“Perhaps the library, then. Or perhaps at book club?”
“Maybe. What will you do all day?”
“Rest inside my mirror. It’s the object I’m bound to. I can leave, but I must return. Don’t worry, Berry keeps me company.”
“You don’t take her in there with you, do you?” I ask, aghast.
“No, no. Watch.”
It’s mind-bending to watch Lucius drag himself to the mirror in my bedroom and for the gray slate surface to become silvery and reflective at the touch of his hand. I pull his free arm away for a second, kissing him hard. In case.
Just in case this is all a dream, and I never see him again.
With a shining silver burst that hurts my eyes, he’s gone, into the mirror, and yet all I see is my own room. My rumpled bed. Berry, sitting on the edge with stalking hindquarters wriggling.
But there’s no Berry in the mirror now, just a pretty yellow and brown butterfly. Then a ladybug. Then a little green inchworm. Berry’s eyes are wide, and she mews excitedly before pouncing and batting lightly at each creature in turn, winning the battle over all of them.
I see how the mirror sways, and I decide that’s too risky. I move my recently-retrieved basket of just-dried laundry under the mirror—just in case. “You keep Berry entertained like this all day?”
“Mostly. She naps a lot,” Lucius says, springing back on the other side of the glass.
“I like this. It’s like a video call, but you’re closer. Can I ever come—” I raise my hand to the glass, but Lucius’ barking “No!” stops me mid-way.
“I could pull you into this realm, and you would never come out. You’d become trapped in here like me, Agatha. Touching the surface is fine. Going inside? No. When I breach the surface,” Lucius’ hand slowly emerges, like a swimmer’s hand clawing for air as they break the surface of the water, “you stay back. The veil divides. It’s ruled by the most basic, ancient magic. The giving of the name. I can call you in. You can call me out. The power of thename is very simple, but it’s a basic ingredient of the magical law of exchanges.”
“The what?”
“You learn a lot of things when you’re bequeathed to a sorcerer’s apprentice,” he groans.
“Oh. You must have had a lot of... owners? Is owners the word?”
“I suppose.”
“You must have had a lot of owners over the years. Learned a lot.”
Lucius looks indifferent, shrugging his rippling, muscular shoulders. “I did and I didn’t. I squandered a lot of time trying to punish people who possessed me. In the end, my trickery possessed them.”
“What do you mean?” I’m afraid I already know.
“How did you feel when you saw something in the mirror that wasn’t supposed to be there?”
“Panicked. Like I was getting worse again. Like I would be heading back to an institution. I mean, that’s catastrophizing, but that’s part of my anxiety issue,” I explain, twisting my hands together nervously.
I wish he’d call me his empress again. I feel so much braver and stronger with that name instead of “Poor, sick Agatha. She hasissues. She’s a littlefragilejust now,” which is how my parents used to introduce me.
“Oh, my empress. If I tell you, I beg you to forgive me straightaway. I cannot live with your displeasure,” Lucius murmurs, eyes lazily drinking me in as his fingers trace my face on his side of the silvery prison.
“I’ll forgive you,” I promise, knowing it’s rash.
“I drove my captors insane. Some quickly, some slowly, but the end result was always the same—except with dear old Jane, my last owner. She was already quite senile when her son gaveher my mirror as a gift. She was hard of hearing and also had cataracts, I think, so even if I did try to torment her, it would have failed.”
“Would you have tried to torment her?” I gasp. “She was a harmless old lady!”
“I would have. I did. I believed that was my right, to make others suffer as I’ve suffered. Perhaps there is madness in me, darling.”
Perhaps there was. I shake my head to clear it. Can I forgive him for willingly inflicting pain on others? Pain that I’ve battled for years?
“I... There was one person I tried to speak to. That sorcerer’s apprentice had a young son, also learning magic,” Lucius confesses, all sexy smugness gone from his manner now. “The boy... A little boy, maybe eight or nine years of age... I hoped he could help me break free. Instead, his father caught him looking at his scrolls and beat him for it. The boy was forbidden from coming into his father’s chambers again. When the father died, the boy had become a man. He discarded the mirror at a local market and never looked back. I lost the only hope and only friend I’d had in decades when I tried a different tactic. So... to madness. Better theirs than mine.” Lucius raises an imaginary glass and starts to fade from view.
