by Cate Corvin
I stared at the mirror in frustration, seeing nothing but this room.
Nails scratched at the door, a long, delicate susurrus as Rosalind ran her fingers over it. I shivered, my teeth grinding together. I was trapped. He had trapped me here, nothing but an empty mirror before me.
“Look deeper, Morena.” He didn’t quite snap, but his tone brooked no argument. “I won’t leave you for her, I promise. Look deeper.”
I swallowed the dust in my throat, tears cutting tracks through the coating on my cheeks. Bruises welted my face, a black eye gleaming at me. I stared into a pair of green eyes, amazed that a color could be so bright here in this deadness.
I stared deeper. My pupils widened, eating the sliver of brightness, and I gripped the edges of the mirror and pulled.
I fell backwards, my limbs jerking and shaking as I tumbled to the floor. Bile rose in my throat as the pain ripped through me, the carpet under my back tearing at the crusted wounds on my skin, the memories pouring back into me…
Rosalind had been in there with me. I had left Cecily’s spirit for dead, my mother’s spirit hunting me from the lower pits of Death.
And Adrian Wolfe had saved me, forcing me to remember enough to make it back to my body.
It was almost more than I could bear to imagine. If Adrian hadn’t come for me, I would have died at her hands, or else wandered through the deadside until my spirit also fell victim to dust and decay.
I gasped for breath, unable to sit up, staring at Adrian’s body standing frozen before the mirror. A dark shadow fell over me and I let out a hoarse and rusty scream.
It was Eric. His hands ran over me, shaking as he examined my wounds. A bandage had been inexpertly taped to the side of his head, covering the bloodied wound there. “Morena. Morena. You’re alive.”
He breathed it like a prayer, saying my name over and over. How long had he been awake, watching over my frozen body? He knelt forward, pressing his forehead to mine as he cupped my face.
“It was Mom. Rosalind. She’s the one.” My gluey tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
I didn’t have time to say anything else. Adrian suddenly stretched and moved, rising to his feet in one smooth motion.
He hadn’t had an anchor.
He yanked a cloth over the mirror, closing the doorway to Death, and chanted another spell over it. Like the words he had spoken in the deadside, the spell he used now burned my ears just to hear it.
“The other needs to be closed as well,” he said, casting a burning glance over me as he strode away. “Bring them downstairs. They need medical care.”
Cecily lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, groaning as she shifted. I remembered the sound of her head cracking the floor when the spirit dragged her own from her body.
I rolled on my side despite Eric’s growled warning. “Help her,” I rasped. “I can manage a little further.”
I didn’t want to admit that I had just been saved by another warlock, thanks to my foolishness in entering the deadside alone. Adrian had saved my life there. I wasn’t going to let him see me carried into a hospital as well.
Eric helped Cecily as I gripped the dresser and hauled myself upwards. My vision blurred, fuzz filling my head. I felt a hand on mine, turned my head to look up into coal-dark eyes as I fainted.
19
I woke to the scent of peppery woods and a gentle hand brushing hair from my face. My eyes opened slowly, watering in the bright light.
The sun was blocked by curtains, but it had never felt so good before, the warmth washing over me. I realized I was lying in a bed, an IV drip in my arm, my back strangely tight but no longer flaring with pain. “Welcome back, Persephone.”
Adrian. He sat in a chair next to the hospital bed with his fingers intertwined with mine. I blinked several times, more than a little amazed to see him here.
“Adrian?” Where was Eric? All I remembered was that he had been angry with me. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, you met me in the Underworld. Under more intense circumstances than I had imagined for a first date, but nonetheless.”
I couldn’t help but smile a little, even though my swollen lip hurt. “Naturally, Hades. How did… how did you know I was in trouble?”
He had mirrorwalked without an anchor. He hadn’t forgotten himself or lost his soul to the deadside. Two souls owed their lives to him now.
