A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) (13 page)

Chapter Eighteen

If I lived inside a cartoon, there was an excellent chance my jaw would have crashed to the floor and shattered into a million shards. Sound effects, bouncing pieces—the whole nine. Obviously I’d seen a lot of creepy crap working with Mom, but this took the horror movie cake. It was right up there with clowns and talking robots.

I sucked in a breath and touched the surface of the mirror with the tip of my index finger. It was warm. Not quite liquidy, but definitely not solid—which was a good thing if I planned on walking through the thing. My finger met with the slightest bit of resistance when I pushed, like poking a hole through plastic wrap, but disappeared into the mirror. I counted to three and stepped through.

There were several seconds of disorientation, but when everything cleared, I couldn’t help gasping. Kendra was a few feet away, smiling, beneath a sparkling golden archway. With each step I took, the walls seemed to glitter. Like they were encrusted with a billion slivers of glass; they played off the light from the torches around the room.

I picked up the nearest torch and held it close to the wall to get a better look. On closer inspection, the glinting shards appeared to be stones that changed color depending on what angle you looked at them from. “Did you light all these?”

“Nah,” Kendra said. She walked back to me and held her hand over the fire as I started to protest. “They’re not fire in the sense that you’re thinking. It’s magic.”

“Well, bippity, boppity, boo.” We walked forward and stopped just beneath the arch. There was a subtle breeze, and I couldn’t tell which way it was coming from.

She came up beside me. “As far as I know, you’re the first non-coven member to ever walk past this gate.”

A profound sense of gravity settled over me. Honor that she would share this with me, but also fear that I wasn’t worthy. “This is kinda huge, Ken. You sure you don’t want me to wait here? I’d totally get it. Look who you’re talking to. My family has done some pretty insane things to protect our secrets.”

The room ahead was huge, with no visible doors other than the mirror beyond the archway. In the middle, there was a podium with a large book sitting open on the top, the edges of its pages fluttering every now and then, and along the walls, it almost looked like countless rows of drawers.

Kendra took my hand and squeezed, tugging me toward the large room. “There’s no one on this planet that I trust more than you, Jessie.”

My foot crossed the threshold beneath the arch, and a horrific howling filled the air.

I groaned. Was nothing easy? Why couldn’t it ever be as simple as walking into a room to take a peek at an ancient book? “You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Kendra cringed. “Oh…”

The howling didn’t ease up. I covered my ears and yelled, “
Oh?
That’s really all you have to say?”

“I guess it makes sense. They’ve got magical wards in place to protect things,” she yelled back.

Any second now, my ears were going to start bleeding. “You didn’t stop to think that might be a possibility before we walked in?”

She met my gaze with a glare. “Neither did you. You’re supposed to do this stuff for a living.”

“Breaking into coven storage houses? Um, no,” I said, trying to make myself heard over the noise.

She threw her hands into the air, then dropped them to cover her ears. “You know what I mean. Hang on. Lemme see if I can get it to stop.” She bounded across the room to the middle, where the podium was. Kendra laid her hand against the book and closed her eyes, and a moment later, the shrieking silenced.

“Thank God…” she said, wiping a hand across her brow. She looked from the mirror to me and shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to hang here. I can come back later tonight and check things out myself. Maybe smuggle some books with me. Right now, I think we need to get you out of here.”

I nodded. No arguments from me. The last thing I wanted was for Cassidy to find out I was here. Not only would she eat me alive, but Kendra would be in a world of shit.

She stepped through the mirror, and I followed, not hesitating this time.

I should have.

“Oww!” Instead of moving fluidly through, I smashed into solid glass, smushing my nose and stubbing my big toe. I gasped. The surface shimmered twice, glinting with the same ripple at the center I’d seen when we’d come in. A million things raced through my head. What if the alarm started going off again? What would happen if there was some freaky, witchy Indiana Jones type booby trap about to spring? With a bright flash, the glass turned clear, and I could see Kendra on the other side looking pale and horrified.

