like Jean Harlow or Errol Flynn feels about a new life as the ultimate undead objects of desire, I am thankful to say I haven’t the slightest notion. And if I ever do, I can sip away all that is so casually crass and modern these days. Cheers!”
Ric thanked the family Charles and looked down to see a quizzical white-and-gray wire-haired terrier eyeing his pant leg with intent to water.
“Asta, no!” Nora ordered, but Nicky merely bent to pick him up and install him on the barstool Ric had vacated.
Ric left them there, a family portrait in dramatic black-and-white against the vividly colored liquors above and the dancing demons below, both under glass.
Chapter Seven
I STOOD BECALMED and frantic in a mirror-world turned into a thorny trap.
Where was Ric now? Who would warn him he was under attack if I was confined to fey stir?
Loretta Cicereau had used my curiosity and my guilt at imprisoning her to reverse our roles. Her boyfriend was not only dead and unrevivable, but mine might soon be in the same state by her hands.
“Any magic you can use to help me overcome this wall you created?” I asked Madrigal.
His broad bare shoulders shrugged. “Phasia and Sylphia supplement my powers, but they’ve gone off to sulk now that I’ve put a wall between us. I’m in the doghouse with them as much as your clever canine Quicksilver ever was, but they won’t abandon me here forever. They’re just miffed you and I reconnected through mirrors. Where’s the wolfbane of Cicereau’s pack now?”
“Not where I could really use him.” I couldn’t help sounding brusque. “I’ve never taken Quicksilver into mirror-world. It’s not like I need a bodyguard every minute.”
“Allow me to disagree.” Madrigal looked around. “I called up a protective wall, but this overgrown cage is like Sleeping Beauty’s thorn forest, and she was stuck behind the briars for . . . what? Decades?”
“Who’s counting? This thorn-spiked jungle transformed from those leaf-bare trees that were so petite and frosty and pretty when I entered the mirror, kinda like your fey assistants when I first met them and their claws were in.” I looked around and up. “The entwined branches lock us in on three sides, even on the Black Beyond above us.”
“Mirror backings are painted black,” Madrigal pointed out. “No wonder the edges of everything inside the mirror are dark and look impassable.”
I paced and tried not to grind my teeth. “I hope Loretta can’t travel with the speed of the disembodied now that she’s physical again. I’ve got to get out and get to Ric fast. I’ve got to get there before her.”
Madrigal again shrugged brawny shoulders. “I’m a novice at mirror magic, compared to you, but I believe even if you managed to retrace your steps, you’d be back to wherever you entered the mirror.”
“That would be my residence,” I said absently. “The hall mirror there is a prop used for the Wicked Queen’s talking mirror in Snow White.”
“Really! Any magician would chop off his left hand to get ahold of a mirror with that provenance for illusions.”
“What good is it doing me now?”
“If that’s the mirror I’ve come toward from my own stage mirrors, it might amplify my magic, at least some. I don’t know how, though. I can quench the fire.” His theatrical gesture did just that, but the thick tangled wall remained.
“I haven’t time to wait for your apprenticeship to take hold.” I looked around desperately.
There was still no “back.” Madrigal was right. The towering thorn trees hemmed us in and the floor was black stone. I stamped my heel on it, which only sent an impact tremor up my foot and leg. Well, I was no dormant Sleeping Beauty waiting for my prince to come rescue me. I needed to go rescue him, so this Jill had better start climbing the beanstalk.
“What are you doing?” Madrigal asked as I leaped up three feet onto the nearest thick branch. “There’s nothing up there but matted limbs.”
“And homicidal thorns,” I said, discovering ten-inch-long spears hidden among the twisted, almost tortured black branches.
It was like climbing wrought iron with an ice storm slick on it. The surface now was numbingly cold, and slippery. And me wearing my midriff-baring salsa dancing top. Soon the red knit would be dyed a deeper shade of scarlet, if I didn’t watch it.
I’d always had a knack for climbing. I remembered unsanctioned solo adventures along the river cliffs, clutching fistfuls of leaf-stripped, whip-thin branches to pull myself over eroding