Page 23 of Nightmare's Dance

“Fuck,” I muttered, and put my trembling hand against the cold glass.

“Hurry,” Nic said with little conviction. He clearly didn’t think I could fix it.

The baying hounds closed in on our location. Their cries grated against my nerves, like nails raking a chalkboard.

Well, screw him. I was going to repair this damn arch, and I was going to go home. As I’d done with the shadow stuff, I visualized the mirror in one piece.

The fabric that covered my body slid along my arm and coated the mirror. Not exactly sure that was what I was going for, I tried to call the shadow stuff back to me, especially since the fabric had retreated from my legs, leaving me shivering, though still technically clothed.

The door burst inward.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Nic take one of the hound’s heads off with a sword, blade gleaming dully in the not-light of this world. The hound disintegrated into shadow stuff, but two more pushed through the door, eyes glowing red, coats a dull black, teeth bared and ready to rip through me and Nic.

“Hurry, Princess,” the Marys urged.

I turned my back on the fight and focused on repairing the cracks in the mirror. That actually wasn’t difficult. The glass flowed under my hand until only a single terrifying woman stared back at me from the depths of the mirror.

“I fixed it,” I shouted.

Nic looked back. One hound took advantage and leaped at him. Nic melted into shadow and the hound tumbled to the ground. It scrambled to its feet, red eyes focused on me, but Nic reformed behind it, beheading the hound with his sword before it could tear me limb from limb.

I hadn’t even realized I was moaning in terror until the creature was gone.

Nic came to my side, sword vanishing into the shadowy mist.

“Mary?”

“The mirror is fixed. The arch is still broken.”

“What?” I yelped.

Nic put his back to mine as more hounds crowded into the single room, growls filling the space. I should have been able to smell their breath, feel the heat from their panting exhalations, but while the scrape of their paws on the wooden floor and their threatening growls were very real, they seemed to be all sound and shadow, no actual substance.

Until one slammed into Nic. He hit my back with his as he scrambled to keep the creature from tearing his throat out. Tendrils of black snaked off the walls and grabbed the hounds, throwing them backward.

“Fix it, Ember, or we’re both dead,” Nic snarled at me.

Screaming, I put both hands against the glass, shoving my will and the shadow stuff I wore into the mirror, picturing the arch I’d seen when I was kidnapped and thinking only of escaping to my home.

After a second that stretched into eternity, something clicked like a key opening a lock, and I fell into the mirror, dragging Nic with me.

Ember

Memories

“One, two, three…”

I ran through the woods while Nic counted. He always found me, so I needed to find a great hiding place this time. He usually discovered the others, too, before they got back to base, but he always got me, and it sucked.

Pushing my bottom lip out as I thought, I came up with a plan. It was a bad idea, but I really didn’t want to get caught every time. We weren’t supposed to go anywhere near the caves without an adult, but as long as they didn’t find out, it would be fine. And it wasn’t like I was going to go very far in. Just enough to get out of sight.

Dried leaf litter cracked under my feet and a twig snapped, but Nic was still counting to a hundred loud enough to cover my noise as I crashed through the woods. Dio and Baz would find good places to hide, too, but I knew these woods better than any of them. Which made it even more frustrating that Nic always found where I hid.

Panting as I raced toward the caves, I cast around for the faint trail my family had made. We came out here a couple of times a year and explored, but not often enough to make it easy to find. I loved the area. We usually found cool rocks and stuff for the rock garden back at the house.

A waterfall and a pool of water I also wasn’t supposed to go into without an adult around made this area the best on really hot days. It wasn’t warm enough today to go behind the waterfall and if I came home soaked, they’d know I wasn’t following the rules.

I always followed the rules. My playtime with my forest friends was too important, but maybe just this once…

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