This was my realm, not hers.
The cards, the two books, and the stacks of coins sat around me on the floor.
As quickly and quietly as I was able, I moved them all behind me.
“Breakfast,” Rose said. “Blake, I’d offer you something in the way of spiritual sustenance, but I think it’s too dangerous. Try keeping your activity level low.”
I clenched my fists. “Gee, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Give this a week or two to blow over, and we’ll see what we can do with you.”
“You sound like them, you know,” I said.
“Them?”
“Sandra, and Laird,” I said.
“Which reminds me of Laird,” she commented. “I’m putting a bogeyman in the room to watch over you. It worked with him.”
“Don’t be stupid about all this,” I said. “Come back, talk to me. Get info from me. If you’re going to risk them, risk the city with this damn dead man’s switch, do it smart, do it informed.”
“Yeah,” she said.
I heard a violent rustling, followed by heavy footsteps. Not in my field of view.
“Break the mirror if he does anything untoward,” she said. “Don’t communicate with him.”
She shut the door behind her.
I found a seat, and carefully moved all my coins to the side, at the edge of the mirror’s field of view, so only someone standing at a strange angle could see them. The books and cards joined them.
I felt confident now. I’d find my way out.
11.02
I couldn’t influence the outside world, but I could influence this one.
I looked over the cards. They were nice, a little old fashioned, the white of the card paper stained with age, but beyond that, they were ordinary playing cards.
My presence had made it so they weren’t reflected, establishing my presence in this mirror world. But a lack of activity, a shift of focus, a bit of release, like the smallest kind of surrender, and I’d let them through. The reflection of the cards.
I didn’t have all of them. Ty had taken some with him, or kicked them out of the scope of the mirror, or something.
Not playing with a full deck, I thought.
Twenty large, fat coins. I couldn’t make head or tails of the language on the coin’s faces. I was careful as I moved them aside, wary of the guard I couldn’t see or hear.
Two books. One on alchemy, more like a dictionary than any kind of spellbook, filled with tables and measurements and Latin words. Aqua Regia, Aurum Regia, Aqua Justatium, Lapis Philosophorum, and so on. Each chapter was prefaced with the sort of stuff that started with ‘Evidenced herein’ and spent more time referring to other parts of the text than it did actually saying anything.
The second book was a catalogue of bogeymen. Rose’s research for summoning the ‘help’. A quick perusal suggested there was very little in the way of vital information. A practitioner who focused on things that had fallen between the cracks was known to the practitioner community as a ‘scourge’, and it seemed like Rose was leaning that way. Just by the language of the text, the assumption seemed to be that the people who were reading the book were very angry types with revenge or hostility in mind.
I could only assume that those did like Green Eyes had suggested and went down to the places between the cracks to collect fallen things for use were to scourges what grandmother Rose was to the diabolist community. The scary ones you didn’t want to tick off, who knew their stuff and were very good at doing what they did without getting killed.
The book had no explanations about what types of bogeymen there were or how they could sustain themselves. It was a text for people looking for quick answers, types who wanted to hurt a rival or answer an insult, often in the bloodiest, most horrible ways.
The last chapter, however, did have some information I could use.
Binding a bogeyman typically involved using some form of the natural elements, and things with permanence. In the former case, it depended based on the type of bogeyman and the place beyond the cracks in reality that they had come from. Some were particularly vulnerable to running water, others struggled to move solid objects and could easily be trapped or stopped by a simple closed door. Yet others didn’t like fire.
Moat, box, or burning circle could serve, depending on the type.
The other option was old items that had a history and durability to them, antiques.
I touched the mirror. I felt the surface vibrate. I couldn’t actually examine it, though. The mirror couldn’t reflect itself, so I only saw the portal into the other world and a trace of the frame where it stood out enough to be caught in the reflection.
Pretty old, if I remembered right. It had probably predated my grandmother.
Thing was, though, I wasn’t quite trapped inside the mirror. Not any more than usual. It was the circle on the other side of the mirror that was giving me problems.