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

up, everything seemed so small and so precious: the orange street lights, the pastel houses by the beach, the plainer muted tones of the buildings closer to the center of the town. A horse pawed the ground in its pasture. A stream of cars wormed their way through the thickening dusk.

And there was the ocean, eternal and quiet and oh-so-huge. I’d never realized in all my years living in Half Moon Bay that I was almost as in love with that place as I was in love with magic.

I kept my left hand on the rune to keep the tabletop moving while I flipped through the pages of the spellbook I’d gotten from Indigo’s family’s library. It was all well and good to want to save my family, after all, but there had been nothing I could do for the substitute teacher who had vanished into mid-air, or even for Vivi, for that matter.

There were spells of protection, spells of love, spells of friendship and hope and darkness and fate-changing and truth-telling and—

Oh.

I hoped against hope that I’d got it right, that there was some magical intuition that came with the craft. Otherwise, I’d be screwed.

Well, Claire would be.

I kept to the fog and followed my path toward home, watching the streets for any ghosts that might be running rampant. Now that it was clear that they could do actual damage, it was all the better that I’d banished some the other day...but it also meant that we were in constant danger. There are, after all, significantly more people who are dead than people who are alive. If they were to suddenly reappear…

I searched the book for something to ward off ghosts, to no avail.

The tabletop deposited me unceremoniously a block away from my apartment building and almost escaped before I grabbed it. My driftwood had never had an attitude, but I must have done my rune wrong on the tabletop because it was now doing its best to break free of my grasp.

Despite the obliviousness of my neighbors to my previous flights back and forth from my apartment, a few passers-by couldn’t help but notice the teenager dropping from the air and yanking a tabletop after her. Someone—an old lady I’d seen at Safeway one too many times—pointed at me and said something to a passing middle schooler, who promptly ignored her.

I tucked the tabletop under my arm and continued down the street as though nothing unusual had happened.

It had been a while since I’d walked on solid ground at home. Back in the mansion, I’d spent half my time flying and half my time taking shortcuts—spiral staircases whose banisters took me upstairs, random ropes slung over balconies, fire poles, and the like. Here, though, I had to act like an ordinary person.

I wasn’t sure if I could do that anymore.

Where was Claire? Adrian had seen her at my apartment yesterday, which meant she wouldn’t be there anymore. She was sentimental, sure, but not so sentimental that she would force herself to stay in a blown-out unit. She’d be somewhere nearby, close enough that she could see my place.

I scanned the street, the sea air chilling my eyes and chapping my lips. I’d forgotten how cold it was, especially at night.

The street was lined with places like mine: old houses that had been converted into multi-unit housing. There were a couple cafés, mostly run-of-the-mill overpriced coffee shops run by people who thought the atmosphere provided by exposed bulbs hanging from the ceiling by wires was worth charging $6 for a cup of coffee. And then…

And then there was the one motel available near town.

It wasn’t like the beautiful houses on the outskirts, north in Montara or south on Route 1. No, the motel on my street was straight out of a horror story about Americana: a long, low yellow building, its paint flaking off in chunks. For weeks, the fluorescent lights had been gasping their final shuddering breaths. I’d stayed there for a couple weeks when I hadn’t planned well for rent that month (and didn’t want to worry my parents, who would have made me fly to Dallas in an instant). It had been unpleasant, but not unbearable.

Claire had a more delicate constitution than I. If she’d decided to let a room there, she must have been desperate to see me.

I jogged down the street.

Where was Vivi? I hadn’t seen her since...well, I hadn’t seen her since I’d gone to visit Cassie. She’d stayed away after that. Maybe she was trying to avoid me because Cecelia had attacked me, but Vivi wasn’t the kind of ghost who’d leave you alone to avoid causing trauma.

I must have looked incredibly odd to any passers-by, although I didn’t really consider it at the time. They saw a teenage girl hurrying toward the motel, lugging a beautifully-painted tabletop under one arm, brown suede coat flapping in the breeze. All I saw was my sister’s face, the last time I’d seen her in person, looking back at me from the airport gate.

Good luck, she had said. I hope you find what you need.

She’d always been tactful like that.

The motel had fewer than a dozen rooms that faced the street, so I didn’t bother checking with the office about Claire’s whereabouts. There was no way she would have stayed there if she couldn’t see my building, so she had to be in one of those.

Unless she had gone out…

It was worth a try.

I banged a fist on the first door I came to, to no avail. The second and third yielded surprised couples, both in states of disarray. The fourth door opened only for a shoe to be hurled at my head, then slammed shut before I could tell who had thrown it.

At the fifth door, however, a hand pulled aside the curtain next to the door to check my identity. There, wide-eyed and a little bit teary, was my big sister, her breath fogging up the window with every exhale.

“Jesusfucking Christ,” she hissed,