Page 85 of Sweet Nightmares
While Jane’s mind wandered, her sister and friends were discussing vampires and various ways to die. But Jane’s mind was focused on Quinnevere’s Blood Mirror shard.
She was the only person alive who knew the location of all three Blood Mirrors—the location of every vampire in New Swansea City’s greatest weakness and the only way to kill them. People would kill for that information, including some of her closest friends like Emrys. But more than any of that, Jane wanted to speak to the third Blood Mirror. It might be the only creature alive that knew what happened to her mother.
But how to manage that?
Quinnevere never took off her necklace. Jane knew because she’d been drawn to it since the moment she saw it, and there was not a day that her sister didn’t have it around her neck. So, how would she get to it?
The truth was not an option.
Could she drug her sister?
That sounded awful.
Fuck.
Jane was wrenched out of her rumination when Constance said, “Quinnevere, your necklace is… glowing.”
A glowing red light reflected in Quinnevere’s green eyes. Jane sucked her lip into her mouth, entranced. Inside its iron casing, the shard of mirror liquified into a flaring crimson metal that swirled to a slow melody.
At that exact moment, a high-pitched scream sounded from beside them—trapped Souls Row. They were Mirror Echoes as Nightmare called them, but also one of the barriers between everyone and finding the Third Blood Mirror.
The Mirrors were talking to each other.
Jane felt it on the air like a conversation. No longer focusing on her actions, Jane reached out and wrapped her hand around Quinnevere’s necklace. Instinctively, she knew it wanted to talk to her too.
And it did.
Time froze. Her friends were statues, and the lights bent like an abstract painting, blurring and swirling together in a beautiful dance. Sound stilled, and an icy chill skated over her arms. The sound returned first, and it was a haunting soprano she’d never forget and had heard in countless night terrors.
“Darling Janey, you must stop.” The necklace spoke with her mother’s voice.
Shock rattled through Jane’s bones. “Mom?” Jane whispered, a tear leaking down her face.
“Yes, my Jane,” her mother said softly. “You need to drop your investigation. You are getting too close to things that are too dangerous to unearth.”
“Mom?” Jane’s nose flared.
The glass in her hand heated as what might be Jane’s mother spoke another unsettling warning. “You are going to die. You must leave all of this now…”
Jane opened her mouth to respond and ask a million questions, but she never got the opportunity because time snapped back into place, and the glass flamed, searing her skin. This was a final warning.
She jumped backward and nearly fell off the cable car, but Constance caught her, keeping her from falling out of the moving vehicle.
“It burnt me,” Jane breathed, and staring at a coin-sized burn in the center of her palm. “So it’s true.” Was it truly her mother? It was definitely a Blood Mirror, and it was the last place she was seen. Jane knew better than anyone that humans could live inside the glass.
Was her mother trapped? Jane needed to find out. There was no way she would drop anything now. She would simply have to find a way to incapacitate her sister or distract her enough to get her hands on that shard again.
“What’s true?” Quinnevere asked, protectively pulling away from Jane.
Jane blinked, and her hand fell into her lap. “What?” she asked as if coming out of a daze.
“You said ‘it’s true’ while staring at my necklace.” Quinnevere gripped the jewelry in between her fingers, the lattice cage digging into her flesh.
Jane bit her lip, and instead of answering the question, she said, “Did you get the mirror shard when your parents died?”
Quinn’s fingers tightened further around the necklace as she contemplated the question. “I—” she started. She blew out a breath. “Yes.”
Jane didn’t quite listen to the conversation after that. It was all the information she needed to know. One of the city’s greatest secrets was also her mother’s prison, and Jane would figure out how to get her hands on it again.
