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

There was my sister, in all her glory. Claire had always been beautiful, but when she was angry, she practically glowed. We both inherited our mother’s dark eyes, but that’s where the resemblance stopped. She had our father’s immaculate complexion and our mother’s slender hands. She was always shorter than me, even though she’d been born three years earlier. She was all curves, too, round-shouldered with a tummy, muscular in the arms and legs. She was strong.

I always envied that.

“I’m not dead,” I offered, but she’d already crushed me with a hug that was half-angry, half-protective. “Let me go. Please. I need to—I need to help you.”

“You need to help me?” she repeated, and pulled me into the apartment with one strong yank. “You’re the one whose apartment disappeared into a whole lot of nothing this week. Sit down. You look like life’s kicked the shit out of you.”

She’s never been one to mince words. In the last few years, she’d developed a hint of a Texan drawl, but it just lilted at the end of her words and extended her vowels.

“Sit,” she said. “Sit and eat. And explain to me what exactly you did to your apartment, because I know there sure as hell isn’t anyone else who would be so stupid.”

I sat across from her on the huge queen bed at the center of her room. The bedspread was stained with something blue, but I tried to ignore it and rooted through the pizza box for the cheese packet.

“You’re in danger,” I told her. “It’s a lot to explain, but I just—I need your cooperation so I can help you, and then I’ll explain.”

She cocked her head at me.

“No,” she said. “I’m not doing anything for you until you explain what you’ve been doing.”

“I—” I interjected, increasingly desperate. Maybe Adrian’s vision had been of tomorrow, or the next day, or years from now, but I wasn’t about to take that chance. It could be any minute. Or Oberon could strike me down first, and then my sister.

He was clearly desperate. So were the ghosts. And yet..and yet, Vivi hadn’t come to kill me yet. She hadn’t grabbed me by the neck and tried to crush the breath from me.

At least I was safe from her.

“We’ve given you far too much leeway with this obsession,” Claire continued. “I’ve taken your side because you took mine with the art and the music and stuff when I was younger, but you can’t keep this up. What about when you go to college, huh? I can’t keep telling mom and dad that you’ll outgrow it. You’re not outgrowing it.”

“Claire, I—”

“And I know it was awful, but after a whole decade, you have to get over Vivienne’s death. It’s not a healthy way of dealing with the trauma. You can’t just blame every bad thing that happens on magic. What kind of life is that?”

Framed by the streetlights through the thin white curtains, she looked like some sort of divine judge. This was my older sister, the only person I’d ever felt was really rooting for me, and here she was, telling me to give up on the thing I’d devoted my life to.

A month before, I would have agreed. I would have packed up all my stuff and moved to Dallas with her. My parents would have welcomed me home, a little surprised but not at all disappointed by the change. I would have found a way to live a normal life, but every moment of every day, I would be looking over my shoulder for the slightest signal to turn around.

What kind of life is that? she had asked.

Not much of one, I thought, but didn’t say. Silence filled the space between us, coating my throat and blocking my words. After all, she was right, in many ways. I’d failed the last test. I would never become the kind of magician Mint had wanted me to be. Maybe I would become something better, but it certainly wouldn’t be through Robin College, and perhaps I was doomed to being a hedge witch my whole life.

“Fine,” I said. “If you do what I ask of you now, I’ll come home with you when you go.”

“You’re lying,” she replied. Her response had been instantaneous, but I could see the skepticism in her eyes. I looked different to her, too. The last time we’d talked face to face had been over a year before. A lot had changed.

“I’m telling the truth,” I said, and offered my pinky. “I swear.”

Reluctantly, she hooked her pinky through mine.

“What do you need?”

I took her hand and led her to the plain table that sat next to her bedroom window. I placed her hand palm up on the table. I pulled the off-brand Sharpie from my pocket and uncapped it, then pulled the leather book from my coat and flipped through it until I found the spell I was looking for.

“Oh, please don’t doodle anything on me,” she said, but I didn’t listen to her. I’d gotten quite good at runes in the past week (as good as anyone could get in a week, I supposed), so drawing the mark was easy.

It was the next part that made the spell hard.

“Bind,” I said, and hoped for the best.

Her hand slammed down against the table hard enough that I heard something crack. She sucked air between her teeth, but didn’t say anything.

Claire not saying anything was much worse than if she’d complained. She tried to tug her hand from the tabletop with no success.

“What the hell?” she demanded. “What kind of trick is this?”

“Just...just wait a minute. It wasn’t supposed to go like that.”

Panic flashed in her eyes, but she held still, for once.

I’d wanted to bind her to reality, to make sure her form was kept intact by magical protection, but it seemed I’d tied her to the closest object—the table—instead.

“You have to tell me—” she began, but I’d started