Chapter 21
Jess
The science wing after hours was a whole different level of creepy.
But we didn’t have time to wait until the next morning, Nate didn’t have time.
The faint smell of rosemary and rue already hung in the air, smoke curling from tiny burners Bianca had set at each corner.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, stabbing at my temples.
My hands still tingled from the attempted banishment spell earlier, the ache running all the way to my shoulders.
Raven’s gaze lingered on me, like he could see the magic leeching my strength. “You’re running on fumes,” he muttered. “There’s a way to fix that, but I don’t have it on me.”
“Then go,” I said.
He gave a sharp nod and launched himself out the open window, a streak of black against the sky. The hallway felt quieter without his constant muttering.
Bianca stepped closer, her voice low so it wouldn’t echo. “You’re going to get him back, Jess. I know you are.”
I shook my head. “What if I’m too late? What if—”
“You won’t be,” she said, cutting me off. “Because you love him, and because you’re too damn stubborn to let some mirror creep win.”
My throat tightened. “Bianca…”
She grinned. “Think of the man you love, Jess. Hold onto that. It’s stronger than you think.”
Before I could answer, Raven swooped back through the window, clutching a tiny vial between his claws. The liquid inside shimmered gold and green. “Sunroot and stardew. Old family recipe. Drink, and you’ll have enough magic to get through the night without burning yourself out.”
I took it, the glass warm against my fingers, and Bianca’s words even warmer in my chest.
Something in her tone hit deeper than the potion’s warmth, steadying my hands before I even uncorked the vial.
The liquid burned sweet and sharp on my tongue, like cinnamon chased with lightning.
Heat spread from my chest to my fingertips, untangling the ache in my muscles and clearing the fog from my head.
The tingling in my hands eased, replaced by a steady thrum of magic, like my veins were carrying sunlight instead of blood.
Raven tilted his head, watching me. “Don’t get cocky. It’s a quick fix, not a miracle. You’ve got maybe an hour before the boost burns off, so make it count.”
Bianca jiggled the key she’d borrowed from the janitor’s closet. “You ready?”
“No,” I said, but I pushed the storeroom door open anyway.
The room was smaller than I’d imagined, more like a walk-in closet than a proper storage space.
Metal shelves lined the walls, sagging under boxes of cracked beakers, dented Bunsen burners, and mysterious jars with labels that had faded to nothing.
In the back, leaning against the far wall, was the mirror Raven had described.
It was oval, the kind with an ornate metal frame, but the surface was cloudy, like frost had formed on the inside. Even from the doorway, I could feel the seam humming behind it, a steady, patient thrum, like a heart waiting for a reason to beat faster.
“This,” Raven said from his perch on a shelf, “is where we win.”
Bianca looked around the cramped space and grinned. “Or die in a very creative way.”
I set the flamingo mirror down on an empty shelf and pulled the peach-gold gloss from my pocket. The last time we’d tried this, Etan had pulled Nate back in before the seam collapsed. I could still feel the ghost of his sleeve slipping out of my grip, the hollow ache when the mirror went still.
Not this time.
“Feels like we’re summoning Bloody Mary,” Bianca said crossing her arms over her chest and hugging herself.
“We’re not,” I said. “She’d be safer company.”
Bianca helped me to add double salt lines around us, and I hoped they would help to keep us safe. The last thing I added was the peach lip gloss, opening it and adding a small dab to my lips before smacking them together.
A shape took form. Shoulders, jawline, hair I’d memorized without trying.
“Nate?” Bianca’s voice was small.
I kept my tone level. “Stay back.”
The shadow sharpened and then his face came into view.
Except it wasn’t Nate.
The smile was wrong. Too still, too deliberate. The eyes glittered like mercury, catching every scrap of light.
Etan.
He didn’t speak at first, just watched us with the patience of a spider. Then, in a voice muffled like it came from underwater, he said, “You came back to see me. How thoughtful.”
The chalk under my hands prickled, faint static rising from it like heat off asphalt. I tightened my grip on the flamingo mirror, feeling the frame vibrate.
“You’re not keeping him,” I said.
Etan’s gaze slid to Bianca, and the mirror rippled. For a split second, I saw her reflected, but older, silver-eyed, lips parted in something that might have been a scream. Then the image snapped back to Etan’s grin.
Raven swooped down from his perch, feathers puffed. “Enough games.”
