The mirror fractured pat.., p.19
The Mirror Fractured Path, page 19
“I know,” Blake agreed, hoping her confidence didn’t lead to: How do you know? Thankfully, Remi blew right past her response and added, “She lived a long life.”
Blake nodded, biting back the words that so desperately wanted to claw their way out of her throat. Rose was murdered.
Blake wanted so badly to tell her aunt, to unload all the lies. But what good would it do? Remi would only freak out, call the cops, likely shut down all of Blake’s searching, and Blake had come too far, uncovered too much, to turn back now.
She took a small breath; anything more felt like it might rupture her chest.
Cole came into the room just as Remi stood and walked across it. She pulled Blake into a gentle embrace. Her words came slowly as she tugged Blake closer. “I should have told you so long ago about the mirror and the curse. I have spent too much time trying to protect you from all the bad things, and I don’t just mean the curse…I mean life. The parts of life that we have no control over.”
“It’s okay,” Blake whispered, breathing in the goodness that was her aunt.
Remi stepped back. Tears pooled in her dark eyes as Cole set a trembling hand on Blake’s shoulders. “We were so afraid of something happening to you after your mom and…”
Remi wiped a tear with the back of her hand. “And I couldn’t bear it if…I felt that my fear had choked you when you deserved to bloom.”
Blake was already shaking her head. “No. You guys wanted me to be safe. You were trying to keep me safe.” There was good reason for their overprotectiveness, for Blake’s father’s desire to protect her, too. Maybe even for Zora’s. And yet none of their efforts had changed anything other than to build a world of lies, to smother magic, and to bury a secret that had the potential to free the family from more tragedy.
Remi reached out and cupped Blake’s chin. “No more trying to build a moat around you. Or keeping you in the dark. Do you hear me?”
Blake peeled off Cole’s coat and sat on the sofa, rubbing her hands in front of the fire. If there was ever a time to ask about the crows, it was now. “What about the letter you mentioned before? The scary one Zora and Phillip got about giving up the shoes and the mirror? I didn’t see it in the pile you gave me. Do you have it?”
Remi walked over to the fireplace and rested her elbow on the mantel as she faced Blake. “I do.”
“I think…” Blake proceeded cautiously. “I think they might still want the magic.”
“Blake—”
“Rose had said Zora came to visit her, that she could hear her and…and she said that the crows are here,” Blake admitted. “And if I can touch the letter, maybe I can see who they really are.”
Remi paused. Then, seeming to decide something, she nodded to Cole, who marched out of the room and returned with the red envelope, which he then passed on to Remi. Its watermark sent a tremor through Blake. A beady-eyed crow gripping a two-headed snake in its mouth.
“Why wasn’t this with the rest of the letters?”
“I had already told you about it,” Remi explained, taking on that familiar mama-bear stance. “It seemed unnecessary…and okay, a little worrisome. Besides, I don’t like this one touching my parents’ words.” She sighed, holding the envelope out to Blake—an olive branch. “But I said we’d work together.”
Blake took the letter from her aunt and sat on the sofa. The room folded in around her.
Her vision telescoped so that all she could see was the crow.
The crows with the serpent. They are coming.
Blake’s eyes locked on the talons. Black and curled like gnarled roots. Exactly the same as the ones poking out from the murderer’s sleeve.
You’ll know them by their claws.
Blake struggled to draw even breaths as she tugged the paper from the envelope, unfolded it, and read the carelessly handwritten words aloud:
“‘You both will suffer grave consequences if you don’t turn over the mirror and shoes in your possession. Bring the objects to the Ursuline Convent at midnight. Choose your fate wisely.’”
Then her gaze dropped to the bottom of the page, to the single printed sentence: Principium et finis.
Blake tried to jog her memory of the class she had taken last year for all of three weeks before she transferred out. “It’s Latin.”
“It means ‘the beginning of the end,’” Cole supplied.
“The end?” Blake said. “What’s the end?” She had the same feeling that she had when waking from a dream. That blink of a moment when you’re floating between spaces and forget where you are. Forget who you are.
“Do you sense anything?” Remi prodded softly.
Blake opened herself up to the memories that she hoped still clung to the paper.
Show me who you are, she repeated silently. At first there was nothing, not even a whisper of a memory. Biting back frustration, Blake redoubled her efforts, clearing her mind of all thoughts, centering her magic with single-minded determination. Then slowly she connected to a source of energy that felt like it was in her control. Like threading a needle, she thought.
Tiny black spots danced in her vision. A dipping sensation like riding a swing up, up, up before soaring down.
Men’s voices race past Blake, so close it feels like the men are sitting next to her. The cacophony of their chatter rises like a bitter wind, high-pitched and low-hummed, one voice folding over the next in a maddening rhythm.
As the voices sweep past, she reaches out with her mind and takes hold of them.
“She won’t give the mirror or the shoes up,” one says.
“Then we’ll take them,” another, more threatening voice adds, “off her dead body if we have to.”
“I didn’t sign up for murder.”
“You signed up for loyalty without question. And if I ask for your blood or anyone else’s, you will give it.”
