Page 140 of The Seven Rings
Frowning, Sonya shook her head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Like glittery,” he repeated. “Ah, sparking. Like you’re welding something and you get sparks.”
“I… Yes, when she had her arms up. I guess I thought that was just the lightning. I didn’t notice anything before she lifted her hands.”
“She went—” Owen wiggled the fingers on his left hand. “Down at her sides, and the rings started to glitter—it’s the word I’ve got for it—and then sparks.”
“She uses the rings to boost her power. I guess we knew that, or thought that,” Cleo considered. “This feels like more.”
“She doesn’t just want the rings—the symbol of them.” Trey spoke slowly. “A token of the lives she took, the brides she removed. She needs them.”
Trey spread his hands. “She’s dead. Yeah, she sealed the curse with her own blood, but she’s dead. Dead’s gotta be a big power suck. We already know, have solid evidence to conclude she has to take time off and on to basically recharge.”
“The rings are a power source.” Logic, Sonya thought. Manor logic. “She needs them for power, and maybe…”
“To exist,” Trey added. “A big maybe, but a maybe. Get them back and—”
“Unplug a main source of power,” Owen finished for him.
“Break the curse, and remove her. And byremove”—Cleo sipped her tea—“I mean destroy, obliterate, annihilate, with extreme prejudice. Bonus round if she screams in agony on the way out.”
“And you keep racking up the points.” Reaching over, Owen snagged Trey’s coffee mug, toasted Cleo, sipped. Winced. “It’s cold, man.”
“So make some more.”
With a shrug, Owen took the mug, rose to go to the coffee maker. Jones opened his eye, watched the journey. Satisfied, he closed it again.
“We learned more than I realized. I didn’t put all this together.”
“You took a hard punch, cutie. You saw your dad, right there, and you couldn’t connect. You couldn’t talk to him, or touch him. You couldn’t have a moment with him.”
“I don’t understand why. He came through the mirror, just like Owen and I do.”
Trey took her hand, pressed it to his cheek. “He didn’t die here. He died in Boston. As far as we know, and it’s pretty conclusive, he’s never been here except through the mirror.”
“So he couldn’t be there the way Owen and I can. The mirror was in his studio—another place, another time. He saw that night—he told Mom he’d had a dream about this manor, and people walking around outside in fancy, old-fashioned clothes. He saw that night but not the way we did. So he couldn’t see or hear me. But we could see and hear him.”
“Because it all happened, at that time and place.”
“I get it. It’s enough to give you a migraine, but I get it.”
“And even though he couldn’t see or hear you, Son?”
She nodded at Cleo. “I saw him again, I heard his voice again. A kick in the emotional crotch, but also a gift.”
Clover, who’d stayed quiet throughout, played Paul Simon’s “Father and Daughter.”
“He did love me.”
“Does,” Trey corrected, and Sonya pressed her face to his shoulder.
“He lit up when he heard you call through the mirror.” Owen brought Trey fresh coffee and a mug for himself. “Here’s a guy thinking he’s having a pretty cool dream, but he lights up when he hears his kid, and he pulls out of it. I’m glad I got the chance to, sort of, meet him.”
“He went back through the mirror. She didn’t follow him,” Trey pointed out, “because she can’t. If she could do what you and Owen can do, Sonya, she’d have done it. Found a way to go through, go back, do what she could to make sure you never come here.”
“She can’t even touch it. The predators. I always wonder why you’d have a mirror with a frame like that. Weird, a little scary, really.”
“To keep evil at bay,” Cleo said. “Protection. Strong magic. Andit invites you in, shows you what you need to know or witness or understand.”
