And Margaret had left her own husband alone in deathly sleep, helpless and unprotected.
Why had she never realized over the years that she ought to be training her body as well as her mind? Within minutes, her chest was burning from exertion, and pain stitched urgent protests into her side with every thudding step. By the time she was half an hour into her panicked journey, her legs and face were deeply scratched and her knees were bruised from far too many falls. Her weak body refused to run all the way, but her mind was still desperately racing ahead,scrambling through every terrible option and dire possibility that might be taking place without her.
She didn’t even notice, until she’d thudded to a necessary but agonizing halt for rest, that Leonie had been running just beside her. “Oh!”
“What’s going on?” Leonie demanded. “You?—”
“Don’t worry...about me,” Margaret panted. “Just—go!” She waved frantically with her right hand while her left hand remained braced against the closest birch tree trunk, helping her to catch her breath. More rustling sounded in the undergrowth behind her, enough to signify a dangerously large animal nearby, but she had no fear to spare for any wildlife just now. “You’re...faster by far. Go to him, now. You have to...keep him safe!”
Leonie shook her head, looking as baffled as if Margaret had suddenly started spouting a different language. “Who are you even talking about?”
“Myhusband!” Her voice broke on the word, and her body doubled over, pain closing in from every direction.
How could she have ever doubted exactly what she felt for him? She might have initially justified their alliance on practical, rational grounds, but her heart hadneveraccepted those limitations. She’d simply been too much of a coward to admit the truth to herself...
But it must all have been blatantly on show to the baroness through her mirror every day. Whether the mirror that wasReflection’s Heart revealed her husband’s vampiric image or not, Margaret herself had been on full display, with all of her emotions only too obvious to everyone but her.
Leonie said, “But Lord Riven told me to protect you.”
“I’mnot the one...in danger now.Go!” Gritting her teeth against the burn in every muscle, Margaret forced herself forward to doggedly continue her own unbearably slow run across the mossy, uneven ground, which felt no longer magical or mysterious but onlylitteredwith infuriating obstacles.
Thankfully, Leonie sped past her a moment later, swiftly disappearing from view through the trees. With every brutally slow minute that passed in the dim green world of the Black Forest, as Margaret lurched around tree branches, scrambled over rocks, and jumped over trickling, shadowed streams, she prayed with more fervency than she’d felt in years that the nachzehrer would reach the inn on time.
When she finally glimpsed the inn through the thick press of trees ahead, she saw the front door left standing carelessly ajar, like a mouth opened in a scream. She lunged forward, all pain smothered by one last, panicked burst of energy.
“Doom!”wailed the specter who floated just inside the door.
Margaret thundered up the cobwebbed staircase without stopping to ask him for details. Leonie met her in the dark corridor, holding out her pale hands and opening her mouth to speak, but Margaret dodgedaround her. She didn’t stop until she reached the open doorway of her own room.
The bed where she’d left her husband was empty. Even the covers were all gone. They must have been used to swathe his body against the burning rays of the sun.
There were, of course, no signs of struggle in the room. He wouldn’t have had any idea what was happening to him, alone and undefended.
Margaret turned, slowly and full of dread, to the dusty mirror on the vanity.
The baroness’s face smiled at her from the glass, free of her cloak and revealed to be an elegant woman, perhaps fifteen years Margaret’s senior, with silvering dark hair beautifully arranged above a gown that even Margaret recognized as no longer fashionable.
“Finally,” the baroness purred. “I’ve been waiting to show you something.”
Standing up, she tilted her side of the mirror to reveal the carpeted floor beside her...where a long, transparent glass coffin had been placed. Filtered through her own non-supernatural mirror, Margaret couldn’tseeanyone inside...
But she knew exactly who must be laid out within that coffin even before the baroness tilted Reflection’s Heart once more to show the thick, cream-colored curtains that hung over floor-to-ceiling windows perilously nearby.
“I can open these curtains at any moment to allowthe sun inside, Lady Riven. So, tell me: are you finally ready to accept my invitation?”
When Margaret stumbledback down the staircase three minutes later, her mind was a whirling storm with no clear center for thought. She was well on her way down the final flight of stairs before she even took in the blurred sound of agitated voices nearby—and it took another second for her vision to finally focus and reveal almost all her fellow residents of the inn assembled at the bottom of the staircase, waiting for her by the front door.
It was such a baffling sight that she stopped, blinking in confusion. Still, the startlement cleared her mind enough that she heard every word Leonie spoke as the nachzehrer hurried up the first few steps of the staircase to meet her: “What are we going to do?”
“We?’” Margaret repeated blankly.
That pronoun certainly couldn’t includeher. She hadn’t been part of a ‘we’ with anyone except one particular person in well over a decade, andhewasn’t here. He was in danger. He needed her!
But why would Leonie bother askingMargaretabout what any of the others should be doing? Margaret had only been accepted into this refuge in the first place on sufferance as her husband’s companion. Now that he was gone...oh, God...
“Allof us,” Leonie repeatedslowly and clearly, frowning and stepping even closer. “What did the baroness tell you? She was watching in the mirror when I went to your room, but she said she’d only talk to you, so I went to wake up everyone else. Olga’s out on one of her mysterious wanders—sometimes she disappears for days—but all the rest of us are up now and ready.”
“Ready...for what?” Dazed, Margaret shook her head in utter incomprehension. She was the odd one out here, as usual—and for once, she couldn’t force her brain to think through the puzzle.
