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

I slammed the door and planted my back to it, my eyes on the painted ceiling. Nothing shifted, thank the gods, so I let myself close my eyes for a breath, and then—

You really thought walls would keep me out, Cecelia said, this time in front of me.

I didn’t open my eyes. If I met her gaze, I would see Indigo in the contours of her face, and then I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed to. I just reached out my hand like before, tried to collect the magic from every corner of my being, and pressed.

I waited for the breath of wind that had followed my magic earlier that day. Maybe I imagined it, but I finally opened my eyes, sure that I’d destroyed the room in front of me.

There were Indigo’s eyes, deep green, ringed with brown. And there was Cecelia’s face, ghostly and horrifying.

Boo, she breathed. I felt the air on my skin.

XXI

Again, I took off. I knew it was useless, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, the pleasure she took in the chase would give me a few seconds to think of something, anything.

The living room was too crowded with furniture, too difficult to make my way through, but I managed it, leaping over the sofa with a grace I’d never mustered before. Maybe it was my magic coming to my air, some sort of reflexive assistance that kept me alive and moving.

The room rippled around me. There was the floor, smooth and brown as maple syrup, and now just as fluid, too. Cecelia’s magic confused, complicated, added layers to the world that hadn’t been there before.

Tell me your name, she said. He needs to know it. Yours is the only name he still needs.

He? my mind asked, but my haste kept me from asking her. I knew she wanted to use my curiosity to slow me down. Offering the name of a man who clearly wanted my name for magical purposes was an attempt to exploit my curiosity and my sense of self-preservation, which were constantly at war within me.

I slid into the hallway, the floor like glass beneath me. Cecelia must have been messing with my mind, I told myself, because beneath the thin layer of glass, a ravine gaped up at me.

Jagged stones reflected the orange light of the elaborately-decorated hallway back up at me. At the ravine’s bottom ran a river, red as blood in the half-light. Where moss could grow along the narrow ravine, it flowered, purple and poisonous.

My breath caught in my chest and refused to leave.

I skidded along the glass, trying my hardness to ignore the emptiness beneath me. Something had settled in the pit of my stomach, something that heard Cecelia’s laugh and went, What if you turn and fight?

That was the voice I would not be listening to, I told myself.

Maybe my friends were around. If so, I had to lead her away from them. It had been incredibly foolish to bring her here, even though she could have come in anyway.

I had to avoid the library at all costs.

I hurtled through the closest door, my breath still refusing to move. Behind me, her crashing footsteps and the cracking of the floor indicated that she knew exactly where I was, even though she was taking her time to find me.

Clementine, she repeated. I’ve heard so little about you, you know.

That was almost enough to make me turn.

From my father, of course. He’s very impressed by you. Vivienne’s said nothing about you. It’s a little rude, you know, Clementine, to not talk to your ghost. We’ve all seen it. You leave poor Vivienne alone. The poor girl is silent because of it. She’s never even talked to the rest of us.

Well, shit. That meant the ghosts were in communication. And if it was really Oberon who was in charge of them...well, he knew our names already.

“Who needs it?” I called. “Who wants our names? And why?”

To bring us back, she said. Why else? Kill five at once, and you can do anything. You can fix any mistake. Even death.

To bring us back, she had said. To fix any mistake. Even death.

She’d been killed with four others, the day after the last test ten years ago. Probably to get enough magic to bring back Mint. And whoever did it was trying to right a wrong. Considering what Hernandez had said—Oberon is losing his goddamn mind—I had a pretty strong inkling of who had committed that particular wrong.

I could think about that later. At that moment, I just needed to save my own life.

I took a sharp turn down an unlit hall and felt my knees slam into an end table. It scraped across the floor as I stumbled over it, my shoulder slamming into the floor. I tumbled onto my back, the wind knocked out of me, and Cecelia leaned over me, lit subtly blue in the deep shadow of the hallway.

Your name before I kill you myself, she said, her childlike voice unnatural for such intimidating words.

“Lia!” came a shout from the door we’d entered through, and there, out of the corner of my eye, was a flash of brown hair, a hint of pressed navy pants in the half-light of the doorway. His voice was like a spark in the hallway, startling and ready to singe.

Ah, brother, Cecelia replied, her eyes still on mine. If she’d been alive, they probably would have been the same deep green as her brother’s. As they were, they seemed only a pale shadow, a thin film of color over the irises of the pale blue-grey ghost.

“Get away from her,” Indigo called out. I didn’t dare to avert my eyes from Cecelia, but my entire body ached to scramble away from them both. I’d never heard that tone from Indigo.

I, like many women, have always found myself preparing to take flight when a man raises his voice. I have had