The Conjuring Glass (17 page)

The symbols and shapes seemed to move in the unsteady light. A single light bulb flickered overhead, making the girls’ shadows dance across the dark wood of the doors like hyperactive silhouettes.

“Should we try them?” Penny asked, her hand hovering nervously inches away from the first door on her right.

Zoe rolled her eyes and grasped the first doorknob on the left.

It would not budge.

Zoe bent down and peered through the large keyhole.

“What’s in there?”

“I don’t know.”

Penny tried a door to the same effect, then checked the keyhole. At first, there was nothing but solid blackness, but as she gripped the doorknob to pull herself up, the darkness lightened into a gray fog, then resolved itself into clearer shapes. A room of some kind, and a large one, but it was too dark to be certain what kind of room it was.

“Look again,” Penny said, and when Zoe put her eye back to the keyhole, Penny guided her hand to the doorknob.

Zoe gasped and pressed her face in closer to the keyhole.

“What is it?”

She drew back a few inches, then pressed her eye to the keyhole again. “I can see myself. It’s a big mirror.”

This didn’t seem particularly odd to Penny, they were in a house of mirrors after all. That room was probably storage for extra mirrors. She moved to the next door without comment, tried the doorknob, found it locked, and peered in through the keyhole. This, too, looked in on a large, dark room—yet not the same room the last keyhole looked in on. The doors were only inches apart, but opened on different rooms.

No, she realized. Not a room at all, but a cave. Long tapestries that hung the entire length on both sides gave it the appearance of a room, but the ceiling and far wall were both made of rough stone.

There was a door at the far end. Like the doors lining the hallway, the door at the other end of that room had a tarnished brass doorknob and key plate. Unlike the others, there was a large oval mirror in a silver frame hung high up on it.

Looking too long at that mirror was worse than trying to read the symbols on the doorknobs. Its reflection fluctuated, showing the room it stood in, then other rooms, and sometimes transparent, ghostly faces. These images only half formed, then retreated too quickly for Penny to study.

Zoe looked in another keyhole and said she saw trees, and the next one Penny peeked through showed her what looked like a library, or a study. Bookshelves stuffed with dusty old volumes covered every wall of this room, and in the center was a single desk and companion chair.

Stranger by the second
.

She moved down the hallway, trying all the doors, and was not surprised to find them all locked, except for the door at the end of the hallway. That door was identical to the others, same size and design, same almost-black wood, except that instead of the doorknob there was a simple handle.

Penny pulled it open and saw the other side was one long mirror, top to bottom, side to side, and designed to blend in almost seamlessly with the mirrored corridor.

Beyond this door was the real house of mirrors, deserted because it was not yet open. If they continued inside, they would eventually find their way out through the front. That wouldn’t be a good idea, even though Penny was eager to explore it. She didn’t know what kind of trouble they might get in if they were caught snooping around, and she didn’t want to find out.

Zoe seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Come on, let’s get out.”

After integrating themselves back into the carnival goers, Penny and Zoe walked toward Tovar’s tent. A small crowd had gathered around the front, converging on the poster board sign. Penny and Zoe forced their way to the front, and saw there was now a time for the first show stenciled on it in bold black letters.

The tent’s flap was open, but roped off just inside, and a circular, raised stage stood in the center, surrounded by a ring of bleachers five seats high. One gap in the bleachers facing the tent’s entrance provided access for the audience. Another gap at the other end facilitated a catwalk, which led from the stage to an old, tall safe box, like something you’d see in a Wild West movie about bank robbers.

Zoe grabbed Penny’s arm, checked her watch, and said, “Fifteen minutes.”

Penny did not need her to elaborate; she knew exactly what her friend meant.

Only fifteen minutes ago, this tent had been empty.

Now it was ready for the audience that would fill it that very evening—and too late in the day for Penny to go. She’d be back at home or practicing in the hollow when Tovar performed that night, and she knew that no amount of pleading would persuade Susan to let her stay for it.

“Time to check in,” she grumbled, and wound her way out of the crowd, back toward the bookstore.

They spent the remainder of the morning playing games and watching the House of Mirrors, waiting for it to open.

They resisted the temptation to use the wand while losing spectacularly at the Ring Toss, Dart Throw, Test Your Strength, and Target Shooting. However, when the huckstering carnie at the Strike Booth laughed at Penny’s first attempt to knock over a pyramid of lead pins, Zoe gave in to temptation. Penny felt the heat of a blush spread across her cheeks as she lobbed her second softball at the stacked lead pins, then gaped in amazement as the pins scattered. They flew in all directions.

While Penny walked away with her prize, a stuffed bear almost as big as she was, she saw the carnie examining the pin her ball had hit, running a finger across a deep dent in the solid lead.

“What did you do?” Penny asked when the booth was well behind them.

“Don’t worry,” Zoe said, sounding not even slightly abashed. “No one saw me.”

“No,” Penny said. “How did you do it?”

“It was hidden up my sleeve. I just got mad and thought about knocking them down…” Zoe stopped and faced Penny, a smile lighting her face.

Susan ran them home during her lunch break, and they spent the rest of the afternoon in the hollow practicing Zoe’s simple, but effective, new spell.