She tapped the surface with her index finger, kicked it with her feet, and finally, pounded it with her fist. The actions were soundless on my end. Her mouth moved frantically, but I couldn’t hear a word. If I couldn’t hear her, chances were she wouldn’t be able to hear me, either. I covered my ears and shook my head. “No good,” I mouthed slowly. “Can’t hear.”

“What happened?” she mouthed, frowning.

She was asking me? She was the witch. I held up a hand and backed away from the glass, slipping into the corner where there was just enough shadow to stand in. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on Kendra and the other side of the mirror. I felt myself blend into the darkness, and from the other side, I saw Kendra turn, looking for me, but my location didn’t change.

I tried again.

Still, nothing. I felt the cool relief as I faded into the shadows, but couldn’t leave the room. This was the third time my shadowing had gone wonky. Maybe Dad was right. Use it or lose it.

“Craps,” I cursed, stepping from the darkness. I rushed back to the glass and banged my fist. “Can’t shadow out.”

“Have to get help,” Kendra mouthed. She didn’t look any happier about the idea than I was.

There was nothing left to say. Cassidy was going to implode when she found out about this, but there was no other choice. Kendra didn’t know how to get me out, and even if she went to another coven sister, it wouldn’t stay under wraps. Cassidy ruled the women with an iron fist. None of them would keep this a secret from her.

I nodded, resigned to my fate.

“Be back, ASAP.” She spoke slowly so I could read her lips.

I watched her leave, then slid to the floor and proceeded to count back from five hundred. Twice. I thought about poking around, but that idea didn’t last long. The only thing that would make this more awesome would be to set off another alarm. It was that line of thinking, plus the mental image of me spending the rest of my days cursed as a snail or an ant, that kept me rooted in the darkened corner with my hands in my lap.

I tried to dial out to let Mom and Lukas know I was alive, but there was no cell signal. I couldn’t even play games because the phone battery was dying. But it wasn’t horrible. I only ended up cooling my heels for about twenty minutes before there was movement on the other side of the mirror.

I got to my feet as Cassidy came into view, followed not by Kendra, but another woman. Two, actually. The one I didn’t know was slightly familiar. I’d seen her around the Belfairs’ house a few times. Jana, or something. Then there was the other. Long blond hair and crystalline blue eyes.

Oh man.
Mom
.

I waited, refusing to move from the safety of the shadows, expecting to see Kendra pop in behind them, but there was no further movement by the door. Great. She was probably locked away in witch jail for bringing me here.

They stopped short of stepping up to the mirror, and Cassidy had her back turned, so I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Jana looked upset and was shaking her head. Mom just looked bored.

The conversation went on for a few minutes, and it was killing me not to know what they were saying. I wished they’d just get me out and commence with the yelling. The waiting was worse than the actual punishment.

I was so absorbed in what they weren’t saying and doing, that I almost missed the plume of purple smoke rising from the floor by the doorway of the bathroom.

I threw myself out of the shadows and at the glass, pounding with all my strength, but it was pointless. I might as well be sending up smoke signals from the Shadow Realm for all the good it did. Like Kendra, they couldn’t hear me, but they also couldn’t seem to see me, either. Cassidy glanced toward the mirror several times. If she’d seen me, there would have been some pretty impressive fireworks.

The smoke started to shift, and thankfully, they noticed. Cassidy was the first, stumbling back as Gressil’s form solidified, and knocking Jana over in the process. Mom, more agile than either woman, dropped and rolled to the left, safely out of reach, as the demon made a grab for her.

He opened his mouth in a silent roar and dove for the nearest person. Jana. The whole thing was eerie. Her soundless thrashing and open mouth frozen in a silent scream. Gressil threw her against the wall next to the sink and leaned in close, his expression one of true excitement. Cassidy approached slowly from the right, as Mom came from the left.

The fact that she was out there facing off against this thing that had almost killed her once already made me insane. I was helpless and cold, numb to the very real possibility that at any moment, Gressil could whirl around and destroy my world and there wasn’t crap I could do to stop it.

