I stepped into the line of the tiny reflections, suddenly eager for the warmth. Then a thought occurred to me. I closed my eyes and touched a fingertip to one of the tiles. It tingled as it passed through the silver. I pulled it back, just in case someone was at the far end of the hallway. A disembodied finger was bound to cause comment.
So it’s not just the one in my room.
I opened the door and stepped through onto the terrace. The sky overhead, however faded, was a welcome expanse of blue.
There was a mirror somewhere on the second floor of the villa that caught part of the gardens and woke them in a riot of color. The terrace itself was gray, with a gray table at the far end, gray chairs, gray tablecloth, gray cup, gray plate. Lady Sorrel’s tea, missing only Lady Sorrel herself.
It was the sight of the tablecloth, oddly enough, that made me realize another thing that was missing. There was nowindhere in the mirror-world. When I’d had tea with Sorrel and the king, a week and several lifetimes ago, there had been a breeze from the desert that stirred the cloth against my legs. It had smelled faintly of creosote and incipient heat.
No wind here. No smells either. The cloth hung in straight folds. Looking over the gardens to where they meshed with the desert, I saw the dark structural shapes of cactus and brush against the equally dark ground. Beyond that, blackness stretched to the horizon.
The sight was chilling. I rubbed my arms and decided thatmaybe I’d done enough exploring for the moment. Next time I’d bring warmer clothes.
Besides, I had so many thoughts, and I wanted to write them down before I forgot something important.
I threaded my way back through the villa. My hand was on the cold nonmetal of the doorknob when I heard something behind me.
It was such a familiar sound that if the mirror-world around me had not been so silent, I probably wouldn’t have even registered it. A door had closed somewhere in the upper gallery; that was all.
I thought it through, while my pulse spiked inconsiderately. If there was a mirror that faced a door, and someone had opened the door in the real world, then it would open here. If they closed it behind them, it would close here. Granted, I couldn’t see any figures standing in the gallery, where they would have been frozen when the door cut off the reflection, but if they’d been going into a room, instead of out, I wouldn’t.
Right. Entirely logical. Nothing to be worried about.
Saints, I have to write all this down.
My mirror-bedroom looked no different when I got back to it, and the maid hadn’t been in, or if she had, her reflection was now caught in some other mirror. I closed my eyes and stepped through the giant mirror.
When I opened them, Javier was standing five feet away, looking utterly poleaxed, staring straight at me.
CHAPTER 16
The timing could not have been worse. He must have just been coming in the door, in the blind spot left by the mirror. An instant earlier and I’d have seen him, an instant later and he wouldn’t have seen me.
If I had the brains that the saints gave an oyster, as my grandmother used to say, I would have been terrified. I would have remembered what the cat had said about being stoned as a witch. I would have immediately started laying the groundwork to convince Javier that he was seeing things, that it was a trick of the light.
But my body was still echoing with the wild enthusiasm of discovery, and when I opened my mouth, what came out was “Saints! Javier, youhaveto see this, it’sincredible!”
I wouldn’t have thought that he could look any more astounded, but he managed. His eyebrows practically touched his hairline. He said, very carefully, “Did you just come out of the mirror?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding so vigorously that my hair flopped into my eyes. “There is something very,verystrange going on with the mirrors here.” I waved at it.
Javier took a cautious step forward, then finally looked away from me, to the mirror. “Is it some kind of hidden door?”
“Not exactly. Give me your hand.” I reached out and caught his wrist. He resisted for only an instant, then let me take it. Either he trusted me, or he was too stunned to protest.
“Close your eyes,” I said. His eyes flicked back to me, then he warily obeyed. I could feel the tension in his muscles as I knit our fingers together. His hand was warm and dry and hard with calluses. Mine was cold and sweaty, and I found a moment to beembarrassed by that, before I closed my eyes and put our hands into the mirror.
His bounced off the glass.
“Wait,what?” My eyes snapped open, which accidentally proved that opening my eyes didn’t mean my fingers fell off. The side of my hand was inside the silver, tingling with cold, but Javier’s knuckles lay against the mirror’s surface. He opened his eyes, too, to see my hand submerged in the mirror as if it were water.
“What,” he said, quite calmly, “in thehell.”
“Oh, damn it,” I said, pulling back out. “I can’t bring you through.” I knew that I could bring physical objects from the real world—I wasn’t naked on the other side of the mirror, so my clothes obviously transferred—but apparently living things were different. “It’s because of the apple. The one I ate yesterday. I tripped and fell into the mirror.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Javier said, “or I have.”
“No, no. Well, that’s what I thought, too.” It appeared that Grayling had been right, thatwasunoriginal.
