The Mirror (The Lost Bride Trilogy #2)

When she came back just under an hour later, she found Yoda sulking outside the servants’ passage.

“Oh now, he’ll be back. I guess I could’ve told Trey to let Mookie stay, but I didn’t think of it. You’ve got me,” she reminded him as she walked down to her bedroom. “And Pye, and Cleo. And I bet Jack’ll show up to play later.”

In the bedroom, she pulled out work-at-home clothes. “I’m going to shower and change, then you can hang with me while I work.”

But when she’d showered and changed, he wasn’t sitting on his bed waiting for her. As she started down the hall, she heard the sound of the ball bouncing on the main floor.

“Looks like Jack came to play already.”

Since the boy remained skittish, she started to announce herself as she approached the stairs.

Then she saw it.

The mirror stood beside her desk. The predators framing it snapped, snarled, slithered. Its glass gleamed and showed her reflection.

A woman frozen in place, her hair loose, the tie to draw it back still around her wrist. Her face seemed pale, her eyes too big.

Then the reflection blurred so she saw only colors, vague shapes.

The pulse at her throat began to hammer.

She heard the ball bounce, the dog give chase. She heard the laughter of a young boy who’d died long before.

“I’m awake.” The sound of her own voice made her jolt. “I’m not dreaming, not sleepwalking. I’m awake.”

But as the gooseflesh ran over her arms, she started to back away. To call to Cleo.

Even as she stepped back, the glass of the mirror swirled. Those colors, those shapes shimmered behind it. She heard something—voices, music? But distant, like sounds echoing down a tunnel.

And she felt the pull.

Awake, aware, she walked to it. Though her hand trembled, she lifted it to the glass, watched it pass through as if through water.

She drew it back.

The tablet on her desk played Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason.”

“I guess I have seven reasons,” she said, and walked through the mirror.

Into the library.

Not quite the same, she realized. A fire simmered, and a different sofa faced it. Flowers flowed over the mantel, graced the table. Lamps spread light as the windows showed the dark.

She’d walked from day to night.

Why here? she wondered. And when?

Why here, she thought again, when she heard music from…

She closed her eyes. “The third floor,” she murmured. “The ballroom?”

But she felt no need to go there, and every need to stay where she was.

“What’s here?” The sound of her own voice brought a chill to her arms.

Could the rings be here? she wondered. In the library where she worked every day? But in a different time.

She started to turn, to begin a search.