Alice’s face flushed with blood and adrenaline, and her hand stung from the impact. The glass had bitten into her flesh and blood was mixing with falling water, creating crimson lines on her skin. Trapper was getting wet, too, but it was a tough little camera and had worked in the rain before. It would work again now. At least, she hoped it would. But there was no point worrying about the camera now—right now her focus was on getting everybody out, getting them away from Nyx.
Nate came up beside Alice and asked “What are you doing?”
“It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. You need to hide right now.”
“Hide? No! What about Emily?”
“If you stand in front of that mirror, you’re dead. You need to keep out of sight.”
“I’m
not
going to hide,” he said, making his intent perfectly clear by forcing the words out of his mouth. “You brought me here to help get Emily out. Let me do that now.”
Alice’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Fine,” she said, “Start calling for her, but don’t cross in front of the mirror. Don’t ever let yourself be in front of it.”
Nate nodded and looped around the room to approach the mirror from the rear. On the other side of the Greek exhibit, Isaac was helping to usher the crowd back into the hall. When they were gone, he grabbed the large doors and pulled them shut, sealing the room off from anyone who would want to come back in that way. Alice, meanwhile, who could never take her own advice, approached the mirror head on with her hands balled into fists.
Nyx was no longer there, neither was the image of the man whose soul she had snatched. She could only see a wet image of herself, her dark hair sagging with the weight of the constant shower falling from above, her dress clinging to her even more tightly now—uncomfortably so—and her face taut with anger and fear. She wanted to run, wanted to leave, but she couldn’t. She suspected she was the reason why Nyx had any power here to begin with.
“Nyx!” she said, putting strength into her own voice to drown out the hiss of the sprinkler system.
Alice received no reply. Instead her reflection, now wavy and speckled with droplets of water, mimicked her actions. Isaac suddenly appeared next to Alice, and she almost jumped. He stared at her image in the mirror and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his magic brass bangle.
“What do you know about it?” Isaac asked.
“It’s more than just a portal; it’s a piece of Nyx and the only way we’re going to get Emily back.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I just do, okay? It sings like she does. This doesn’t make any sense, but just trust me.”
“If the mirror is a piece of her, she won’t make it easy for us to take Emily back. I don’t think she’d take kindly to us opening this portal of hers.”
“No,” Alice said, “I think that’s exactly what she wants.” She couldn’t hear Nate talking over the blaring alarm and the hiss of the water, but she could read his lips well enough. He was calling for Emily from behind the mirror, just like Alice had asked. “I know how to open the portal.”
“You do?”
“When I open it, you have to make contact with Emily again so that Nate can call her out.”
“What if Nyx stops Emily from leaving?”
Alice gave him a sidelong glance to look at his face. A part of her wanted to kiss his wet lips, and she didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way he was looking at her, his big brown eyes full of concern and care—care for her. She hadn’t felt that in a long while. No one had ever cared for her quite like Isaac had.
“I know what’s happening now,” Alice said. “I know why she’s here and what she wants with Emily.”
“What does she want?” Isaac asked.
“Nothing. Emily was a mistake. You have to trust me on this. If we open that portal and Emily makes a break for it, Nyx will let her. It’ll still be up to Nate to get her out, but she’ll come out. Nyx doesn’t need Emily. She needs me.”
She could see the questions manifesting behind his eyes. If Nyx didn’t want Emily, why keep her? Why crush Isaac’s spell back at the theater last night? Why go to all this trouble? But he trusted her. The moment he nodded, she knew, he would do exactly as she asked, no matter what the request was.
“Do it,” she said, “Emily has one chance to get out, and you’ll have one chance to close the portal once she’s clear.”
“Close it? You don’t think you can?”
Alice shook her head grimly.
Isaac stepped in front of Alice and pressed his left hand against his right wrist. “What if I can’t close it behind her?”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
He nodded, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. The bangle on his right wrist began to glow with a dull blue light that grew with intensity as the seconds passed. Alice then became aware of another presence entering the atmosphere of the room. This was a dark, ancient, powerful soul which Alice had come across before but had never seen with her own eyes—Isaac’s elusive Guardian. She supposed any powerful, old creature on their side was a boon right now and put it out of her mind.
When Isaac opened his eyes again, he reached out with his left hand, palm out toward the mirror. Alice, in concert with Isaac’s movements, pressed her hands against the glass and she began to hum the melody which had been stuck in her mind, the one she kept hearing whenever Nyx was near, only she hummed it an octave higher as if attempting to harmonize with it. She felt stupid doing so, but after a couple of seconds her reflection began to warp and distort, and the glass turned to mercury again. But it went a step further this time.
The liquid began to peel away revealing an empty, infinite darkness behind it. Around her, the sprinklers stopped hissing, the fire alarms stopped blaring, and the room fell into an eerie quiet. Alice pulled her hands away from the open portal and felt a cold draft of air touch her skin. Fresh fear washed over her.
“Emily,” Nate said, though his voice was wavering, “Emily, can you hear me?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Great Escape
Alice waited for the reply with her eyes closed, her palms clenched into fists, and her heart pulsing heavily against her chest. They were powerful, slow beats, like a construction worker bashing a sledgehammer into a wall, and each beat brought with it a fresh dose of nerve-racking worry. Nate called out again, and Alice winced as if she had been slapped across the face. Would she reply? Was she free to reply? Could she even hear him?
“Nate?” Emily’s voice came from within the depths of the portal, distant and echoed, but present. “Nate, where are you?”
Alice opened her eyes and sucked in a lungful of air as if she had just woken up from a bad dream.
“Emily!” Nate called out, “Listen to my voice and come to me. I promise this isn’t a trick.”
“It’s dark, I can’t see anything anymore. I don’t know where you are!”