Blake blinks herself back to a physical awareness. The shadows have vanished.
But the living room has narrowed to a tunnel. There, at the end, is a flicker of light. Voices echo down the narrow passage.
Blake hears a cat screech in the distance. And then a woman’s voice. “The window, Phillip.”
A flurry of motion. Rapid footsteps. The echoes of a pounding heart. Blake’s fingers suddenly curl around a shape, a cool metal thing. And there is something else in her grasp. The shoes, pressed against her chest. She would know their feel anywhere. And yet she knows that if she glances down, she’ll only be holding the letter.
At the end of the tunnel a blanket of mist forms, slow at first and then so thick all Blake can see is white. The next words…they don’t penetrate her ears. She doesn’t hear them as much as feel them, sliding through her blood, weaving between her ribs and into her heart. Like a serpent.
“Choose your fate wisely.”
And like a candle being blown out, the tunnel is gone.
Blake didn’t remember how long she sat there in the faint sunlight breaking through the clouds. She didn’t remember how long she stared at the letter that held two memories: the crows’ and her grandparents’. She didn’t remember diverting her gaze to the red shoes so effortlessly wrapped around her feet, as if they were made for her.
Remi and Cole remained silent as ghosts. It was Blake who spoke first, revealing every detail of what she had heard and seen. “I…I could feel the mirror. I could feel what Zora felt.”
The power of her magic pulsated deep in her bones.
“Tell us everything you saw,” Remi said.
And so Blake did.
Cole took hold of the fire poker and jabbed at the wood in the fireplace while Remi said, “I know you’re wondering the same things I have wondered a million times. Who are these people, and where are they now?”
“But why would they be here? We don’t have the mirror.” Blake groaned. “And why would they care so much about shoes that they might not even be able to use? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Remi went over to the side table, tugged open the drawer, and riffled through it.
“What are you looking for?” Blake asked.
“A damn cigarette, but I threw them all out after…”
Cole was at her side in an instant as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “I can feel the mirror,” Remi said quietly, laying a hand on her stomach. “I can’t explain it. But it’s like a faraway storm getting closer and closer.”
Blake trusted her aunt’s intuition. And for a second she let herself believe that there were no lies between them, that Rose hadn’t been murdered. “We will break this curse,” she said, and just as the words left her mouth, she could see the fear mount in Remi’s eyes.
But there was something else, too. A hard, determined focus that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“I had another vision,” Blake said. “Of Coit Tower.”
“I wonder why…” Cole said mostly to himself.
To identify the crows.
“I don’t know,” Blake admitted. “Maybe I’m still getting clues because we still haven’t found the mirror? I’m heading there tomorrow.”
“We’ll go with you,” Remi said, then immediately sucked in a breath and pulled a face. “Except, Cole, you have that follow-up test at the hospital.”
“It can wait,” he said.
“No way,” Blake put in, enjoying her role as protective parent for once.
“She’s right,” Remi said. “And we have Rose’s celebration of life tomorrow night.”
“Then we’ll go to the tower the day after,” Cole suggested.
No, no, no. Rose had been murdered because Blake had been getting too close. That much was clear. She needed to figure out what the magic was trying to tell her and she needed to do it before anyone else got hurt.
“The day after tomorrow,” Blake agreed, but as soon as she uttered the words, she knew it was a half-truth. She’d head to the tower tomorrow without them—during the day, so there would be a lot of people around. Maybe she’d bring Olivia and Ian. She’d come right home afterward, and if she had to, she’d return with Remi and Cole the next day. She just knew that she couldn’t wait.
Remi looked at the fire, gazing into the flickering flames for a long moment. “When will this be over?”
Soon, Blake wanted to say. She could feel it in her gut, in her spirit. She was getting close to the crows and the mirror.
Guilt flared through her, but when she thought about all the lies that she had already told, the guilt was swallowed by her knowledge that she had lied only to keep Remi safe. But that was a lie, too, or might as well have been. Nothing would keep her aunt safe from the curse. And Blake was still boiling a pot of deceit in the name of love. Just like her father.
Still all she could do was make a silent promise: I’m the wolf, and I’m going to destroy the crows.
That night Olivia slipped into Blake’s room. She swiftly closed the space between them and pulled Blake into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”
Blake fought the tears. Not just for losing Rose but for the way in which she lost her, the way in which she was partly responsible for her death.
When Blake pulled back, Olivia said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure you really want to know,” she managed. “It’s worse than you could imagine.”
“Which is why you have to tell me. Now.”
Blake took a deep breath and went over to her desk, where Olivia had stacked her sketches neatly. With her back to Olivia, she let the awful words spill from her mouth.
Silence filled the room. A gasp. And then Olivia was at her side, forcing her to look her in the eye. “You’re sure?”
“It’s the same people who sent Zora the letter demanding she give up the shoes and the mirror.”
“But why kill Rose if they want something you have? Or at least they think you have.”
“Because she was getting close to telling me who they are,” Blake said, struggling to keep her voice even, struggling to accept that any of this was real. “Which means they were watching or listening.” Tears streaked down her cheeks as the realization took hold of her. “The bastards were listening to our conversations.” There was a small tickle at the back of her mind. “But that doesn’t make sense….”
