“The mirror.”
“Exactly. Ripped from its frame. I think Peg must have been going wild. I was in my time, so apart from John, she was all on her own. No going back to get me.”
“What happened next?”
Peggy turned back toward us and fixed me with a hard but unreadable expression. “Anthony almost died is what happened next. The man made him put a doorstop in the mirror, then tied him up and left, taking the mirror with him.”
“Five days he was gone,” said Lilly. “And Anthony tied up all that time in that little hole. If the rain hadn’t been making it through there, I’m sure he would have died.”
“Five days,” I said. “Looking for me? Wait.” I held up my hands and tried to line the times up in my head. “This started, what, two weeks ago? That’s when Melissa and Keisha got attacked.”
They made me tell them what I knew about those attacks. “But wait,” I said, looking at Lilly. “What about you? What happened when you tried to come through?” I looked back at the hole in the creek bank I had come out of. It wasn’t large, and was mostly hidden by grass and weeds. “If he took the mirror away, where did he put it?”
Lilly opened her mouth to speak, then paused, thought for a moment, and tried it again. “That’s … part of what we need to talk to you about, Kenny. There’s a lot this man doesn’t understand about the mirror, we think, but some things he must understand better than we do.” She looked at my face and shook her head. “Oh, I mustn’t be making any sense at all. It was in water, Kenny. It was sunk in water. I found a doorstop in my mirror. Thinking it must have been left by Peg, I tried to come through, and I almost died. John says he’s seen exactly that happen. You know, of course, that terrible heat or cold you go through when you pass through the place in between. Somehow it’s worse when you pass from the mirror into water. It makes your muscles cramp and tighten. My lungs filled with water and I could barely drag myself back in time to save my life. I kept trying, but I could never go through. Wherever he had taken the mirror, he had sunk it in water.”
“Why do you think he’s looking for you?” said Peggy abruptly, directing a steady gaze at me.
“What?”
“Why is he looking for you?”
Kenny Maxwell killed my wife. I could still hear the words in my mind. I flicked a glance at John Wald, but he wasn’t entering into this part of the conversation. Could it be he hadn’t heard or hadn’t made out that accusation?
“I don’t know,” I said. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. What if it was true? Killed his wife. What if I deserved what he wanted to do to me? “What happened next?”
Peggy turned away, finding something to look at up a bend in the creek. Lilly took over. “The man came back two days ago. Screaming. He thought Anthony was hiding things, mirror-secrets. He hauled Anthony out of the hole and into the creek where he had the mirror. I think he might have killed him, but Peggy heard.” Lilly gave a little smile. “Our Peg is brave, I think, however much she wants to hide it.”
“Doesn’t take courage to scream and act the fool,” said Peggy, her back still turned to us.
“As soon as he saw her,” said Lilly, “he dropped Anthony and ran for her, started screaming. This man she had never seen before in her life, babbling about how he’d found her at last, he’d save her, never let her go. Is it any wonder, she isn’t thrilled to be talking about it?”
“I’m fine,” said Peggy. She walked back to us but didn’t sit. She ran a hand through her hair. “He kept screaming about how he’d tell me everything and make it right this time.”
At last, as she told it, the man must have realized he was terrifying her. He tried to reassure her that he was only trying to “stop the bad things.” To prove his goodwill, he fished Anthony out of the creek, and the mirror as well. Tying Peggy as well—for her own good, he said—he brought them all back to the carriage house.
“Then came the gun,” said Peggy. “He said it was all to make us happy again. If he could kill Kenny, everything would be peachy keen.”
“He would have done it all, too, if it weren’t for John,” said Lilly, “though it cost him terribly.”
Wald, also out looking for Anthony, returned to the carriage house in time to see the crazy man tying Peggy and Anthony to chairs. Wald attacked and they struggled. In the confusion, Anthony broke free and began to scream. People ran to help, but before they arrived, the crazy man escaped into the mirror.
“How could he do that?” I said. “I thought it was only the mirror kids? I thought it doesn’t let in any one older than sixteen?”
Wald shook his head. “Does not choose.” I frowned, and he rubbed his chin as though choosing his words carefully. “When it chooses the first time, we must be young. And when our year of seven is done, we think the glass is done with us. But ten years on comes another year of the glass. And ten and ten and every ten. If we’re still alive, we’re still the children of the glass.”
“So it depends on what’s his home time,” I said. “Right? You can always go back to the time you’re supposed to be in.” I shook my head to clear away the questions this new rule brought up. “Anyway, that must have been when he came to Anthony’s basement and got me.” I turned to Wald. “But you were there. Breaking into the house. How did you get there? You didn’t come through the mirror.”
Wald gave a huge sigh and a sad, weary grin crossed his face. “The long path, lad. Pray thou never need foot it.”
“He was arrested,” said Peggy. She threw her cigarette butt into the dying fire and stared at the embers. “They were all idiots. Wouldn’t listen to a thing I said. My father and Ben Wilkes from down the street came in to find me tied up and John bleeding from a nasty pistol whipping. I tried explaining, but—well, you know the neighborhood’s reputation. Missing children and the like.”
John nodded, staring into the fire. “I canna blame them,” he said. “A good drubbing I took of it, too. That father of thine, hath a good kick in his foot.”
John told of how he was arrested and charged with assault, breaking and entering, vagrancy, and half a dozen other crimes. Unable to prove his innocence, and carrying only serviceman’s papers from thirty years ago, he didn’t see the light of day until 1948.
“So, wait,” I said. “That’s happening right now? I mean—it just happened, right? How are you here?”
Peggy groaned. “Weren’t you listening? ‘The long path’? John waited. Yes, he’s in jail now, one of him. Awaiting trial. He’ll get out. Wait all the way until 1957 and come to help us. He broke into Anthony’s house last night—in ten years—to catch Prince Harming when he came through the mirror. If you had let him in instead of running, he could have helped you sooner. Gave us a shock when we saw him, I’ll tell you that for nothing, ten years older in a day.”
He smiled ruefully and nodded.
“So Prince Harming,” I said, “comes out of the mirror to kill me, and that’s when—”
Wald nodded. “Would have been worse if thy Luka had not been there.”
“Did … did she bite his cheek?”
Wald chuckled at that. “A high harpy that one, and fond like gold a’ thee.”
I told them I remembered some of the rest of it. “He escaped. And Luka followed while you stitched me up.”
“Aye,” said Wald. “She could not wait it. She guessed the mad fool had footed up the years to menace thy friends. I called her to stay whilst I stitched thy side, but she’d have none a’ that. Rushed into the glass. Left one a thy doorstop strings that I might after-foot.”