Page 60 of The Mirror of Beasts

She dropped her palms from where she’d pressed them against the glass and wrapped her arms around her waist. The style of her pale green gown was more at home in Avalon than our world—a glimpse of the past you would only see now in costume, or portraits.

Caitriona was the first to recover her senses. “Who are you?”

“My name is Elaine,” she said. The words were hoarse, as if she’d spent a lifetime screaming for help that never came. “Please, you must assist me. You must let me out. They have kept me here so long.”

“Great Mother,” Olwen said, horrified. “No one has helped you in all this time? How can that be?”

Yes, I thought. How could that be?

Now that the shock was wearing off, there was room for suspicion to slip in. Judging by Caitriona’s uneasy stance, she was following a similar, more coldhearted line of questioning in her mind.

“Elaine of … Shalott?” I ventured.

“Yes!” the girl said, her breath fogging the glass as she drew close again. “You know of me?”

Olwen turned to me, her eyes pleading. “There must be a way to get her out?”

“Sure,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. “But how were you trapped in the mirror in the first place?”

I’d read the faces of enough tarot customers at the Mystic Maven to know what the quick pursing of Elaine’s lips and the angle of her head meant. Annoyance. Impatience.

“A sorceress by the name of Lavina ensnared me when I did not bow to her wishes,” Elaine said. “I beg of you, release me. My family must miss me terribly and I so long to return home.”

I leaned closer to the mirror’s frame, searching the design of animals. “I’m not seeing any sigils …”

“They wouldn’t be on the frame,” Olwen said. “Metal is an inorganic material.”

Oh. Right.

“So is glass,” I said, thinking. Covering my hand with my jacket, I gripped one side of the mirror. As expected, the backing was wood. As I leaned closer to it, I saw that the glass wasn’t glass at all, but a layer of magic meant to mimic it.

“Cait, can you help me pull this away from the wall for a second?”

“Wait—what do you mean by this?” Elaine asked.

Caitriona obliged and had a far easier time of straightening the heavy mirror than I did. But even that small bit of space was enough to see the sigils written in crimson on the back of it. Blood, it seemed, to further intensify the power of the spell.

“Are they back there?” Olwen asked, trying to lean over my shoulder to see.

“Yes,” I said faintly. There were five words written beneath the curse marks. Caitriona met my gaze from the other side of the mirror. Carefully, so carefully, we leaned the mirror back against the wall.

“Did you not remove them?” Elaine said. “Surely taking a blade to them and scratching them out would be enough?”

I took several steps back from the glass. Caitriona followed.

“What—what are you doing?” Elaine asked, looking between us. That twitch of her lips was back, and in her agitation, her eyes had darkened to black.

“Here’s the thing, Elaine,” I said. “Your first strike was the name. The real Lady of Shalott was freed centuries ago. There were several sorceresses present for it, and they recorded their memories.”

Now Olwen was the one to back away.

“No—” the girl began.

“The second was the name of the sorceress,” I said. “The sorceress Honora was the one who trapped the Lady of Shalott.”

“You’re wrong,” the girl protested. “It was Lavina, I swear it.”

“The third strike,” I said, “and my favorite of all, is the fact that there’s a warning written on the back of the mirror. Do you want to take a guess at what it says?”

---