His expression finally softened. “Thank you, darling.” When he kissed me this time, we both lost track of where and when we were.
When his arms dropped from around me, I remembered we were long past sunrise, so I helped him undress and get into bed.
He was almost out when he suddenly grabbed my wrist. “You can leave during daylight hours. Take the main hall all the way to the end. You’ll take steps down and then back up. There are a series of doors. They’ll lock behind you. You’ll exit into The Bloody Ruin Asylum and Taproom…and…It’s a ruin bar…There’s a commercial street back along the edge of the Guild property…”
I patted his chest. “It’s okay. Sleep now. I’m going to sleep today too.”
He made a quiet sound and was out.
First, though, I was going to unpack and get cleaned up. I started to calculate how long I’d been awake but then butted up against a time change and stopped. I was too tired for math, especially as I was pretty sure it had been more than thirty hours.
After I’d hung up the fancy clothes, Clive’s suits included, I took my toiletry bag to the bathroom. More white marble and ornate decorations. It was elegant but cold. Temperature-wise cold. I supposed if everyone was snoozing, they didn’t need to fork out for heat during the day.
I put my things on the gray-veined marble counter, turned on the hot water in the walk-in shower, lined up my travel-sized bottles, and stepped under the rain head. The water started off strong, filling the room with steam, but then went cold not long afterward. Caught with soap on my body and conditioner in my hair, I darted in and out of the frigid water, trying to rinse off.
Once reasonably sure the water was running clear, I turned it off and stood a moment, shivering. Squeezing the excess out of my hair, I put it up in a towel and then grabbed a bath sheet off a warming bar, quickly wrapping it around myself. I brought a corner up to my face and breathed into it, trying to warm my frozen head.
“I thought this town was sitting on thermal pools,” I mumbled to myself. Why the frick was the water arctic?
The overhead lights flickered, and I jumped. Fearing the power would go out as quickly as the hot water had, I dried off and dove into my pajamas. Returning to the bedroom, I grabbed a hoodie and slid it on. It was summer. Why was it so cold? I slipped on a pair of running socks too, as my feet were freezing on the cold floor.
One of the perks of having a vampire husband was not having to tiptoe around in the dark, afraid of waking him up. I could have had all the lights on while playing music and he wouldn’t have cared. Some of it might slip past what he says is death and I contend is deep, restorative sleep because it wasn’t unusual for him to ask me about something he heard while he was out, which proved my it’s-not-death point.
I went back in the bathroom and pulled out a hairbrush and comb, unwrapping my hair and using the towel to wipe the fog from the mirror. My arm went back and forth, clearing the glass for far too long. The steam in the room had all but cleared, yet the mirror reflected nothing by gray smoke. Was it the mirror itself that was the problem? I had seen my own reflection earlier, hadn’t I?
Wait. Did the Guild use two-way mirrors to spy on people? I leaned in close, trying to see myself in the glass.
A swollen, bloodshot eye stared back. My body recoiled in horror. The mirror now reflected a woman who wasn’t me.
Long, matted hair obscured parts of her battered face. Dark circles seemed to weigh under her wild eyes. I stared into a gaunt face with a bruised jaw and a split lip. A damp, stained slip hung from boney shoulders. My initial fear disappeared, pity taking its place.
Trembling, I remembered the attack that had almost ended me eight years ago, remembered how horrified I’d been at seeing my own battered reflection in the mirror.
But this wasn’t me. I reached out a hand, wanting to help, knowing what it was to be the one on the other side of the glass, brutalized and in shock.
Baring her stained teeth, she screamed, the sound echoing off the tile, piercing my heart. As I stared into her black eyes, a chill ran down my spine.
Who was she? Was I seeing into a room beyond our own? Was I looking into the past, into the asylum?
On a last wail, she reached through the glass, her clawlike fingers scrabbling over the frame. I had a moment to panic, remembering a horror movie much like this. I jumped back as she dove out of the mirror, her cold fingers brushing against my throat.
Three
I Should Have Learned Some Key Hungarian Curse Words Before I Came Here
I threw my arms up, but no one was there. Instead of a battered woman screaming, there was only terrified me in the mirror. I looked in the bedroom. Nothing. Clive was resting in the bed. No traumatized woman was wandering around, which was a huge relief.
I’m a necromancer. Seeing ghosts is not unusual for me, but this was something different. She felt like a live wire. Normally, ghosts can’t hurt me, but there had been those two in New Orleans who’d pretty successfully attacked me. They’d been supernaturals in life. Perhaps I was dealing with the same here. The one in the mirror, though, had felt human to me.
The crazy chill in the bathroom left with the woman in the mirror. Hopefully that meant she’d used up her strength to scare me and would now be quiet. I supposed I should have been prepared for ghosts when I saw the building. I’d been so worried about vampires plotting against us, I hadn’t considered ghosts.
Deciding it was safe to proceed, I blew dry my hair, turned on the gas fireplace, grabbed my e-reader, and curled up on the couch. There was no way I was telling Clive about the poor lady in the mirror. I knew him. He’d worry and want to move me out of the Guild, but I didn’t want anything to get in the way of him becoming a Counselor. Besides, I could deal with ghosts.
Right now, I needed to relax if I had any hope of sleeping. I was reading the latest in a mystery series I enjoyed, but I couldn’t concentrate. I had to keep stopping myself and going back, realizing I hadn’t been paying attention to the words my eyes were skating over.
Had the young woman in the mirror been a patient in the asylum? She’d been bruised. Had she done that to herself or had someone else hurt her? I’d read such horrible things about asylums…
A shadow passed over me. Flinching, I sat up, looking around. I’d become accustomed to light and shadow flickering with the fire. This was different, though. I’d seen something tall and dark pass in my peripheral vision, seen the shadow momentarily block the fire.
