The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

The flowers also grew along the stairs. Fox carefully avoided touching them. The staircase ended in a wide cellar, from which a corridor with windowless rooms branched off. The mesh of wires in the doors was hard to spot, even for her eyes. Silver gratings. The cells behind them were empty, except the last one.

Fox recognized the lifeless body behind the grate, though Jacob had his back to her. She closed her hands around the bars. It felt like clutching air. The magic was so strong that not even touch revealed it. Fox pulled her hands back nevertheless. Her skin tightened as though it was turning into silver itself.

“Ah, bonjour! Or is it bonsoir out there?”

There was a man crouched on the floor behind Jacob, wearing clothes from this world. His back was against the cell wall as though he’d been sitting there for a long while. His dark hair was as curly as sheep’s wool. “Your face is new. Whoever you stole it from!”

He got to his feet, his fists clenched like a boxer ready for the next round. “You come to invite me for another look in the mirror, non? Sacrament, you must really like my face. Mais, Sylvain Fowler will not come voluntarily, ma puce.”

He raised his fists and boxed the air as though to prove how hard he’d make it for her.

Fox would have laughed if Jacob hadn’t stirred.

“There’s no reason to fight,” she said. “I don’t belong to them. I’m here for him.” She nodded toward Jacob. “What did they do to him?”

The gloves she pulled from her pocket had saved her from many magical traps, but she couldn’t be sure they’d work here.

“Ostie de moron!” Sylvain let his fists drop. “You don’t recognize your own kind anymore, Sylvain? She is human!” He leaned over Jacob. “I think he’s fine. Probably had too much of their dust. How did you find him? Love, and all that?” His sigh sounded jealous and understanding.

Fox started forward.

“Do not come in! There’s something with the door.” Sylvain pushed up his sleeve to show her his forearm. Next to a tattoo of a fiery maple leaf, a strip of his skin shimmered like metal. “This is what happens when you try to get through.”

“It’s a grille made invisible with camouflage magic.” Fox cautiously closed a gloved hand around one of the bars. It was still an unpleasant feeling.

“With what?” Sylvain eyed her as though she weren’t quite sane.

The lock, once visible, was easily picked. The gloves shimmered silver as Fox pulled them off. She ran to Jacob. His skin was warm and his breathing regular, like he was asleep. Fox couldn’t see any wounds, but then her fingers found the head of a tiny needle in his dark hair. It was embedded in his left temple. They had a fairy tale in Lotharaine—her mother had told it often—in which the Devil held a prince captive for a hundred years by sticking a silver needle in his head. The prince woke as soon as his sister pulled the needle out. In Fox’s world, it was often a good idea to follow the lessons of such tales, but this was Jacob’s world.

“I can carry him if he can’t walk,” Sylvain whispered. “We have to cross the river. They control the entire island. Won’t be easy, but we find a boat, maybe?”

Although Fox guessed Sylvain Fowler to be in his mid-forties, his lively eyes and wide mouth made him look like a handsome boy who’d aged only a little but had broken his nose a few times in the process.

“We don’t need a boat. We’ll take another way.” We? Fox! She couldn’t take a stranger through the mirror.

But Sylvain was right—she might need his help. First, though, she had to find out a bit more about him. “Why are you here?” She tried to make her question sound like little more than concerned curiosity.

“I worked for them.”

“Them?”

Jacob shuddered as soon as Fox touched the needle.

“Immortal Glass and Silver. I delivered their mirrors.”

Mirrors. Pull it out, Fox. Jacob groaned, but the needle slid out without resistance.

“My daughter’s hair is as red as yours,” Sylvain whispered. “I’m thinking of her all the time since I looked into that damned mirror. Maude merde. That devilish glass doesn’t just steal your face—it brings up the memories, as though someone’s stirred them around. All the filth I’d forgotten, but the good things are worse.”

That didn’t sound like the mirror that had brought her here. In Fox’s world, there were mirrors that fulfilled wishes, gave aid, revealed the truth—they could be a promise or the perfect trap. Witches always spat on a mirror before looking into it to make sure it wasn’t magic.

Jacob began to stir. Fox had to whisper his name a dozen times before he finally opened his eyes. They stared at her through silver.

“Fox?” His fingers sought her face. “I can’t see.”

She was glad to hear his voice, but there was no time for joy, nor for fear. Jacob groaned as he leaned on his right hand.

“What’s happened to your arm, Jacob?”