“What the hell just happened?” he asked. He dropped his keys as he tried to lock the door, picked them up, and tried again.
“
That
,” she said, emphasizing the word, “Was something telling us to get the hell out of its space.”
“
Its
space? This isn’t
its
space, it’s
my
theater.”
“I thought you told me you were just the projectionist.”
“Fine, but…”
“Look, I get it, Emily is your friend, but I need to figure this out and determine a plan of action.”
“But—”
“—one that
doesn’t
include you.”
“You can’t leave me out of this!”
Alice straightened out, snatched her flashlight out of Nate’s hand, pocketed it, and said “Watch me.”
Nate frowned. “Do you really expect me to sit on the sidelines after what just happened in there? You took Emily’s picture, and she wasn’t even in the room! How did you do that?”
“She was in the room, Nate. You saw her sitting on that chair.”
“But how is that even possible?”
“It just is. Lucky for you, you don’t need to understand this. The only thing you need to understand is that this place is no longer safe for you. It’s off limits, kapisch?”
“Off limits? How am I supposed to come—”
“—you
don’t
come back.”
“But then how will you—”
“—
you’re
going to give me your keys.”
“I… am?” Nate considered what she had just said, his logical mind working things out at a frantic pace. For a moment it seemed like he was going to ask a question, but he must have realized arguing with Alice was a bad idea because he handed her his ring of keys. Alice took them, slipped them into her jean pockets, and nodded. “Thank you,” she said.
“I need them back,” he said, “I need to hand them in to the owner in three days. I’m supposed to be taking inventory and cleaning the projector.”
“Three days…” she said, staring at the keys. “That won’t be a problem. This will be over before then.”
“You’re sure?”
Emily didn’t have three more days, but Alice at least knew where to find her; even if this wasn’t a comfortable thought by any means. Emily hadn’t been killed—she had been snatched away to another place, one that wasn’t accessible by normal means. This place was the Reflection. A place where the dead live macabre mockeries of life, and where humans should never tread.
Alice nodded and said, “One way or another.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Old Flame
The idea of Emily, a living person, roaming the nightmare realm of the Reflection, lost, confused, and under attack from all sides, made Alice feel physically sick. She shouldn’t have left, she should have stayed at the cinema and kept going, kept snapping. But the truth was she didn’t know how much good she could have done. If Emily truly was lost in the Reflection, then this had become more than just a job.
A few times she had thought about starting her car, but the rain falling on its roof was creating a steady hiss of sound which Alice found soothing. Alice didn’t often drive; she hadn’t even driven to the cinema tonight, having chosen to walk instead. When she left Nate, though, she made a conscious choice to go to her car instead of going home. But when she got to it, she had no idea where to go.
Alice turned the ignition and the dashboard blinked to life. The stereo came on, and a haunting voice accompanied by guitars, drums, and bass filled the car. She stared at the picture in her hand again and narrowed her eyes, concentrating. “Why didn’t this work?” she asked, remembering the hand which had earlier been in the frame.
That she hadn’t been able to trap Emily, sure, this much she accepted. Emily was alive, and trapping a living soul required more energy than Alice had put into the effect. But if the hand belonged to a spirit, it should have been caught, shouldn’t it? Thinking back, Alice had never snapped a partial frame before. She had always been careful to wait until the spirit’s full body was in the frame before trapping it with her peculiar power.
Maybe that was why it didn’t work?
Again her mind circled back to Emily, lost in the Reflection. Emily was, right now, running for her life and hiding in whatever dark place she could find, keeping as far away from the spirits around her as possible and trying her best to understand where she was and why this was happening; much like what Alice had been forced to do only a couple of years ago.
The Reflection was a maddening place not meant for humans. It was a place for the dead and the dreadful, a realm created by design or by circumstance to serve one purpose and one purpose alone—
to keep them separate from us, and us separate from them
. But the division between realms wasn’t perfect, nor was it foolproof. There were seams in the wall, cracks wide enough to be exploited by the unwary or those with powerful enough intent.
Intent.
Alice started her car and it grumbled to life. She peeled out of the parking lot and began to drive, listening only to the loud, haunting music of her tires on the road, and the patter of rain on her windows. The Theater district was quiet this time of night, the old, empty buildings watching her as she passed through. But the closer she got to the beating heart of the city—a trio of districts which were home to Ashwood’s largest, and richest buildings—the more tail-lights and exhaust pipes there were on the road.
She parked outside a stone building the size of an entire city block. It was all gray walls, marble columns, and gargoyles which seemed to stare at you when you looked at them. Alice sighed when she turned the ignition off and stared at herself in the rear-view. For an instant her eyes flashed a shade of bright blue, but she shut them hard, bit her lip, and waited for the moment to pass. When she looked again, they had returned to their natural hazel brilliance.
Still hungry
, she thought, and she wondered how long she could put eating off before she ran out of time.
“What the hell am I doing here?” she said to herself.
That Emily was lost in the Reflection was an undisputed fact, as was the reality that Alice had no way of getting her out without help. But Alice didn’t want help, didn’t need help, and much less
Isaac Moreau’s
help. She turned her gaze toward the building on the other side of the road—the Ashwood Imperial Museum—and shook her head.
“I could leave,” she said, “I can find another way.”
But she was lying to herself. She had, after all, come all this way almost without thinking about what she was doing, hadn’t she? Alice hadn’t tried to call him because she had deleted his phone number a long time ago, an action which had added a sense of finality to their relationship—like a period on a sentence. She could not, however, unlearn the things she knew about him like, for example, where he worked, a place she had come to many times before.
