Then there was Isaac, who was just as intelligent as she was and could challenge her in ways no one else ever had. He was her equal and she was his, and they had been great together. They fought, yes,
everybody fights
, but then they made up, they did so with their bodies as well as their hearts.
But Nyx had taken all that away from her, denied her the life she was about to embark on.
The worst part about all this was that Alice wasn’t even mad anymore. She had, a long time ago, come to terms with her lot in life. She had never been spiritual—well, not in a
spirituality-as-a-way-of-living
sense, despite her family’s nightly prayer sessions—but even she understood what had happened to her had happened for a reason. She had some destiny to fulfill, some role to play in the great stage of the universe. Alice wasn’t
the chosen one
, but she had been chosen to do
something
with her life.
Nyx, then, had been a force of nature that destiny itself had used to shape Alice into the person she needed to be. Sure, some might consider the time Alice had spent in the Reflection as part of nature taking its course, but none of this was any consolation.
The mere idea of facing Nyx again made Alice’s hands tremble and her heart thump deeply in her chest. As she climbed the stairs to the next floor, she noticed the skin on her arms start to prickle. When the prickles reached her bare, scarred back, they brought fresh pain with them as if the wound had been inflicted yesterday.
“Screw you, Nyx,” she said under her breath, “I’m coming for you.”
Tonight, Alice decided, wouldn’t play out according to the whims of destiny. The outcome would be
hers
to decide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Dark Siren
The Greek exhibit stood silent, lit only by dull shafts of moonlight filtering through the tall, barred windows on the far side of the room. As Alice made her way across it, her heels causing pecks of sound to follow her steps, she could sense the danger in the room. It felt as though she were walking through some type of static current, a kind of energy crackling in the air. She pressed on through the dimness, weaving between columns and displays, going where her instincts took her—toward the mirror, and toward Nyx.
When she came upon it, she first found herself awestruck at how clean and shiny it appeared to be. The mirror, according to Isaac, had to be hundreds of years old. Even though he and his team had restored it, she hadn’t imagined it would look so… perfect. This was the only word Alice could use to describe the thing.
Perfect
. From its ornate silver frame encrusted with dark gems, to the pristine surface of the glass so clearly reflecting Alice’s image.
Perfect.
She had never been given the chance to truly admire the mirror when she was Nyx’s captive. It could have been a barn door for all she cared. The mirror was merely a way out to her, but now she saw that it was so much more than that. Isaac was right to have called it the prized display of the Greek exhibit.
Careful not to tip anything over, Alice slipped beneath the velvet rope and approached the mirror, curiously scanning its surface for obscure little details like symbols or bits of text. But there were none. The frame was smooth and clean, polished and dark. Upon closer inspection, Alice could notice the flaws in the metal, dents and scratches in the frame, in the glass. It wasn’t so perfect after all.
“C’mon,” she said to her reflection, “There has to be something about you I can use.”
But the mirror didn’t reply. Instead it obediently mimicked the movement of her body and lips, the image distorting only slightly toward the uppermost right corner of the glass. Alice focused her attention on this distortion and noticed how her features seemed to elongate here, as if the glass were slightly crooked.
Alice brought her fingers up to the corner and held them above the glass, carefully considering whether to touch it or not, wondering what would happen if she did and what crucial bit of knowledge she would miss if she didn’t. Goose bumps spread along her hand, wrist, and arm.
“Fuck it,” she said, and she pressed her fingers against the mirror, expecting to be sucked in to some deep, dark place where Nyx was waiting, but nothing happened.
The mirror was cold to the touch, ice cold, and Alice was getting a familiar feeling—a kind of
vibe
— from the thing. But her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t quite connect the sensation to its meaning, and this caused her eyebrows to furrow.
Then she heard something. A voice; no, a song. Though she hadn’t quite heard it with her ears so much as she had heard it with her mind. Alice’s body froze, and she found she couldn’t remove her fingers from the mirror. In fact, her entire palm had been sucked against the glass and her head was starting to feel a little too light.
She heard the voice again, a female voice, and didn’t need to be told this wasn’t Emily. Once again, it was like trying to listen to a song floating on the ocean. She would hear pieces of it— disjointed and distant—but it was difficult to stitch enough sound together to identify the song, who was singing it, or where it was coming from. Only, she knew
where
it was coming from, and who was singing it. The song was coming from the mirror, from somewhere on the other side of it. And the voice was Nyx’s.
“Sing, sweet sister,”
said the voice, “
If you sing with me, I will sing with you, and we can be together again.”
She could hear Nyx’s voice sailing above the floaty, beautiful aria, and she knew in that instant what it was Nyx needed from Alice. She needed Alice to sing, to harmonize with her, because Alice held a portion of Nyx’s power, and in order to use it, Alice had to give it up willingly. But she wouldn’t be doing that today.
Alice tugged on her hand and it came loose. As soon as she stepped away from the mirror, the song in her head receded like the waning tide. Alice stared at her own reflection now as a number of realizations began to pour over her like hard rain. The mirror had always been part of Nyx’s plan, as had been getting Alice to stand in front of it. Nyx clearly had some kind of control over the artifact, could use a portion of her power through it like a conduit, but it would only open if Alice and Nyx performed in concert, because she and Nyx were two parts of a whole.
This had all been one big setup.
She heard something then—stone grinding on stone—and spun around on her heel. There was nothing there except the busts of old white men, glass cabinets filled with artifacts and trinkets, and a pair of mannequins wearing togas. One of them was holding the Xiphos sword which had been in Isaac’s office earlier, the one she had gone looking for. Her heart was beating so hard she could no longer hear herself think, and she had to think. In a couple of moments this room would be filled with people. But she
had
just heard a sound.
