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

to meet mine, even when I tapped the back of his hand. Gods, he was freezing to the touch, colder than a window in the dead of winter.

“So what’s going on? What are we supposed to prepare for? I saw a man turn into ash in front of me just hours ago. Do you just expect us to carry on with our tasks as though we have no part in this? And this—” I continued, pulling the copy of Midsummer out of my bag. “—the guy gave me this.”

I didn’t expect such a violent reaction. Mint, who had been sitting still enough to model good behaviour to the statues at Madame Tussauds, finally jolted again. Lilac and I both flinched, but he didn’t explode out at us as he might have. He just pulled the book from my hands faster than I could blink.

“Mint,” I hissed. “It’s not fair to us to not explain.”

He met my gaze at last, and this was the Mint I’d met early on. Finally, endlessly still, cold and pale as stone, this was the Mint that had helped Adrian from the ground. And this was the Mint who wanted to help. There was no anger in that stare, no rage at my audacity to speak so frankly to him. There wasn’t even fear.

Just exhaustion. Horrible, endless, terrible exhaustion. Not even a spark of life.

What the hell had he done?

Guilt flooded his face, and anger, and back were the freckles and the pale pink tinge. He pressed himself back into the booth behind him and stared me down.

“No secrets to outsiders,” he explained. “Your realms are not our responsibility until you pass the tests and join us.”

“So you’re just going to let people die?”

He couldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry, Clementine.”

It was the first time he’d apologized to me.

Lilac reached over and pressed her palm to the top of the book. I half-expected her to tug it away from him, but she just looked up at him, her expression unreadable in the orange lighting of the diner.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she asked, her voice soft and scathing. “There are five young magicians in danger and your excuse for not helping us is that it’s not customary? That help isn’t due to outsiders when we’re in trouble? What kind of logic is that?”

“It’s how it works,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“It’s how it works,” she repeated. “Ten people are dead.”

“They aren’t magicians.”

Now people stared. This wasn’t just a personal quarrel anymore, and I knew that if they were to get involved, Lilac and I would end up grossly outnumbered by people who were incalculably stronger than us.

Maybe that would happen. I wasn’t about to interrupt her, though.

“What kind of person would you be?” Lilac said at last, standing to go. “What kind of person would you be if you let us die on your watch?”

Mint didn’t say anything. He just struggled against himself.

“What happened to you?” Lilac asked. “Are you cursed? What’s wrong with your face? Is this some kind of test?”

He just stared at the book, at the title, at the binding. He stared at it as if we’d pulled it from the grave of one of his friends—as though having it was both a great travesty and a great blessing.

I didn’t care. There was no way I could care, at that point. All these tests, all this magic, all this nonsense. There was nothing to be done about it except figure it out for ourselves.

“Fine,” I said at last. “Thank you for the house. At least we have one place to go if we get swarmed by ghosts. And fuck you for your cowardice, and your apathy.”

That was too harsh. We’d already beaten him down, even though he was already in a terrible spot. He looked as though someone had stabbed him, and I knew it had nothing to do with the words we’d thrown at him. It was all because of the book, that damned book, with the five names in it.

“Artie Lincoln,” I said. “Eleanor Hsu, Jamie Jacobs, Gavin Hernandez.”

Mint met my eyes. “Please,” he said. “Don’t—”

“Oberon.”

His face crumpled at that name, and I almost wanted to apologize. Almost.

“You’re one of them,” I said. “You’re one of them. And you died. There were deaths ten years ago. There are deaths now. Mind explaining that connection to me?”

He didn’t say anything for a long minute.

“Your next test is in four days,” he said, but his voice cracked and changed partway through. “You will not see me until then.”

We left after that, as quickly as we could, with our palms pressed to the door. Somehow, it knew where to take us. The rest of our trio waited beyond, in the highest room of the lighthouse.

“So?” Indigo asked, his eyes on me.

“So we’re on our own,” I replied.

“Shit.”

Worse than being on our own, we were subject to the whims of a man who was clearly struggling with some internal battle of wills. The last test had been accompanied by Mint’s death, and had been followed by Vivi’s death. Who was Mint to say we needed to leave it alone?

His real name was in that book I’d just given him, and in the journal pages Amaranth had left me.

I just had to find out which person he was.

And if he was the nameless kid...well, I’d deal with that if it came down to that.

XVIII

Lilac and I took up seats in our little five-person circle on the floor of the lighthouse. Outside, the sun scraped past four o’clock and the ocean settled into a deep blue-green, the texture of fine silk. Silence drew curtains between each of us.

“What next?” Lilac mused. “We can’t go back to our worlds—at least, not unprepared. I don’t trust Mint enough to stay at the mansion. And if people keep dying at this rate…”

Adrian sighed. “We’ve got to banish the ghosts,” he said. “And we’ve got to scare the killer off, at least