“You’re a real bitch, you know that, right?” I tell her.
“I...I don’t understand,” she stutters. Hayley, stuttering. And quivering like a rabbit. The queen in all her glory. God, this was a good night.
“You think you can get away with treating us like crap.” I snarl in her face. “No more. I’m ending your story right now.”
“What are you saying?” she exclaims, scrambling up from the bench. Let her try to run. She won’t get more than two steps in those ridiculous heels before I rip her throat open.
“You’re speaking to her in Japanese, you moron. She doesn’t understand you.”
I hadn’t smelled him. I whirl, and there’s Kei Sakamoto standing behind me, hands in his pockets. Where had he come from? And why couldn’t I smell him? It was like he didn’t exist.
He stretches lazily, lacing his fingers over his head. “You ducked out on your presentation, Lassie. Miller’s really going to dock your grade.”
My lip curls. I’m not here to chat. I’m busy. I turn back to Hayley, but now Sakamoto is standing between me and her.
He couldn’t have moved that fast. My gaze zips between where he was and where he stands now.
“Hayley’s no fun,” Sakamoto says. “Not for you. Want to play with me instead?”
“Get out of my way,” I say. A rumble sounds deep in my chest.
“Jul Graham is dead,” he says.
“What!” Hayley exclaims. “How?”
“Well, honestly I had no idea what Simon wanted it for when he commissioned me to find the Tailor’s Sword, but it seems pretty clear now,” he says, offhand.
My eyes travel unbidden to my overpale, pockmarked left arm.
The red pulse kicks back in, building steadily.
“Every day you walked through these doors with the only thing that could kill her strapped to your arm,” Kei says, amused. “Pretty heavy stuff. Her being dead, I mean, but man, that bracer was pretty heavy too.”
I roar and dive at him. Hayley runs away into the night screaming.
I swipe at him, and he ducks, spinning under my swing. How could he be so callous? Was this all really just some source of entertainment to him? Never mind. I’m busy. My vision is hazing red. When I paint the sidewalk with his insides he won’t find it all so funny.
I leap at him and he falls to his back, planting his feet in my ribs and launching me over him. I land in an easy roll and spring back to my feet, ready for anything.
But he’s not there.
“Let’s play a game,” comes his voice. I can’t pinpoint it. It seems to come from the trees.
“Hide and seek, maybe,” he says. I spin. This time it sounds like he’s behind me, towards the forest. But I see nothing.
“Or better yet...”
I spin again, furious, desperate for something to hit.
“Tag,” he says, right into my ear.
I swipe at him, but he’s already running, and fast, into the woods. I let out a roar of frustration and tear off after him.
Hemlock
“No!” I screamed, hauling myself up from the hole. I hadn’t seen him. He must have slid into the room when I was focused on her. Up through the floor, maybe. In through the window, maybe. Mirrormakers can change anything in this tower. Sneaky little abomination. I should have killed him when I had the chance.
“I wonder if this has ever been used on a Tailor before,” Simon sneered, twisting the sword with a horrible squelching sound, combined with the crunch of broken glass. Juliet’s eyes went glassy as she slumped over the blade. He pulled it out, blood streaming, and she collapsed to the floor in a red pool of glinting shards. She looked up at him, her mouth gaping like a fish. He watched her life drain away, expressionless. She wanted to say something, it was clear, but her lungs were filling with blood.
“You idiot!” I hissed, moving toward her.
Simon pointed the Tailor’s Sword in my direction, and I froze. “That’s one less weapon for you to collect,” he said.
I backed away, hands up. My final chance for vengeance was dying on the floor, but I wasn’t going to lose my soul for her. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” I told Simon.
Her blood is sinking into the cracks in the stone floor, the glittering bits of glass along with it. Does he see the Tower devouring her life? Did he really hate her so much that he would be this stupid?
“Rhys!” Juliet shrieked at last. A shockwave of power burst from her, rocking us both back. A dark violet- black energy curled up from the floor around her body, ghostly tendrils of power that sunk into her skin and vanished. Blood burbled from her lips and she went still. Juliet Graham was dead. The ever-present avarice I’d regained with my body gripped me with full force.
“That was mine!” I roared.
The Tower rumbled beneath our feet. The first look of confusion crossed Simon’s face. “You need earth for an earthquake.”
Magic fizzled from the mirrors ringing the room, tiny little ghosts of static filtering through the air. Another shockwave rocked the Tower, and several of the mirrors cracked.
I turned slowly, not quite prepared for the source. Lightning crackled around the Ryan boy I’d bound. My vines were dissolving into sand in front of my eyes. He was stock still, his colorless eyes wide and frozen on Juliet’s lifeless form.
The ceiling burst. Hunks of glass skittered across the floor. Some folded into sand. Some embedded themselves against the floor and melded there. Crackles of electricity arced out from him through the room, lighting the drapes of the bed on fire.
“Get out,” he murmured.
He could have been his uncle. For a moment, I felt actual fear, and backed away. I hadn’t expected this. He was unproven, he shouldn’t have this much power...
“Who the hell are you?” Simon demanded, shifting his grip on the sword. But it wasn’t until he stepped into Rhys’s line of sight, between him and Juliet, that Rhys reacted.
“GET OUT!” he howled.
A violent wind ripped through the room, rocketing in through the window. It whipped both Simon and I against the walls but left Rhys and Juliet untouched. The glass debris in the room whirled; I held up my arms to shield myself from the razor-sharp fragments.
“Know your exit, rookie,” I said, inclining my head toward one of the standing mirrors. Simon could activate it and we could escape the grief-stricken boy. The last time I’d seen someone this berserk, he’d destroyed the entire city of San Francisco. But that had been a Wolf. Mirrormakers were something else entirely.
Simon hesitated, but Rhys was gaining focus, and his focus was on Simon and the sword still dripping his girlfriend’s blood.
“YOU,” the boy roared. Lightning crackled and glass whirled around him.
With no further hesitation, Simon pressed his hand to the mirror. The surface shimmered and he jumped through. I dove after him, uncaring of the destination.
I rolled across a dusty wood floor, with moonlight filtering through a hole in the roof overhead. Stacks of old boxes and rows of bottles were scattered around. The lumbermill? It connected to the storeroom of the old lumbermill? I looked back at the mirror I’d exited from. Static arced from the frame like grasping fingers. Eyes wide, Simon picked up the closest thing, a broken chair, and hurled it at the mirror. The crash resounded through the mill and into the forest. The broken glass twitched on the ground for a moment, as if animated, but as the static dispersed they fell still. Silence ruled again. Simon took a steadying breath, pushing his hair back from his face. So he was at least intelligent enough to fear the boy’s raw power. I wondered which of them was stronger.
