The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

‘I do not want people to die!’

‘Then, my dear, you must not make any more wishes.’

The black-eyed woman looked like someone’s mother, or the gentler kind of schoolmistress. After Mrs Pembroke’s death Eleanor had imagined countless women like her who might take her in. Distant relatives in country cottages, or honest churchgoers ready to usher her in from the cold. But the black-eyed woman knew that, Eleanor realized. How many nights had Eleanor lulled herself to sleep imagining a woman with her neat brown bun, her pretty flowered dress, her gentle motherly arms? And here she sat, so exactly like her daydreams that she could have sprung, Athena-like, from Eleanor’s own head. Even her voice was familiar – something like her mother’s, or Mrs Pembroke’s. Only the eyes were different. Flat, black, cold. They were the eyes of what the black-eyed woman truly was – the thing that wanted her soul. She’d squeezed herself into the shape Eleanor’s imagination had given her, with only her eyes to give her away.

Eleanor wondered what she really looked like, and pushed the thought away at once.

The black-eyed woman had killed the canary. The black-eyed woman had killed Lizzie. Her plump fingers had stretched out like eagles’ talons, and hacked and slashed Eleanor’s wishes into being.

‘I think you should leave,’ Eleanor whispered.

The black-eyed woman vanished. Eleanor hadn’t felt the mattress move, nor had she felt it when the black-eyed woman sat on the foot of her bed. It was as if she’d never been there.

Eleanor had never wanted anything to be true so badly.

Eleanor did not sleep. She stared at the wall, tears pouring down her face. Lizzie was dead because of her, and that sweet little canary.

If Eleanor hadn’t made any wishes, they would still be alive. How had she ever thought that anything good could come of selling her soul? How had she ever imagined that a being called by blood would ever bring any joy? She had blindly taken the black-eyed woman’s deal like a child running into the woods, and now the path was lost and she was surrounded by things moving through the trees.

The butcher’s boy had killed Lizzie and the canary might have – how had the little bird died? She couldn’t remember – but the woman had set them on those paths, paths that Eleanor had laid the moment she spoke her wishes aloud. It was all Eleanor’s fault.

Hers, and the black-eyed woman’s.

The black-eyed woman had appeared like a glimpse of a great creature below the surface of the water. What had been a flat, empty expanse of darkness shifted and became a vast, shining flank, or a glittering tapestry of scales. Even the woman’s eyes were black and still, like an immense dark lake. In making a wish carelessly, Eleanor had been trailing her fingers over the water, waiting for something to lunge towards her hand.

How could she have been so thoughtless?

If only she’d been better, Eleanor thought, clutching her head. If she’d been wiser, more careful, the kind of girl Mrs Pembroke would have wanted her to be. Mrs Pembroke would never have made such a careless mistake. She would’ve taken one look at the black-eyed woman and seen her for what she truly was. If Eleanor had been better, kinder, cleverer, she would not have made the deal. Mr Pembroke would not have attacked Leah. Eleanor, at the age of nine, would not have sat at the foot of the old iron bed with her hands over her ears while her mother …

Eleanor shook her head. She had to find a way out of the deal. The black-eyed woman had never mentioned anything like this. She’d lied to her. She’d never asked for power like this. There had to be a way out of the deal.

And until she found one, she would not make any more wishes.

Eleanor crept down the servants’ staircase. It was gone midnight – she’d heard the chimes and flinched, as she always did – and the house was quiet. The smell of rain oozed under the gap of the door to the second-floor corridor, and over the sounds of it falling Eleanor could hear something scrabbling behind the cheaply plastered wall.

She was going to the library. There had to be something in there to help her find a way out of the deal. She couldn’t sit and lament over the state of her soul; she had to take it back. It was hers, and it would not be taken from her.

She did not see the light coming through the gap under the door until it was already opening. Her heart stuttered, she shrank back, but it was too late.

Mr Pembroke was standing on the second-floor landing, a candle clutched in his hand. He was swaying on the spot, his waistcoat half-undone, a brown stain on his rumpled white shirt. But his eyes were fixed on her, and a slow, horrible smile was spreading across his face.

‘Ella,’ he slurred, ‘what are you doing out of bed?’

Eleanor gripped the banister, just to have something to hold on to. She was in her nightdress, her hair in a sloppy plait, her feet were bare. Mr Pembroke was staring at them, his eyes bloodshot.

‘I thought I heard a noise,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I see that must have been you. If you’ll excuse me, I—’

‘No. I need to talk to you. In the study.’

Eleanor reached for the doorknob. He was clearly drunk. Maybe if she shut the door he’d forget she’d ever been there, and she could creep back to bed as if nothing had happened …

Mr Pembroke pointed a finger down the corridor. ‘If you don’t come into the study, you’re dismissed. I’ll throw you out in the clothes you stand up in.’

Eleanor stared into his dark, wet eyes, the colour an oily, glistening brown, and knew that he would do it. He would not care that he was her legal guardian, or that she had no