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

as he could muster at Ginger. Ginger, meanwhile, was her usual self—hard to get used to but funny once I got used to her hyperbolic humor and her confusingly contradictory demeanor.

“What next?” she asked at last. “There are only four more tests.”

“Only,” I repeated, disbelieving. “Adrian died in the first test. The next four have to be more difficult. How bad can they get?”

Indigo gestured agreement. “We have to stick together on this,” he added.

“Absolutely not,” Adrian interjected. “We don’t even know if we all passed the first test.”

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“That could mean any number of things. I’m not working with you until I know for a fact that my success is not dependent on your failure.”

“How kind,” Ginger grumbled, but there was no real hatred in her voice. At that point, each of us had already determined one thing: we’d do whatever it took to pass these tests.

A competition for answers about the murders of our childhood friends, relatives, and enemies was probably not the most productive way to establish our friendship.

Ginger leaned back on her couch and kicked her feet up on the coffee table.

“What if passing this test is reliant on character?” she asked, although we all knew she didn’t believe it. If the test was reliant on character, Mint would have already failed me for killing Adrian, and possibly Adrian for being himself. “What if you have to act right to get magic? What if your ability to use it is reliant on how good of a person you are?”

“Then the kind of magic we’re going to learn isn’t that great after all,” Adrian replied. “I’m not here to fuck around.”

That was one way to level the conversation.

“Three weeks,” I said. “Four tests.”

“And several dead bodies,” Indigo added. “One in each of our worlds, it seems.”

“They’re our responsibility, aren’t they?” Ginger said, her tone resigned but her posture tense..

“Who else’s responsibility could they be, if Mint isn’t doing anything about them?” Indigo asked. “They shouldn’t be left without justice. And who else will bring them justice except us?”

I shrugged and stood. “We’ll see what happens. If we can, we need to figure out what happened to those victims. There’s almost nothing that can be done to stop whoever’s killing them unless we look into what’s happened already. And that means...”

“We’ve got to figure out the past,” Adrian interjected. “Our pasts.”

“Yeah.”

He dropped his head into his hands and Ginger groaned. Indigo just looked at me as if I was about to disappear. For a brief, brief moment, everyone looked their age. We were just students who wanted to learn but were scared of what they would learn and why they wanted to learn it.

We had deaths to investigate. We had magic to learn. We had cryptic notes, new magics, a complicated future ahead of us, and terrible memories at our backs.

But, more than anything, I had an unconquerable urge to sleep for a long, long time.

I claimed a bedroom close to the stairs and nobody looked up as I headed to sleep. It had been a long day—much too long—for all of us. I hadn’t slept more than four hours in two days, and whatever this day held for us, it would be complicated.

Damn it, I’d left my Bio notes at home.

I fell asleep with grass all over me, my hair filled with sticks. There were bruises and dirt stains across my thighs. I didn’t care one bit. I didn’t even glance at the room I claimed. The bed was too inviting, the comforter too warm, the small fireplace already lit when I entered. I propped my driftwood against the wardrobe, and collapsed facedown onto the pillows for what I expected would be the best night of sleep in years.

When Adrian shook me awake at half-past five in the morning, I hit him in the chest. In part, it was payback for the night before. From where she sat on the desk next to my bed, Vivi directed a wicked smile in my direction.

“What happened?” I demanded. In the half-light, he seemed more exhausted than ever, his face all angular bones and his hair unkempt.

“Ow,” he grumbled, rubbing at his sternum. “What do you mean? I’m waking you up to make breakfast.”

I wasn’t awake enough to say anything mean, so I just stared at him.

“And why the fuck do you think I’m going to make you breakfast?” I finally asked, my brain and voice together enough at that point to form a coherent sentence.

He raised his hands in self-defense. “I woke all the others up and they said they couldn’t. You’re the last one. I hope you can cook.”

I rolled over onto my front and pulled the comforter back over myself.

“Can you?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “But you’re a grown man. Do it yourself or wait until I actually wake up.”

He grumbled and plodded out of the room, but by then I was too awake to go back to sleep. Besides, Vivi’s stare has always made it hard for me to relax—especially after what I’d read in that journal entry the night before. A ghostlike strangling a young woman in a mansion...Vivi and I fit all the criteria for that situation to go down between us.

I would need to figure out what Amaranth was trying to warn me about—or lure me into. Especially considering what they’d written about Mint.

I pulled myself out of bed, showered in the adjoining bathroom, and dressed in clothes supplied by the wardrobe, which had been stocked by someone who didn’t quite get my size right. Maybe I’d chosen the wrong room.

It didn’t matter. I grabbed my driftwood and slinked downstairs, careful to avoid Adrian, who was pouting in the kitchen.

My first thought: Where do I find Indigo?

My second: How do I avoid Indigo?

Lilac had made it awkward. It wasn’t really her fault, but irritation still fizzed in my stomach. Indigo had been the only member of the group I conclusively trusted, and now we would have to confront what Lilac had