Sarah glanced out into the rainy afternoon. Starlings were rising from the Wood in flocks.
She shut the door and bolted it. “If you mean Maskelyne, yes he’s here.”
“Why on earth couldn’t he call me! I’ve been waiting at the cottage for an hour.”
“There’s no signal here. Besides, he’s busy. With the mirror.”
The tall girl closed her umbrella. Sarah saw how her long red plait of hair was soaked, the way her anger had suddenly thawed to a bleak resentment. “The mirror. Always the mirror.”
Sarah nodded. But she didn’t move, checking quickly there was no one around but one of the replicated cats, washing its tail on the dark wooden table. Then she ventured:
“If it wasn’t for the mirror, he wouldn’t be here.”
“He never is here!” Rebecca dumped the umbrella in the rack; a pool of water trickled from it across the tiles. “All he thinks about is how to reach the thing, and now he’s done that. They need him and he needs it.”
“To do what? Journey?”
Suspicious, Rebecca shrugged. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing. Except . . .” Sarah came closer. Rebecca always made her feel small, ridiculously petite. Folding her arms, she leaned back against the table and said, “Except that without the mirror, you’d have him all to yourself.”
As soon as she’d said it, she knew it was too crude. She cursed herself silently.
Rebecca’s suspicion became indignant certainty. “Don’t involve me in your crazy plots, Sarah. I know all about you, and where you’ve come from. Maskelyne says you’re dangerous, that you want to destroy the mirror. You’ll get no help from me. Now, where is he?”
She stalked across the hall head high, and Sarah let her reach the corridor to the kitchen before saying, “Yes, I’m dangerous. But I’m not your enemy. The mirror is your enemy. Your rival. The fascinating, endlessly powerful Chronoptika.”
Rebecca stopped, but didn’t turn.
Sarah went on, relentless. “Venn, Jake, Maskelyne. They all think they need it. But they’ll become slaves to it, and believe me, I know that’s true, because I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen how the mirror can devour people, mind and soul, how it can swell and pulsate with its own power, how it can become a darkness that can—will—devour the world.” She took a step across the hall. “I’m going to stop that happening. You could help me.”
Rebecca’s braid dripped rain on the tiles. Her jacket was patched with damp. She said, “Leave me out of this, Sarah. I’m not like you. I don’t care about saving the world. I’m just a girl in love with a ghost.”
The cat stopped washing and gazed at them both; Rebecca scooped it up and ran her hand over its black purring fur. Then she walked down the corridor, carrying it.
The cat stared back over her shoulder.
Sarah followed, thoughtful.
The seed had been planted.
It would have to be enough for now.
Piers had set up the ancient film projector in the drawing room, and had cleared the wall of its paintings to use as a screen. He wound the restored film reel in expertly, humming, his red brocade waistcoat a cheery brilliance under the dirty lab coat.
Venn paced. “Ready?”
“Almost, Excellency.”
Wharton was sitting on the leather sofa, feet up on the coffee table. “Like a Saturday matinee, this. Should have some popcorn, Piers.”
As the two girls came in, he nodded at Rebecca in surprise. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she muttered.
He also saw how Sarah had what he had come to call her “plotting” face on—he raised his eyebrows at her now and she smiled quietly, sarcastically back.
“I don’t remember inviting guests,” Venn said.
Ignoring him, Rebecca went straight to Maskelyne. The scarred man stood near the window, his dark eyes on the silver bracelet Venn wore around his wrist.
Quietly to Rebecca he said, “You should be in Exeter.”
“Not when I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Nothing is going on. Except that my magic game worked.”
She nodded, dumping her wet coat. “And you were too busy even to tell me.”
“Right.” Piers flexed his fingers. “Are we all ready?”
“Where’s Jake?” Sarah said.
“Here.” He came in with the marmoset on his shoulder; it leaped to the curtain and raced up.
To Sarah Jake looked tired, and strangely older, as if time in the past had moved differently, as if he had lived longer than the few days he had been there. But he wore his expensive clothes carelessly, and threw himself down next to Wharton.
“Right.” Venn turned. “Get on with it.”
Piers clicked the projector on, and the reels began to whirr. “Just to say this was almost impossible to get back. Corroded almost to nothing in places.”
The room was dim; rain patterns moved on the windows. On the wall, shadows began to blur; Piers muttered and played with the focus, producing a rapidly shrinking fuzziness that made Wharton say, “What is that?”
“People.” Jake watched, intent.
“One person.” Venn came forward, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Sort it, Piers.”
“Doing my best. Like I said, it’s in bits . . . How about . . . that.”
With an abruptness that silenced them all, a man loomed from out of the darkness and was there looking out at them. A man in a dark place, wearing some sort of brown ragged robe.
His outline flickered, vanishing briefly, reappearing with a jerky flicker slightly off center.
Wharton sat up. Sarah stared.
Rebecca looked around, wondering why they were all so silent.
“Who is that?” she muttered.
Rain pattered on the window.
No one answered.
Until Maskelyne said in his husky voice, “That’s Jake’s father.”
13
Janus has everything. We have nothing.
He has spent years perfecting his knowledge of the Chronoptika—his hunger for its secrets is destroying us all. We believe that seconds before the final catastrophe he will enter the mirror and journey to a refuge he has carefully prepared. He will live on, safe in the past.
Only we can break this cycle of despair. If we destroy the mirror, we destroy Janus.
Illegal ZEUS transmission
IT WAS DAVID’S idea to make the film.
It might have been on our third time of speaking—or channeling, as I was delighted to call it.
He insisted that he was no ghost, and I have to admit a slight sinking of the heart about that, because, after all, dreams are dreams. But when he explained to me that he was a man from the future, a man who had traveled in time, and had even once worked with my dear father, I was more than mollified.
I was thrilled!
“How is that possible?” I breathed.
He shrugged. He always seemed to stand very close to the glass, to be almost able to reach out through it, but when I touched the obsidian surface it was hard and smooth as ever.
“The mirror makes it possible,” he said. There was an anger in his voice. “If it wants to.”
“Then . . . might I also journey?”
“You don’t have this.” He raised his arm and I saw he wore a silver bracelet, curiously carved and worked, with an amber stone embedded in it. “It was what your father never had.”
“But . . . you do. And you must have this mirror . . . so therefore . . .”
The logic bewildered me. Was he gazing into the very same mirror as I was, but in some other age?