Crown of Glass Read online

  She stepped forward to press her palm against the broken glass.

  “Please,” whispered the memory of Gabe’s voice in her mind. “I know you’re there. You have to be.”

  Jenna poured her magic into the mirror, her heart hammering in her chest. Images began to play across its surface, quicker than the eye could follow.

  As Jenna stepped back, Valentine took her place. Her pale hand closed around an ivory crucifix at her throat; a cool darkness pressed down upon them, threading itself through the moonlight that still wound its way around Jenna’s form.

  That darkness was different, this time — less oppressive, though still heavy in its own way. There will be pain, that power whispered. But you will survive.

  “Follow me,” Valentine rasped. “You won’t see me once we enter, I expect. But I won’t let you fall.”

  The witch stepped forward, past the images that flickered upon the mirror… and disappeared.

  Gabe’s trembling grew stronger, and Jenna shot him a concerned look. He shook his head at her. “Let’s go,” he said. “I need to do this.”

  Jenna took a deep, shuddering breath… and took them both through the mirror, in Valentine’s wake.

  “Are you listening?”

  Gabe’s figure stood in front of the windows of the Metropolitan, his hands against the glass, his golden-brown eyes searching his reflection with terrible desperation.

  As Valentine had promised, she was nowhere to be found — but her magic seethed just beneath the surface of the vision, coiled around Jenna’s soul. When Jenna realized that the real Gabe had disappeared as well, a brief panic struck her — but the Capricorn magic pressed against that fear, softening its edges into something more bearable.

  Jenna closed her eyes, and reached out with her senses.

  He’s still here, she thought. This memory is part of him. He can’t walk separately from it in the same way that I can.

  She opened her eyes again, and saw that one or two other patrons were murmuring and glancing at Gabe from across the room. With all the things to appreciate in a museum, it must have been strange to see someone looking away from the exhibits and toward the windows. His hair was mussed, his face tired and hopeless. He looked a little bit like a crazy person, begging his reflection to talk to him.

  “Please,” Gabe whispered plaintively. “I know you’re there. You have to be. I can’t have just imagined you.” His voice was choked with emotion. “I can’t just be talking to myself.”

  Was it Jenna’s imagination, or had there been a flicker of silver light behind his reflection’s eyes?

  “She’s dying,” Gabe said. “I found someone just like her. There’s a man who traded his life to the Lady of Mourning Glory, in return for saving his wife. She gave him a candle — she told him he had twenty years before it burned down. Make the most of the time you have left, she said.” He clenched his jaw. “If men can sell their lives to faerie lords, then I’m not crazy. What Jen showed me here, when we were kids… it has to be real.”

  Jenna froze, staring at his back.

  The image of the phosphorescent candle at the center of the Looking Glass surged back into her mind, as clear as if it had been burned into her brain. That’s not possible, Jenna thought. I never made any deals. I’ve never even been to Arcadia before now.

  Gabe’s reflection tilted its head to one side. “…real,” his own voice whispered back to him.

  Gabe’s hands trembled on the glass. Incredulous tears gathered in his eyes. “Help me save her, please,” he whispered. “I’ll do anything. Give anything. I have no one else to ask.”

  “Anything?” his reflection asked softly.

  Jenna reached out to close her fingers around Gabe’s shoulder. He closed his eyes at her touch, distantly aware of her presence.

  “What do you want?” Gabe asked.

  Those silver eyes flared. Light refracted around his reflection; the way into the Looking Glass opened, and the Gabe in the mirror reached out to grasp Gabe’s hand, pulling him away from Jenna.

  “You,” said the Lord of the Looking Glass.

  “You can’t have him!” Jenna hissed. She jerked Gabe back by the shoulder, hauling him back from the window.

  The Lord of the Looking Glass didn’t even seem to see her. Gabe struggled though, tugging himself free of her grip.

  “I’m doing this,” he told her angrily. “Let me go, Jen.”

  Jenna pressed her lips together. This has already happened, she remembered. A dull ache settled into her chest. I can’t stop him, even if I wanted to.

  “All my life, you’ve given things up for me,” Jenna said softly. “I just… can’t keep letting you do that, Gabe. It’s not fair.”

