“You’re a lot easier to believe when you’re talking about how angry and pissed off you are,” Rose said.
She sounded so damnably calm.
“That’s all I needed to say,” I told her. “I’ve got to walk away from this, because I can’t take it any more. I’ve got reading to do.”
I turned to go. I need to read those damn diaries that Grandmother wrote, and about shoring up a spirit, and power sources and-
“Maybe,” Rose said, and something in her tone made me hesitate. “But you’re not going to do your reading here. This discussion was never going to end with you staying. It seems we’re going to need to shore up our defenses to prevent intrusions from more oblique angles.”
I turned back, staring at her through that tiny window that was the mirror.
“As heir and custodian of the Thorburn estate, granddaughter of Rose D. Thorburn-”
“Rose, stop,” I said.
“-I hereby expel you from Hillsglade House, until further notice.”
The mirror in front of me winked out of existence, as did the television screen, the window, and the oblong patch of light somewhere above me that was the mirror in the library went black as well.
I couldn’t occupy a space that didn’t exist. It wasn’t darkness. It wasn’t vacuum. Only utter nothingness.
I was thrust into the nearest available space. Into snow that wasn’t really that cold and outdoors that had no fresh air. Powdery snow flew around me, but the impact still hurt. Being shunted from one location to another hurt more.
Tossed aside, cast out of the house.
I stood in the reflection of the house’s front windows, beyond the house, and I could see through to perceive Rose and the others, gathered in the living room.
The interior was dark. No path stood available for me.
She can do that? I thought, I could have done that?
Fuck.
Numb, aching, feeling the wood creep across my skin by millimeters, gaining more ground in the wake of the betrayal and abandonment, I made my way to my feet.
It touched the window.
When I’d exited the factory, I’d gone from one side of the window to the other. The glass I’d carried with me had broken with the landing.
There was no passage through this window.
Fuck.
I stared around me.
Darkness, and patches of scenery. Most of the city was reflected in some fashion or another, from front windows and car mirrors. Some patches were clearer and stronger than others.
The interiors of houses weren’t lit anymore than Hillsglade House was, and not every roof was reflected in a surface.
The end result was a piecemeal city, artificial and empty. Buildings stood, but not every face of the building existed. Stretches between these cardboard cut out sections of street were cast in opaque darkness. I was reminded of the towns in old westerns, where buildings were only building fronts, held up by stilts.
Rose had been limited to my presence and places I’d been. Was this all ground that Rose had covered, or were the rules different? I was the true vestige, after all.
I set off, taking long strides.
Rose was tainted. I had no doubt about it now. The Rose I’d talked to in there had been off. Not quite right. Closed off, controlling, a course in mind and no willingness to be swayed.
They were holing up. Protecting the house with barriers.
The mad despot in her tower, challenged on all fronts.
Was she going to get worse? The others weren’t, as far as I could tell, arguing against her. Maybe that was some influence of hers, maybe it was genuine trust. Maybe it was that they were newbies to this world, and Rose took point as a matter of course, having a week or two more experience than they did.
Either way, they weren’t going to call her on her shit. She was going to keep going until someone confronted her on an equal level. As a peer.
When I’d been real and Rose the person in the mirror, she’d taken that role, questioning me, keeping me level.
Now that the roles were reversed, she’d cast me out.
I needed help. Help, ideally, that could smack some sense into my alter ego.
Maggie, I thought.
If it had been a month since the factory thing, which would have been in the last week of December…
Could she be in school?
Maggie could be the peer I needed.
It helped that the driveway was long. I’d been able to start walking first and decide on a destination second, without having to change course.
My path degraded as I walked, the reflections less clear.
When it had effectively disintegrated, I simply stepped across, skipping ahead a third of a city block.
I covered ground fast. My body was light, my bones felt more like sticks than stone.
There was a definite time lag between the real world and this one. Snow, smoke from chimneys, they existed as still images, catching up to reality only every two or three seconds.
Goal number one. Find Maggie. Once I had at least one ally, I had some ability to affect the real world, to get something done.
Number two, I needed a real body. I’d promised it to Rose, but, well, this wasn’t how I’d wanted to give it to her. Getting a body was a high priority, but only because it would make other things doable. Not necessarily the second step, but something I’d have to keep my eye open for.
Priority number three, I needed information. Books would be great. Knowing what my enemies were doing was greater still. It would help me, it would help my friends. It would even help Rose. Then, as part of that same line of thinking, I had to figure out what Rose was up to.
The further I got from Rose, the clearer my own reflection became.
“Hello hello,” I heard a female voice, melodic and sing-song. “Did I spy…?”
Fuck no.
“You did spy,” a man said, his voice with the same melody to it.
“A shadow without a person to cast it, in the window. My eyes are sharp, you know.”
“I’ve complemented your eyes before, my dear lady. I’d make a work of art out of them, if you weren’t so attached to them.”
“Or if they weren’t so attached to me?”
“Mmm hmm.”
The voices weren’t getting quieter as I walked away. They were following.
Faerie.
“It looks like a rose, it walks like a rose…”
“Not interested guys, you might not remember, but we’ve done this before,” I called out.
“Sounds like a rose.”
“Roses don’t have sounds,” I said.
Challenge subtlety with bluntness.
They’d barely been a block away. Random luck I’d run into them, or something else?
Rose was shoring up her defenses, holing up.
Was this entire town a minefield of hostile Others and practitioner traps?
“A rose can rustle,” Ev’s voice followed me, reaching into and through the nearby panes of glass. Cars were parked along the length of this street, and the rearview mirrors and side windows reflected the surroundings for me to tread in. “A brush of wind through leaf, stem and thorn. A sound that only the most gifted beings might claim to know.”
“Shall we be your breath of wind?” the man asked. “We can treat you to the faintest of breaths on your skin, until your skin has prickled from head to toe, and phantom sensations caress you.”
“Not interested,” I said. “Go away.”
“So rude,” Ev said.