Chapter 2
Jess
I slammed the dressing room door behind me so hard the mirror rattled in its frame. Then, I pressed my back to it and tried not to hyperventilate.
Okay. That could have gone better.
I’d finally kissed Nate and managed to turn it into a Fourth of July firework show. Romantic? Sort of. Terrifying? Definitely.
And the thing in the mirror… nope. Not thinking about that. Probably just a trick of the light. Or a concussion. Or both.
I peeled myself off the door and stared at my reflection. Still me: brown hair in a ponytail, green eyes wide, lipstick, or rather, gloss, slightly smudged. My star-shaped beauty mark looked regular. The mirror behind me looked normal.
Until it didn’t.
The glass rippled, like someone had tossed a pebble into a pond. Then, a hand emerged, Nate’s hand, followed by Nate. Only… not.
That Nate had a sharper posture, eyes with a strange silver glint, and a confident smile that could melt steel beams. He stepped out of the mirror like it was a doorway.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said, his voice warm and knowing. “I’ve been waiting so long to meet you.”
Before I could speak, his arm slid around my waist, pulling me in close. His kiss was immediate; no shy pause, no awkward bump of noses, no hesitant brush of lips before pulling back. Not like just a few moments ago under the ticket table.
The real Nate had been different. Sweet. Careful, like he was worried he might scare me off if he pushed too hard. Even when the sparks had blazed and we both pulled back in shock, there’d been a softness in it, like he was holding something precious.
This was nothing like that.
This Nate kissed like he owned the moment.
Like he owned me. His mouth moved with precision, coaxing rather than asking, tilting my head just enough to make the angle perfect.
His fingers pressed lightly at my waist, steady but not forceful, like he knew exactly where my centre of gravity was and how to use it.
The air between us vanished, replaced by heat that rolled through me in sharp waves.
It was intoxicating. Wrong, but intoxicating.
For a dangerous, stupid heartbeat, I wanted to keep it. My knees felt looser, my chest tighter, and the noise in my head silenced until all I could hear was my own pulse. This wasn’t sweet or hesitant. This was consuming. For one horrible second, I liked that he didn’t hesitate.
Then, my brain snapped back into place. This wasn’t Nate. This was a stranger wearing his face, and every second I let it happen was a second too long.
I shoved him back. “Who the hell are you?”
His smile widened. “I’m Nate, but better. You can call me…” He paused and something flashed in his eyes. “Call me Etan. See you soon, beautiful.” Just like that, he stepped backwards into the mirror and vanished.
The glass rippled once, then stilled. My reflection looked like me again but shaken, flushed, and one bad decision away from being shipped to Salem and straight to magical jail. I ran out of the dressing room, back into the hallway. I needed to get home.
“Jessica!”
I jumped. Ms. Galloway, my history teacher, stood in the doorway to the gym. Her expression was half stern, half suspicious, which was pretty much her default setting.
“Have you seen Nate? His sketchbook, the ticket money, and half the tickets were on the floor, but he’s gone. It’s very unlike him.”
Panic zinged through me. I forced a smile. “Maybe he went home sick,” I said quickly. “It’s hot in here.”
Her gaze lingered on me, sharp as a scalpel. “Hmm. Maybe. I’ll check with the office.”
I did what any innocent student with nothing to hide would do: I bolted. Out the front doors, down the steps, straight into the woods behind the school.
The trees closed in fast, and the air smelled like pine and damp earth. My boots crunched twigs as I ran, replaying everything in my head.
The kiss. The sparks. The other Nate.
Magic 101: mirror creatures are bad news. Dangerous, manipulative, and illegal to summon. The Magical Council had very clear rules about keeping them locked in their own creepy parallel dimension.
And I had just accidentally invited one out for a smooch.
I tripped over a root and landed hard on my knees.
The sting helped me to think. If The Council found out, my mom could lose her job.
I could lose my magic, and even worse, end up in witch jail.
I’d heard they had a special block for witches who misused magic.
Plus, if that silver-eyed Nate was here, where was the real Nate?
I didn’t have answers, but I did have a sarcastic talking raven who’d probably yell at me until my ears fell off. So, I picked myself up, brushed the dirt off my skirt, and headed for home.
The deeper I went into the trees, the quieter it got. Not peaceful-quiet, wrong quiet. The usual chorus of crickets and distant traffic faded until all I could hear was my own breathing and the soft crunch of boots on dry leaves.
A cold ripple settled over my skin, like walking through a doorway I couldn’t see. The shadows between the trunks seemed thicker, bending at angles that made no sense. I thought I saw movement—a figure, too tall and too still, half-hidden behind a pine. When I blinked, it was gone.
Raven always said the veil between realms was like old fabric. Most days, it was strong enough to keep things on their side. But sometimes, the threads thinned, and if you weren’t careful, something could slip through.
