Page 3 of The Mirror of Beasts

“So?” The word was out before I could stop it.

The others turned to me, horrified. I almost wished that I felt the same way—that I felt anything at all. Instead, an almost comforting numbness settled over me, as if I’d known all along. Maybe I had. People like me … we weren’t meant for long lives or happy endings.

“What in the Blessed Mother’s name are you talking about?” Olwen demanded. “Who would have cursed her, and in such a way?”

“Was it the White Lady?” Neve asked softly.

The bruiselike stain on my chest, just above my heart, turned icy, prickling the warm skin around it. My pulse started a drumming beat, off-tempo from the throbbing of the mark. As if a call, and an answer. Every hair on my body rose as the seconds stretched with the agonizing silence.

Nash took a step toward me, bringing with him the smell of damp soil and grass and leather. “No, Tamsy was born with it. But the magic of the curse did draw the spirit—”

The dark air of the apartment shifted violently, forcing me back as another blur of movement raced forward. A flash of silver hair—of a silver blade.

Caitriona launched herself at Nash, using the force of her momentum to slam him back against the front door. The hat and handkerchief fell from his hands, both slipping along the threadbare rug to land at my feet. Olwen gasped, hands pressed to her mouth as Caitriona brought one of my kitchen knives up to Nash’s bare throat. Her other arm rose to pin him in place.

“Who are you?” Caitriona demanded. The edge of the blade drew a faint line of blood to the surface of his clean-shaven skin.

A bolt of panic shot through me as her words sank in, electrifying my mind.

It’s not him.

We’d found his body in Avalon. As much as I wanted the last few hours to be one long, unending nightmare, it wasn’t. I could lie to myself about any number of things, but that wasn’t one of them. Nash was dead.

“Who are you?” Caitriona repeated. “There are many creatures that can wear the face of another, all tricksters, most wicked.”

The man stared at me with a familiar look of indignation, exasperation, and amusement. The air burned in my lungs, begging for release.

“Who?” Caitriona repeated.

His answer was to shift his stance, hooking his leg through the inside of hers as his open palm shot out and slammed against her solar plexus. Breath burst from her in an explosion of shock and anger, but his foot had hooked her knee and she was falling before any of the rest of us could lunge to catch her.

“Cait!” Olwen moved to kneel beside her, but I caught her arm, holding her in place.

The being reached down to claim the knife, the corners of his mouth quirking with a suppressed smile.

“All this blade’s good for is picking teeth and buttering toast, dove,” he said.

“Put down the knife and step away from her.” I’d never heard Neve’s voice as cold as it was then, her face hardening with anger. “Touch her again and you’ll have hands for feet and feet for hands.”

Her wand, through magic or some strange stroke of luck, had survived the destruction of Avalon—I had completely forgotten about it until I saw her reach into the bag at her waist and pull its long body free. Nash—or Not-Nash—stared down at the razored tip pointed toward him, then looked at me, a bushy brow arching.

“Never thought I’d see the day you’d be cavorting with a sorceress, Tamsy.”

“Keep going,” Neve said. “Your face can only be improved by swapping your mouth with your nose.”

The man tilted his head to the side for a moment, as if pausing to picture this. But he did as asked, setting the knife down on the floor and kicking it out of Caitriona’s reach.

“Are you of Avalon?” he asked Caitriona. “Are you the reason it’s merged again with our world?”

The words were like hands around my throat. The others flinched, retreating from the accusation—but we were guilty of it, all of us. We had performed the ritual thinking it would heal the Otherland and free it from a cursed existence, but it had only restored it to our own world. The collision of the isle and modern Glastonbury had wrought death and destruction I couldn’t begin to think about without wanting to claw at my own face.

You didn’t mean for it to happen, I told myself. None of us did.

It was a mistake. It was a terrible, terrible mistake. I could rationalize that all I wanted, but it didn’t stop the waves of nausea from spreading through me, or the gripping horror at knowing what we’d done.

“Tamsy—” he began again.

“Don’t,” I got out around the knot in my throat, “call me that.”

---