betrayed them. To know that they would go on despising her for the rest of their lives left her feeling almost as hollowed out as the knowledge that Ace would never again look at her with beaming pride.
“Yeah, I am afraid that I’m going to fail again,” she said, still peering into the nothingness of Phobia’s face. “But one cannot be brave who has no fear.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THERE HAD BEEN many times since Adrian and his dads first moved into the old mayor’s mansion that Adrian had the nagging thought that it was far more space than the three of them needed. Not only because there was a formal parlor, formal dining room, and four guest rooms that had yet to welcome a single guest, but also because three grown men simply had no use for seven—count them—seven bathrooms.
Each one, of course, came equipped with a mirror. And that wasn’t even considering the mirrors in closets or the one hung over the fireplace mantel in the parlor, and probably some he hadn’t even thought of yet. It seemed reflections were everywhere he looked these days.
Adrian unscrewed the mirrored medicine cabinet from the wall of the third bathroom on the main floor, thinking for the umpteenth time that he hadn’t given enough credit to Narcissa Cronin’s power when he first met her at Cloven Cross Library. Sure, traveling through mirrors had seemed like a neat party trick, but now he was beginning to fully appreciate what a useful ability it could be.
There were mirrors everywhere.
It was almost like having a skeleton key to nearly any door in the world.
It drove him nuts every time he stopped to think about it. He had been in the same room with Nightmare that day at the library. She had been right in front of him, and he had been completely oblivious. It made him sick to think how she must have been laughing behind his back.
Realizing what a tedious job it was going to be to get rid of all the mirrors in the house, he’d been tempted to simply smash them to bits, or maybe just drape them with heavy cloths. But he didn’t think his dads would be too happy coming home to a house full of glass shards, and he didn’t know enough about Nightmare’s mirror-walking ability to know if a heavy cloth would be enough to keep her out.
And so, they had to be taken down.
The final screw fell into his palm and he pried the cabinet from the wall. He hadn’t bothered to remove the toiletries inside and he heard them sliding and crashing into one another as he carried it down the hall, down the steps, and into his basement bedroom. Past his bed and TV, past the desk where he had spent hours sketching in notebooks and, more recently, giving himself tattoos, and into the room that had once been deemed his art studio.
The room that had of late been converted into a living jungle.
He hadn’t entered the room in the days since Nova’s arrest. It held too many memories that were soured by his belief that Nova was his most loathed enemy. Memories of her head tucked against his shoulder, her face tranquil in sleep. Memories of her surprise when she saw the mural Adrian had painted on these walls, then watching her unspeakable awe as he brought the trees and vines and exotic flowers to life.
Since that night, the jungle had begun to fade, just as Turbo was. Adrian’s power didn’t include immortality. His creations would wilt and die, just like things in real life. Faster, actually, than things in real life. Now, when he entered this room, the one-time aromas of perfumed flowers had been replaced with the smell of decay and rot. The vibrant colors of the flowers faded to grays and browns, their silky petals drooping and papery crisp. The vines that hung from overhead tree branches became brittle to the touch, and a number of them broken, disintegrating on the mossy ground that was, itself, dying to reveal the plain concrete floor underneath.
Only the statue that stood at the far end of the room appeared untouched—but then, it had never been alive to begin with.
Adrian set the mirror against the wall with the others that he had already removed. He figured that if Nightmare did come through one of them, she’d be so confused by the dying flora that she’d think she took a wrong turn in mirrorland, or however that worked.
As