“Master of the Universe? Is this a video game now? What the fuck…” Patrick looked around, bewildered.
“God. It means God.” Martin pulled back Lisa’s chair and sat heavily down, put his hands on the indicator and stared across at Robin. “Let’s go.”
Robin jolted, startled by his vehemence.
Cain stepped closer to the table, behind Robin. “I don’t think—”
Martin glared at Robin, eyes burning. “Let’s go.”
Transfixed, she slowly extended her hands to the planchette. Her fingers touched Martin’s cold ones. Martin spoke through clenched teeth, unfamiliar, grating syllables: “Haim ata ru-ach o Qlippah?”
The pointer jumped violently under Robin’s hands and flew off the table, clattered to the stone hearth.
“Shit,” Patrick yelped, jolting back.
Robin found she was standing—she’d jumped up so quickly, she hadn’t realized she was on her feet. Everyone was standing except for Martin, all of them frozen in disbelief.
Cain whipped around toward Martin. His voice was strangled. “What the fuck did you say?”
Martin sat back against his chair. He spoke evenly, his face like alabaster in the flickering light. “I said, What are you, you fuck?”
He stood up with eerie calm, crossed to pick up the pointer from the hearth. He put it back on the board and sat, looked up at Robin intensely. “Come on.”
Cain moved forward. “No. That’s enough. You’re too into it.”
Martin nearly shouted over him. “Come on.”
Robin flinched, blinked back tears, but she felt for the back of the chair and sat, reached to the pointer.
Cain spoke low behind her. “You don’t have to.”
Martin’s voice cut through his. “What are you?” he demanded of the air. All scientific detachment was gone; he’d spoken as if to a real person. He pushed his fingers into the pointer, stared down at the board as if he were alone in the room.
Robin touched the pointer with her fingertips. Immediately, the piece began to move. Robin recoiled. There was something different there, not a new energy, but a change in the energy. So much…loathing. Malice. Fury. The malevolence fairly crackled through her fingers.
But the words the pointer spelled were slow, almost teasing.
Martin jerked forward, his voice raised. “What are you?“ The planchette scraped, swift and violent, across the board.
Robin gasped and pulled her hands away from the planchette. She felt rather than saw Cain move forward behind her; then his hands were gripping her shoulders. Lisa was hugging herself from the edge of the shadows.
Martin pressed his fingers into the wood, white-faced and shouting. “I’m asking you. Tell me what you are!”
Everyone was still. The indicator slowly circled under Martin’s hands.
Robin watched, paralyzed, squeezing her hands together on her thighs, subliminally aware of Cain’s hands on her shoulders. She suddenly thought, with clarity for the first time, Lisa wasn’t moving it. It wasn’t ever any of us. Then, oh God…what is it?
The letters appeared inexorably under the cut circle of the pointer.
Robin could feel the others craning forward, waiting, mesmerized, as the pointer’s circles diminished to barely a hover. Then a sudden burst of letters.
Robin stared at the board in disbelief, the letters, the word echoing in her mind. No one was speaking the words aloud now; they were all just staring down in numb silence. She had just enough time to wonder, Show us what? How—
Martin commanded, “Show us.”
Cain spoke instantly: “No—”
The planchette scraped violently across the letters.
In the hearth, the fireplace logs cracked open, showering sparks upward. All five of them spun toward the fire, freaked.
Robin caught movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced up at the mirror above the fireplace.
In the dark glass she saw a pale shape rushing forward, as if coming from a long distance, a tunnel. There was no time to scream, no time to react. All she had was a glimpse and then—
The mirror shattered.
Lisa and Robin screamed. All five of them jumped back as ugly glass spears shot from the mantel, exploding outward, shining briefly in the air, and then crashing on the floor.
No one moved. All five stood frozen, stunned, suspended in shock.
Patrick gasped out weakly, “Motherfucking shit.”
Robin’s heart was pounding in her chest. She could hear Martin breathing shallowly beside her, blinking behind his glasses. The room was utterly silent, the shadows long on the wall. Glass shards like knives littered the carpet, glittering in the firelight.
Cain was the first to move. He forced himself forward to the fireplace, stepping carefully around the razor-sharp glass. He reached out (Robin almost called out “Don’t!“ but could not make herself speak) and put his hand flat against the pale circle of wall where the mirror had been.
“It’s hot,” he said. His voice was far away, as if he were in a trance. “Fire must have…heated the mirror and it broke.”
Lisa toned on him, nearly shrieking. “What planet are you on? It just happened to shatter? At that precise moment? Gosh and gollee yes—happens every day.”
Martin spoke, his voice dry, also sounding very far away. Or is that me? Robin wondered. Am I the one who’s far away?
“Hysteria,” he said, almost to himself.
Lisa went wild. “Don’t you fucking tell me I’m hysterical!”
Martin pointed at the broken mirror, cold and surreally calm. “That. Hysteria. We made it happen. I was reading accounts of similar occurrences under conditions of extreme psychological stress….”
His voice was flat, monotonous. But Robin noted with distant but crystalline clarity that there was an undertone there: excitement.
Patrick laughed uneasily, big and hulking in the half-light. “We all were pretty jacked up.” Beside him, Lisa looked dazed, disconnected, shivering. Patrick reached out, kneaded the back of her neck with a big hand. Robin felt a stab of jealousy, then a fragment of a rational thought. He’s used to hysteria. Because of Waverly.
Shadows crawled up the walls around them.
Robin heard herself speaking from a long distance. “I saw something in the mirror. Just before…”
Everyone looked at her in the dark, silent room.
“A shape…it was so fast…like something coming this way.”
The others stood, looking at her almost thoughtfully. They did not speak, perhaps processing. She almost thought they hadn’t heard. The candles flickered, and the logs hissed as they rolled with flames. We’re in shock, aren’t we? Robin thought. That’s why everything feels so frozen and far away.
Cain finally spoke. “Probably just the mirror bending before it cracked.” He nodded to himself slightly—Robin was sure he wasn’t aware of doing it—convincing himself.
Patrick put an arm around Robin. His arm was heavy, and warm, and real. She leaned into him hungrily, feeling her whole body against his. To the side of her she saw Cain turn away from them, but the body warmth, the heat of Patrick’s blood, the sound of his heart beating, the life of him, that was all she could care about.