past. Rose, and someone called Wald. He knew things. That means we must have found them out.”
Jimmy shook his head, but Luka interrupted him. “Look, all you have to do now is go get Rick. We’ll meet you there.”
I saw Jimmy look longingly at his bedroom window, but in the end, he did what Luka said.
How can I explain what that walk was like? Midnight, ten years in the past. Somewhere in the world, I was four years old right now. It was a comfort that at least we had the mirror with us, though carrying the thing took a lot of getting used to. If your bare flesh touched its surface, you’d sink in, so we wore gloves and let it mostly lean its solid back against our arms. It was about four feet high and two wide, and no heavier or lighter than it ought to be now that it was out of its frame and off its dresser. To the two cars that slowed down as they passed us, we must just have looked like two lunatic kids carrying a perfectly ordinary mirror down Manse Creek Avenue at about one in the morning.
We walked in the general direction of the lake, mostly on the side of the road. Luka pointed out houses that had later been knocked down and ones that had yet to be built.
When we turned onto Homestead and could see the place Luka called the storage shack, Rick was waiting on the doorstep with Jimmy.
He stood as we approached and ran a hand through his hair. “Holy crap,” he said. “When Jimmy—I almost didn’t think he was serious. Hey, can we just forget about what happened the last time? I was an idiot.”
Luka interrupted. “Kenny wouldn’t have come back if he wasn’t ready to forgive and forget.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. All of their eyes were on me, even Jimmy’s. I felt like whatever I said, it should be the right thing. Forgive and forget was good, but it wasn’t enough. “We called you in the future—in my time. It didn’t work out, but you tried to tell us things about what happened in the past, something about the baby that died. You were with us. You were one of us.”
Rick raised an eyebrow at all this, but didn’t say a thing. He just nodded, opened the door to his grandmother’s junk house, and motioned us in.
The place was a dump. It had clearly once been intended for people to live in, a tiny bungalow with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. No indoor bathroom. The bedrooms felt like they were designed for midgets.
Every space was filled with junk. Faded boxes advertised toys, gadgets, household utensils, things I couldn’t even guess about. The kitchen counter was covered with rubber overshoes and something that called itself a waterproof scarf. Other rooms held cigar cutters, pipe maintenance kits, junior golf kits, ladies’ massagers, mustache trimmers, and a million old magazines.
“It’s a family joke,” said Rick. “My dad begs her to get rid of it. She always says next summer she’s gonna clear it all out and sell it. For the last ten years at least.”
As we carried the mirror in through the crowded kitchen, I yelped in pain and danced back. The mirror would have dropped if Rick hadn’t leaned in and grabbed it. “What’s going on?” he said.
I dug frantically in my pocket and brought out the rabbit’s foot Luka had given me. In the darkness of the junk house, a web of fine blue sparks danced in the fur. “Felt like I had a live wire in my pants,” I said, staring at the others.
Jimmy had shrunk back to the entrance of the house. Rick and Luka put down the mirror and leaned in. She touched it. “Tingly.”
“It was burning before,” I said.
I reached out to hand it to Rick, but then clutched it tighter. “Wait,” I said. Holding the keychain out, I turned in a circle. Weaker, weaker, weaker, and then when I turned back toward Rick, stronger. I took a step. Stronger still. There was no movement, but I kept thinking the rabbit’s foot was struggling in my grip. Another step and I was surprised it didn’t jump out of my hand.
Rick reached out, touched it, and recoiled.
“It’s getting stronger,” I said. “Move the mirror away.”
“It can’t be that,” Luka said. “I’ve been in and out of the mirror a bunch of times with that thing.” But she moved it anyway, giving me room to step forward again, closer to the kitchen counter.
I don’t know why I wanted to get closer. I had a half memory in my head of something like this, but couldn’t bring it to the surface. I took another step, finding I had to switch hands because my right was almost numb from the strange electricity.
“Kenny?” said Luka.
“Yeah.”
“Why is that box moving?”
I had been concentrating so much on the sizzling object in my hand, I hadn’t even noticed, but now I did. A cardboard box on the counter. Smaller than a loaf of bread and so covered in dust that you couldn’t see what the once-colorful pictures and writing were advertising. Its movement was slight, like there was a mouse inside making halfhearted escape attempts.
Rick picked the box up and blew the dust away, though when he did, I had to step back because the tingling in my hand grew to a genuine pain.
Luka directed her flashlight beam at the box. “Holy crap.”
“You got that right,” Rick said. He read from the box: “Lucky-for-you rabbit’s foot. Genuine talisman of good fortune from ancient times. Only left hind feet. Just thirty-five cents.”
Luka took the box from Rick, broke the seal, and opened it up. You could pick it out easily. One foot, packed in with the rest and dancing with blue sparks. Luka steeled herself and put her hand around it, then held it up to me.
I yelped and dropped mine, the shock so intense. Luka did the same.
They landed close together. An electric blue tentacle darted out of the keychain I had been holding and struck the one from the box. It wasn’t a spark. It wasn’t quick or thin or jagged enough. It was more like an arm made up of silvery blue ripples, and it lingered for a good two or three seconds. Along its length, flickering back and forth like eels, were ghost images of the rabbit’s foot, for all the world like one thing remembering its life, another imagining what was yet to come.
Then, with a final crack, the glowing connection moved the two keychains apart and collapsed.
“Holy crap,” said Luka into the ringing silence of the room.
“What the hell was that?” said Rick, looking at the two good-luck charms. “Is this one … are they … ?”
“The same rabbit’s foot,” said Luka. “Your grandmother gave it to me. They’re the same thing.” She kicked the one she had given me a safe distance away, then asked me to put the other one back in its box.
“So … it does this because it can’t be in two places at once?” I said.
Luka shrugged. “What am I, a scientist? Come on, it’s getting late.”
We found a place for the mirror in the larger bedroom, then Rick wanted to sit in the hallway between piles of horrible oil paintings and boxes of mason jars and talk for a while, mostly about setting up some rules. “For the house, I mean. If you’re seen coming and going in daytime, it’s gonna be trouble. I’ll make copies of the key and leave them in front of the mirror.”
We agreed to all of this. Rick would have talked more, but Jimmy started getting increasingly nervous, and even Luka began to yawn.
The goodbye was awkward. “You guys—you guys’ll come back, right?” said Rick.
We promised we would.
I had intended this time just to power through the three steps it now took to cross the slow, buzzing space between the mirrors, but the moment we were inside, I heard a gasp from my right, and I turned my head and opened my eyes before I knew what I was doing. Luka must have done the same, because we both winced and cried out in pain at the same time.
Or maybe it was surprise.
Just more than an arm’s length away stood a girl, brown-skinned and wrapped in a colorful cloth. Around her swirled another cloud of images, like ours but dimmer.
After a moment of silence on both sides, the girl broke out into a wide grin. “Greetings,” she said in a musical accent. “I have not yet met any of the blessed from your mirror.”
“Our mirror,” said Luka. “You mean … are there other mirrors?”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Have you not looked down the hallway?”