Perhaps Adrian Wolfe alone could claim to be the King of the Underworld. And I’d thought he was being pretentious.
A cold flush of terror ran through me when I realized how close I had come to being one of those wandering spirits, forever searching for a way back to the light. I was no Persephone to his Hades.
“I’ve done a lot of studies on Death,” he said slowly, as though contemplating what to tell me as he spoke. “Put simply, I’ve learned to sense certain… disturbances in the spirit world. Your mother’s revenant rising from the depths set off alarms I’ve put in place. Certain precautions.”
I wanted a drink of water desperately, but everything else I wanted to know was a jumble in my aching skull, straining to get out. “Why do you have alarms set on me? Where’s Eric? He found something in the Treatise on the House of Mirrors I needed to know…”
Adrian ran his fingers over the back of my hand. I glanced down at the hodge-podge of green, violet, and yellow bruising covering my skin. I wanted to know what my face looked like, though part of me was afraid to see. “Because my grandmother had suspicions about Rosalind for a very long time. This confirms her theory.”
“How did you mirrorwalk without an anchor? Without… forgetting?” I demanded. The fear was still very real, crawling in my throat with a metallic taste.
Adrian smiled at me faintly, tracing a circle on the back of my hand. His touch felt good, sending butterflies through my stomach despite my anxiety.
“Through hard work and discipline, same as anything else.” His eyes darkened despite the smile. “It’s not common knowledge for a reason. Most who attempt to learn it fail the hard way.”
The hard way… I realized my memory had returned in full by now. I had not only broken the rule of traveling deeper into Death through another mirror, despite it not being deliberate, but I had come so close to opening a door to the outside.
To the true land of the dead.
If Adrian knew how to mirrorwalk without losing himself, perhaps he had also once traveled deeper. Maybe he had even gone outside, into the pearly mist that obscured all things from living eyes.
A small part of me thrilled to the idea. Why not try it, if I was so skilled? Hadn’t I been lauded for years, as the only child of two great mirrorwalkers? They had all been waiting to see what my potential would become.
That was what Adrian was looking for. The Persephone to his Hades. The Queen of his Underworld. Vivienne Wolfe had kept her grandson, the greatest of the Wolfes, under wraps from all other covens until they found his equal.
I suddenly found myself very much wanting to be that equal in spite of my residual fear. But that would mean going back into the deadside anchorless… and what would Eric or Joss think of that?
Joss had to know exactly what Adrian was searching for. He’d as much as told me that the two of them were looking for someone who could match Adrian’s mirrorwalking abilities… and they thought that person could be me.
Last night proved that I had a long way to go to reach Adrian’s level of skill, but I’d survived for much longer than most witches would have.
As for Eric… I knew I could no longer bend under his desire to keep me safe. All of this could have been avoided if we hadn’t been fighting for stupid reasons, for reasons that hadn’t changed since I was young and naïve and lovesick. I needed to allow myself to grow, even if it meant hurting his feelings… but I hoped he would still be willing to grow with me.
The witchlight I had conjured down in the third level of Death, the brightness of the sun driving away the pervasive darkness, was a complete anomaly for
me. I had never created something like that before, only brief, flickering tongues of light that died as quickly as they lived. Even now I couldn’t quite recall the words I had sung, though they had felt as natural as breathing at the time.
I needed to consult the Bell grimoire, but I knew I would’ve remembered something like that. Even Hannah Bell, with her hundred-spirit exorcism, hadn’t written such a spell down.
I was behind in my knowledge, stunted by my own exile. I had only hurt myself in the end.
“Teach me,” I whispered. I gripped Adrian’s hand as tightly as I could, which wasn’t really tight at all. Everything still ached. If I’d known how to mirrorwalk anchorless, I could have defended myself better.
Adrian cast his eyes over me. “I’ll teach you. Heal first and reform your coven. Gather your strength. It won’t be an easy path for either of us.”