  “Lots of things are unfair,” Gabe told her quietly. “You know what’s not fair, Jen? Car wrecks. They’re something that just happens to people, and sometimes you don’t even have anyone to blame. Going through life without a family — that’s unfair, too.” He stared into the Looking Glass. Its silver light played across his eyes. “If I lost you, too… that would be exceptionally unfair. Given the choice, I don’t even have to think about it.”

  Jenna curled her arms around him, pressing her face into his warm back. “I hate this,” she whispered. “You knew I would. But… I don’t hate you. None of this is your fault.”

  Gabe swallowed, reaching out to take the faerie lord’s hand again. “I know,” he said. “I know whose fault it is.”

  The Lord of the Looking Glass met his eyes steadily. Something unspoken passed between them, and Gabe pulled free from Jenna to take that last fateful step inside the Looking Glass. “My name is Gabriel Fisher,” he said, and the words rang with a strange, echoing clarity. “You can have that name, and everything else that I am, if you help me save Jenna.”

  A surge of indescribable power flashed against Jenna’s senses. The light of the Looking Glass flared like a star. Images flickered against her eyelids, faster than she could process.

  A smiling little red-headed girl, her eyes sparkling with secrets. “Show me some magic!” Gabe laughed at her.

  The screech of tires. Pain. Darkness. A hand on his, holding tightly. “Promise you won’t leave me too,” he whispered.

  “You’re not going anywhere, okay?” Jenna’s voice told him softly. “I’m gonna take care of you, too.”

  “Hey there, gorgeous.” Gabe held her hand desperately in his — painfully aware that if she ever disappeared, he might just go with her. “I’m here. Couldn’t stay away.”

  Jenna lost her breath.

  I’m like Gabe’s reflection, she thought suddenly. Or maybe he’s mine. We’ve never been able to survive apart from one another.

  “Everything,” the Lord of the Looking Glass declared, in a clear, triumphant tone that rippled across the entirety of the realm. Somehow, Jenna knew that the faerie lord had seized upon the same realization — that he had always known. This is why the Lord of the Looking Glass was so fascinated with Gabe, she thought. What we both are resonates with the realm. The Looking Glass wants us.

  Somewhere through the cascade of light, she saw Gabe, his warm brown eyes washed of color, now alight with burning silver. There was an almost painful luminosity to him — a radiant, ethereal beauty that had taken root inside his soul.

  Gabe was staring down at his hands, laughing incredulously. Overwhelmed — by relief, and not by madness. No hint of that dead, glassy green showed through in his incandescent silver eyes.

  “What?” Jenna whispered. She stared at Gabe, uncomprehending. “This isn’t what you look like now. If the Looking Glass didn’t break you… then what the hell did?”

  “Deeper,” Valentine’s voice whispered in her ear. Jenna didn’t see her, but she felt the witch’s hand in hers, pulling her onward, downward. “This memory is connected. It had to disappear, along wi’ the rest. But there’s something darker just beneath th’ surface.”

  The portal to the Looking Glass wavered dangerously. Inky black dark
ness seeped in at the edges, glittering with those pyrite gold specks that suffused Valentine’s magic.

  Something heavy, terrible, and irrevocable laid beyond that dark veil.

  Jenna’s heart seized in her chest.

  This is it, she thought. What we’ve both been avoiding.

  Valentine’s fingers tightened on hers. Dark, leaden sorrow leaned upon Jenna’s shoulders… but it was not unbearable.

  “You will survive,” Valentine’s raspy voice told her. “Whatever else happens, you will still be here afterward.”

  Jenna held more tightly to her hand. Fear rose inside her, and she let it come. She let it wash over her, through her. Let it settle around her like a vise. It makes sense that I’m afraid, she thought. But being afraid won’t save Gabe. I can be afraid all I want, as long as I still move.

  I can’t abandon him again.

  Valentine’s hand pulled her slowly forward, until that ecstatic silver light disappeared completely.

  Jenna followed after her, and descended into darkness.

  Darkness retreated softly. The feeling of it hovered dangerously around the edges of the memory though, muffling everything in an awful, desperate miasma.

