldn’t see them without panops or X-ray goggles or something? Jack’s always looking between leaves and trees and shadows. She glanced down at the animal. Standing at attention by her side, his tail twitching in spastic swishes, Jack was staring fixedly at this strange, wobbly energy-air. Boy, she’d pay good money to get a look at what he saw. Because Jack could slip into a blind spot. So maybe a blind spot was a way out? Or a … a kind of rip you could hide in?

  In her arms, Tony let out another soft moan. When she touched his cheek, she felt the slow slither of a squirmer gliding under her palm—and then it hit her.

  What if Elizabeth’s blood could heal Tony?

  4

  SHE LOOKED OVER at Meme, who’d finished bandaging Bode’s head. To her relief, Bode’s head was rolling, like he was waking up. When Bode raised a hand to a temple, Meme took it, then bent to murmur something and even smiled when Bode’s eyes fluttered open. The two of them were kissing close. She thought Meme wanted that. From the long look Bode gave her, maybe he did, too, but there was something else in his face Emma couldn’t read. Whatever it was, Meme straightened abruptly and let go of Bode’s hand.

  Neither saw Elizabeth’s eyes flick their way, or the way the other girl’s face changed into something half suspicious, half … well, not fear. Like Meme really bothered Elizabeth, or was a tough problem that needed figuring out.

  Meme bugged the crap out of her, too. Sure, she seemed okay on the outside, even if she did have a stick jammed up her bum. (On the other hand, this was England after all, and all those guys were into good manners and everything. Well, when they weren’t chasing you with an ax or making you fight zombies.) She and Rima hadn’t had a chance to talk about it, but when Tony asked Rima what Meme looked like through panops, he hadn’t heard her response the right way: how Rima said nothing. Not oh, it’s fine, it was nothing. No. This was when nothing meant something. Meant, Holy crap, Tony! When I looked through those glasses, there was nothing there! Like maybe what Rima saw was a walking androidgirl with a Silly Putty face. Or no girl at all.

  At that thought, she felt one of those lightning jolts, like when you’ve worried over a tough math problem for a long time and then the answer just—blam!—comes out of the blue.

  What if that explained why Meme was so bland? So nothing? Because she was the same as the man-things but more advanced, like a better model that’s almost but not quite human?

  So Kramer made her, too, but only got to a certain point? Because Kramer didn’t have either the know-how or that last secret ingredient to make Meme a real person?

  How Star Trek was that? But she thought she was onto something here. Meme was missing a certain essential ingredient—call it personality—and she didn’t react normally. Like she’d never once noticed or commented on Jack, asked where the cat had come from, or how come they hadn’t made stew out of him or something. All kinds of ding-ding-ding-ding warning bells went off then. That’s why she’d said something to Bode. No matter what Meme looked like on the outside, she wasn’t wired like them. In a way, she was the reverse of Elizabeth. There was a whole lot going on inside that girl.

  Going on inside … Emma felt her heart jump. Another aha bolt. Whoa, wait just a second. Elizabeth had saved Bode’s life. She said it was nothing. That it was CPR.

  CPR. In this London. Elizabeth knew CPR.

  Oh, holy crap. Emma stared at the other girl’s freaky face, which glimmered and shifted, and those eyes that matched hers—and thought, Just who is inside you?

  5

  “WHO ARE YOU? How did you get in there?” Peering through her purple glasses, the crazy lady pointed a trembling finger at Elizabeth. “I don’t know what you are …”

  “We’re not things,” Elizabeth said—and Emma thought, Oh yeah, right. Your face is all wobbly, like it can’t figure out who you’re supposed to be now. “We’re what’s left of the people we were,” the other girl said.

  “Leave her alone!” It was that poor woman in the far cell. “Stop badgering her. I don’t know what’s going on here or what you are, but that is my daughter.”

  The crazy lady whirled. “You ask what I am, Meredith? Look in the mirror and ask the same of yourself.”

  “I know what you are. I don’t understand why Frank did it, but …” The woman named Meredith faltered. “Wait a minute, where did you get those? The glasses?”

  “What? These?” Slipping them off, the crazy lady gave her spectacles a look, as if seeing them for the first time. “You mean, my panops?”

  “Yes.” Meredith swallowed. Her fingers knotted. “You can’t possibly have … that is, I’ve got the only pair.”

  “Oh. Well.” The crazy lady gave a careless shrug. “I guess you’re mistaken then, and don’t tell Kramer, because he’s got a pair, too. What do you use yours for?”

  The small muscles in Meredith’s jaw twitched. “When I make my Peculiars.”

  Peculiars. Emma sat up a little straighter. So Meredith could make this weird and funky fog? Or was she talking about something else?

  “And I use them when I check Frank, after he comes back from …” Meredith scrubbed air with a hand. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  The crazy lady’s eyes glittered like a crow’s. “Understand what? That you use panops to check our dear, darling Frank for hangers-on after he cuts himself to bind one of those things from the Dark Passages? After he’s gone off, disappeared, traveled to a Now? Because you want to make sure, don’t you? Nothing left inside, bound to the blood?”

  “Yes.” Meredith’s voice was really small, like the crazy lady had just slapped her. “But how do you …”

  “Meredith,” the man—Frank—said, and put his arm around her. He shot the crazy lady a glare before smoothing hair from his wife’s forehead. “Sweetheart, don’t say any more.”

  “But Frank, how does she know? How can she? I still don’t understand. Why did you make her in the first place? What possessed you? I’m here.” Meredith’s lips wobbled, and Emma wasn’t sure if she was trying on a smile—which was awful, terrible, like watching a poor dog that just knew it was in deep doo-doo for chewing that table leg—or working on not crying, which was just as bad. “Aren’t I enough?”

  “Make her? Sweetheart?” The crazy lady showed her teeth in a grin Emma had seen on the faces of really popular girls, right before they took out your jugular with a class-A snark. “Isn’t that nice. How
he must care for you.”

  “Stay out of this.” If looks were lasers, that crazy lady ought to be burnt to a crisp. “Your argument is with me,” Frank said.

  Frank and the crazy lady know each other. Then, Emma thought, Well, of course they do, you dope. Look at Meredith and then look at …

  “But what if I want to hear what she has to say?” Meredith turned to face the crazy lady. “How do you know about all those things?”

  “How do you think? You really believe you’re the first? The only? You’ve seen all this—doppelgängers and doubles and the malleability of matter—and you still believe you’re unique?” The crazy lady spread her arms in a ta-DA. “Then how in God’s name do you explain me? How do you explain my daughter?”

  “She’s not yours,” Meredith said.

  “Don’t!” Frank snapped at the crazy lady. “Can’t you just leave it!”

  “Do not dictate to me.” The crazy lady drew herself up like a queen. “You are no longer master here. Or are you afraid? What is it, dear Frank? Isn’t she strong enough? No better luck this time around?”

  This time around? Emma’s eyes fixed on Meredith’s bandaged arms. Her stomach gave a sick little flutter. Sure; of course; that would explain why he did it. Because what if this time—the arms, the hospital, her being sick and wanting to die—what if all that isn’t the first time?