He rose to his feet and leaned over to brush a butterfly-light kiss over my forehead, his psychic tendrils reaching out to touch mine. “I’ll be back for you. Thorne will be here as soon as he can.”
The promise in his words was like a flame, heating my skin from the inside out.
I drifted off again, accompanied by the beeping of medical instruments before another presence woke me. I opened my eyes to dimming light, completely unaware of what time it was.
Joss’s lips were set and furious, but his relief was palpable. “Why didn’t you call, Morena?”
I stared at him blankly for a moment as I dredged myself from dark dreams. “I… I panicked. I don’t even have my phone now.”
He snorted, fiddling with my bandaged hand. “I didn’t mean to come in here and start accusing you. It’s just… I’d be pretty pissed if I found you again just to have you die on me.”
My ribs protested as I stifled a laugh. “That’s how I party, you know that.”
“Well, can you try to stay out of trouble for longer than five minutes now that I’ve got you back?” he asked, his voice strained.
“I wasn’t looking for trouble,” I protested, and Joss gave me a dry look.
“You’re not alone anymore.” His own eyes were shadowed. “All you had to do was call me. When I said I wanted you, I didn’t mean part-time or conditionally. I meant all the time. You have no idea what losing you would do to me... or Eric.”
Tears prickled behind my eyelids. “I’m just used to being alone now. It’s a tough adjustment.”
“Then adjust faster,” he growled, leaning over the bed to press an all-too-brief kiss to my lips, his woodsmoke scent washing away the sterile smells of the hospital. “I’m going to have some words with Eric over this.”
My servitor would lose all goodwill towards the Thorne warlock if they got into it over me. “Let me talk to him,” I said. Joss’s hand gripped mine. “Did you both mean what you said? You don’t mind that… I love him, too?”
He gave me his crooked grin, dimples showing. “Of course not. I’ve known about that for years. I figured wherever you went, he went too.”
“Then you’re definitely going to have to let me talk to him,” I said. A sharp pang of pain threaded through me as my ribs twinged and I winced. Joss pushed a button that dispensed more pain medication. “It’s going to be hard enough to convince him that Adrian’s okay.”
“He told me you wanted to learn,” Joss said, gently touching my cheek. “Go to sleep, Mor. We’ve got plans for you.”
That sounded ominous… and exciting.
The white popcorn ceiling above us wavered as I fought off a wave of drowsiness. “I should have told somebody about my mother...Rosalind. I knew something wasn’t right, and I ignored it and now it’s come to this.”
Even lying here in a hospital bed, I knew it wasn’t over. She would follow me, pervading the deadside wherever I went, until I banished her spirit or she consumed me. I wouldn’t call her Mom anymore. The spirit following me wasn’t my mother at all, but the shell of whatever selfishness had possessed her.
Joss said nothing. He just gripped my hand, looking over my injuries with his brow knit tight.
I couldn’t fight the pull of the medication in my IV, the painkillers pulling me down into darkness. Joss’s voice murmured something, sounding like Eric.
My eyes slid shut, and before I fell back into the dreams a dark shadow walked into the room, leaned over me across from Joss, and pressed a kiss to my bruised lips.
For a moment, nothing hurt at all.
I opened my eyes again. The sun had vanished, and Joss was gone. Eric sat next to me now. Every time I blinked, I felt like I was slipping through a strange drugged time warp where nothing made sense. “Eric, you came.”
He was running his fingers along my arm. As soon as I realized that, tingles flowed through me, overriding any residual aches. “Of course I did, Mor.”
Eric looked just as angry as Joss had, but I knew without asking that his anger would be directed inwards, as always.
“I’m glad you’re here.” This time, my lip didn’t sting when I smiled. It’d healed quickly. “How’s your head?”
He suddenly reached out to touch my face, pushing a strand of hair back. “It’s fine. Don’t even think about wasting energy worrying about me.”
“Why wouldn’t I do that?” I was just thrilled he was here at all. The argument between us was the kind of cataclysmic thing that broke up covens. “All I cared about was finding you.”
