Chapter 11
Leila was waiting in the living room, pacing around and bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her face was alight with anxiety as I emerged from Granny Nightjar’s studio, anxiety that apparently increased at the sight of whatever expression was on my face.
“How did it go?” She whispered. “Are you… okay?”
I realized I had no idea how to answer that question, so I just sort of shrugged. Evidently, that was answer enough. Leila certainly seemed to expect no better. She nodded in a knowing way, as though she had seen this reaction from many a person emerging from her grandmother’s sessions.
“She can be a little… off-putting,” Leila said. “But she’s very, very good at what she does.”
If by “what she does” you mean scaring the ever loving shit out of people, then yes, she’s a master, I thought to myself. Aloud I said, “Sure.”
“Did you… was she able to help?” Leila asked. I could tell she was stuffing down a hundred more detailed questions that she was dying to ask.
“I think so? I, um… learned some things and got some answers,” I hedged.
“Great,” Leila said, swinging her arms awkwardly back and forth at her sides. “I’m… I’m glad she could help.”
“Yeah. Well, I should probably get going,” I said. “My mom will start worrying if I’m much later.”
“Okay, yeah. It’s just… do you think… when could we talk about the… the Persi situation?” She dropped her voice on the last few words, as though afraid Granny Nightjar might hear her.
“Huh? Oh! Right.” I was so shaken up by my encounter with Granny Nightjar that I’d almost forgotten about my bargain with Leila. “Yeah, let me… let me think about that.”
Leila bit her lip. “I don’t want to rush you, but… well, I did write some poetry, and I wondered if—”
I tried to control my face so that she wouldn’t see my horror, but I don’t think I was entirely successful. “I’d hold off on that,” I said. “I don’t really think Persi is a poetry type of person.”
Leila’s hopeful expression fell. “Oh. Really?”
“Definitely not,” I said firmly. “You’ll want to stay away from romantic cliches with someone like Persi. You don’t want to come off as… well, desperate.”
Embarrassment stained Leila’s cheeks pink, and she dropped her eyes to focus on her shuffling feet. “Right. Yeah, I should have thought of that.”
“Look, I promise, I really will try to help,” I said, shuffling closer to the door. “Stop by the shop on Friday morning. Persi’s not working, and we can… brainstorm, okay?”
I couldn’t stand here talking anymore. I couldn’t concentrate on romantic gestures and relationship drama.
I had to get out of here so I could think.
Every second I stood in that apartment, the walls seemed to be closing in on me, the air thickening until it felt like it was choking me.
Leila said something else, but I was already heading through the doorway, taking the stairs at a run.
I burst through the door at the bottom of the staircase, and stumbled out into the back of the bookstore, startling the woman behind the counter.
I heard her call after me, asking if I was okay, but I didn’t stop to answer.
I crossed the store at a run, and burst out the front door into the deepening gloom of the evening.
I didn’t stop when I reached the street, but kept running, not toward Lightkeep, but in the opposite direction, down the narrow street that led to the pier.
I didn’t stop until my feet clattered onto the boardwalk, and my hands closed on the ice-crusted railings.
I closed my eyes, and let the bitterly cold wind off the water batter my face and whip my hair around me.
My eyes welled with tears that squeezed out from under my lids, and tracked backward across my cheeks and into my hair.
I could feel them turn to ice, tightening against my numbing skin.
The frigid temperatures and the bite of the wind seemed to shock some of the panic out of me.
As my body numbed, so did my fear, allowing my thoughts to crystallize.
I’d opened a portal. Without meaning to, I’d used magic and opened a portal that connected me to the Darkness. There it was. A cold, hard fact.
I had two choices in front of me. Option one: I could use this portal, however accidentally I had come to create it, to find the answers I was looking for.
It was the option that made the most sense.
After all, wasn’t this what I’d been hoping for?
The only problem with this option was that it scared the shit out of me.
