Page 59 of The Mirror of Beasts

Caitriona immediately pointed to the glowing emergency exit sign, a man running from fire toward an open door.

I clarified, “Any strange symbols that look like curse sigils you’ve seen before.”

“Got it,” Olwen whispered, beginning an eager search.

With the crystals interfering, any automatic sensors for lights didn’t switch on, leaving us in darkness until Olwen let out a soft hum and snapped, creating a small blue flame at her fingertip. We followed the short hall into the main chamber of the cellar.

Barrels of whiskey and shelves of wine bottles greeted us. I did a slow lap around the room, scanning the stone walls for doorways or curse sigils. My frown deepened.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Caitriona asked.

“Not even a little,” I said, annoyed all over again that Emrys had managed to get both himself and Neve caught. So much for him being useful.

“At least it’s warm down here,” Olwen said, rubbing her arms.

It really wasn’t. There were no vents to bring in heat, allowing the winter cold to seep in through the foundations. But as I circled back toward her, I felt it too. The air warmed like a breath around us.

I backed up toward the nearest wall, keeping a hand outstretched to follow the trail of warm air. I checked the floors for sigils and this time saw what I had missed before. Half of a sigil was carved into the floor at the place where it met the stone wall and had been painted to blend into the tile.

“Oh,” I said. “What a clever little Wyrm.”

“What is it?” Olwen asked.

I couldn’t resist showing them. I walked back toward the wall, keeping my hand out in front of me. Instead of meeting stone, my hand passed through the wall, as if it had been nothing but air.

It was nothing but air. The other half of the mirage sigil was visible as I stepped through the doorway, into the actual storage room.

“God’s teeth,” I whispered.

It wasn’t a room, it was a warehouse—not just for relics, it seemed, but artwork, statues from antiquity, and furniture that looked like it had been scavenged from some beheaded king’s palace.

I was so used to crawling around dusty old vaults and researching the past that it was disorienting to see such a modern, almost futuristic setup. Everything was sleek metal and clean shapes. The storage cases that contained relics were lit by dim lights and temperature controlled, covered by both locked steel cages and protective wards.

As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I scanned the walls and floors for any other sigils that might trigger an alarm, a trap, or worse.

“Don’t step on any of the rugs,” I told them. “There could be curse sigils beneath them.”

“What is all of this?” Olwen asked, holding her flame higher to better see. Rows and rows of tables and chairs were scattered throughout.

“Their real library,” I said. “And storage for their finds.” Most of the guilds focused exclusively on legendary, magical relics rather than priceless antiques and mortal-made treasures, but it seemed that the London guild was branching out.

“Hello?”

The faint voice was as soft and sweet as a songbird’s. For a moment, I thought it had come from upstairs or the wine room, but Caitriona held out a hand, stopping us.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

“Yes,” Olwen called back before I could stop her. “Where are you?”

“H-Here.”

The voice was already faltering, as if swallowed by the gloom. We moved toward it, past the barred cases, past the shelves of Immortalities, to the unlit end of the room, where a tall object was hidden by thick fabric. Caitriona gripped it, pulling it away with a single hard tug.

The mirror revealed itself in all its towering glory, its silver frame adorned with beasts of every kind—dragons, unicorns, lions, falcons, stags. We saw none of it. Not at first.

Not when there was a trembling, pale-faced girl staring back at us from the other side of the glass.

The girl had a dreamy quality to her; what light touched the silvered glass made her image ripple with iridescence. She was small, but not a young girl, her hair as dark as a raven’s feather and her skin bone white. It was her eyes that held me there. Large and round, they were of a pale blue that seemed as endless as the sky itself.

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