Inside the House of Mirrors

Penny and Zoe snuck out again just before midnight and made their way through another chilly October night to the hollow. The evidence of Zoe’s earlier practice lay scattered around them: shattered driftwood logs, splintered deadwood, and blasted pinecones.

After starting a fire, further warming the already unseasonably warm atmosphere of the hollow, they gathered the remains of the wood and stoked the flame with it.

Tonight it was Penny’s turn to practice while Zoe kept a lookout, watching her mirror for The Birdman.

Rather than forage for targets in the dark, Penny brought the stuffed bear she’d won from the snickering carnie at the Strike Booth and set the makeshift target against the dirt wall that bore the scars of Zoe’s earlier practice session.

As she squared up about ten feet away from the dummy, readying herself, she spotted Zoe peering intently into her mirror beside the fire.

“Do you see him yet?”

Zoe shook her head. “I see something, but not him.”

Penny let the wand tip drop and turned to Zoe. “What?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s a…” She looked up at Penny, an expression that might have signaled recognition on her face. “I think it’s a door.”

Penny considered this and wasn’t surprised.

She raised her wand again and thought,
knock him down
. She gave a little mental push, and saw something that might have been a heat shimmer leave the wand tip. There was some recoil, but weak, forcing her wand hand up a few inches, and her spell struck the stuffed bear, caving its chest in with a sound of a fist striking a pillow.

That would barely ruffle his feathers
, Penny thought, a little disappointed.
I’ll have to do better than that
.

An hour later the stuffed bear lay torn and tattered on the ground, both eyes and one ear missing, and leaking stuffing from several tears and holes. Penny gave up trying to set it back up after each hit, and simply pummeled it where it lay. There was a foot
‐
deep dent in the bank behind it, where a few of her spells missed and blasted away dirt and stone.

Better
, Penny thought, and smiled.

“Want to trade?” Penny asked, and Zoe was happy to oblige.

“That was getting really boring. I was about to fall asleep.”

Penny regarded Zoe for a few minutes, watched the stuffed bear come further apart under her friend’s assault, then pulled her own mirror out of her pocket and stared into it.

She saw nothing unusual, no Birdman, no door, only her own reflected face.

Tentatively she whispered, “Father?”

For a moment her own tired, hopeful face stared back at her. Then a fog covered it, and a new face formed in the fog. A pale shape at first, topped by wild, flyaway hair so red it could have been reflected fire from the circle of stones. Then the features resolved themselves, and the shocked, wary face of Tovar The Red stared up at her.

Penny glanced quickly at Zoe, found her hard at work blasting away at the dirt bank, and turned back to her mirror.

Whispering again, “Dad?”

Tovar’s watchful expression relaxed into a grin that made his sharp features a little friendlier, and gave a slight nod. Before she could speak further, Tovar pressed a finger to his lips, mouthed the word,
later
, and vanished.

Zoe practiced for a while longer, and Penny watched the mirror, once again showing only her own reflection, until she started to nod off.

“Come on,” Zoe said, rousing Penny as her eyes slipped closed. “Let’s get back. I’m pooped.”

Penny nodded and grabbed her arm before she could turn away. “I think we’re ready now.”

“Yeah,” Zoe agreed, though she sounded less than enthusiastic. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

The next day, Tovar’s tent was gone. The life-sized poster board was gone, and Penny felt the bright secret hope that she’d get to meet him, to finally meet her father, depart.

Had something happened to him?

She gave no sign of her disappointment, and after a short search of the park grounds affirmed he had not simply moved his tent, they went to the House of Mirrors, which was now open.

The line was longer than those for the other rides, and hearing the conversation between Rooster, who for a wonder had not noticed them standing only a few feet behind him, and one of his friends, they had a good idea why.

“I don’t know how they do it. Probably lasers or something.”

“That’s not lasers,” his friend said, his tone confident and knowing. “It’s holograms.”

“My brother screamed like a girl when he came out,” Rooster said, and laughed.

Behind them, a group of Katie West’s friends laughed and flirted with a trio of boys passing by, looking like kings of the fair with their football letterman jackets. The tallest of the girls, her short brown hair streaked with blonde highlights, seemed to have stepped into the role as queen bee in Katie’s absence. She continued the conversation they had been having before getting in line.

“Yeah, I hope they find her. I’m just sayin’…you know …I was kind of getting sick of her anyway.”

“You gonna ditch her when she comes back?” one of her friends asked.

“
If
she comes back,” the new queen bee said, and to Penny she sounded remarkably unconcerned.

Zoe tugged on Penny’s arm, and she saw the line moving up. They moved with it, and she tried her hardest to ignore the rest of the conversation behind them. She didn’t like Katie, but suddenly found herself feeling bad for the girl.

Other bits of conversation floated back to them.

“…My third time through. Scariest damn thing I’ve ever…”

“…It’s like he could almost reach out and grab you!”

“I’m taking Ellen’s phone in. I gotta’ record this.”

After a few minutes, they found themselves at the front of the line, and as the carnie ushered them through the rope gate and up the steps to the entrance, Penny had her first real moment of doubt. She froze inside the doorway, somebody behind them laughed, and Zoe shoved her in with a growl.