“Why shouldn’t I get rid of it?” I ask him.
“It’s…” He pauses, then continues. “It’s a surprise. Your birthday is coming up, so be patient.”
A surprise…
I approach the open mirror, the ache in my chest steeling hard and cold. “Sure.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then asks. “You won’t remove the mirror?”
“Nope.”
There’s a tense silence, and I don’t think his mind is eased. Once we hang up, he’ll probably call Dylan to panic. I might smile if I weren’t so pissed.
I stop at the entrance. “Goodnight,” I say.
“’Night.”
I hang up, Hawke forgotten before I even take the phone away from my ear. If they’ve been in here, then it must be safe.
Heading to the opening, I stop myself just before I put a foot in and peek inside. “Hello?”
A long black tunnel lies before me, and I think I see an opening, but I can’t make out much else. Black walls, dark floor, and it smells like a cave. Wet rock, earth, deep…
I open the flashlight on my phone, shining it inside.
The tunnel is bare and empty, the long walls a black or deep gray. I step inside and spin back around, pulling the door closed and seeing my shop through the two-way mirror.
“Those little shits,” I grit out under my breath.
It’s not a mirror from the inside. It’s a window. I can see everything in the shop. Who comes and goes, who’s working, what’s stocked on the shelves, the register with the cash… But no one out there would be able to see me in here.
Raising my phone, I find the latch on the upper left and secure it, now knowing why the fingerprints I found last night looked like they were made from someone gripping the mirror from behind.
I unlatch it again and open the mirror, making sure I know how to get out. I close it again, just in case one of my family members with keys come in. I turn, light from my phone showing me the way.
My running shoes squeak on the floors as I step down the long corridor, the faint light at the end getting bigger.
I stop at the end, spinning my flashlight to the hallway to my right and back again to the room that spreads before me.
All at once, everything looms—the expanse of the massive space. The ceiling as high as three floors, bigger and taller than my parents’ foyer. The high windows, wet with rain. The rusted, spiral staircase to the far-left corner, leading to a door in the ceiling. The kitchen with half-eaten bags of chips on the counter, and the living room beyond with the massive TV, couches, PlayStation, and liquor bottles on the coffee table. I run my eyes over some Latin words drawn in thick white paint on the back wall.Vivamus moriendum, est.
‘Let us live, since we must die.’
It’s an inscription on some statue at City Hall. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere else too.
There’s also some diagram with documents, pictures, and writing posted on the brick. Yarn links one idea to the other, creating a web, as if mapping a story.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but it must only be about four seconds because I press my foot to the floor, realizing I stopped mid-step.
But still, I take all that in, fire spitting from my eyes. “Little. Shits.”
They’ve been crashing here.
Hiding out to party and drink and have sex, and they were doing it in high school! I charge into the kitchen, whip open the fridge, seeing all the food. Sandwich stuff, condiments, leftover pizza, beer…
In a matter of minutes, I walk down the hallway, through the workout room and the two bedrooms, seeing clothes, a tube of Aro’s red lipstick in one room and one of Kade’s baseball caps in another. Not to mention a nightstand with at least five empty condom wrappers. I cringe. “Goddammit!”
Barreling out of the room and charging back into the great room, I head up the spiral staircase, open the hatch, andpeek out onto my roof.