“What doesn’t?”
Blake told Olivia about the painful throbbing in her ears, the pitch and hum and static whenever the stalkers were around. “I never felt that when I was with Rose, though. Maybe they were too far away?”
And before Blake could respond, Olivia was already discounting her theory. “Then they wouldn’t have been able to hear you.”
Just then the cat wandered in, swishing his tail back and forth languidly as he studied Blake with sleepy eyes.
Blake told Olivia what happened when she touched the letter.
“Imagine if you could do that with the mirror,” Olivia said. “If you could feel it in your hands…imagine what else your magic could do.”
That night Blake fell into a deep sleep. Where she dreamed.
A door.
At the end of a long, narrow hall.
Before her hands touch the brass knob, she feels the cold.
From behind, footsteps. More than one or two or three.
She throws open the door, plunges ahead, and slams it in the dark.
Instinct drives her forward, through the haze. One step. And another. A melody echoes from all sides. Similar to carnival music but slow, very slow.
Through the mist, she sees she’s in a forest clearing. There is a single row of white tents. Their tattered folds flutter in the breeze. Her gaze follows their peaks to a mirror roughly twenty feet away, ornately framed and at least twice her height. Before the looking glass is a small, round table where a wooden box fashioned with a crank rests. Her dad used to call the toy “diablo en la caja”—devil in the box.
One step and then another.
Like a ghost, she makes no prints in the dirt. Picking up her pace, she rushes past the tents, where she sees the symbols: the seeing heart, the crown bathed in lavender light, the tower, and in the last tent…the ocean. A fish rolls out of the breakers. Rainbow colored, its scales like glitter, its eyes wide and golden. A creature from a fairy tale. And then another and another, multiplying with each crash of the waves. All dead on arrival.
She flies past them all.
The music grows louder.
El Diablo’s crank turns and turns.
Three paces away she halts. There is no reflection. Only a bright red glimmer, like a distant star. A chill rolls off the glass.
The box’s crank turns slower and slower. It stops.
There is a single moment of breath, a silence that’s glaring, and still…
The box pops open and a murder of black birds erupts, vanishing into the sky soundless as butterflies. The mist blinds her.
Blake hears the beating of wings before she sees the razor-edged claws closing in. The birds, so much larger than she imagined, come at her with a vengeance.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
She collapses onto the ground, throwing her arms up over her head. Claws tear her clothing, rip her flesh.
Bit by bit.
It is her father’s voice that penetrates the violence, like an ax casting its final blow. “Dejalo libre.” Set it free.
There is a shred of sky that Blake clings to.
Heat courses through her body. She feels the magic blooming in her blood, spilling out and onto the ground in waves of heat and power.
Her mouth is open before the shriek rips through the air. “NO!”
The mirror’s shards fly. The glass bites into wings, breasts, and skulls. The birds drop out of the sky, bloodied and trembling.
She gets to her feet, surveying the death toll as the remnants of her power, barely contained, whisper, “Finally.”
Blake woke in a cold sweat.
She felt like she was unraveling, bits and pieces of her floating away. Scraps of dreams and visions and memories taunted her. It was three a.m. Everywhere she looked she saw the wings. They were in the shadows, in the corners, in the waning light of the moon.
The tower and the rainbow fish. More symbols. They reminded her that she wasn’t done yet; this quest wasn’t over.
For a moment, Blake felt her blood pulsing beneath her skin, a raw energy waiting to be unleashed. Something was opening inside her—a door, a bloom, a raw and unchecked power she knew nothing about. It was like trying to see the whole of the ocean through a two-inch gap.
Blake closed her eyes and brought the dream’s final image to her mind’s eye. The crows—broken and bloodied at her feet.
The air felt unnaturally still as she repeated her father’s words: Set it free.
Slowly, a memory surfaced. The night of the binding, she had woken up again. Two shadow figures stood in her doorway, her dad and Abuela. Blake leaned into the memory. Someone had said those same words, hadn’t they? Set it free.
It was a question, asked by her father. “Can she ever set it free?”
It. The magic.
Abuela let out a gentle noise. She said, “The fullness of her power will…”
And then the memory was gone.
The fullness of her power will what?
Angry, frustrated tears stung Blake’s eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She hugged her knees to her chest and stared out at the wintry sky, making promises to herself.
I’ll find the mirror.
I’ll set the girl free.
I’ll break the curse.
I’ll destroy the crows.
When she woke again, the phone was ringing.
Bleary-eyed, Blake peered over her comforter. Wasn’t someone going to answer that?
The phone chirped incessantly, forcing her out of bed. She stumbled into the hall, where she picked up the receiver from the table. “Hello?”
“Blake?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Ms. Ivanov from the gallery. I wasn’t sure I would catch you. Isn’t it a school day?”
Blake had to focus on forcing air into her lungs. “Oh…hi, Ms. Ivanov. Yes, but there was a flood at school.” For a blink, she had the ridiculous thought that the woman was calling to ask for her pencil back.