  Gabe stood at that scratchy black welcome mat. That incredible glow had faded from him, muffled instead to a soft, muted light. Only the darkness inside the apartment hallway made it possible to see that he shone at all.

  His hands shook as he unlocked the door to the apartment. There was a strain on his face — the fresh shard of power inside him had left him raw, barely lucid — but his radiant silver eyes were still sharp, and there was a determined set to his jaw.

  Robert Wright was standing in the doorway to Jenna’s bedroom, staring inside. As Gabe stepped into the apartment, Jenna’s father turned with a furious look in his eyes. “You left!” he growled. “She might be dying, and you went off to who-knows-where—”

  Robert stopped cold. His eyes darted to the silver in Gabe’s hair, and the eerie light that shone behind his gaze.

  “What have you done?” he whispered.

  Gabe stared back, suddenly uncertain. His fingers still trembled at his side. “Where… where did you put the candle?” Gabe asked. He tried to make his voice hard, but Jenna heard the tremor in his voice.

  Robert froze visibly, caught by the question.

  Jenna pressed a horrified hand to her mouth.

  Gabe closed his eyes painfully. “Oh, god,” he whispered. “It was you.”

  Jenna’s father recovered quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said coldly. He straightened his posture warily. “But you need to leave, Gabriel. The last thing I need right now is a clumsy mortal playing at warlock around my daughter.”

  He can’t. He wouldn’t. Jenna stared at her father, trembling. But there was a terrible truth in his expression, and she knew, deep down, that Gabe had found the answer.

  Gabe clenched his teeth. There was a purely human heat and fury in his eyes as he opened them again. “All this time,” he ground out. “You let me search for the answer. You let her search. I must have looked at Jenna’s medical records a hundred times… but I should have been looking at yours, shouldn’t I?” He clenched his fingers against his palms. “You should be dead, or at least immobile. You were diagnosed with aggressive multiple sclerosis. It went into remission right around the time Jenna had her first attack. But you look perfectly healthy now.”

  Robert’s eyes flared. “That is an invasion of my privacy!” he hissed in a low, threatening tone. “And almost certainly illegal. How dare you pry into my affairs.”

  “I found someone else who made a deal with the Lady of Mourning Glory,” Gabe said quietly. “He traded his own life to save his wife. But you traded someone else’s life for yours. Your first-born child? Isn’t that the classic deal?”

  Robert took a step toward Gabe, his posture rigid. “I will make you leave, Gabriel,” he said in a low tone. “Do not doubt me. Whatever power you bargained for, it will not be enough to protect you from me. I was using magic decades before you were even alive.”

  Gabe surged forward, grabbing him by the collar. “You sold your own daughter!” he hissed. That silver light flared behind his eyes. “You awful piece of shit! How can you even look at yourself in the mirror?”

  Robert grabbed at Gabe’s wrist, closing his fingers painfully around it. Before either Gabe or Jenna could react, her father shoved him roughly back against the wall. As Gabe staggered, trying to catch his balance, Robert closed his fist and punched him soundly across the face. Gabe blinked, stunned by the sudden violence.

  “Stop!” Jenna lunged at her father, shocked into movement. “Stop it! Oh my god, what is wrong with you?”

  Her hands passed through him, as though he were some distant spectre. She stumbled into the wall, gasping for breath.

  “You have no idea what it’s like to be in my shoes,” Jenna’s father growled at Gabe. He lashed out with a kick, catching the other man soundly between the ribs.

  Gabe gasped and choked, raising an arm to ward off any further blows. “Don’t you dare lecture me about making deals, you hypocritical son of a bitch,” Robert hissed. “Yes, I made a bad deal! And I tried to put that fucking candle out, but it just keeps burning. I can’t undo what’s been done, no matter how hard I try!”

  Robert stepped back, breathing hard. Gabe trembled against the wall, staring at him as though he’d never seen him before in his life.

  Somehow, he found the strength to speak.

  “Give me the candle,” Gabe whispered, clutching at his ribs. “Please. I can take it to the Looking Glass. What one faerie lord did, another one might be able to undo.”

