“you can’t even tell Tailor. I’m serious. I’ll tell you what you want to know, but in return you have to help me guard it.”
I nodded slowly. Rhys already knew, but did I need to tell her that? Surely I could keep one thing to myself? “Ok,” I said. “I’ll keep the mirror a secret. Tell us about the mill.”
She let out a breath she’d been holding. “Just remember, this is what you asked for,” she said. “You won’t like it all. The more you know, the more you have to be afraid of.”
Camille gasped, looking out the window. Bea followed her stare but quickly lost all sense of alarm, seeing a pair of wide yellow eyes peering in.
“Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s just hungry,” Bea said dismissively. Seeming to deflate, she looked around at us all. “Well, who else is hungry?”
Mac raised his hand immediately. The rest of us slowly followed suit, with varying degrees of sheepishness.
“I thought as much. Get in the kitchen before you break my china.”
“I never get tired of the part where the imp is your pet,” Mac said, totally engrossed in watching the creature on the back porch have a staring contest with the cold pie Bea had set out there. She stood at the kitchen counter putting together something she called ‘long sandwiches’ for the others while I munched on a bag of carrots.
“I’d hardly call it a pet,” Bea said offhand, layering a split loaf of French bread with meat, cheese, and ranch dressing. “But it’s harmless. Mostly. Imps will steal from anyone, and they look like vicious little vermin, but they’re only truly dangerous to people who wronged them when they were alive, or if you threaten them. Skittery little bastards though,” she said, eyeing the creature through the window. “I’ve been feeding that one for years and he still won’t come near me. Imps just don’t trust anything they didn’t steal.”
“And they eat candy bars and pie?” Mac asked eagerly.
“That one does. All imps are different. You know what they are, right?”
“Not even slightly,” Mac said, unabashed.
“Well,” Bea said, watching the yellow-eyed creature sniff the pie cautiously. “When people die, usually they ‘pass on’ or whatever that means. Maybe there’s another life. Maybe they vanish entirely. Who knows? But every so often, there comes some poor idiot who just can’t let go, for whatever reason.” She shrugged, opening the oven to lay both sandwich halves under the broiler.
“So they’re ghosts?” Mac said eagerly.
“You’re jumping ahead of me, boy,” Bea reprimanded him, closing the oven. “When a person’s heart isn’t strong enough to handle the transition, the echo of their mind becomes a ghost. That’s why ghosts can’t feel. And imps can’t think, because they’re what happens when a person’s mind is the weak half. That thing out there is a distant shadow of some poor idiot’s heart. It’s skittish, inconstant, and reacts totally on impulse. As for what it eats - that’s dependant on the person they used to be. This one won’t touch anything that’s not made of pure sugar,” she said wryly.
Camille pulled a face.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Bea said, looking askance at her. “I once saw one that subsisted exclusively on frogs. It was disgusting.”
The imp outside was buried head-first in the crust, crumbs flying upwards. My stomach twisted at the thought of those teeth turned on something living.
“That one’s been around for some time,” Bea said. “I first saw it when I was a little girl. I have no idea how long it’s hung around Havenwood.”
“Are you sure it’s the same one?” Destin asked.
“I’ve never seen eyes that color before, or since,” she said. “I don’t know who he used to be, or how long he’s been dead, but I’ll tell you one thing: he hates Meredith.”
“We noticed,” Mac said. We’d already told her about running into Meredith at the mill. She’d taken it better than I’d expected - apparently less keen on lectures than Tailor, she’d seemed to gather that we’d learned our own lesson about the Ender.
“To be fair, I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t hate her,” Bea said, removing the crisped sandwich halves from the oven and deftly flipping the top half over the bottom. She set the assembled sandwich on a cutting board and sliced it into 2-inch sections. “She’s come to Havenwood twice before, in my lifetime. Her only goal is killing the Wolf.”
