“It does take you roughly half an hour to fall through the portal,” the demon said. “That gives me some leeway.”
“So why a garden?” Beth asked. “This place seems like it was ripped straight from Victorian England or something. Hello, the 1800s called; they want their garden back.” The longer she was here, the more rooted in reality she felt. If she really had fallen through her mirror into a demon’s garden, then she needed to find a way out.
She lifted the wine glass to her lips and paused when the demon grinned in response.
Fuck. Dream or reality, it was time to play it safe.
“Oh, it was. I was trapped here some time ago by a very powerful man, but I managed to bring some real estate with me.” The demon leaned forward, suddenly vanishing and appearing at Beth’s side. He placed a hand on her wrist and pushed the glass away from her mouth. “I’m afraid I avoided your question earlier. You definitely don’t want to drink that. Otherwise, your soul becomes trapped here.”
“I wondered.” Beth set down the glass. “Does this have to do with the man who sent me here?”
“That would be Master Sebastien. I’m afraid that per the terms of my imprisonment, I often must do things I do not particularly find pleasant, such as trapping humans in this place.”
“And eating would trap me here?”
The demon nodded. “It would.”
“I don’t see anybody else here,” Beth noted.
“Oh, that’s because most people don’t last very long here.” The demon frowned and took Beth’s glass from her hands. He sipped at the wine, his thick lips spread thin on the crystal glass.
“You kill them.”
The demon nodded. “Usually. Or I wait until they throw themselves off the island. Whatever I find more entertaining.”
“But why not me?” Beth asked. “Isn’t it your job?”
“Not technically. The exact language involving my imprisonment here dictates that I must answer my master or his associates any three questions once every lunar cycle. Naturally, I try and get out of it if I can. I only have to answer yes or no. However, Sebastien has been gracious enough to provide me visitors on occasion, and I keep them alive as long as they interest me.”
“So you can answer three questions? Any three questions?”
“Well, I can answer any question, actually, without limitation. I could give the society all the details they want, but someone forgot to put that in the language of the spell that bound me here.”
“So I could ask any question and you could answer it?”
“Only if it pleases me.” The demon grinned. “Go ahead. Try.”
“Who was my first kiss?” Beth asked.
“Human or nonhuman? Family, nonfamily?”
“Are you stalling?” Beth leaned back on her cushion, her breasts pushing up against the fabric of her nightgown. She saw the demon’s eyes flick down at her figure and then back.
“Hardly. Your mother was your first kiss. When you were three days old, she kissed you on the mouth. Out of reflex, you tried to suck her lips. It counts. Nonfamily and human was Victor beneath the bleachers in the seventh grade. You did it on a dare. Nonhuman was Mr. Beary, the teddy bear. You kissed him several times as a child, but when you were eleven, you planted a kiss on that bear in the hopes that he would turn into a prince. You even tried to use tongue because you saw it in a movie once.”
“Holy shit.” Beth stared at the demon. She hadn’t thought about Victor in years, and she had completely (or deliberately) forgotten Mr. Beary. “This isn’t a dream, is it?” She spotted a fork by one of the plates and picked it up. She had to know for certain, and a pinch wasn’t going to be good enough.
“Hard to prove,” the demon told her. “No matter what I tell you, you could argue that the dream made up the memory. In a way, maybe you could think of your actions here as—DON’T DO THAT!” Beth jabbed the fork into her leg and screamed, then pulled the fork free. Blood flowed freely through the fabric of her nightgown, and she put her hand over the wound. Her palm was now damp with her own blood, and a chill ran through her body.
“Holy fuck, ow,” she swore, then looked at the demon. She had fallen into a bad situation, and now she needed to find a way out. But how?
“Well, that settles it.” The demon shook his head. “Not dreaming.”
“No kidding.” Beth balled up her fists. “This really hurts.”
“Yeah, well I prefer you intact.” The demon waved a hand over her leg, and the burning stopped.
Beth lifted her nightgown and wiped away the blood with a cloth from the table. Four tiny dots had scarred her legs.
“And definitely much quieter.”
She stared out across the garden, the gears of her mind turning. If this was real, the thing in her room had been real. What did Sebastien want with a copy of her? Was he some kind of witch? No, maybe a warlock. Shit, so many years of monster movies and fantasy novels and she still couldn’t piece it all together.
Beth thought of Mike. This whole mess was related to him, but how? Looking at the demon, she smiled politely, a feeling that was only skin deep. She was going to find a way out of here, and she thought she had a pretty good idea how to make it happen.
“Alex!” Dana sat up, scattering an array of metal tools onto the floor of her apartment. The sound they made upon striking the ground was deafening, causing Dana to put her hands over her ears. It had been the life support dream again, the sound of Alex’s last breath being drawn, watching the nurses leave the room with looks of defeat on their faces.
“Fuck,” she whispered, staring
