I had no time for this. I couldn’t afford the emotion. I stepped closer to the mirror and turned my palm toward it to snap a picture so that later, after I’d gotten my parents out, I could make Barrons help me find this place in the Silvers and free them. But just as I was about to press the button, one of the children opened his mouth, snapped at me with vicious teeth no human child had, and made a suggestion to me no human child would, and I backed hastily away, cursing myself for allowing emotion to fog my mind.
Dani had said some of the Unseelie were imprisoning children. With that awful thought in mind, I’d looked into the Silver and seen its denizens colored by my fear and worry, which had airbrushed telling clues. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have noticed the subtle wrongness in the shape of the “children’s” heads, the unnatural ferocity in their tiny faces.
I didn’t spare a glance for the fourth mirror but walked straight to the fifth. At a slight angle from it, so the LM wouldn’t see me doing it, I snapped a picture, sent it to Barrons’ cell phone, then slid my phone into my pocket.
Only then did I let the impact of the scene hit me.
We had a definite destination.
He was in my living room, at my house, in Ashford, Georgia.
The Lord Master had my mom and dad bound to chairs and gagged, with a dozen black-and-crimson-clad guards standing around them.
The Lord Master was in my hometown! What had he done to it? Had he brought Shades with him? Were Unseelie walking the streets even now, feeding off my friends?
The one place I’d tried so hard to keep safe, and I’d failed!
I’d let V’lane take me there, given in to my weakness, stood outside my own home. Was that the fatal act that drew the Lord Master’s attention? Or had he always known and only now decided to make use of it?
In the mirror, across the fifteen or so feet that separated us, my daddy shook his head. His eyes said, Don’t you dare, baby. You stay on that side of the mirror. Don’t you dare trade yourself for us.
How could I not? He was the one who’d taught me that the heart had reasons of which reason knew nothing, the only quote of Pascal’s I remembered. All the reason in the world couldn’t have talked me into turning away now, even if I hadn’t had Barrons as backup. Even without a safety net, this was a wire I’d have walked. I might have found out my biological mother’s name last night. I might have even begun thinking of myself as Mac O’Connor, but Jack and Rainey Lane were my mom and dad, and always would be.
I walked to the wall. Daddy’s eyes were wild now, and I knew, if not for the gag, he’d be roaring at me.
I stepped up, into the Silver.
But now we see through a glass darkly and, the truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on evil.
—Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
Good of you to come,” mocked the Lord Master. “Nice hat.” Entering the Silver was like pressing forward into a gluey membrane. The surface rippled thickly when I touched it. When I tried to step into it, it resisted. I pushed harder, and it took considerable effort to force my boot to puncture the silvery skin. I thrust in up to my hip.
Still the mirror pressed back at me with a buoyant elasticity.
For a moment I stood half in each world, my face through the mirror, the back of my head in the house, one leg in the Silver, one leg out. Just when I thought it would expel me with the snap of a giant rubber band, it yielded—sucked me in, warm and unpleasantly wet—and squirted me out on the other side, stumbling.
I’d expected to find myself standing in the living room, but I was in a tunnel of sorts, of moist pink membrane. My living room was farther away than it had looked from outside the mirror. There were forty or so feet between me and my parents. Barrons had been wrong. The LM was more adept with Silvers than he’d thought. Not only was he capable of stacking Silvers, the tunnel hadn’t been at all visible from beyond the glass. In tennis-speak, this set went to the LM. But there was no way he was winning the match.
“As if I had a choice.” I wiped my face with a sleeve, scrubbing at a thin layer of smelly, slippery afterbirth. It was dripping off my MacHalo. I’d thought about removing it before I’d entered the mirror (it’s a little hard for people to take you seriously when you’re wearing one), but now I was glad I hadn’t. It was no wonder people avoided the Silvers.
You had every choice, my dad’s eyes said furiously. You chose the wrong one.
My mother’s eyes were saying way more than that. She began with the mess that was my tousled black hair sticking out from under my “hat,” went nearly ballistic over the tight leather pants I was wearing, made short, scathing work of my butchered nails, and by the time she got around to the automatic weapon that kept slipping around my shoulder, banging into my hip, I had to tune her out.
I took a step forward.
“Not so fast,” said the Lord Master. “Show me the stones.”
I swung my gun forward into my other hand, slipped the pack off my shoulder, opened it, fished out the black pouch, and held it up.
“Get them out. Show them to me.”
“Barrons didn’t think that was a good idea.”
“I told you not to involve Barrons, and I don’t give a fuck what he thinks.”
“You told me not to bring him. I had to involve him. He’s the one who had the stones. Have you ever tried to steal anything from Barrons?”
The look on his face said he had. “If he interferes, they die.”
“I got your message loud and clear the first time. He won’t interfere.” I needed to get closer. I needed to be between the LM and his guards and my parents when Barrons and his men arrived. I needed to be in stabbing distance. Barrons planned to reconfigure his Silver to connect to whatever destination the Lord Master was at, but he’d said it would take time, depending on the location. Stall, he’d ordered. Once I get the photo, I’ll work on connecting to the other end. My men will come in behind you as soon as I have a lock on the location.
“Put down the spear, your gun, the pistol in the back of your pants, the switchblade in your sleeve, and the knives in your boots. Kick them all away.”
How did he know where all my weapons were?