Eric’s hand glided to a stop against my cheek, and without thinking, I tilted my head into his hand.
To my surprise, he didn’t pull away. His thumb ran over my cheekbone. “I know. And if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own bullshit, you wouldn’t have been put in that position. I don’t mean any of what I said, Mor. I don’t want to watch you move on with Joss Thorne and handfast another warlock. I don’t want to sit back and see your life go by while I watch from the sidelines.”
A vise squeezed my heart, threatening to crush it. “What are you saying?” The idea of Eric being gone, leaving like he’d tried to leave the Bells before, emptied my lungs of air.
That pressure lessened a little when he leaned in closer, holding my arm with his other hand. “I’m saying that I don’t really give a damn about our reputation. It’s already tarnished past saving, so I might as well let it go all the way. All that matters to me is that I’m with you.”
Now I was breathless in a different way, slowly sitting up and reaching for him. He leaned in so I could grab him, wrapping my fingers through the neck of his shirt so he couldn’t pull away. “You’d better not be playing me, Eric Shields,” I growled.
But my other hand was already running over his face, touching the spot where a spirit-possessed Cecily had slammed the pan into his head, the faint scratches left on his cheeks.
He drew closer, lips only a breath away from mine, and closed the last little inch between us.
My pulse pounded through me. Warmth washed through me as he kissed me, until he broke away. “No matter what happens, we stay together, Mor. I came too close to losing you.”
My fingers stopped aching. He’d transferred his life-force, healing me a little more. I released his shirt, suddenly feeling shy. Maybe he’d only meant to kiss me to transfer that energy.
But maybe it was a real kiss, too.
“Always together.” I laced my fingers through his. He didn’t pull away.
Eric held me up, his arm around my waist, as I walked stiffly alongside him through the park. I breathed deeply as the sun beat down on me, warming my hair and cold limbs and easing the ache that had settled there.
The hospital kept me for three days and I had only been discharged on the condition that I take it easy. Eric had finally crowded Joss out, extracting a series of promises from me that ranged from no training, no running, and no exercises to no mirrorwalking, which I was a little too happy to comply with.
I needed to mentally regroup before I faced the deadside again.
Eric had locked and barred his house, which was ground zero, t
aking only what we needed. We were living out of a hotel room for the time being, drawing on coven funds to pay for it. Bell, Book & Candle was on semi-permanent hiatus for the time being.
Cecily Cole had been in the hospital for several days as well, where she had been treated for a minor concussion. She had come to say goodbye to me the day she had left, ducking her head in embarrassment as she thanked me. I felt her discomfort as easily as if she had shouted it.
No one deserved to have their body overtaken and mistreated by a spirit, much less know in detail about it. She said that the last week was a vague memory, which was about as good as it would get for her.
We didn’t accept payment for saving her life. It was a botched job, and now that I was reforming Bell coven, the funds weren’t needed anyways. I would have to meet with the attorneys, lawyers, and financial advisors tied to the coven soon enough.
All in all, I was simply glad I had survived my encounter with Rosalind’s spirit, but the news wasn’t all good, despite knowing my most faithful guardian would stay with me.
New stress lines were carved into Eric’s face and his features took on a grim cast every time he looked at my remaining bruises. His overprotectiveness had entered the realm of ferocious and volatile. I wasn’t even allowed to leave the room without a cell phone anymore.
Once, I would have been overjoyed at this fiercely protective attention, but now I longed for a minute alone to ruminate on my own doubts and fears.
I was also afraid to approach the topic of our kiss in the hospital, which neither of us had mentioned since I’d been discharged. I was afraid to ask him what I hoped: did he love me as more than family, more than the Bell covenhead and John’s daughter?
“So, it’s off to Rosethorne, right? I told Joss it’d take me longer than I thought to bring Bellhallow back…” At least I didn’t have to worry about Joss’s feelings towards me.