The Crumpled Mirror by Elizabeth Loea (free novel reading sites TXT) 📕

the floor and walls made of a dark, coarsely-cut wood. It felt like a room I’d read about in fairy tales. There were some exceptions: there was a laptop open on the desk pushed into the corner, and something that looked like a cross between a Rubix cube and a Polaroid camera was lodged between the blankets. But it was mostly a comfortable, if eccentric, bedroom.

There was a fire blazing in the hearth—a hearth! In a bedroom!—and a black cat curled up on the desk chair.

Indigo leaned down to stuff a pile of junk under his bed and settled the checkered comforter over it.

“Uh,” he said, a little sheepish. “Welcome.”

I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Why don’t you have a real door to your room?”

“Ah, the androids. If you leave a space big enough for them to come in, they will. Doors don’t really work all that well against them. We’ve got to be careful about all of that, so I claimed this room.” He gestured about. “It’s from the older version of the library, when things weren’t all so...modern.”

There were shelves pushed back against the walls, stacked with all sorts of odd trinkets and marvelous shiny things. The desk, too, was stacked with stuff, probably homework. The computer pinged with messages. A wardrobe against the opposing wall spilled junk out from between its finely-carved doors, and a series of fake vines curled across the metal footboard of the bed.

I sank into the comforter and leaned against the footboard. He took a seat opposite me, his back against the headboard. The cat mewled, stretched, hopped off the chair, and clambered onto the bed, padding over to examine me closely. Once it had its verdict, it climbed into my lap, curled up, and went to sleep.

“What’s its name?”

“Toto,” he said. “And no, he doesn’t talk.”

I chuckled at that.

“So...telekinesis, huh?” I repeated.

“You’re going to press me on that, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never met a telekinetic person before.”

“Obviously. And your mystery-hungry brain is eating me right up, hm?”

“Guilty as charged. Stop dodging.”

Indigo leaned forward, the lighter streaks in his hair glimmering in the firelight. “It’s only been bad the last few months or so,” he said. “But it’s happened every so often throughout my life. When—when my sister died, I realized I wasn’t crazy to think magic was real. It took me until...well, until last night to be absolutely sure.”

“I’d be pretty sure if I could move shit with my mind.”

He shrugged. “It always ends poorly. I haven’t tested it that much. When I was little, I thought I was hallucinating.”

“‘Always ends poorly?’” I repeated.

“I don’t have that much control over it. Either it ends up like the android back there, or nothing happens. There’s no in-between. And sometimes I can’t stop the collateral damage, either. Like, if I mean to lift a shelf into the air, I might explode it and three other shelves nearby. Mom says it’s best to just avoid using the power altogether.”

He glanced toward the door, probably worried she might come in and start yelling. So far, it seemed she was otherwise occupied.

“So you’re hoping Mint will tell you something about it,” I concluded. “That’s why you’re going through the tests.”

“No, I’m doing that to find out about Cecelia.”

“Your sister.”

He nodded. “Everything outside is burned, but...do you want to see something? I haven’t been there in...well, about a decade, but I think going with you would make it easier.”

“I’ve known you for less than a day.”

He shrugged. “I haven’t really had anyone to go with. I try to avoid people, for the most part. Partly because of the telekinesis, partly because I’ve been so consumed by the magic stuff that…”

“It’s hard to talk to people who aren’t as obsessed as you are,” I finished for him. “Yeah.”

“So if you’re not comfortable going with me, I understand,” he told me. “But if you are, it would be great.”

His tone warmed my heart. Having someone trust me—particularly someone who was as insane as I was—meant more than anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

I pushed Toto off my lap and rose from the bed, extending a hand to Indigo. He didn’t accept it, but slid off the comforter and stood at my side, his eyes on the hole to the broom closet.

“We’re going to have to do this carefully,” he said. He ducked through the hole to the storage closet and I followed, already longing for the warmth of the fire and the comfort of Toto purring in my lap.

Indigo slid from shadow to shadow in the hallway outside his room. I followed less cautiously, my footsteps quiet enough to be  ignored but not quiet enough to be silent. The shadows danced around us, the buzzing of the fluorescent lights drawing moths even this far below the ground.

Door after door, we crept through the halls of the great library, our footfalls the only sounds. Far in the distance, the sound of electronics and a faint whizzing cut through the thick quiet, but here, there was almost nothing.

Indigo pulled aside a curtain at about waist height in a room that looked like a decimated study, the table on its side next to the hole in the wall. He let me go first through it, and I was lucky I moved with care, because the space beyond had only a small ledge to keep me from falling. I grabbed him for balance as he followed me through.

Indigo chuckled at that and gestured to what looked like a fire pole a foot beyond the drop. The room itself was only a few feet wide, the ledge a smooth stone, a pale orange glow lighting the stone beneath our feet.

“You can go first,” he said.

“This isn’t one big trap to kill me and roast me, or something?”

“If you like mysteries so much, go down and find out.”

That was not reassuring, but I knew he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. I’ll admit, that was a little naive of