It’s nothing
, she thought,
just nerves,
and she turned to face the mirror again only to see a face that wasn’t hers staring back at her. She gasped and jumped back. The face wasn’t a face at all, but a dark silhouette with two glowing blue eyes
the color of cold, dead stars
, and an aura of writhing, shadowy tendrils. Alice steadied herself and opened her mouth to speak, but then the shadow woman—Nyx—disappeared, leaving Alice staring at her reflection in the mirror.
This time, when she heard something move, she saw it too— in the reflection.
Alice threw herself to the floor just as the mannequin which had a moment ago been holding the sword to its chest, arched its hand around its side and hurled the sword at Alice. It whizzed past her ear, missing her by inches, and struck the mirror. There was no smash to be heard. When Alice looked up, she saw the sword half-impaled in what should have been glass, but appeared to ripple like mercury around the edges of the blade.
Alice turned her head to look at the mannequin, but the position of its hands suggested it had never moved. Had that been a hallucination? Had she seen the stone man wearing the toga move, or had it all been in her head? The sword half-embedded in a pool of quicksilver made a solid argument to the contrary. Cautious, her senses on high alert, Alice rose to her feet, and approached the mirror. Grasping the hilt of the blade firmly, she pulled on the sword, but it remained stuck in place, her effort succeeding only in creating more ripples in the pool of mercury.
She tugged again, but the sword refused to budge. This was frustrating. Was it caught on something? Again she grunted and pulled, but the hilt of the sword slipped out of her sweaty palm, sending her toppling over the velvet rope and about to crash into the ground. The metal poles which had been supporting the rope came down with her, clanging a deafening sound which echoed throughout the cavernous exhibit.
Alice planted her hands on the floor, hoisted herself up, and righted the nearest metal pole, not once taking her eye off the sword, still stuck in the mirror. She was about to pick up the second metal pole when the sword—blade and hilt—disappeared into the pool of mercury as if someone on the other side had pulled it through. A moment later, after the soft, shimmering, silver ripples finished their dance, the mirror became solid again.
“
This is mine, now
,” said a terrible, melodious voice in the back of Alice’s mind.
Fear of the sound—of the voice—ran her through like a spear, rooting her to the spot. She was about to reply when she heard the steady, rising murmur of a crowd floating in through the open doors with the velvet rope in front of them. Alice turned to face the mirror again, her heart pounding so hard it was difficult to hear the sound of her own thoughts, and got to work straightening all of the metal poles she had knocked over a moment ago.
Slowly the room filled with guests, a gentle chorus rising at a steady pace until the quiet chattering became an excited murmur. Alice was able to blend seamlessly into the crowd, but her breathing was ragged, her eyes didn’t know where to settle, and when Nate found her she didn’t know what to say besides “I’m sorry.”
This caught him by surprise. “I’m sorry?” he asked. “What do you mean, sorry? Did you get anywhere with the mirror?”
“No. I mean, yes. I did. It’s just that things are more complicated than I thought. Nyx knows I’m here.”
Nate’s face became deathly white, as if he had just been told he had an incurable form of cancer. Alice had only an instant of eye contact with Isaac before the director handed the group to him to talk about the pieces in the exhibit, especially the mirror. But in one quick, concerned glance Alice had adequately communicated the sense of impending danger. Isaac nodded and pulled the group’s attention to a huge model representation of a classic Greek amphitheater, a piece which was on the side of the room opposite from the mirror.
He was beginning to explain how this was an accurate model of the amphitheater on which many of Athens plays were performed, when strange movement on the mirror’s surface drew Alice’s eye.
She approached with Nate by her side and saw the backs of the other people in the room reflected on the surface, but there was something else, too. There was an extra guest in the room, only this woman existed on the mirror and not in the room—in the real world—with everyone else. She was tall and beautiful, had gorgeous, silky black hair, eyes which shone bright and blue, and was dressed in a gown of pure, silken shadow. Alice could see wisps of dark smoke rising from the dress, and tendrils of ink spreading across the floor. She could hear the song in her mind, too, the dark melody on the water; only it wasn’t a light, haunting aria this time, but a low, saddening dirge.
Nyx’s hands came slowly up over her head, and clasped between them she held the shining steel sword that had a moment ago almost taken a piece of Alice’s ear. Nyx gave a sinister smile, turned her eyes toward the patron nearest to her, and swung the sword down on him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Portal Reopened
Alice’s hand flew up in a feeble gesture of protection, but Nyx’s sword cut a line right through the man’s back as if he had been made of air. In the reflective surface of the mirror, the blade ripped his body in half, and the two separate pieces exploded into a shower of light sparks. In the material world, the man suddenly collapsed to his knees, and then he—like the cab driver—collapsed into a patch of brown dust.
A moment later Alice saw the man’s soul—a shimmering, glowing representation of his human form—trapped inside the mirror with Nyx.
Alice’s heart caught in her throat as the realization of what had just happened came crashing over her; the guests in the room hadn’t noticed. As they trampled over the layer of dust that remained, she knew the man had already been forgotten, and his soul was now trapped. There was no saving him now, but as Nyx chose another target and brought her sword up again, Alice sprang into action.
She dashed toward the wall a few feet away from her. Nate called out after her, but she ignored him. When she reached the fire alarm, she smashed through the protective glass plate with her bare hand and pulled hard. The alarms blared, the sprinkler system kicked in, and then the screaming started. But these weren’t screams of terror; they were the screams of women whose Louboutin’s, expensive hair styles, and Gucci dresses were getting wet.