In the mirror—
“Where is it?” Jesse inched forward warily. “Your reflection—it’s not there.”
Shakily, she rose to her feet. Her leg gave an awful throb, the phantom ache of an old break creeping in. In the looking glass before her, she could see all the room reflected back at her. A smattering of mismatched armchairs. A table stacked with Bibles. An oscillating fan gone green with mildew. Jesse, a home call kit gripped in his fist, the metal bell of a stethoscope peeking out from within.
She wasn’t there at all. She peered into the mirror and saw nothing peering back. In her hands she held a crumpled mess of ribbon, clean and neat—as though she’d tugged it loose from a pair of satin slippers.
“You were in an altered state,” said Jesse. “When I came in the room. It’s like—like you weren’t even there. Are you there now?”
She nodded, staring in horror at the ribbon in her hands. At least this time, she hadn’t brought back something living. At least this time, nothing lay dying in her grasp. It was a small mercy.
Setting the ribbon onto the table, she signed:Are we still on for tomorrow?
Jesse’s gaze shuttered. “Yeah, we’re on,” he said. “But because it bears repeating—that paper I wrote was hypothetical. A theory. You understand that, right? What you’re asking me to do—no one’s ever done it before. It could kill you. It very likely will.”
His words rang through her in a death knell. She wasn’t reckless. She wasn’t suicidal. She didn’twantto die. But the cracks inside her already ran so deep, she didn’t see any other way. When you had a cavity, you went to the dentist to have it drilled out. Left unchecked, the rot would move into the bloodstream. The heart.
This was no different. She had to believe that.
If I die, I’ll take our dirty little secret to the grave.She scooped her hands toward her like she was digging through dirt.I’ll be six feet underground and you’ll be in the clear. There’s nothing to lose.
Jesse’s laugh came out strained. “Yeah, this is a low-stakes investment for me for sure.”
High stakes, high rewards, she signed. It was something Philip liked to say.If you pull it off, you’ll be a god.
“So you keep reminding me,” he said stonily.
She peered back at the mirror—at the place a girl was meant to be. Jesse stood there alone, his chestnut hair a mess, his mouth pressed into a grim white line. Quietly, he fiddled with the roll of paper in his hands.
“Would it change anything if I told you I thought you were eighteen when we met?”
She fought an eye roll.You knew exactly how old I was.
“You targeted me.”
You made it easy.
His smile was devoid of humor. “And now here we are.”
Here we are. Did the bird die?
“It did,” said Jesse. “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually. I have a theory. The barest shadow of a theory, at least. Come here.”
He unrolled the paper flat, grappling with the corners that curled in over his hands. It was a map, though it had been extensively marked. Bold black marker veered in sharp corners and curved arches from one end to the other and back again, intersecting at odd places here and there. At the top, someone had writtenProperty of Alex Sadowski.
“Have you ever heard of Alfred Watkins?” asked Jesse.
She shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. Most schools leave his research out of their curricula. It’s still fairly controversial.”
Why? Who is he?
“Watkins was an archaeologist in the late nineteenth century. Not a very well-respected one. He believed that the world is covered in these ancient ceremonial pathways. There are these fringe theories, even today, that the paths are so worn down by travel, the very air around them has begun to thin.”
She wasn’t entirely clueless. She’d seen videos online—most of them heavily doctored—of people slipping through the sky. Read internet rumors and tabloid theories that there were places in the world where one reality butted up against another.
The stories were so pervasive that even Frankie—wry, cynical Frankie—had gone through a phase in middle school when she believed the rumors so thoroughly, she’d convinced herself she could carve a window in the sky with a steak knife. All she’d gotten for her troubles was a three-day suspension for bringing a weapon to school.
