“It doesn’t matter.” Gideon was gloomy. “We won’t be going anywhere. All this is in the Summerland, and that goes on forever.”
Ignoring the paradox, Wharton stared at himself. Really, he thought, he was getting a touch overweight. He said, “What do you think?”
Venn frowned. He went up to the nearest mirror and put his hands on it. It was black and solid. “We’re so used to going through mirrors,” he said, “that we’ve forgotten what they’re really for.” He stared into his own wintry eyes. “They show us what we think is real. But it isn’t. Nothing is real.”
He opened his fingers.
And to Wharton’s astonishment the wall of black glass held the tiniest point of light, diamond bright. As he watched, it grew, as if it zoomed toward them, became a circle, then a square, then filled the mirror and was a window down onto some peculiar street, narrow, sun-slanted and cobbled.
As they watched, it closed again.
“Was that real?” Wharton said, fascinated.
Venn had stepped back, every sense alert.
“Possibly. In some other time. Or it might be a trap set for us by Summer, because I’m beginning to think she knows we’re here.”
Wharton didn’t like the sound of that. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“Maybe.” Venn turned suddenly to Gideon. “You. Tell me. Why did you bring Sarah here?”
Gideon’s green gaze flickered. “She begged me. I . . .”
“Felt sorry for her?” Venn advanced on him. “I don’t think so.”
Gideon stared back, fierce. “We made a deal. She told me that she would help me.”
“How can . . .”
“She said that in her time there were no Shee.”
The words seemed to spill like a whispered wonder into the room. Gideon clenched his fists, hugged himself, as if he had said something terrible, something fascinating, that should never have been spoken.
Venn too, Wharton saw, was both astonished and intrigued. He stepped forward and lifted a hand, but as Wharton jerked forward in alarm, Venn’s fingers stopped inches from Gideon’s white glare. “No more,” he breathed. “Don’t talk of that here. Summer will hear.”
He paced, restless, furiously watching his own reflections pace with him. All, Wharton noticed with a sudden chill, except one.
Because there was one mirror that held no Venn, that held nothing but darkness.
Wharton looked at it. Sidled closer.
Venn turned. “I’ll smash every panel in this place if I have to. There must be a way out!”
Wharton reached out. The mirror was black, but not glass. It was a door painted dark as midnight, and there was a tiny handle recessed into it, and he reached out and turned it, and it opened.
Gideon yelled, “No!”
Venn turned and lunged at the door.
But Wharton was gone. All he saw was his own face in the mocking glass.
22
Progress report: ALICIA HARCOURT SYMMES
Subject observed continually. Seems to meet co-conspirators only at alleged séances. Information likely to be passed here.
Subject may be aware of surveillance. Yesterday she left the house and winked at this officer.
ALLENBY Covert Operations
THE ROOM WAS set up as a crude laboratory. Alembics stood on the bench; a rack of bizarre glass retorts bubbled and spat. A skull watched them with empty eyes.
David crossed quickly to a small cupboard in the wall and unlocked it. He took out a tiny vial. “This is it.”
He brought it over. “I’ve been trying to isolate an antibiotic. It’s crude, unrefined. But it might work, Jake, it might save a few lives.”
The vial was filled with a grainy substance, amber as honey.
A noise somewhere in the building startled them. They froze, listened to footsteps running up the stair outside. The baby made a small snuggling motion against Rebecca’s warmth. The footsteps came close, passed the door. Then they pattered on up and died into the distance.
Jake breathed out. “Right.” He undid the bracelet from his own arm and slid it onto Rebecca’s wrist, clicking it shut.
“What?” She stared in alarm. “But we’re all going together, aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. But this is just in case.”
For a moment she stared at him in dread, the possibilities of being lost in the endlessness of time reeling out before her. Then he turned her to the mirror.
“What do you use to operate this, Dad? There are no controls . . .”
“I’ve learned a few things about the mirror.” David came toward the silver frame. “All that electrical input, you don’t even need it. These letters here, these words. They’re enough if you know how to use them. You put your hands here. And here. Sometimes I think it reads your DNA. But”—he shook his head, stepping away in dismay—“for God’s sake Jake, every time I’ve tried I’ve gone further back! What if we all end up in some prehistoric swamp? What if . . .”
“We won’t.” Before his father could object, he moved, grabbing Becky and pulling her close. “Do as he says.”
She touched the silver frame.
Under her fingers she felt it tremble, felt it sense the bracelet she wore, the terror she felt. She felt it waken and become interested in her.
“Jake.”
Jake grabbed David. “Now us, Dad.”
The mirror hummed. It shuddered. The air in the room gathered itself up.
But what burst open, with an abrupt, shocking crash, was the door. The guards leaped inside, halberds at the ready. Behind, striding tall in his robe of damask, the condottiere of the palazzo entered and stared.
The mirror throbbed.
It opened like a sudden vacancy in the world and took Rebecca and Lorenzo into a sudden roaring gust of emptiness.
The guards fell to their knees, speechless with terror. A halberd clattered. All the retorts on the bench shattered; Jake was flung sideways, and in the seconds it took him to stumble up and get his breath back, the signore had a knife at his throat and one strong arm tight strangling around his neck.
He saw his father stop in midstride, fling up his arms, yell, “Signore! No!”
Jake gasped for air. His hands clutched at the warlord’s arm, but it was firm as steel, and the man’s voice was contorted with anger and fear.
“What sort of filthy devilry have you brought into my house, dottore?”
The very last ghost I ever saw was in January 1941.
I really should have given up by then, but even though I was an old woman, I could not stop hoping. My father had been so sure they would come—David or his son Jake, or their mysterious and rather thrilling-sounding friend Mr. Oberon Venn.
I had taken to keeping the mirror covered, and all those years it had been a silent presence in my room. It had never shown me anyone again but for my own sadly ageing face. Perhaps I had begun to wonder if David had ever existed. My father died, the world changed, another world war loomed over us. Food was rationed, London cowered under the Blitz.
And then, on a cold spring morning when the daffodils in the square were splitting their papery yellow buds, Janus came back.
I had long since ceased to be able to afford a maid. I had become a dusty old woman, gray and lined, but still my spirit was high. I was happy with my séances, which had become strangely popular, and my tea parties and my dear friends from the Psychic Society.