“Yeah, so, I’m still kinda rusty on exactly what that is?” Mac said, reaching for a sandwich piece. “Other than apparently not an actual wolf,” he said, mouth full. Then his eyes went wide. “I just realized this is the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.”
“The Wolf is a person,” Bea said, pushing the tray toward Destin and Camille before Mac could eat the entire loaf. “Or rather, it’s a bundle of power attached to a person. Kill that person, a new Wolf is born within the year. It’s impossible to predict who and where. Every one of them is bad news - the power of the Wolf inevitably corrupting the host - or so it’s said.” Her gaze out the window was distant. “I’ve seen two of them, but I’m still not convinced how inevitable that is. Meredith is convinced, though, and even if she sees proof to the contrary, she forgets. I don’t know why, but every time the Wolf is killed, her memories are wiped clean.”
“But she’s immortal?” I asked.
“You see the problem,” she said, with a significant look at me. “Right now, she has no more memories than you do. An immortal made of fire, with all the maturity of a teenager.”
“No offense taken,” Mac said, mouth full of sandwich.
Bea gives him a silencing, though not unkind, look. “You want to know about the mill fire. I’ll tell you. But I’ll need to take a step back, for you to understand my full meaning.
“My name is Beatrix Graham, but generations ago it was Grimm. They changed it when they left the Afterlands and crossed to this side of the mirror, wanting to hide from the tyrants we’d left behind. My parents never told me,” she said, pointedly not looking at me. “They’d decided we were safe, that it was time to let history fade and melt into the rest of humanity.” Now her eyes met mine. “Soren had other ideas.”
Seeing the others’ looks of confusion, she explained, “Soren was a Mirrormaker - which is exactly what it sounds like. When he was a child, and still learning his powers, Soren made a few unintentional anomalies. One resulted in pulling me into the Afterlands.” Her expression was carefully blank. “I ended up spending a lot of time there, and brought some friends back here with me - orphans of war that wanted to live here, free of magic, seeking normal lives. Zinnia Wilde, my best friend, and two feral boys. Marco Heron,” she glanced at Destin, “and Omen Taft. Omen was like a little brother to us all. He’d wanted to stay and fight the war his parents had lost their lives for, but we wanted to give him something better. Something simpler. Safer. Zinnia and I got him a job hauling lumber for the mill. Marco had become a police officer. We thought we were done with the other side, that we could forget it all.
“Then Meredith came.” Her tone was grim enough that even Mac had stopped eating, attention totally focused on her story. “I’d heard of her,” she said, a dark smile crossing her face. “She’d sounded cool, honestly. An immortal guardian protecting the world from its monsters with a righteous cleansing fire. At first, I even wanted to help her find the Wolf, when she’d declared it was hiding in our town. But that was before we knew it was Omen.”
She crossed to the window, looking out at the imp curled up in the pie pan, sleeping off the sugar rush. “His temper had been getting worse, it was true, but we thought it was just teenage hormones. He was stronger than he had any right to be - but he was feral, so we’d chalked it up to that. I think I’d had some instinct about it, because every time Meredith wanted to visit the lumber mill, I’d distracted her...but it was only a matter of time. The instant Omen turned sixteen, Meredith knew exactly where he was. He, Zinnia and I were doing inventory at the mill. You’ve seen the remains of the place. You can imagine the rest,” she said bluntly. “He resisted, but you can’t really stop her, only slow her down. She burnt him alive. He was only sixteen. He hadn’t even hurt anyone. Yet. Yet, she said, but it was Omen, so...” I couldn’t see her expression with her back turned to us. “That’s when I knew that she was the real monster. And that was when I knew that you can’t hide from forces like that.” She looked at each of us in turn. “John Tailor still thinks you can. I won’t tell you such fairy tales. I’ve learned to err on the side of caution, but no matter if any of you have powers or not,” she glanced at Mac, “you’re involved, Juliet is right about that. Meredith has no allegiances, no sympathies, no motives beyond hunting the Wolf. She won’t
