“What?” Leonie’s pale eyebrows shot upwards. “That’s not—I mean, no one was actually there in my room with me tospeakthem! They’re just the words I hear in my head almost every time I look in my own mirror.”
“Your mirrorat the inn,” Margaret pressed. Herown mirror there had been acting oddly, too, hadn’t it? All those strange flashes of light that had come out of nowhere...
She had dismissed them as mere visual oddities. What if instead they were signaling something far more dangerous? If someone had actually been watching her through the mirror with their own candle or gas lamp on the other side...
No wonder the baroness had known exactly where she was headed! Margaret had left all her maps and notes spread out on her vanity, just in front of her uncovered mirror, for hours.
Ugh, how she hated missing the obvious! But her early, personal training had been stronger than she’d even realized until her husband had forced her to look into her own reflection today and finally see the truth. With her aunt’s critical voice ringing in her ears, she had learned to avoid all mirrors years ago—and ever since her marriage to a vampire, she’d flinched away from even thinking about them, too afraid to acknowledge how they made her feel.
...And that stubborn refusal to acknowledge her own emotions wasexactlywhy she had made such an elementary mistake in her analyses. “Hanno!” she snapped across the nixen’s fierce debate. “The thing that was stolen from you—was it a mirror of supernatural power?”
“How could you not already know?” Brows drawing together in bafflement, he twisted his neck within Gisela’s grip tostare at her.
“Reflection’s heart,” Margaret said impatiently. “A baroness stole it from you, didn’t she?”
“Her people invaded our territory,” Gisela said grimly, “but she came first. She’d been lurking and spying through the trees, but we took no note of her. We thought ourselves safe after centuries without any trouble from our neighbors, butshesaw one of our elders speaking into Reflection’s Heart. She stole it while they napped upon the shore, and she left only a poisoned apple in exchange.”
Hanno sneered, pulling free of his companion’s loosened grasp. “That, we noticed. Humans have no sense of smell! None of us could be fooled by such a wicked trick.”
Gisela shrugged off his interruption. “No one was harmed by her poison, but it was too late to reclaim the treasure we’d guarded for so long. She had left our territory by the time we knew our loss, and her men came the next day with axes and noisy machines to try to steal all we had left.”
“But you fought them off,” Margaret murmured, “and now...” Curse it, whathadthe baroness been nattering about as she tried to persuade Margaret into following her? Some murderous grand plan, too ridiculous to remember...
“She said the woods were infested with monsters like me,” said Leonie, “but that she and you together could change all of that and restore this place to what it ‘should’ have been from the beginning, without any of the rest of us.”
“What?” Gisela snarled as she lunged out of the water to stand between Leonie and Margaret. “You called this perfect treasure amonster? Aninfestation? Youdared?—?!”
“No!” Grabbing Gisela’s arm, Leonie shook her head.“Shedidn’t. She never has! Lady Riven snubbed the baroness and took no notice of her ranting...but I did. I’ve been hearing her hate through my own mirror for months now, ever since I first took shelter in our inn.”
No wonder its occupants had been so set against allowing any humans inside! Leonie couldn’t be the only one who’d been targeted by the baroness to vent her simmering rage.
“She must absolutely loathe our inn,” Margaret realized. “It’s a safe haven for everything she hates and fears, isn’t it? That must be why she’s been spying through the mirrors. How close is her home?”
“See for yourself.” Gisela flicked her fingers disdainfully towards the thickly forested mountain that rose to the north—and Margaret glimpsed the curving towers of a romantic yellow building poking above the tall green conifers that covered all the rest of the mountainside. “She said this land shouldallbe hers by right, only because her dead mate’s family had some piece of human paper that said so.”
“That is absurd.” There was a reason the Black Forest covered so much of so many Germanic principalities. No human hadeversucceeded in chopping much of it down for long! Bargains could benegotiated for specific human dwellings, but only tales of horror ever ended unagreed attempts, and those stories were passed down over the centuries as warnings to each new generation.
“We taught her exactly how foolish she’d been.” Hanno smiled from the water, his sharp teeth glinting. “When the last of her men ran away, she had to as well. If she ever comes back, she knows we will be waiting to finish her lesson.”
“So, she’s been sitting up there stewing ever since her first ploy failed?” Margaret’s brows knotted together. “I don’t understand. Doesn’t she have anything better to do with her time?”
“You’rea human, and you spend all of your time thinking about the supernatural,” Leonie pointed out. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“But—!” Margaret’s jaw dropped at the betrayal. “I want tolearn, not to destroy! It’s not the same thingat all.”
Although...
The baroness must have learned a good deal of her own by now, if she’d had full private use of Reflection’s Heart for years. If she really thought shecouldsomehow be rid of every supernatural creature who stood in the way of her own profit with just a bit of help from Margaret...that mysterious “small favor” she’d been going on about...
No wonder she had been so furious when her second invitation hadn’t worked any better than her first. But whenshe’d claimed that, if Margaret wouldn’t listen, she would use her servants to somehowmakeher...
“Oh, no,” Margaret breathed. “No, no, no!”
“What?” The question came in chorus from Leonie and Gisela.
Margaret couldn’t spare any time to reply. Tossing her notebook to the ground, she shoved heedlessly past everyone else to run with all her might in the direction from which she’d come, lifting her heavy, obstreperous skirts with both hands to gain precious seconds of speed along her way.
Whatwouldn’ta hate-filled, bitter woman who’d plotted murderous revenge for years dare do to achieve her aims once she finally glimpsed them within her reach? Of course Margaret had ignored those shouted threats before, when she’d thought them purely aimed ather. But apparently, the baroness knew every bit as well as she did everyone who was currently in residence at the inn...
