my magic, or rather, my magic from me.
Two parts of a whole—Stormwalker and Beneath goddess. I’d been fighting the two natures all my life. Now Emmett, with a flick of his wrist, yanked them apart.
The pain went on and on, so terrible that I became curiously detached from it. I saw my body coalesce into two distinct ones, two Janets, each slightly translucent and hanging a few inches above the debris-strewn floor.
One Janet had skin darkened by genetics and a life in the sunshine. The other’s skin glowed white, the unhealthy shade of a goddess who never saw the sun of this earth.
The two of us were powerful, but I realized immediately that I derived my strongest magic from the mixture. I’d never understood how much until this moment.
It was the grounding of the Stormwalker that let me draw the Beneath magic and focus it. Likewise, my well of Beneath magic let me enhance the storms and direct them where I wanted them to go. I’d been working in the past year to find the exact balance that would make me strong and keep me sane at the same time. I had nearly learned that equilibrium, until Emmett, this moment, stole it from me.
I hung there, staring at myself, seeing out of both Janets at the same time. Stormwalker watched Beneath goddess, and Beneath goddess watched Stormwalker.
Mick chose that moment to tear off the rest of the roof. His black dragon head peered down, fire in his eyes. He saw the two mes dangling in the air, and stopped.
“No,” I told him, both Janets speaking in tandem. “If you kill him now, I’ll never live.”
Mick must have understood that, or Emmett would already have been snatched up. Mick drew his head back, his eyes filled with rage and frustration.
“Get Drake, Cass, and Pamela to safety,” I told him, my voice chorusing.
Mick reached down and plucked up Drake. Cassandra raised her hands. “No, I’m not letting this bastard win.”
She’d die trying, I saw. I didn’t want to lose Cassandra, but Mick backed off. He would understand that she needed to fight. Pamela looked unhappy, but she would stay with Cassandra and protect her while I couldn’t.
Mick withdrew, but I knew he wouldn’t go far. I held on to the comfort of knowing he was near. The turquoise and onyx ring he’d given me clasped the fingers of both Janets, the sensation letting me know he’d never desert me.
I looked at the ring now on my left hand … Then realized, as I faced myself, that the ring on Beneath-magic Janet was on the right hand, as though I looked at my own reflection.
Reflections …
Emmett’s magic could split people into their essential parts, each an image of the other—if not exact in the case of the dragons. He wanted a magic mirror to enhance his abilities, doubling his power, or perhaps multiplying it infinite times. A mirror reflecting a mirror showed a never-ending corridor of possibilities.
Mirrors also showed what was truly there. My mirror had shoved me into the dreamwalking to explain to me what was truth, and what I had to face.
Emmett had broken the mirror when he’d come out of it. Because it had revealed his true self? The skin sunken into the skull, the eyes points of light?
Emmett had become that being by siphoning off power from mage after mage, stealing magic until he’d exhausted his mortal body. He had to keep up a glam in order to interact with the world. No client would have wanted to come to his sleek office building to entrust their money to him if they’d seen his real guise.
He’d made sure the glam was in place when he emerged from the mirror, because even he didn’t want to face the mirror and see the truth.
Reflections, I mused, even as the dark part of my brain screamed in pain. Reflections of reality—in a magic mirror.
And suddenly, I knew how to use the mirror against him.
The knowledge came to me on a whisper—no idea if it was a product of my own mind, the mirror, Mick, my grandmother, Elena, Cassandra—someone else trying to help me. It didn’t matter. I knew what I needed to do.
Both of me turned and extended the hand that wore the ring. “Smooth,” we said together.
Lightning crackled around the hand of the Stormwalker. A ball of Beneath magic balanced in the hand of the goddess. Together we threw the magic—lightning and white fire—into the mirror.
The mirror let out a sound