Most of the black and white photographs feature one or both of two girls with wide smiles - one pale with black hair, one dark with what looks like white hair, despite her youth. Picnics, a day at the beach in old-style bathing suits.
“That can’t be Ms. Bea,” I say, blinking at a picture of them sitting with legs dangling off the back of a pickup truck, grinning at the camera.
“You didn’t think she’d always been old, did you?” Destin asks.
“I didn’t think she’d be a babe,” I reply. “That’s just weird.”
Destin looks at a picture of them in an office, with two guys. He leans back in surprise. “I think that’s my grandfather,” he says.
“What, seriously?”
“Yeah, I recognize the police uniform he’s wearing. I didn’t know he was friends with Ms. Bea. Who’s the other guy? He looks pretty young, like our age.”
Despite Jul’s soft sound of protest, I carefully lift the picture off the wall and pop off the back cover. Omen’s first day of work, is scrawled across the back of the photo in looping script. Bea, Zinnia, Omen, Marco - 1976.
“This is him!” I say, fitting the picture back together and turning it around to get another look. “This is the guy who died in the fire. This must have been taken at the mill - it burned down the next year.” He was younger than the rest, Destin was right - maybe fifteen, while the other three were about twenty. “He looks normal enough to me,” I say.
“Kinda reminds me of you, actually,” Destin says. Omen’s hair and skin are as dark as mine are pale, but he’s about my height - Destin’s grandfather towers over him, with a hand on his shoulder. Omen’s grin at the camera is wide, oblivious that his death is a mere year away.
“Morbid, dude,” I tell him.
“What? He has the look of someone who’d walk right into certain danger and drag his friends with him.”
Jul, however, is transfixed by a small portrait propped up on a side table. It’s painted, not a photograph like the others. The face is almost familiar, but the expression is wrong, and the hair. Mentally I switch out the blue-white hair for a dark brown, and trade the far-off, detached smile with a disapproving frown.
“Is that Rhys with white hair?” I ask, standing at Jul’s shoulder.
“I don’t think that’s him,” Jul says, but her expression is strange as she stares at it.
“Distant relative,” says a cold voice from the door. Ms. Bea stands there, arms folded. “What are you doing in my room?”
“Um...” I offer, “...scavenger hunt?”
Chapter 15
Jul
My grandmother had caught me and my friends snooping in an off-limits room when we were supposed to be at school for detention. And yet, I was the one feeling righteous indignation.
“What happened at the mill?” I asked, shocking myself with my own forwardness.
“The mill?” She managed to not even glance at the photos on the wall.
“Meredith burnt it down forty years ago,” I said. “You were there. Your friend died. And now she’s come back.” I trembled, remembering the woman’s scalding fingers reaching for me. But I hadn’t burned. “You knew a Mirrormaker - ” I pointed at the portrait, “didn’t you? I bet you know everything. You certainly can’t forget, all Grimms are Hunters, after all - ”
“Busy girl,” Bea said angrily. “So this was Simon’s plan? Did he send you here to play the innocent, all the while grooming informants out of your friends?”
I gasped as if punched. “What?”
“You think I don’t see you, greedily turning over every leaf in Havenwood? He’s sent you for the Tower mirror, and he’s never getting it. I swore he’d never have it.”
“This isn’t about the mirror!” I cried.
“Why else would you dig up the past with such fervor?”
“Because I want to know who I am!” I shouted. “I have to sneak, and hide, and lie, because no one will give me a straight answer.”
There. I’d said it. And from the shock on Bea’s face, there was no taking it back.
Camille, Mac, and Destin stood stock still, silent spectators to my outburst.
“All of us,” I said. “You and Tailor, you keep telling us to ignore what’s around us, but how could we? We’re here. We’re involved. If you want to protect us, give us the tools to protect ourselves. If you don’t, we’ll find a way to arm ourselves.”
I felt Camille take a step up to stand beside me. Gratitude flowed through me for the silent solidarity.
Bea’s expression was incredulous, and somehow distant, as if seeing something other than Camille and I standing there. “You’re not here for the mirror?” she said at last.
Maybe if I finally told the truth, all of it, maybe then she would finally believe me.
“I know where the mirror is,” I said, and she went rigid. “I’ve even been inside,” I raised my chin. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading. But Dad has nothing to do with it,” I stated firmly. “He’s never mentioned anything to me. He never let me look at his research. I didn’t even know magic was real until I found the stupid thing by accident. I haven’t even told my friends about it, because it just seemed...too much.” No lies, just...omitting Rhys. He’s not going to be happy...
“I’m sorry, guys,” I turned and apologized to the others. “I was going to show it to you eventually, it just...felt really private, I guess,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. He’s going to kill me.
“Don’t,” Bea said sharply, then shook her head, letting out a long sigh and softened her tone. “Please, don’t show it to anyone. Not ever.” She gave me a long, considering look. “You want the truth, Juliet? Then swear to me that you will keep its location a total secret from this moment on. From everyone. That mirror is more important than you, or me, or this entire town. You can’t tell Simon, you can’t tell Camille,” her eyes flicked to the blonde girl, “you can’t even tell Tailor. I’m serious. I’ll tell you what you want to know, but in return you have to help me guard it.”
I nodded slowly. Rhys already knew, but did I need to tell her that? Surely I could keep one thing to myself? “Ok,” I said. “I’ll keep the mirror a secret. Tell us about the mill.”
She let out a breath she’d been holding. “Just remember, this is what you asked for,” she said. “You won’t like it all. The more you know, the more you have to be afraid of.”
Camille gasped, looking out the window. Bea followed her stare but quickly lost all sense of alarm, seeing a pair of wide yellow eyes peering in.
“Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s just hungry,” Bea said dismissively. Seeming to deflate, she looked around at us all. “Well, who else is hungry?”
Mac raised his hand immediately. The rest of us slowly followed suit, with varying degrees of sheepishness.
“I thought as much. Get in the kitchen before you break my china.”
“I never get tired of the part where the imp is your pet,” Mac said, totally engrossed in watching the creature on the back porch have a staring contest with the cold pie Bea had set out there. She stood at the kitchen counter putting together something she called ‘long sandwiches’ for the others while I munched on a bag of carrots.
“I’d hardly call it a pet,” Bea said offhand, layering a split loaf of French bread with meat, cheese, and ranch dressing. “But it’s harmless. Mostly. Imps will steal from anyone, and they look like vicious little vermin, but they’re only truly dangerous to people who wronged them when they were alive, or if you threaten them. Skittery little bastards though,” she said, eyeing the creature through the window. “I’ve been feeding that one for years and he still won’t come near me. Imps just don’t trust anything they didn’t steal.”