  Robert clenched his jaw. “I’m not handing anything over to another goddamn faerie,” he said. “I’m certainly not handing anything over to you.”

  “Jen is dying,” Gabe said. His voice broke on the words. “Please, just let me try.”

  Robert shook his head sharply. “Let you try?” he spat. “What do you take me for. You’ll just as likely kill us both. You have no idea what you’re doing, Gabriel.”

  Jenna fell to her knees next to Gabe. She lifted fingers to the cut that her father’s fist had left on his cheek. The awful unreality of it all weighed upon her. This happened. Dad hit him. He said these things. How could he even be the same person that I knew?

  Gabe stared at him, uncomprehending. “…you know she’s going to die,” he said. “You’re going to let it happen.”

  “If I thought you had a chance of success, I might let you try,” Robert said coldly. “But I’m not going to risk my life for no reason.”

  Gabe struggled back to his feet. Jenna looked up at him from her knees, her mind whirling. There was an awful, bewildered look in Gabe’s eyes. “You’re more of a monster than any of those faeries,” he whispered. “They don’t understand the horrible things they do. But you… you know. And you’re doing this anyway.”

  Robert whirled on him. “You are uninvited from my abode!” he bellowed at Gabe, his face red with anger. “I do not want you in my home! You sold your soul! You will turn around and walk back out that door—”

  Jenna shoved back to her feet, swallowing. “Don’t you dare listen to him, Gabe,” she said. “You belong here. This is your home too!”

  “You can’t uninvite someone you never invited inside in the first place!” Gabe yelled back. His eyes flashed with a righteous silver glow. “You never invited me in, never. Jenna did that, not you.” He took a ragged breath. “Now get out of my way!”

  Her father gestured violently toward him. The gold rings on his fingers flashed with bright, burning sunlight. Somehow, Gabe found the presence of mind to shove Jenna back behind him, away from the hissing heat of that awful power.

  The magic burned at Gabe’s psyche, raking against his sense of self, tearing at everything that he was. Jenna stared in horror, unable to look away. There was no mistake: her father meant to kill him, to burn away every last
mental shred of the man that was Gabriel Fisher.

  But the Looking Glass had no intention of letting that happen.

  Silver light flared deep within Gabe’s soul, warping the air around him. That burning sunlight refracted, turning abruptly upon its creator. Robert staggered back with a shocked scream, covering his face with his arms. The spell he’d crafted was insidious though, and powerful, and it burned past all of his defenses, carving away at his mind.

  His screams cut off almost directly after they’d begun. Robert Wright collapsed to the floor, his eyes wide and staring.

  Gabe stared down at him — his mind torn, his body shaking. He took one trembling step backward, with a look of utter horror on his features.

  Jenna stared with him, stunned.

  “It’s a difficult question,” the Lord of the Looking Glass had said.

  Gabe staggered back again, slamming back into the wall. His eyes fixed on Robert’s body, aghast. “Oh, god,” he whispered. “I… I didn’t… I didn’t mean to…”

  Terrible, incredulous grief tore through Jenna’s mind. The awfulness of the scene replayed itself before her, real enough to reach out and touch.

  I don’t know what to do, she thought. I don’t know how to deal with this.

  The weight of it bore down upon her, so heavy that she couldn’t bear to draw breath.

  Her father had betrayed her from the very beginning, continually. Over and over, as she suffered in bed and dragged herself to a dozen different doctors, to let them poke and prod at her — he had watched silently, knowing all along. He had tried to kill her best friend. And still…

  …he was still her father.

  The sight of him, dead on the floor all over again, was almost too much for her to comprehend.

  Gabe shivered violently, his hands shaking harder than ever. His eyes never left her father’s body. “I did this,” he whispered. “This is my fault. What… what kind of monster am I?”

  This is Gabe’s grief too, Jenna realized, clutching at her heart. Her head felt dizzy; her body felt as though it was coming apart. This betrayal. This awful feeling. And… and worse. She closed her eyes with a sob. Gabe isn’t a violent person. He helps people, he doesn’t hurt them. The idea that he could kill someone, even by accident… that he could kill my father, no matter how awful he was to him…