The demon must have decided Mom and Cassidy had come close enough, because he threw his head back and laughed, semisolid purple tendrils shooting out in both directions to wrap around them like twine on a Thanksgiving turkey. They fell to the ground, squirming to be free, and Gressil turned back to Jana. She’d stopped screaming and was shaking her head. Over and over.

I kicked at the glass. “Run!” I yelled, even though I knew she wouldn’t hear me. “Don’t just stand there. Do something.” But Jana wasn’t me. I could see she wasn’t a fighter. She stood stiff against the wall, and I knew it was all over.

He spoke, his lips forming words that looked a lot like
hour for hour.
Hour for hour? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Not that it mattered. Nothing would help poor Jana now. Gressil took a deep breath, lips so close to hers that if I turned my head to the right a little, it might look like they were kissing. Her body lit up—a pale pink light that sort of glimmered all around as it flowed from her and into Gressil’s wide open mouth. Sucking her soul, her energy, her life force—whatever it was.

I slammed both hands against the glass. In fact, I did it repeatedly. Over and over until my fists were numb and my arms sore.

Jana grew paler by the second. As the last of the pink light dwindled, her eyes fluttered closed, and she went limp in the demon’s grip. My heart sank. He stepped away, releasing her, and her body dropped like a stone to the dirty tile floor.

Cassidy’s eyes were wide, and I didn’t think it possible, but maybe the coven leader did have a heart. The obvious pain she felt was etched in her expression. She stopped struggling against her bonds to stare at her fallen sister, horrified.

The pain was palpable, constricting my chest and making my throat thick. Tears slipped down my face. I hadn’t known Jana, but no one deserved that. To be used and thrown away like a thing. A piece of trash.

I waited, breath held, for the demon to make another move, but he didn’t. He stepped away from Jana to stand over Cassidy, saying something I couldn’t make out. Whatever it was, though, had both women’s heads whiplashing toward the mirror. He turned as well and flashed a predatory grin.

They hadn’t come to free me. They hadn’t even known I was here.

Gressil dissipated, along with the smoky bonds around Mom and Cassidy, leaving a thick cloud of purple in his wake. Cassidy climbed to her feet. One look at her expression—it’d gone from sorrow to murderous in a quarter of a second—and I was backing away from the glass as fast as my feet would carry me while she did her mojo to open the door.

“You little bitch,” she howled, charging through the mirror. With the door open, I probably could have scampered into the shadow and transported myself to the other side, next to Mom, but my feet wouldn’t work. No matter the command, I stayed rooted like a moron as she came at me. Cassidy crossed the room and grabbed the front of my shirt, spinning me to the wall. “How dare you?”

I needed to diffuse the situation. “I know it looks bad, but I can—”

“Shut up.”

I bit down hard on my lip and cringed at the venom in her voice. Grasping at her hands still wound around fistfuls of my shirt, I dug my nails into her skin. I wasn’t about to get physical with my best friend’s mom, but I had a right to defend myself.

“You have no respect—” Cassidy flew backward.

“Get your goddamned hands off my kid,” Mom roared.

The fiercest Monster Masher I knew, Mom was definitely a force for the chaos-causing Otherworlders to fear. But threaten her child? Forget about changing your zip. You’d better look into changing your country code. Or your planet.

“If you
ever
lay a finger on her again, I might forget you’re human and just eradicate your ass,” Mom seethed.

Cassidy climbed to her feet, rage seeping from every pore. Her movements were stiff and jerky, and her lips pulled back with a snarl. “Just like a Darker. Threaten, threaten, threaten.” She laughed and raised her arm, fingers curling tight into a fist. The skin around her hand began to glow deep red. “It’s about time someone taught you some manners.”

“What the hell?” Kendra came through the door and stopped midstride when she saw Mom and Cassidy facing off against each other. There was something in her hand. Her gaze fell to Jana, lying pale as paper on the other side of the mirror. The thing, a book, fell to the floor as she rushed to step between them. When neither mom answered, she turned to me, then dropped to the ground beside Jana. “Jessie?”

What was I supposed to say here? Your mom attacked me? I couldn’t do that to Kendra. “They showed up. I assumed it was because you brought them.”