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

say something. Since Ginger and Lilac were having their own little conversation, I gave Adrian a look that could shatter glass. He pulled up a chair, sat down, and tugged my hot cocoa from my fingers.

“That’s mine—” I started, expecting him to dump it onto the concrete. Instead, he just sniffed it.

“What is this?”

“Chocolate,” I said. “What the hell is wrong with Lilac?”

Ginger gave me a look and I shrugged. I didn’t have time to talk kindly to Adrian, even though I kind of owed it to him after killing him the night before.

“Deaths,” he said. “In her realm, and mine. And Indigo’s. I don’t know where he went, though.”

Adrian took a minute to catch his breath.

Indigo emerged from around the back of the Starbucks, holding my driftwood like a tray. Atop it rested a few other odds and ends: a thick piece of glass about the size of a window, a polished slab of mahogany, and a large, battered copper square. He cut an eccentric figure: a broad teenager in a dark green button-down carrying a pile of junk, his dishevelled hair a mess and his eyes practically glowing. He was even more out of breath than Lilac, but he kept a steady pace toward us.

Vivi fled when she spotted him.

Ginger and I barely had time to get the beverages off the table before Indigo set them down in front of us as easily as if they had been a single sheet of paper.

“Could you replicate the flying charm on these?” he asked me. “We need proper transportation.”

I glanced at Lilac. “I think there’s something more urgent at stake,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“My cousin got vaporized,” Adrian said.

“Adrian,” Indigo interjected.

“What?”

Ginger looked up at me as Lilac caught her breath and took a sip of the tea. Adrian struggled to look unaffected and took a moment to adjust his shirt.

“Did you see who did it?” I asked, trying to keep panic out of my voice.

“No. One second he was there...the next, he was gone.”

I didn’t know what to say. None of us did. Adrian wasn’t the kind of person who’d accept the sympathy of strangers, and we were as good as strangers to him.

Being friends with him is not an easy task.

“And a shopkeeper in Lilac’s world,” Adrian added, quick to change the subject. “Indigo hasn’t heard of one in his, but I’m sure it’s happened.”

“One here,” I said. “Ginger was there, too. The substitute disappeared into thin air.”

“Could be Ginger’s fault, then,” Adrian grumbled.

“I don’t think so,” Ginger told him. “We have bigger concerns than your inexplicable hatred of me. Now it’s up to ten deaths. Not six. Ten. Ten deaths in two days. Fifteen if you count the ones from ten years ago.”

The table of students nearby gaped, but I leaned against Indigo and tried not to look their way.

“I think it has something to do with the tests,” I said. “So I think we need to talk to Mint. The deaths started up again when the new tests did. Mint was killed in the last test. Surely he knows something about what happened. Maybe he even knows who the killer was the last time.

“What if—” Adrian started, but silenced himself before he could say anything more. That was new. “How soon can we go?”

Indigo pressed a pen into my hand. It wasn’t a Sharpie, but it looked a lot like one. I scrawled the charm across each object as my classmates watched.

I told myself it didn’t matter. They already knew I was eccentric. School would be shut down for a while because of the death, anyway. Honestly, though? I kind of revelled in the secret, in the fact that I had embarked on this adventure and had the chance to leave behind everyone who’d called me crazy these past four years.

Adrian took the glass, leaving Ginger with the copper and Lilac with the mahogany. I turned to Indigo when I was done.

“What about you?”

“Telekinetic,” he reminded me. “And if that ever falls through, I can share yours.”

“Go. I’ll catch up with you,” I said. “There’s something I have to do first.”

XV

I waited until I saw Indigo finally head out before I pulled the copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream out of my bag. I hadn’t flipped it open yet—honestly, I was too afraid of what I might find. If a person hands you anything right before his death, make sure to take proper precautions. He has nothing left to lose.

This, fortunately, was not among the more terrifying things I’ve been handed by people who are about to die.

The cover was tattered. It was an older edition that hadn’t bothered to try to make it interesting for teenagers. I leaned against the railing and tried to ignore my schoolmates, who kept glancing at the driftwood Indigo had left with me.

In the book were five signatures, all in different hands. Whoever had signed this had to have been either a group of non-magicians or a group of especially careless magic users.

I traced the names, all of which were highly-stylized cursive signatures. Artie Lincoln, Penelope Hsu, Jamie Jacobs, Gavin Hernandez, and a crossed-out scribble with “Oberon” scrawled above it.

Wait, I thought. I’d read two of those names before. No—three: Artie, Penelope, and Jamie. That couldn’t be coincidence. But if the substitute had been in possession of this play, that meant he had either found it somewhere…

…or he was one of the people who had signed their names in it.

Both prospects were horrifying.

“Fucking magicians,” I grumbled. I took a photo of it on my phone just in case I lost the book. The rest of it was annotated but contained nothing useful—just the idle ramblings of a very disengaged teenager. No mention of spells or charms.

A headache began to creep up my neck and sink its claws into my skull. Before I could do something rash—throw the book away, engage with my schoolmates, buy another cup of coffee—I grabbed the driftwood and jogged to behind the Starbucks, where I