Hello, Delia, it whispered, and I felt the words slide across my skin.You were so very good today.
My mouth went dry. Not from fear, but from something that felt disturbingly like recognition.
As if I’d been waiting my whole life to be seen by those eyes.
“No,” I whispered.
The thing in the mirror smiled.
Yes.
Heat curled through me, thick and full. I should be terrified, some tiny part of my brain realized. I should run. This face in the mirror, this voice, was a mirage of lies and bullshit and I knew—knew!—I was out of my league.
Instead, I found myself leaning closer to the glass, and finally a spindly strength welled up from somewhere even deeper than the voice that plagued me. Words flickered within me; old words, my words.
“As wax melts before the fire,” I whispered thickly. “So the wicked perish at the presence of God.”
The ebony eyes went flat. Quick as a heartbeat, the monster’s beautiful, sculpted lips twisted into a sickening snarl. Fury cracked his face, revealing a boiling scramble of worms and viscera beneath the now-puckering skin. As I stared, unable to breathe—to move—to think, a violent spew of bone-splintering rage ripped through me, shattering the heat and leaving only spine-freezing terror behind.
“No!” I gasped, wheeling away from the mirror as if it were going to explode off the wall at me. I spun and slammed my back against the front door, my eyes going wide as I took in Mrs. Klein standing in the center of the room, her powder-white fingers clutching something that looked almost familiar…
I swiped my hand awkwardly at my hoodie pocket, but there was no phone there, of course. My phone was in Mrs. Klein’s hand. I’d dropped it—where? Probably in the hallway.
“Your phone, dear,” she said, her lips trembling as she tried to form a smile. She stared at me, and I stared back, neither of us able to make any more words come, and nothing but the soft, wracking sobs of Iris in the back filling the air between us.
I’d failed this poor woman, I realized. Here I’d done everything I could to save her sister, and the result wasn’t joy, or gratitude, or even relief.
It was fear.
Mrs. Klein was afraid of me.
And…she probably should be.
I blew out a long breath and took my phone from her, careful not to look anywhere but at her, then at the front door. I shoved the phone in my pocket and left.
Chapter
Four
My palms were still sweating as I walked up Mordechai’s driveway, never mind that I’d avoided mirrors for a full day after I’d left Mrs. Klein’s, until I forced myself to stare into the one in my bathroom this morning.
Nothing had stared back at me, lurking in my eyes. Nothing spoke to me. Not even when I’d screwed up the nerve to ask it to.
“Hey,” I’d managed, my voice dry as chalk. I’d gotten nothing but silence back.
I was just me, alone. Same as always.
I mean, sure, I’d seen...something. In the mirror. Or I thought I had. But it could have been stress, or an adrenaline crash after the exorcism. My overactive imagination combined with Mrs. Klein’s decorative mirror and bad lighting.
That made sense. That was rational.
The alternative—that there was a presence in there with me, something with a face and a voice and intentions of its own…No. I wasn’t going there. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Because if I admitted that what I’d seen was real, I’d have to admit what it meant. And I wasn’t ready for that.
I may be going crazy, but at least I wasn’t possessed.
Even stranger, I’d had no nightmares. I’d woken up this morning freaked out at what might be covering the walls, but they were white. Pristine. The usual post-exorcism pornographic slurs scrawled in garish craft paint decrying me as a whore and a slut, a useless cunt with shit for brains…were nowhere in evidence. Everything I’d come to expect—the bumps in the night, cold hands on my throat, needles pricking my skin, screams howling in my ears—had taken the night off, apparently.
