against them. The end.”
“Your memory is a little too good,” Gabriel complained.
“You tell the same stories over and over,” Camille pointed out. “After a few years, the twists stop surprising you.”
“You want a new story, is that it?”
“If I have to sit here and listen to you slur through a fairy tale,” she said, “at least make it one I haven’t heard.” Why was he being so weird?
He regarded her blearily. “Have it your way. Once upon a time,” he murmured, “there was a horrible, selfish man who had only ever caused problems for anyone he met. His gifts brought pain and misery for others, and he was convinced that it was the only way he could live. That it was just part of his DNA, and that the only way to be happy was to continually feed his avarice. Then one day, an angry little girl kicked him in the shins and he was forced to take her home and feed her.”
Camille sighed. “I think I know this story.”
“But you haven’t heard it. So shut up. The girl was a monster. She broke his valuable things he’d spent years hoarding, drew on his walls, refused to take baths, put pins in his shoes, wouldn’t speak English, insisted on eating things that smelled horrible, and the only way to calm her down was to tell her long, complicated stories. He figured this was karma, getting him back.
“He had never spent long amounts of time with anyone, you see, much less a child. He had developed obsessions with certain people before, but obsessing is very different from truly knowing someone, living with them and learning to take the good with the bad. He had no inkling of what ‘camaraderie’ or ‘family’ really meant. But with each passing bedtime story, with every begrudging trek to a ramen shop, things changed. They changed so slowly, at such an imperceptible gradation, that he didn’t notice. They became accustomed to one another, the angry girl and the selfish man. He began to think of her less and less as a temporary nuisance, and more and more as a permanent fixture. But he didn’t fully understand the extent of the change until the day he was sent a letter.”
He leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling. “It was written by a powerful woman, from an even more powerful family. She demanded the girl’s presence in a faraway school. She offered him a great deal of money and priceless artifacts if he would relinquish guardianship of the girl. The man was affronted - offended - that she would assume he’d turn her over for
He took a heavy breath. “The man was selfish, first and foremost. That had not changed. What surprised him was that his system of measuring value had been upended by a scrawny orphan who tormented him with grilled mackerel for six years.”
“I never made you eat mackerel,” Camille muttered.
“You made everything smell like it,” he returned, grimacing as he upended the last of his drink. “Anyway, the new plan was to make the girl so incredibly badass that no matter what she encountered in the world, she would survive it. By this time the man had realized that the girl possessed a great deal of power, and he resolved that she should learn to use it better than he had with his own. He wanted to save her from what he’d decided was the worst fate - looking into the face of the person you care about the most and telling them that your entire, overly long life has been a total failure.”
“Not a total failure, you make good melon bread.”
That surprised a chuckle out of him. She was unaccustomed to serious Gabriel and it worried her when he lost his humor. “Ah, yes, thank you, I forgot. So the man bit the bullet, dragged her kicking and screaming to the faraway school, because if they were going to blackmail her into attendance, he was going to be there to make melon bread.” He glanced up at the clock. “And then the angry girl went to sleep, because she had class with a grumpy English teacher in the morning.”
He rose, walking to the door, empty glass in hand.
“Does this story have a happy ending?” Camille asked.
He regarded her for a moment. “Ask me later,” he said, shutting the door behind him.
Chapter 11
Jul
That was all it said, in a neat, no-nonsense script. I’d unfolded the piece of paper Rhys had handed me several dozen times and I was still no closer to understanding his motives. Was he my enemy? He certainly didn’t seem like my friend. Did he just want to talk? Even if only that, did I really want to hear what he had to say?
As much of a threat as he seemed to be...if it led to my mother, I did. I absolutely did.
I gingerly stepped through the mirror’s frame, feeling the bizarre climate change from the humidity of the orchard to the chill of the stone stairwell. I climbed the steps with trepidation. I felt more like an intruder, this time. Bea was working at the library again this afternoon, so I’d had to walk home - but at least that meant I had some time to sort this out with Rhys in the Tower. Maybe he’d explain how all of this was possible.
A bleary face appeared in a small mirror on the wall when I reached the gleaming white atrium.
“Master Rhys awaits you in the library,” the face said, and then faded away.
I pushed aside the curtain. The sight of all those books still took my breath away. Rhys looked up at my entrance. He was seated at a wide table, books spread out around him.
“Hi,” I said sheepishly. “Please don’t...um...destroy me.”
“I won’t,” he said.
Tendrils of glass curled up from the floor, snaking around my legs and rooting me to the spot.
“Yet,” Rhys amended, rising from the table.
I twisted in my bonds, but the glass was too thick - I was trapped. My heart hammered in my chest.
Rhys approached a few steps, but kept his distance, well out of reach. “How’d you get in, hunter?” he demanded. “Are you a hybrid?”
“H-hybrid? What? I’m a girl, I’m just a girl, I don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Not convincing,” he stated coldly. “You’re a Graham and you made it into my mirror, and you want to pretend that it was an accident? Do I look stupid?”
“Yes! I mean no!” I floundered, as Rhys’s pale eyes sharpened. “I mean yes it was an accident - I was just following directions.”
“What directions?”
“In...in...” As I scrambled for coherence, something bizarre happened. My mind was suddenly wiped blank. Emotions pushed to one side. Indignation bubbled up inside me.
He made a face. “Phrasing. Please don’t ever say that again.”
“I’ll say whatever I want!” I shot back. My nerves burned, up and down my limbs, and it felt good even as it worried me. What was this place doing to me? “You want to know what I am? I am pissed off!” I shouted. There was an audible crack in the glass at my feet, but I paid it no heed. Everything was tumbling out of me, all the injustices, all the frustration. “My father abandoned me, my grandmother hates me, I’m a million miles from home, I don’t have any friends,
