The Mirror (The Lost Bride Trilogy #2)

“Come to the manor as a bride, die as a bride. Perhaps I will not revel in your pain as I did the others, but I will not regret giving you death.”

Dobbs smiled, tossed back her hair as it blew in the rising wind. “Come to the manor as a bride,” she repeated, “live in the manor as a wife, and know your death follows. Your pain, your blood, your tears will only feed my power.”

“Stay away from me! Stay away! You’re mad.”

“So they say.” Laughing, Dobbs lifted her arms.

Outside, thunder boomed. In the library, an ice-edged wind whirled so the flowers on the mantel, on the tables withered and died.

Books and blackened blossoms tumbled to the floor.

“So they say,” she said again, with a kind of glee. “But I am mistress here, and if you enter my house as a bride, I will make your wedding gown your shroud.”

Dobbs looked down at her, almost kindly. “He’s weak, Michael Poole, and will never be faithful. He’ll choose another, and one I’m sure to enjoy damning to death more than I would you. Go now. Make your choice.”

She laughed again as Patricia pushed herself up and ran from the room.

Much as Patricia had, Dobbs wandered the room, touching, indulging.

She stopped less than two feet from where Sonya stood, turned slowly. Stared.

“Something there, something there.” She muttered it as her dark eyes narrowed, as confusion clouded them. “A Poole. Yes, a Poole. One of the five, are you? Dead, all dead by my hand, by my power. You think to haunt me? I am mistress here!”

She stepped closer, and it seemed to Sonya looked directly into her eyes.

“Your blood, Poole bitch, on my hands. Your ring on my finger, dead whore. And your tears forever on my tongue. As will be the next and the next, generation by generation. I am mistress here and ever shall be. And damned to you.”

When she vanished, Sonya let out the breath she’d held. She could still hear the music. She could see the glittering shards of glass from the broken compact.

Following impulse, she crossed to it. Could she touch it? she wondered. She was as much a ghost here as Dobbs had been. But…

She reached down, felt the shock go through her when her hands closed around the lid. Her heart skipped as she picked it up, then the puffs: one, she noted for powder, one for blush—no, rouge, she corrected.

Both had fallen out.

Carefully, she replaced them, closed their twin lids, then the cover on the oblong of gold.

Holding it, she walked to the mirror. And through.

She lowered into her desk chair. The ball bounced along the hall downstairs as she stared at the compact in her hand. Clover greeted her with Katy Perry’s “Roar.”

She’d brought it back, she thought, dazed. She’d brought this object back through the mirror with her.

Maybe she wasn’t up to roaring because everything felt so shaky, but she’d brought it back with her.

As Cleo came down the hall, the ball stopped bouncing.

Cleo lifted a hand in her usual half wave, then stopped.

“Jesus, Sonya, you’re dead white. What happened? What—”

She broke off as she rushed in, and Sonya held up the compact.

“It’s beautiful. Art Deco. Where did you find it?” As she asked, Cleo opened it. “Oh, the mirror’s broken. That’s a shame.”

“It broke when she dropped it.”

Cleo put a hand on Sonya’s shoulder. “Who dropped it?”