“Something terrible, I’m sure,” the ghost said. “And I could not fulfill my vow to teach you.”
Selene held the crystal goblet aloft. “I think I know a way to free you.”
He leaned in, a hunger crawling up into his face. She remembered him to be monstrous, then. Something beyond human. Her breath caught, but she released it quickly.
“Hold the glass”—she gestured to the narrow window through the mirror’s face—“and stand there.”
“As you say.”
She took a step back to give him space to move, their paths crossing as if this were some sort of dance.
“Ready?”
He held up the goblet.
Selene sang her highest note. It rang, sharp and clear, piercing in its clarity. The glass trembled. For a moment, Selene was sure she could feel the floor shift.
The ghost’s eyebrows went up, and then settled into understanding.
“No!” he cried. The glass shattered in his hand, shards spraying across his face. “If the mirror shatters, there’ll be no way out. There’ll be nothing—for either of us.” Freckles of blood formed over his cheeks and began to weep. “The mirror is the window. It is the anchor. Without it, there is nothing.”
Selene went cold. She hadn’t considered what would happen if the glass broke. She’d be trapped in here forever, or worse. “How can you be sure?”
“There are things I seem to know.” Blood ran down his face. The broken glass fell.
And so much he did not know. Selene caught a tremor in her hand, fighting the urge to wash the blood from him. Somehow, the brutality of it didn’t make him less lovely. There was something wrong about all of this that she had yet to unpuzzle, some sense of uncertainty that plagued her. Perhaps it was the door painted to look like nothing, or the steps someone had carved from stone.
“Has this happened before?”
“I don’t know for certain.” All levity was replaced by dark consternation. “Of this I am sure: I could never forget you, Selene.”
If there had been darkness in his eyes, it was gone now. They were bright as twin moons, looking at her with an audience’s admiration. Countless people had looked at her father like that. No one had ever looked at her this way. She felt all at once undeserving of his adulation.
Selene had been forgotten. And the ghost had, too. He’d been abandoned here for a hundred years, his life and his mind stolen from him, because he had slipped from the consciousness of the world.
“I won’t forget you,” Selene said softly. Her heart beat con ardore, the disparate longing to close the space between them and brush fingertips almost too much. “Do you already know the way to escape the mirror, somewhere, down deep?”
“It is certainly forgotten. I would have used it.”
“I used blood to escape the mirror before,” she said. “Can you try?”
His cold blue eyes cut to her soul. He exhaled and the cuts on his face and hands—some of which had healed and some of which still bled—shifted from red into black, blood into shadow. Selene marked the tempo of her heart. This was the simplest solution, the easiest way out.
The magie du sang stuttered.
The shadows that had lifted into the air twisted, as if strangled. The rest of the ever-present dark churned with a sudden violence Selene did not expect.
And the ghost was not freed.
Selene was almost embarrassed by her disappointment. “I’ll keep looking.”
“I know you will.” He waved his hand. “Has the magie du sang proved its worth?”
“I love it. I love getting what I want.”
“And will it get you into the competition?”
“I have a plan.”
