Page 5 of Sweet Nightmares
What would a Den of Nightmares look like?
Not this.
Or perhaps this was precisely what nightmares looked like: grand, luxurious palaces with turrets scraping against the sky and stained-glass windows allowing rose-honey light to illuminate gilded walls and enchanting halls.
It was a fairytale come to life, and Jane Whitfield-Klein hated fairytales.
She hated damsels in distress and Prince Charmings fighting great beasts to save them. But, most importantly, Jane hated happy endings. They didn’t exist—no prince was coming to save her, and none ever would. Because princes were daydreams, and Jane lived in a world of night terrors.
How fitting that this is where she had ended up.
A snake of nerves coiled up her arm. If Jane didn’t bargain with the Mirror of Nightmares for enough riches to satisfy both the Cobra Lilies and her horrible husband, then the gang would kill her. And she wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of dying.
So, she squared her shoulders and swallowed hard, causing her mouth to purse and her split lip to sting.
Just another reminder of the gang and their price. At least they’d had a healer patch her up a little before forcing her into the mirror. It was the small niceties Jane had taught herself to cherish. It didn’t matter how pathetic that might make her
Jane was used to being pathetic.
But right now, she had a goal to accomplish: find the biggest villain in the world and somehow convince him to bargain with her for an impossible amount of money with no lasting consequences.
Easy.
So fucking easy, right?
The sound of her heels clicked against the ornate marble floors as she walked further into the opulent lair. The Mirror God had to know she was inside his domain. Yet, he hadn’t appeared.
Because he was toying with her.
Building up the anticipation and drama. Wanting fear to soak into her soul.
But Jane wouldn’t be scared. Her life was horrific outside the mirror glass, so no matter what happened next, it wouldn’t matter.
Death and abuse were her options out there. But hope existed inside the glass—even if that hope was also horrible.
Jane knew the legends, and she knew the Looking Glass was evil, but the depths of his evil was unknown. This made her hopeful in a strange way.
So, no matter how hard the Bargainer tried to unsettle or break her, it wouldn’t work. Nothing broke Jane Whitfield. Not her parents’ deaths, not losing her sister and being abandoned by her uncle, not marrying an abusive, disgusting man thirty years older than her. Not being tortured by a gang, and definitely not a Mirror God.
Because Jane’s strength was unbeatable. Unbreakable.
As if on cue, a string quartet began playing an off-key melody in a three-four time signature—a rotten waltz.
The god was trying to unsettle her. He had chosen the wrong trick for the wrong girl, because music could never harm Jane. Music was her comfort. Even the creepy kind.Especiallythe creepy kind.
Jane pinched her eyes closed and let the chords hit her as if they were a physical force, visualizing them as ballet ribbons floating and pulsating through the air. The silk caressed her arms, legs, and face like a lover after a long round of lovemaking—not that she knew what that feeling was like.
With her eyes shut, her other senses took over, and the scent of lavender, mixed with hints of basil and jasmine, wafted toward her as if mingling with the music and ribbons.
And it was casting a calming spell.
A deep sense of peace settled into Jane’s bones. It was probably the opposite of what the god intended. Even though it was utterly ridiculous and unadvisable, Jane felt safer in the mirror with a devil she didn’t know than the ones living in the outside world.
If she could bottle this moment and keep it forever, she would.
But moments never lasted.
Opening her eyes, she walked to the edge of a balcony overlooking a massive ballroom lit by hundreds of red bayberry candles in elaborate gilded sconces. In the corner were fourtranslucent ghostlike string players—two violins, a viola, and a cello—and across the floor were translucent couples dancing a waltz. Floating through the air were aerialists and acrobats.
