“Dead. I know.” I stared down at the card and lock of hair. “He’s talked to me before this, last night on the front lawn and also at the Warlock’s, but I wasn’t sure it was him.”
“Can you be sure now?”
I held up the teddy bear. “This used to be mine, a long time ago. My mom gave it to me when I was a baby; for all I know, my dad might have gotten it for me before I was born.”
“But for all you know, this could be an elaborate trick conjured up by some dark entity.”
“That’s true.” I closed my eyes and smelled the dusty bear again; it was like an instant portal back to the happiest time I’d had as a child. A thousand questions about my family and my life crowded around the memories, questions only Ian Shimmer could answer. “But if this really is from my father, I have to talk to him.”
chapter
eight
Mirror, Mirror
After Cooper and the Warlock left on an errand in the Land Rover, I went looking for Mother Karen in the kids’ playroom. She was arbitrating a fight over a Transformers toy; when she got the two kids settled, I pulled her to the side.
“Can I borrow the mirror in your study?” I asked.
“Sure.” She dug in her jumper pocket for the key and handed it to me.
“Um.” I stared down at the key. “Does your mirror have any … security enchantments? To protect against magical spycraft or identity spoofing, if that kind of thing happens?”
Her eyebrows rose. “It has some protections against demons and malicious spells, yes. Who or what exactly are you planning to contact?”
“My father. My real one, I mean, not my step. I think. I haven’t ever met him, and it’s all super-weird and hard to explain, but if it’s him I really need to talk to him.”
“Well.” She pursed her lips. “Just don’t give out any sensitive personal information, unless you’re absolutely certain he’s who he says he is. Saying ‘oblittero’ will cut off the connection if you need to; so will clapping your hands or stomping your foot twice if you can’t speak.”
I thanked her and went into the study, latching the door behind me. Mother Karen would surely be able to get into her own study without the key, but I didn’t want any of her kids coming in there in case there was trouble. What kind of trouble could come from contacting someone (or something) that claimed to be my father, but wasn’t? I didn’t have a clear idea, but having spent some quality time in a hell, my imagination was supplying plenty of dire scenarios. At least two of them involved hooked chains, rusty razor blades, and a TV stuck on a Jerry Springer marathon.
I sat on Karen’s couch and stared down at the card, mentally doing a dare-I-eat-a-peach dance with myself. In the end, it seemed better to try to get answers than to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been. So I went to the antique mirror, stuck the card under the frame, and spoke the opening charm.
Nothing happened right away, so for a few moments I wondered if I’d done it wrong. And then the reflection changed to show an empty tall-backed wooden chair, and behind that an arcane-looking workshop that appeared to occupy an old-fashioned domed observatory. In addition to a big telescope, I saw several antique brass solar system models, an alchemical apparatus of glass tubes and distillation flasks for potions on a long table, and chalkboard walls with a mixture of spell glyphs and complicated mathematical equations written on them in the same neat, precise handwriting as on the note.
“Um … hello? Anyone there?” I called.
“Oh!” The reply was a deep, pleasant baritone—nothing like the somewhat sinister whisper I’d heard before—somewhere off to the side where I couldn’t see. The speaker had a slight accent, maybe German? I heard a chair scoot across the wooden floor. “Is that you, Jessie?”
“Yes, it is,” I replied.
I heard the sound of feet slapping across the floor in flip-flops. A tall, strongly built man with long, wavy, penny-brown hair and a full beard stepped into the mirror view and sat down in the chair. His face was deeply tan. He was wearing bright orange Thai fisherman’s pants and a long madras patchwork jacket over a black T-shirt with white Courier lettering: “I Void Warranties.” I began to suspect that my disinterest in fashion was probably genetic.