Beauty and the Werewolf

mirror down on the desk, still wrapped, and carefully unwrapped it. Breathing raggedly she settled into her chair and stared down at her reflection.

Father, she thought, fiercely. Show me Father!

There was a ripple across her reflection, as if the mirror was water instead of glass, and had been disturbed.

Then the surface fogged over — or was it the image in the depths that was fog shrouded? The whole mirror darkened, then slowly lightened. The fog cleared, and she was looking straight at her father, as if she was sitting in the chair across from his desk at his warehouse office.

He looked haggard, as if he had not slept much more than she had. And he was working with the same dogged persistence she remembered from when her mother was dying, as if by burying himself in his work he could drive everything else out of his mind. That was always his response to trouble, to work three times as hard.

She knew what had him looking so drawn and sick, and generally horrible. Worry over her, of course. What had they told him? Was it even remotely possible that they had told him the truth? What was he thinking?

She was dying to comfort him, aching to tell him that she was all right — even to lie to him if she had to. And all she could do was watch him scratching away at things that his clerks could do, in an effort to not think about what was eating him up inside. She choked on a sob, and tears dripped down her cheeks as she watched him.

She watched until she couldn’t bear it any longer, then turned away from the scene. It faded into black blankness the moment she did.

She dried her eyes and concentrated on taking deep, deep breaths. This was supposed to be making her feel better, not worse. She wasn’t going to do herself, him, or anyone else any good if all she did was sit in a corner and cry.

Finally, she got herself back under control. She thought about looking in on Genevieve or the twins, but what possible purpose would that serve? None of them had seen her taken away — Father would have been at his office when the King’s men arrived, while Genevieve and the twins would not yet have been awake. So none of them knew the exact circumstances, except what the servants would have told them. If the servants told them anything… Certainly her stepmother and stepsisters wouldn’t even have thought to ask, for it would never have occurred to any of them that the servants could be a source of information.

She couldn’t imagine that anyone with a particle of sense had told Genevieve anything that she could turn into gossip. Whatever they had told her would have been something utterly boring and ordinary, so the worst that would happen would be that she would be mildly irritated that Bella wasn’t at home making sure everything ran smoothly.

No, if she looked in on the rest of the family, all she would see would be that they were carrying on as usual. And that would probably make her cry, as well, as a harsh reminder of where she should be and what she should be doing.

Now she was not entirely certain that this had been a good idea. She couldn’t speak to anyone through this mirror; all she could do was watch them, long to be there and make herself more desperate, the more she watched.

Was this how the newly dead felt? Watching their loved ones, but unable to touch them, comfort them, tell them anything at all? No wonder they fled this world so quickly — this was sheer torment!

Unable to stop herself, she turned back to the mirror. But as she fought with the desire to look in on her father again, a new idea occurred to her.

It could show her her own family — could it show her anything else?

She concentrated on Edgar Karsten, the old bookseller in the square who always seemed to know exactly what she or her father wanted, and always seemed to have it in the shop. A moment later, the mirror fogged over and cleared again, and there he was, up on a ladder, dusting his bookshelves, pausing now and again to pat the spines lovingly. What would he make of the tin-bound books in Sebastian’s library? she wondered.

She let the image fade. Other than providing a moment of distraction, this was getting her nowhere…

Unless…

She stared into the darkened depths of the mirror. There was one person who might have answers. Maybe if Bella could get a glimpse of her, she could learn something.

Show me! she told the mirror fiercely. Show me the Godmother!

In the back of her mind, a little voice was saying sardonically that this couldn’t possibly work. After all, the Godmother had every sort of magic there was at her disposal, and she had presumably created this mirror. Surely she would not make something that could be used to spy on her.

You really are a foolish wench, you know, that voice in her head told her. And even if it works, what can you possibly learn by watching the Godmother do whatever it is that Godmothers do? It’s not as if this is the largest problem in her Kingdoms that Godmother Elena has to cope with! You and Sebastian are probably somewhere near the bottom on her list of things to do.

So Bella didn’t really expect anything other than fog or darkened glass or her own reflection as she willed the mirror to show her the woman that had created it.

She certainly didn’t expect what she got.

A glowing green face abruptly appeared in the mirror, staring at her with a quizzical expression, as if she had startled it. Just a face, nothing more. It materialized so quickly, and it looked so strange, that she jumped and uttered a stifled yip.

The face peered at her. “Ah,” said a voice that sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a well. “Isabella Beauchamps. This is not unexpected, but you are a little beforehand here. We weren’t ready for you to make an effort to talk to us so soon. The Godmother is a little busy at the moment. Can you wait?”

She stared at the face. It talked! When she had looked at her father and at the bookseller, there had been no voices at all, no sound. But unless she was having a particularly vivid hallucination…