“Just remember… remember the video we watched in the theater that night. Remember what we saw? You have to walk in a straight line, Emily. Just walk and you’ll get to us like it did that night.”
Alice remained perfectly quiet. She didn’t want to risk startling Emily and sending her running back into the darkness, especially when she could sense Emily’s energy approaching. Her living, human soul was a tiny white light in a tenebrous cave, barely bright enough to illuminate more than a foot in front of itself, but bright enough to be seen by anything wanting to look for her.
And there were things looking for her, or more accurately, following her.
The darkness behind the light was full of activity; a sizzle of dreadful noise that transported Alice back to the time she had spent in the Reflection. The static always came before Nyx’s Pain Children arrived. It was like a warning bell, a sixth sense. She wondered if Emily had acquired it too, if she knew she was being followed, but Alice didn’t think Emily had been changed like Alice had.
Alice had been fed a human soul and had become a—
what had Isaac called her? —
a half-Lich; Nyx wouldn’t have risked that outcome again.
“Keep talking,” Alice said, and Nate continued to speak, coaxing Emily out of the dark portal. But the static was rising, and Alice was starting to think Emily wouldn’t make it out before the Pain Children did. The gas mask man, the poltergeist, the trio of shadows with the copper teeth, and whatever else Nyx had freed from the film reels which had once been locked away in the depths of the Cinema Royale were all coming. They were all following Emily’s light. Only, soon they wouldn’t need her light; soon enough they would be able to see the exit themselves.
Alice leaned in to Isaac’s left ear and asked “Can you close it?”
“I don’t know,” Isaac said, “I think it’s only staying open because you’re here.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can feel the connection, it’s like the mirror is feeding off your energy.”
Emily suddenly spoke again, excitement in her voice. “I can see the light!” she said, and when Alice looked deep into the mirror, there, in the darkness, she could swear she saw a light too.
“Now, Nate,” Alice said, breaking the silence, “She has to come out now. Tell her to run.”
“Emily,” Nate said, his voice breaking, starting to waver. “Run for the light. Trust me, okay? Just start running right now. Run as fast as you can and push your way through. I’m right here to catch you.”
“I’m trusting you,” Emily said, “I’m so tired, I have no choice.”
“You have to run as hard as you can. Now.”
The tiny light in the tunnel began to grow brighter with every passing moment, but Alice’s patience was starting to thin. “Isaac, you have to start closing the portal,” Alice said.
“No, don’t,” Nate said, “Emily hasn’t come through yet!”
“If we don’t close that portal, she won’t be the only thing coming through it.”
“Just a few more seconds, that’s all she needs. Please!”
Isaac closed his hands again and started to speak in a quiet tone, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. An incantation was likely, but what was he doing? What was his magic doing? His arm was shaking and his neck was tight, the muscles as taut as a bowstring. Outside, lightning illuminated the sky followed by a detonation of rolling thunder so loud it must have hit directly above the museum.
Then she saw it; the speck of light in the darkness transformed into the gleaming tip of a steel blade racing toward her.
She shoved Isaac to the floor and was able to pivot on the spot a couple of inches, but the biting blade shot out of the darkness and tore into her right shoulder, slicing through skin and in a painful flash. The searing sensation didn’t register until the sword had embedded itself into the far wall where it wobbled rapidly from the impact.
She fell to the floor clutching her arm, gritting her teeth against the pain. Alice’s entire right arm was a blaze of hurt, but the pain itself was a good sign. At the speed the sword had been travelling, the razor sharp point of the blade would have severed her arm in two if it had struck an inch or two to the left.
Little victories,
she thought as she wiggled her fingers.
The scare of the impact had been greater than the impact itself.
“Alice!” Isaac said, “Are you alright?”
“Just a scratch,” Alice said. “Get her out, Isaac—get her out and close that fucking portal before they get through.”
Nate continued to call for Emily, screaming down the mouth of the portal and into the dark, but Emily’s voice wasn’t coming any more. He started to panic, screaming now. Alice rose to her feet and helped Isaac back onto his. He was no longer standing directly in front of the mirror, and his magic—whatever magic he had been using—had failed the moment he broke concentration. But she couldn’t focus on Isaac right now, or on Nate. Beyond the threshold of the mirror, something was happening. Shapes were emerging.
Not a single shape, but
many
shapes.
The hissing static grew to a fever pitch. Alice stepped away from the mouth of the mirror and waited for the emerging shapes to take full form until finally, one of them did. There was a blinding flash of white light and a sound like thunder, and suddenly the mirror’s edges were glowing. The whole frame shook and looked as though it was about to topple over. Emily screamed from inside, and Alice watched her physical form come lurching out of the dark depths of the Reflection and into the world of the living. Emily rushed out of the threshold, hooked her foot on the mirror frame, and went crashing to the floor as if she had just been spat out by some huge animal.
Nate made a sound halfway between a yell and a cry of elation and dashed toward her, helping her to her feet.
“Get out,” Alice said, “The two of you. You can’t stay here. Go out through the back door.”
Emily stood, threw Alice a look of thanks, and with Nate by her side, made a mad dash for the door in the far corner of the exhibit. As Nate and Emily ran, Isaac clasped his left hand around his glowing, magic bangle, raised both arms to eye level, and pointed his open right palm toward the mirror.
If they couldn’t close it she would have to somehow destroy it, but she didn’t know if this was something she or Isaac could do. A muscular spasm climbed up her spine, causing her entire body to twitch as, she saw a tall, impossibly thin creature emerge from the mirror. The naked old man didn’t collapse when he crossed the threshold like Emily had, but instead seemed to jump out, standing hunched over like Quasimodo. His long arms dangled limply at his side, his gray skin was stretched thinly over protruding bones, and thin, wispy hair fell lazily out of a sarcoma ridden skull.