Etan tilted his head, like he’d just noticed the bird. “You again. Tell her the truth, little herald, the Realm doesn’t give up what it takes. It only trades.”
The mirror pulsed once, twice, each time spiderweb cracks racing from the center. The glass gave a sound like a distant bell being struck.
“Back!” Raven barked.
I yanked Bianca away just as the surface burst into a spray of silver-edged shards. They dissolved before hitting the floor, leaving only the frame, empty, dark, and humming.
Bianca let out a shaky breath. “So, that’s a no on luring him?”
“On the contrary,” Raven said. “He knows we’re ready for him. That makes him reckless.”
I wasn’t sure if that was good news, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
The mirror maze rattled like it was about to shatter into a million pieces. Nate’s reflections were everywhere now, his pale, desperate, fists pounding on the glass. I could feel him slipping away.
Etan’s voice echoed from every direction. “You don’t have to do this, Jessica. We could make this world ours. You, me, no limits.”
The inner salt ring flared white, iron filings sizzling like tiny fireworks.
Etan stopped short, his eyes darting between the mirrored walls that reflected him a dozen times over, each image sharpening into something meaner, hungrier.
The scent of burning rosemary and rue filled the air, smoke curling at the edges of the room.
I tightened my grip on the peach lip gloss in my pocket. Raven’s voice from earlier echoed in my head: Especially the peach one.
“Looking for this?” I held it up, letting the light catch the shimmer of its enchantment.
Etan’s gaze snapped to it, his expression flickering between curiosity and suspicion. “You think a trinket’s going to save you?”
“Not save me,” I said, and tossed it just inside the second salt ring. The gloss hit the ground with a faint chime, releasing a puff of allure magic.
Like a magpie with a death wish, he stepped forward—right into the tighter ring. The sigils Raven had inked on my hands burned hot, responding to his presence. The mirrors blazed, folding his reflections inward until there was nowhere left to look but at himself.
He snarled and lunged for the seam in the barrier.
The inner ward cracked, lines splitting like glass—only for the ward echo spell to ignite, sealing the break with twice the strength.
The iron filings sparked again, driving him back toward the center, toward the gloss that had baited him in the first place.
Bianca coughed through the rosemary smoke. “That’s one way to make peach look lethal.”
Raven swooped down and landed on my shoulder, shouting over the wind. “End it now, before it’s too late.”
“I don’t have enough power,” I yelled back.
Then, my hand brushed my skirt pocket, the one holding my backup gloss. And another. And another. My entire enchanted lip gloss collection. Weeks of work. Love charms, protection spells, even the one I’d made for perfect karaoke confidence.
“Oh, this is going to hurt,” I muttered.
I yanked them all out, uncapped them, and let the magic pour into the flamingo mirror.
The mirror drank the magic like it was parched.
A faint whisper threaded through the sound of the vortex.
It wasn’t words, but the cadence of something calling from far away, hungry and patient.
The glosses hissed and sparked as the enchantments bled together, glitter swirling in a golden vortex that slammed into the mirror maze like a hurricane.
The scent was overpowering, sugar-sweet peach tangled with metallic ozone, like a thunderstorm blooming inside a candy shop.
The golden vortex roared, each swirl catching the light until the air looked molten.
Shards shattered in slow motion, glittering down like dangerous snow.
The wrong Nates and wrong Jesses dissolved one by one, their mouths opening in silent screams that left frost on the air.
My arms ached from holding the spell steady, the magic thrumming through my bones like a drumbeat that wanted to split me in two.
I ground out the words of the banishing spell, my mind focused on holding everything together, but behind my eyes, I saw Nate, his smile, his eyes.
Etan appeared in front of me, close enough that I could see the silver in his eyes ripple. For a heartbeat, he didn’t try to stop me.
Instead, he whispered, “Remember me.”
“Etan—”
The spell pulled him backward, his edges blurring into light. Around us, every wrong reflection screamed, fractured, and dissolved. Nate’s image in the nearest mirror reached toward me and this time, I reached back.
Etan’s last smile was almost human before the magic swallowed him whole.
The maze collapsed. The flamingo mirror went still. I dropped to my knees, the empty gloss tubes clattering to the floor like tiny plastic tombstones.
Raven hopped down beside me. “You did it.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. But it doesn’t feel like winning.”