I picked up my pace, desperate for the familiar creak of my bedroom door and the sarcastic welcome of Raven.
As I tore through the woods toward home, I told myself not to think about the kiss.
Not the sparks, not the way Nate had looked at me, and not the dazed, blinking confusion on his face as I bolted.
Somewhere back at the ticket table, he was still standing there.
By the time I made it back to my room, my boots were muddy, my knees hurt, and my heart was staging a rave in my ribcage.
Raven was waiting on my desk, perched beside the now empty peach-gloss cauldron. His beady eyes tracked me like I’d just walked in wearing a neon sign that said, ‘I Ruined Everything.’
“Well?” he said, in the tone of someone who already knew the answer and was just fishing for the confession.
I shut the door. “You know how you said the gloss might be a bad idea?”
“Yes.”
“And how you warned me that love magic never works?”
“Yes.”
“And how you mentioned that it can result in unintended magical mayhem?”
Raven’s feathers puffed. “Jessica.”
“So, I might have accidentally made out with a mirror creature and lost the real Nate in the process.”
Raven made a sound like a dying accordion. “Might have?”
“Okay, fine. Did.”
He hopped to the edge of the desk, talons tapping the wood. “Do you have any idea how dangerous mirror creatures are? They’re parasites, Jess. They feed on real-world sensations. They replace people. The Magical Council has banned all contact with them for centuries.”
“I didn’t plan to contact one! It just showed up and kissed me.”
“That’s how it starts. Show me the gloss.”
I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up for him. His beady eyes studying the swirling peach-gold liquid.
“What else did you put in this?” Raven asked as I turned the tube over.
“The stuff from the recipe. Moonstone. Hm, a little extra moonstone, honey, a rose petal…” My stomach knotted. “And a piece of my hair.”
His head snapped up. “Your hair?”
“It’s supposed to make it personal—”
“Jess, that doesn’t make it personal to him. It makes it personal to you.”
“I’m sorry, I…”
But Raven was paying no attention to me as he carried on.
“The gloss didn’t anchor to Nate at all,” Raven said, pacing.
“It anchored to you. Your hair tied it to your energy. You overloaded it with moonstone, and the corsage petal pulled in the Mirror Realm. So, instead of harmless glamour, you built a glowing beacon that screamed ‘open seam here,’ and mirror boy answered.”
I groaned and marched around my room, pressing the palms of my hands into my eyes.
“If you’d been anywhere else, maybe the gloss would’ve just fizzled. Hallowell Bay is already sitting on enough magical seams to make the air hum, and you know your bedroom mirror had always been… twitchy. Tonight, apparently, it had been waiting for an excuse.”
My eyes flickered to the peach blobs still stuck to the mirror and I sank onto my bed. “What do I do?”
Before Raven could answer, the air above my rug shimmered like a heat wave. The room filled with a glowing purple smoke, and with a shower of rainbow glitter that smelled of hairspray, Baba Yaga appeared.
She was exactly as Mom had described her; towering, all sharp cheekbones and sharper attitude, in an electric-blue power suit with shoulder pads you could land a plane on. Her hair was a gravity-defying, teased-to-the-heavens, eighties masterpiece.
I cowered under the glare of the most powerful witch in the world.
“Jessica Knox,” she said in the kind of voice that made you sit up, even if you were already sitting up straight. “Explain yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I just wanted him to like me.”
“There are other ways to do that,” Baba Yaga snapped.
“None of them involve abusing magic, endangering the veil between realms, and violating at least four Magical Council statutes before dinner.” She paused, eyes narrowing in a way that made the air feel colder.
“I’ve dealt with your kind of mess before.
Different face, same hunger. The last one wore a girl’s smile and walked out of a Paris boutique in 1924.
She lasted nine days before she drained her counterpart dry.
“Her voice went sharp enough to cut. “I had to drag her back through the glass myself. She didn’t go quietly.”
“I know. Please, help me get Nate back. I’ll never try anything like this again.”
Her eyes narrowed, but there was a flicker of something that might have been sympathy. “You have one week. One. If you fail, I will personally escort you to Magical Containment jail, and your mother will hear every detail. Raven will give you the information you need. I’ll be watching you.”
I swallowed hard. “One week. Got it.”
With another glittery shimmer, she vanished, leaving the faint scent of Aqua Net in the air.
Raven sighed. “Well, looks like you’re going to learn more about the Mirror Realm than you ever wanted to know.”
“Awesome,” I muttered. “Can’t wait.” I tried to match Raven’s glare with one of my own, but the mirror behind him rippled, just once, like it knew what was coming.
Raven’s beady stare tracked me like he was mentally chiselling my tombstone. “That’s day one gone, Jess. Six left before Baba Yaga redecorates your jail cell.”
Six days. The number clung to me like a burr.