Fog was filling the car, misting them both. Jake had to say it. “I saw him. Back at the Abbey. I saw my father’s ghost in a mirror.”
Maskelyne turned, fast. “A black mirror?”
“Just a mirror.”
Disappointment flickered over the man’s ruined face. “Well. That is what Symmes called the delay. A temporal echo. Or perhaps more like a ripple. It means nothing. Your father isn’t there anymore.”
Jake shook his head. “Look. Tell me about this thing. The Chronoptika. Tell me everything.”
Gideon landed lightly on his feet and turned his back on the Dwelling.
So much for leaving a window open. He walked swiftly into the trees, simmering. He had taken Summer’s punishment for this Jake, this spoiled arrogant child. Had thought, after all the timeless eternity of his captivity, that maybe this could be a friend.
A human contact.
Summer was right about them. They were boring.
The moon balanced over the Wood. Snow was coming. He could sense its cold, silent approach.
And something else.
He stood still, listening, one hand on a vine of ivy.
Something uncanny had entered the estate.
He could smell it. All the hairs on the back of his cold hands could sense it. An intrusion from some dark place. A rank, animal stink.
He slipped into the undergrowth, crouching low. And then, so abrupt and close it made him shiver sideways, he heard it howl.
A long, eerie spine-chilling wail.
A wolf’s anger.
He breathed out dismay into the frosty air. Leaves crackled. A shadow ducked out of the trees.
Still as winter’s most frozen corpse, Gideon saw the man flicker by; a thin, lank-haired man, his eyes hidden by small blue lenses that seemed to reflect everything.
A man with no substance.
A man like a wraith, an echo. And slinking at his heels, white as paper, the soft-padding wolf.
Safe in his Shee-craft, Gideon let them pass. He watched them merge into the shadow of the house. They left a darkness on the night, a vacuum.
Maybe Jake had been wise not to open the Dwelling. “Because Shee I know,” he breathed to himself. “And humans I know. But what sort of creature are you?”
A starling flew down and landed on the branch beside him. It fixed him with a black sidelong eye and said, “She asks is there anything to report?”
Gideon kept his face calm—they were experts at reading the slightest expression. He made up his mind then in that instant. He would escape them, even if he had to die. She would not own him for all time.
“No,” he said. “Nothing to report.”
Wharton heard voices coming, froze in his examination of the mirror, swore once, slid hurriedly behind the clockwork. He crouched behind a bank of levers just as Piers ushered Sarah through the labyrinth. Venn was close behind them.
Venn looked at her. “There’s nothing to worry about. Piers and I are both here…in case.”
Sarah stared around at the crude webbed labyrinth, the alien, crowded machinery. Then she saw the mirror. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not scared.”
It was a lie. To see it again, this terrible device, the shadowy warped reflection of her face in its depths, terrified her. It was festooned with trailing wires and monitors, and she knew far more than Venn about the devastation it could cause. She tried to sound calm. “Is this it?”
Venn came and stood beside her, so they were both reflected. “This is it. The Chronoptika. An impossibility in itself—a concave mirror that seems flat. It was obtained by a Victorian eccentric called John Harcourt Symmes, back in the 1840s. He claimed it could warp time. But his results were generally failures, though we don’t know for sure. One volume of his journals is missing. His last experiment may have worked.”
She said, watching Piers test systems and flick switches, “What happened to him?”
Venn shrugged, unhappy. “Forget him. We won’t be trying anything as stupid. Just getting the thing calibrated.” He looked at Piers. “The bracelet?”
“Not yet. Stand here please, Sarah. I just need to run some tests—your height, weight, and so on.”
She stepped onto a small Plexiglas platform. “This mirror. How did you get it?”
“A long story.” Venn seemed so tense, he couldn’t keep still; he walked around to Piers and watched him impatiently. “Will she do? She has to.”
“Two minutes.”
“And David Wilde? He worked with you on this, didn’t he?”
Venn raised his head and his eyes were hostile. “I suppose Jake told you that. Leave it, Sarah, I don’t want to talk about David.”
I’ll bet you don’t, she thought. What about her! She was the one facing the risks. But she bit her lip and told herself to stay calm. This was what she was here for. And she was so close!
“Right.” Piers scuttled around the mirror. “There were a few rather strange readings there, but nothing the system can’t handle. I’ve been trying to build in a reflex barrier—a sort of safety function. We didn’t have it when we lost David, so you should be safer.”
Venn watched, motionless. “She’s ready.”
She said, “Yes.” Defiant, her eyes on his.
“Then put this on, please.”
Piers held a wide silver cuff of metal. The bracelet. She stared at it, then held her arm out, tugging up her sleeve. The bracelet was icy around her wrist. It hung a little loose. Her heart thudded, like a tiny vibration in the glass.
“Good. Now…” Piers turned, but Venn grabbed him.
“Wait.” Venn was staring at the shadowy corner behind the generator. Sarah turned quickly, but Venn’s voice was a roar of anger.
“JAKE! Get out from there.”
Nothing.
Then she saw it too, a shadow, lurking close. For a moment she knew the Janus Replicant had crept inside, that it was here. Then it detached itself. Something clattered and Wharton stepped out, looking guilty and dismayed and determined. “Actually, it’s not Jake. It’s me. And I’m afraid I can’t let this charade go on for one second longer. It all stops now.”
“So you see,” the scarred man said quietly, “the mirror is a dangerous thing. Venn is working blindly, with no second chances; he’s lost the bracelet your father was wearing and has only one left. No margin for error. Yet he is obsessed. If he had a subject he considered expendable, he might…”
Jake looked up. “Subject?”
“Someone to experiment on. Someone young, healthy. Expendable. He may ask you. If he does, you must refuse.”
Jake wasn’t listening. “Sarah.”
“What?”
“She had something she wanted to tell me, and I didn’t listen. But it shouldn’t be her, it should be me!” He grabbed at the door handle, furious. “Let me out of here! Or drive me back, now.” He whipped around. “We have to get back there before…”
He stopped.
Maskelyne was facing him, the scar cruelly obvious now, the dark eyes clear and sad. “I’m sorry to be crude, Jake. But that’s not possible.”
He had a small strange weapon in his hand. It looked like a long-barreled dueling pistol, but it was made of transparent glass. The muzzle was pointed directly at Jake’s head.
Jake stared in disbelief.
“I want my mirror back. You are all I have to trade with. Venn’s beloved godson.”
Jake almost laughed. “Are you crazy? He can’t stand me! You’d be doing him a favor!”
His scorn was scathing. Just for a moment, Maskelyne froze in doubt.
And Jake attacked.
He grabbed the gun; the man twisted away. Jake’s fingers were tight over Maskelyne’s; he tugged, forcing the weapon up, his other hand gripping the man’s throat. Maskelyne was stronger than he looked; they grappled, breathless. Then Jake shoved and kicked, the gun slipped, he touched the trigger. An explosion of brilliance flung him back in the seat, rocking the car, knocking all breath out of him. For a strange, timeless moment the world was splayed darkness, a bruising crash in his ears that became a steady, fierce hammering on the car door. He struggled up.