Chapter 2 #3
I then spoke to the elemental magic that always flowed through me. “Find any threat that dwells here,” I bid the flame.
Balls of fire left my hand one after another, and when I glanced around the room, everyone was focused on me. I also noticed that Brett had his phone pointed at me. I waved for good measure, and after a moment, he scowled.
“You can’t record Xan’s magic,” Cass explained to him. “You should have asked me. I would have told you nothing shows up.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because it’s magic.”
“The door is closed upstairs,” Willa said. “Will that stop the flame?”
“No,” I assured her as the fire balls returned to my hand, one by one.
“See? Nothing else amiss,” Lorne stated.
But they hadn’t all returned, and I was certain not because I counted them, but because I could feel the absence. And the one I was missing wasn’t far. It wasn’t up on the second floor; it was closer than that.
Walking out into the hall, I saw one flame hovering in front of the large hall mirror.
It was a beautiful piece James used to have hanging over the fireplace in the living room but had moved not too long ago to make room for an enormous wagon wheel.
The latter wasn’t my thing, but neither was I an arbiter of good taste.
Everything I liked was decidedly ancient.
But now, one of my flames was hovering in front of the mirror. Moving quickly, once I looked from the flame to the reflection, I immediately saw the problem. There was none.
“Huh,” I muttered, not pleased in the least.
“What the hell, Xan?” Lorne rasped, right there at my shoulder.
“Not…sure,” I answered haltingly, walking over and not seeing myself at all. “Keep everyone in the living room. This will freak them out.”
“I’m thinking after seeing a ghost, this will be pretty tame.”
“I dunno about that.”
“Why’re you not freaking out?”
“Because these are things to be investigated, right? There must be a why, so figuring that out is the most important thing at the moment.”
“I love that magic never scares you.”
“But I was raised in this, so I’m used to it.”
When I took a step closer, the scene in the mirror changed from an empty hall to Corvus—or more precisely, Corvus from the vantage point of our kitchen window—and I saw a large shadow dart between the trees in the moonlight.
I jolted, I couldn’t help it, then felt foolish.
I was normally the scariest thing that walked the grounds of Corvus, or frankly, any woods.
And yes, in the last couple of years, that hadn’t been the case, but as a rule, it was, in fact, me.
That something was prowling around was a concern.
That it was Giles was probable, as he had the power to make me see something else in a mirror, but that didn’t make a lot of sense.
From what I’d read, he moved through time so it didn’t catch up to him.
Moving around, he never aged. What was keeping him here, and honestly, why hadn’t he simply knocked on the cottage door?
It was freezing outside. Didn’t he want to come in and sit by the fire?
Before something truly frightening came into view, I put my finger in my mouth to wet it and leaned toward the mirror.
A hand with misshapen fingers that ended in claws reached for me.
Instinctively, I recoiled, which I thought better of and corrected fast, leaning forward to grab and pull.
My grandfather always said that things that lurked in the shadows needed only to be dragged into the light.
I’d forgotten for a moment because I was surprised, and that split second of hesitancy allowed Lorne to act.
“Fuck no!” Lorne gasped and grabbed me, yanking me back.
Promptly, the hand retreated into the mirror.
I took a breath to steady my nerves that were jumping all over the place.
“You should have let me yank it through the portal,” I said between breaths.
“The fuck is going on, Xan?”
The lights went off then, and I could hear everyone yell from the living room.
“We need to go,” I told him, making my voice as steady as possible, patting his hands on me gently. “Us being here will endanger them.”
“You want us to go home?” He sounded incredulous.
“Of course. The cottage will keep us safe, and we have to determine what’s happening.”
“I hate this,” he muttered, letting me go.
I put my index finger back in my mouth, wetting it, which was hard as dry as it was, then stepped close to the mirror and made spirals in the upper right-hand corner. “I seal this mirror and declare it be used solely for the highest and best for all.”
My grandfather drew pentacles with widdershins around them.
For me and my grandmother, spirals, in the natural direction, organic, cyclical, empowered with sacred wisdom, had always worked best, as they followed the course of the sun, which brought light.
Our practices varied, but the end result was the same.
Instantly, Lorne and I were visible in the mirror, and the lights in the hallway—and I was guessing everywhere else from the clapping in the other room—came on. When I turned to look toward the archway that led to the living room, everyone was clustered there.
“We’re gonna go,” Lorne announced. “The good news is, the house is clean, nothing bad in here. The bad news is, whatever other weirdness is happening, that’s on us. I think us leaving is for the best.”
No one, not even James and Cass, argued with him.