Which left me with option two: ignore the portal, leave my questions unanswered, and try to forget about the whole thing.
My only other experience with scrying had been terrifying, and all I’d been trying to do was connect with my own grandmother.
Now, I would be seeking to connect with something much more frightening, and the thought of it made me want to reach into my bag, pull out the mirror, and cast it into the sea.
I imagined it smashing on the rocks, shattering into glittering shards, and being swept out on the waves, like Sarah Claire’s mirror had once been destroyed.
It was a satisfying image, but it faded quickly as reality set in, and Granny Nightjar’s words echoed in my ears.
The door is not in the mirror. It is in yourself, Little Bird, and you cannot close it.
Even if that mirror lay on the bottom of the ocean, shattered into glittering dust, the portal would still be open, carried with me wherever I went, like a terrible secret I could never share.
There weren’t two options. Not really. I only had one choice. I just didn’t want to make it.
I opened my streaming eyes and looked out over the ocean, the cresting white froth of the waves hissing and roaring as they threw themselves upon the rocks.
Surely the anticipation was worse than just facing what was coming.
That had always been true. In the theater, the crazed, nervous energy that ate away at your stomach in the minutes leading up to the opening of the curtain was always a million times worse than the actual performance.
That was the difference between waiting and doing. Between action and inaction. At least in action you had the knowledge that you were moving forward, that whatever happened, something would happen, and then you could just deal with it.
The Darkness wasn’t going away. I just had to accept that. To face it.
Away from the nightmarish atmosphere of Granny Nightjar’s presence, the fears that had swelled to panic began to shrink again into something much smaller.
As night fell and the cold deepened, that fear stopped crushing me.
It contracted into something I could put in my pocket and carry with me, still present, but manageable.
And as I turned away from the water and began the walk back up from the pier, I was reminded of something my mother had said to me:
“Bravery doesn’t mean you don’t experience fear. That’s just stupidity. Bravery means feeling scared but doing it anyway.”
And in this particular instance, I had to admit she was right. It was time to stop running.
It was time to stop, plant my feet, and do it scared.
“For an open portal, you’re locked up pretty damn tight, aren’t you?” I muttered to my reflection.
It had been five days since my appointment with Granny Nightjar, and the only thing I had to show for it was frustration.
The morning after I’d seen her, I claimed a headache, locked myself in my bedroom, and set to work.
I propped the mirror up against the leg of my desk, sat across from it on the floor, centered myself, and began to scry.
“Where is the Darkness?” I asked. Again. And again.
I said the words out loud. I whispered them.
I mouthed them silently. I screamed, then spoke, then whispered them inside my own head.
I focused on my lips as I said them. Next, I tried looking into my own eyes.
I searched the reflection of the room behind me.
I leaned my body left and right, peering into corners.
I tried asking the question with my eyes closed and then opening them slowly.
I tried again and opened them quickly. I even tried opening them one at a time.
Nothing.
I tried different questions. What is the Darkness doing? Where did the Darkness come from? What does the Darkness look like? What does the Darkness want?
Only my own frustrated reflection answered. Finally, I kicked the mirror over with an aggravated growl. Freya hissed at me.
“Oh shut up,” I grumbled at her. “You try it and see how calm you can stay.” She glared at me and slunk from the room, her tail flicking back and forth like a head shaking with disgust.
Then, I remembered that Granny Nightjar had said the portal wasn’t in the mirror, but inside me.
I gave up on the mirror, and decided to try some other reflective surfaces.
I poured water into a wide, shallow bowl, and stared fruitlessly down into it for over an hour.
I pulled the curtains back, and tried to use the panes of glass in my window, but all I managed to do was fog them with my breath.
I dug a makeup mirror out of my purse, and held it in my hands for so long that my mind wandered, and I started counting my freckles.
I even used the shiny, polished back of the spoon Rhi delivered to my room with a cup of tea.
Nothing. No answers. No Darkness. Just my own stupid face, which I was sick of staring at.