As much as she disliked the idea of coming to see him, Isaac was the only person she knew who could help, but still she hesitated. Emily’s life was on the line, and she was being picky about the help she needed. As she debated whether to go or stay, an Ashwood PD squad car rolled alongside her and drifted to a stop at the light at the end of the street. Alice watched the car and remembered a time when she had driven one similar to it. Number one hundred and twenty-six had been her squad car, one of the newer models. Powerful, agile, and easy to handle even at high speeds. She remembered it fondly. But memories of her nightly cruises and her time spent wearing a uniform were never far ahead of the sounds of screams, the smell of gasoline, and the taste of blood; Alice’s own introduction to the Reflection.
Unlike dreams, which were easily forgotten, the horrors she experienced in the Reflection were ingrained into her psyche, carved into the walls of her mind—and the skin of her back—like cave paintings. How long she had spent there herself, she didn’t know. What
exactly
had happened to her only came back in fractured flashes embedded into nightmares. What she did know was how she had gotten
out
, the price she had to pay to return to the world of the living.
“To serve and protect,” Alice said to herself, reciting the police department motto.
As much as she didn’t like the idea of going to see Isaac, she liked the idea of leaving Emily in the Reflection even less.
Alice shut the engine off, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and opened the car door. The rain was coming down hard, but it was a short run to the museum staff entrance. She shook droplets of rain out of her hair and buzzed the intercom, hoping the night-guard would be at his desk to receive her. A wave of relief came over her when the intercom droned to life and an electronic voice spoke from the other side.
“Yeah?” said the guard.
“I’m here to see Isaac Moreau, the Curator,” Alice said.
“He’s gone home for the night.”
Alice pressed her lips together, looked around—thinking of what next to say—and then saw it. The car—Isaac’s car. The black Impala with trinkets hanging off the rear-view mirror was sitting by the sidewalk, being washed by rain so hard it bounced off the hood and the roof. He still drove the same car.
“It’s important,” she said, “It’s about his wife.”
This was bullshit. Isaac didn’t have a wife, at least Alice didn’t think so, but he was a private enough man the guard at the door wouldn’t know whether she was lying or not unless he asked. When presented with a choice which required effort—confirming with Isaac—and one which required the simple push of a button…
“You’re his wife?” he asked, a slight hesitation to his voice.
“I… am, yes, I’m his wife.”
The door buzzed open, and Alice stepped through. Her footfalls echoed through the narrow stone hall, accompanied by the tapping of rain on nearby windows and the distant grumble of thunder. Halfway down the hall, the walls opened to create a small, circular block where the security guard was sitting. There was a desk, brown oak with a glossy finish. Pictures of rolling hills with castles at their crests hung on the walls. A tall, green fern grew healthily in the corner, a water cooler sitting idly next to it.
The guard, a stocky, intentionally bald man, didn’t stand to receive her. When she saw the size of his gut, she knew why. He was massive. So big, in fact, his belly spilled over the desk he was sitting at. But his short sleeved shirt revealed a number of tattoos along his left arm, some Japanese, some traditional. He wore a hoop earring in his left ear, and had fists the size of bricks. He had the look of a man who could knock the consciousness out of even experienced boxers with a single blow.
“I didn’t know Isaac had a wife,” he said in a gruff voice.
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise me. Is he in his office?”
“He is. Wasn’t expecting anyone, though. Told me he didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Sounds like him, always has his door closed at home. I barely see him.”
The security guard, whose name-tag identified him as Dustin, didn’t seem to know what to say to this, though his eyes did wander up and down Alice’s body. He had been difficult to read until then, but his emotions came rushing out of him when he drank in her tight frame and long, dark—and now wet—hair, and Alice was ready to receive them. He wanted to tell her to leave Isaac, wanted to tell her he wasn’t good enough, that he didn’t care enough about other people. Wanted to tell her he would keep her safe, would protect her. He’d probably break her in half, too, but you know, it would at least be one hell of a ride.
Alice cracked a smile, amused, and watched the security guard stand and make his way down the corridor. “Follow me,” he said, and Alice did as she was told.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Taste
The Ashwood Imperial Museum was a towering monstrosity of stone and marble, surrounded by perched gargoyles so lifelike they could have gotten up and flown around. Isaac, a curator at the museum, wasn’t just a charming man with a pearly white smile and a smooth British accent, he was a Mage—one of repute. But he was also an anthropologist, having collected a Ph.D. in the field from Oxford University in London, as well as a lover of ancient history, and one hell of a charmer.
Formerly an acne ridden, awkward child from Surrey, Isaac now brokered seven figure acquisition deals at one of the country’s most prestigious museums, and tinkered with the very fabric of reality. If someone had told him this in the past with any degree of confidence, Isaac would have awkwardly smiled and dismissed the notion entirely. Yet here he was, wearing a fine suit and escorting a beautiful woman through a museum wing he had helped build.
Isaac walked along the tall halls of the Imperial Museum with his hands behind his back, one hand clasped against the other, closely followed by a tall, Greek woman by the name of Helena Metaxas. She had a soft face with eyes as green as a field in spring, and was holding a tablet and taking notes.
“If you’ll follow me please,” Isaac said in his silky British accent, and he gestured Helena through a tall arch. Her high heels made a clacking sound wherever she walked, and she gave Isaac a sly wink as she went through the doors.