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

been the kindest way to honor her memory, but was certainly the most economical.

The sun had risen well above the distant hills by the time I took a seat on my enchanted tabletop, but I barely registered the light. I barely registered anything. I just wanted someone—anyone—to promise me that I could bring my sister back to life.

The flight home to the mansion was a quiet one. The sky was clear, so Neal Wallace and his group of paranoid elders must have been having a field day filming me soaring through the air on a painted tabletop, but I didn’t care.

I was going to kill Oberon. I was going to kill Oberon, even if I had to claw my way through dozens of realms to do it, and then I was going to kill Mint for not saving my family when I’d begged—pleaded—for him to step in.

I just kept my eyes on the ocean, even though I was flying in the opposite direction.

Claire had spent most of her days there whenever she came to visit me. Her cold tolerance was better than mine, so she’d race down to the shore in a big T-shirt and Daisy Dukes and she would swim. Then she’d come out of the surf, shivering and delighted, and she’d complain about the weather in Texas as though she wasn’t old enough to move wherever she wanted.

And now she was in a bottle at my side.

It was my fault. I knew it was my fault. This last week had just been one long series of threats that I had breezed by as though I was invincible. I should have been smarter. I should have rejected Mint’s invitation to the test.

All it had done was make my life worse.

Well...not all worse. There was Indigo, at least.

The tabletop slid from the edge of Half Moon Bay into the forest and dappled sunlight enveloped me. The quiet gave me a chance to collect my thoughts, but I had only gotten around to the thought Claire is dead forever and it’s my fault before the burned trees rose on the horizon.

They weren’t at the top of the mountain, exactly, but they were high up enough that climbing the slope on foot had always been an issue.

I clambered from the tabletop to the ground a couple hundred yards away from the trees and tried to keep my expression together. The others would have lost people, too, barring extraordinary circumstances. This was no time for me to lose my cool.

A hard thing to think when I had my big sister in my pocket.

I took a few deep breaths, wished upon a lucky star even though it was midday, and steeled myself.

When I reached the portal, though, I slammed into what felt like a glass door. The shock knocked me back a pace as warmth spread across my face from my temple. Was that…?

I reached up and daubed blood away from my head.

“Damn it!” I shouted, and banged a fist on the barrier just as Adrian had two days ago. “Let me in, you asshole!”

Mint, who I assumed supervised the entrances and exits, did no such thing. I sank to the ground, my back to the barrier, and wished that a friend would come through the portal, just so that they could hug me and say it would be okay.

Without the mansion, what was I?

Without magic, what was I?

A scared young woman with no home to go back to and a sister who was dead because of me. I had a whole lot of explaining to do when her parents found out about everything.

I found a place a few dozen yards from the portal, curled up into a ball amid the needles, and let myself cry.

When I ran out of tears, I was no less despairing, but a good cry always makes a person feel better, no matter how terrible their circumstances. From the pocket of my coat, I produced a compact, and from the other, I produced the letter Amaranth had left me—the one that contained the recipe for the portal spell.

If Mint wouldn’t let me in, I’d go to him. Whether he liked it or not. And I’d get my sister back, and then I would find whoever had done this to her and I would do my worst. Whatever that worst turned out to be.

I traced the spell across the corner of the compact using the small end of my pen. This magic didn’t need any special words; all it took was a pen and intention. The breeze brushed the back of my neck as soon as I was done and the mirror folded in on itself, seams appearing in its midst.

I set my board on the ground and prepared to go through.

I stuck my hand through, then pushed my head into the compact, hoping it would allow me through despite being significantly smaller than I was.

Magic being magic, it let me in with no issue, but all I saw was a thick darkness, as though I was pressing into curtains. My head and shoulders through, I pulled my coat tight around me, closed my eyes, and pushed further, falling to the floor with a loud clatter.

Noise set in before anything else, the chatter of a restaurant flooding my ears and assuring me that my suspicions were correct: if I didn’t somehow specify a destination, the mirror spell would always take me to the odd, 1950s style diner the five of us had found mere days before.

The tile was cool on my back and the smell of french fries lulled me almost to sleep. It had been an exhausting day, full of loss, and all I needed was a warm hug from one of the few remaining people who cared about me—

“Get off the floor,” said a voice. Or, more specifically, several voices, all attached to the same person.

“Why are you here?” I grumbled. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m here because it’s the only place I don’t die every twelve hours,” he said.