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

the black-eyed woman. She had no idea how she had come to be trapped in the book – was it like the jinn in Aladdin’s lamp? Eleanor didn’t even know what she was. She’d assumed the black-eyed woman must be a demon – she had come from the pages of Faustus, after all, and Eleanor couldn’t think of anything else interested in the buying and selling of souls – but how could that be right, if Eleanor was able to set foot on holy ground?

Eleanor was teeming with questions. She cleared her throat. The sounds of the hotel had begun to fade hours ago – footsteps on stairs, broughams and carriages pulling up to the entrance, doors opening and closing – but now, they seemed a fraction quieter. As if something was listening.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘I’d like to talk to you. Can you … come out?’

‘If you insist, dear.’

Shadows shifted. The black-eyed woman stood perfectly still, in a spot where there had been nothing but darkness. The back of a chair became the swell of her skirt, the sharp edge of a corner became the line of her shawl.

She sat at the table, hands neatly folded. Something in the way she walked did not seem right. Every step was measured, even, and precise. It reminded Eleanor of Felicity on the morning they’d met. Felicity had seemed so scared of knocking something over she’d walked like a mannequin. The black-eyed woman had that same stilted air, born of endless observation. With a shiver, Eleanor wondered how long she had been watching for.

‘I wanted to apologize,’ Eleanor began, ignoring the prickling feeling on the back of her neck. ‘I was very rude to you when we last spoke.’

The black-eyed woman gave a gracious nod. ‘That’s quite all right, my dear.’

‘Will you tell me your name?’

She gave a smile. It was empty. ‘You may call me Alice. Or, if you prefer, Emmeline.’

Eleanor flinched. Her mother’s name. Mrs Pembroke’s name. Hearing them from the black-eyed woman’s mouth stung. The chair felt like the end of an iron bedstead, pressing into her back.

‘Those aren’t your names, are they?’ she asked, her voice quiet.

The black-eyed woman spread her hands. ‘They may as well be. I hope that, in time, you will come to think of me in the same way. I have only your best interests at heart.’

Eleanor resisted the urge to ask if the black-eyed woman had a heart. ‘I must call you something.’

‘There is no need.’

‘But how am I to find you, if I want something? I don’t even know where you live. You just appeared from that corner! How did you get here?’

‘It’s not nearly as impressive as it seems. Suffice to say that I am quite as real as you are, but that does not mean we are the same type of creature.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘No, I imagine not.’

The woman’s eyes were flat and still. So was her smile. Perhaps that was how she managed her disappearing trick – simply staying so still that the eye glazed over her. Mesmerists and mediums did that sort of thing. It was easier to believe that the black-eyed woman was like them than to acknowledge that she was something else entirely.

‘Why did you call me?’ she asked.

Staring into the woman’s black eyes was like looking over the rim of a pit. Eleanor shifted and looked away. ‘I thought we ought to get to know each other.’

The black-eyed woman laughed. ‘My dear girl, I know you already. But if it’s conversation you want, I can oblige. How are you finding your new position?’

What did she mean, I know you already? What was she? Eleanor adjusted the ice and wondered how best to broach the question. The woman’s smile did little to soften the emptiness of her eyes. The thought of making that smile disappear made sweat prickle across the palms of Eleanor’s hands. ‘It hasn’t quite been what I expected.’

The black-eyed woman tutted. ‘It was cruel of Miss Darling to treat you so. But she is a desperate woman. I expect cruelty is her last weapon.’

Eleanor remembered Mr Darling’s face. Drawn and pale, but still lit with anger at the sight of his daughter’s dress.

‘I fear your Charles is in for a nasty shock.’

A bead of cold water rolled down Eleanor’s sleeve, like a fingernail running across her skin. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m sure Miss Darling is quite the little angel in front of Charles now, but that won’t last past the honeymoon. Of course, it’ll be too late for him then. She won’t give him reason to let her go. Another unhappy marriage in the Pembroke family tree.’

‘Another?’

‘Oh, yes. There have been many, over the years.’

‘Have you seen them all?’

The black-eyed woman smiled. ‘I have seen many things. I will see many more.’

My dear girl, I know you already. Eleanor shivered. ‘Do … do you see everything I do? Even when you’re … elsewhere?’

‘Of course. How else could I grant your wishes?’

Eleanor swallowed. Melting ice dripped through her fingers. ‘When you disappear, where do you go?’

The black-eyed woman patted Eleanor’s hand. ‘It’s a little difficult to explain. I am always with you, but I am elsewhere as well.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to, dear. Just try to think of it as moving between the gaps.’

‘What gaps? How can you move between them? What … what are you?’

The black-eyed woman’s face could have been carved from rock. Firelight cast strange shadows across her skin. One moment her eyes seemed as large as the sockets of a skull, the next they were sharp and small. In the flickering light, the space behind her chair was full of swooping, avian shadows.

Icy water trickled down Eleanor’s wrist. Her pulse fluttered like a trapped bird and suddenly, she realized how fragile it was. It stuttered and stammered and rushed and danced, but one day it would stop, and the black-eyed woman would still be there. Eleanor’s hopes and dreams meant nothing to her. Her ageless hands could change Eleanor’s life,