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

or his eyes or any number of other messages that this was not a man to be messed with. It could have been something else entirely. I walked in his wake and tried to avoid the eyes of passers-by.

Up close, the school was almost too beautiful. Age had not withered its strength, although it had weathered its features. I followed Mint through an intricately-carved oak door that opened of its own accord.

Inside, students crowded the floor, which was covered with a selection of mats in various muted colors. Above, faces flashed across the painted ceiling, much like the ceiling back at the mansion. I spotted my own face, exhausted and sad and terrified among the others.

It had been a week since this had started, but I felt as though I’d aged a decade.

And where was Vivi? I hadn’t even seen a flash of her hair since I’d come back from Cassie’s. The last I’d seen of her, she’d been watching me as I trudged up the hill toward the mansion.

As we passed, students stared at Mint. I assumed he was a familiar face to them, if a little intimidating.

These would have been my classmates.

Mint turned to me at last, but gave me a chance to examine the room before he spoke again.

“I’m giving you another chance,” he said.

“You’re—” I paused. “You’re what?”

He couldn’t mean what he seemed to be saying. My world started to slip out from underneath me, but it didn’t entirely slide away until he nodded and gestured to the mats.

“I’m giving you another chance,” he repeated. “It’s not fair to fail you if I’m asking you to operate outside the boundaries of your power. If you’d explained to me that you’d banished the ghosts…”

I hesitated. Was he trying to get a confession out of me? Had he brought me here so I could be arrested for blowing up my apartment? Was this a trap?

“Indigo told me,” he explained. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I sighed. “I thought I might get in trouble for doing something like that in front of people.”

“Oh, you definitely are. But that’s no reason to keep you out of school.”

Relief washed through me, as cooling as the tide, and I settled back on my heels.

“What do I have to do?” I asked, my palms beginning to sweat. I glanced down to wipe them on my sweater. When I looked back up, Mint had closed his eyes as if he was trying to to ward off a headache.

“I—” he started. “I, uh…”

He slapped his hands over his ears. I reached out to catch him as he fell, but he was eight feet tall—much too heavy for me to hold up. I broke his fall as he tumbled to the floor, his weight crushing my leg into the mat.

“Mint,” I hissed as students swarmed us. “Hey! Mint!”

He said nothing, but he wasn’t unconscious. He stared straight up at the ceiling, even as one of the students pressed a hand to Mint’s chest and began to chant what I suspected was a healing spell.

“Hngh,” Mint groaned. “Cle—” he tried, but couldn’t finish my name.

“Mint,” I repeated, pulling at his shoulders to try to get him to sit up. He was much too heavy, so I leaned over him. “What is it? What happened?”

He lifted his hand as best he could, angling a long, pale finger toward the ceiling. I followed his gaze to a face I didn’t recognize: a man about Mint’s age, with a slender face almost as pale as Mint’s, a thick smattering of freckles, and wavy dark hair. As I watched, the face rippled, as though it was trying to tear free from the ceiling.

“Go,” Mint rasped. “Save—” he coughed, his breath so shallow, I couldn’t feel it even from mere inches away. “Oberon.”

“Save Oberon?” I repeated. That couldn’t be it. This was Artie Lincoln. He’d been killed by Oberon. Maybe he felt indebted to the man for bringing him back to life, but he surely couldn’t have wanted to save him.

And save him from what?

“You were right,” Mint  gasped out, the glassiness peeling away from his eyes. Fear was there, only pure, unadulterated fear in this moment of clarity. “You were right. About him. He’s here for you. I’m—I’m here for you. It’s not me, but it’s in…”

He shook his head and rolled onto his side, his back facing me. He retched, near silent.

“He brought me back,” he gasped out. “But he lost his powers. He’s basically human. He’ll...he’ll do anything to—”

His eyes rolled back in his head.

Reeling,  I looked up to the student next to me for directions.

“Go,” she said. In the dim light of the huge room, she looked practically immortal. “We’ll take care of your friend.”

“Can you?” I asked. “Can you save him?”

“Once we figure out what we need to save him from, yes. Go. There’s nothing you can do for him, rookie.”

A comfort and an insult at the same time.

“Wait,” I said. “Wait, let me take him.”

“Are you kidding?”

“He dies every so often,” I explained, and she didn’t even blink. “If I get him to that diner place, he might come back to life in less than twelve hours.”

She glanced from him to me. “How exactly are you going to get him there.”

“I—” he had told me to run. “I’ll send people back for him. Can you keep him here, so they know where to look.”

She nodded and waved me off.

I searched through my pockets for the compact that had taken me from Half Moon Bay through to the diner, but I’d left it behind in Half Moon Bay.

I glanced at Mint one last time before I bolted. I headed in the opposite direction from the meadow, jogging through the halls of the school. I’d have to find some way back into that diner from this world.

Oberon had killed Mint—Artie—in the final test. He’d killed Vivi and the other four people to bring Artie back. But he’d lost his powers in the process. And he hadn’t managed in merging