Ill Met by
Moonlight
By
C.E. Murphy
Chapter One
I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror.
I can see you all the time — when you brush your hair, when you change
your clothes, when you climb into bed with a lover.
When moonlight falls on the mirror, I can whisper secrets from the future
into your ear.
And sometimes, when the time is right, I can step through and rejoin the
world for a single day.
Sophia turned her back on the mirror frame, leaning against it with a soft
sigh. "At least I could," she whispered, putting a trembling flutter into the
words, "until my mirror was hidden from the light."
That phrase sounded better than
until my mirror was put in a closet.
It could also more believably be filled with regret and sorrow as she spoke in a
voice she'd once nurtured so magazine articles would refer to it as
dulcet.
They would never do so again: her throat had largely recovered from the
screaming some decades ago, but there would always be a rough burr left in her
words.
Her voice was almost all that had changed. The years had taken no toll on her
figure or face, and her wheat-blond hair had gotten no longer. She still wore it
coiffed, with permanent waves that fell around her shoulders and down her back
in a deliberate homage to the great Veronica Lake.
The late, great Veronica Lake, Sophia corrected herself. She'd watched
the blond siren pass through the valley of death, just as every other giant of
her time had. All of them. Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich —
everyone but Sophia Robinson, whose disappearance had been the topic of brief,
titillating gossip and speculation, and who had then been forgotten as quickly
as any starlet whose first film failed.
Ironically, of course, her film hadn't failed at all. It had done
spectacularly well, thanks to Sophia's disappearance. It was the stuff of
legends. It was the stuff, better yet, of movies. But after a month or two, the
topic of conversation at parties on the other side of the mirror ceased to be
her, and Hollywood soldiered on, brave and lonely, without its brightest rising
star.
Sophia tipped her head back against the mirror frame, tracing the fine line
of her jaw with her fingertips. Slow, elegant movements, the kind that she'd
studied and learned in order to impress upon her public that she was more than
just a flash in the pan. She was Sophia Robinson,
Movie Star. Her hair
brushed along her spine, a soft reminder that the glittering, backless gown she
wore was for a premiere party. It was to have been her first great moment in the
public eye.
She had, as they said, been unavoidably detained.
I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror, she began
again. In sixty-some years, she'd pared down the script to its essentials,
leaving it cool and, she thought, ever so slightly dangerous. She would, of
course, star in the movie. It was, as it had always been, all about her. The
rougher voice she'd acquired would suit a vocal overlay well. It would tell the
audience that the woman who spoke those words had been through something — been
through a certain kind of hell, and came through again, braver, more beautiful,
and full of an untouchable light. The woman who spoke those lines would be an
icon.
Sophia shook her hair over her shoulders again and gave the silent
shadowlands a coy, sideways smile, careful to not let it crease deep lines in
her still supple skin. Youth was beauty, and beauty was power. She'd been a
little girl the first time she'd seen a film starring Greta Garbo, and she'd
understood in one glorious moment what youth and beauty could bring a woman.
Immortality.
"I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror," she purred, and for
the first time in years, light flooded a rectangle in the plainscape. Sophia
lurched around, forgetting elegance and grace, and slapped her hands against her
side of the mirror. "Hey!" she bellowed. "Let me out!"
A voice from the other side of the mirror said, "Holy shit, look at this."
* * *
The light was far too bright. Sunlight, its intensity blinding, not
moonlight's pale, freeing touch. Sixty years of habit asserted itself and Sophia
lifted a hand to her brow, palm out and fingers curled delicately to shade away
the worst of the light without forcing her to resort to squinting. The light had
a purity she barely remembered, molten gold pouring in without warming her, the
mirror's silver backing keeping anything that smacked of life just beyond reach.
A figure separated itself out of the astounding light — black and slender,
shadow cutting through gold. The block of torso came first, then sunlight winked
around shoulder-length hair and gave the figure a head. Finer details, the arms
and legs, blurred into visibility an instant later, until a silhouette stood
between Sophia and the world outside.
"Holy shit," the voice said again, and the figure put his hand on the mirror,
fingertips pressing against metal that Sophia knew from experience was cool to
the touch, even after long days under stage lights. "Hey, Terry! C'mere and
check this out!"
"What?" A woman, impatient, appeared in the filtered light, and her presence
was enough to change everything. Shadows sprang fully formed into shapes and
forms; so much to look at that Sophia suddenly couldn't choose where
to
look. Sunlight behind the pair flooded in from a picture window so broad and
bright Sophia couldn't see its frame.
The sun itself flared red even as she watched, half astonished she could
still remember what colors looked like.
Sunset. She put her hands against
the mirror again, matching her fingertips to the man's, and whispered, "Put me
in the moonlight." He wouldn't hear her, couldn't, unless the mirror was placed
in moonlight, but she whispered it with all her heart, anyway. The tremble in
her voice bespoke of desperation and loneliness. That was perfect, she thought;
she would have to remember it for her movie.
"Right, that's pretty damned cool," the woman — Terry! What a ridiculous name
for a woman — agreed. She was pretty, in a pixieish way, with short cropped
brown hair and wide green eyes, but her shoulders were much too broad. She would
never be a Hollywood glamour puss. Sophia indulged in a disdainful sniff and
turned her attention back to the man, who flashed a grin over his shoulder at
the ill-named Terry.
His hair was as ridiculous as the woman's name. Shoulder-length and wavy,
practically feminine, though the still grinning face he turned back to the
mirror was strong-jawed and indisputably masculine. He had dark eyes and a
sensual mouth, the sort that every leading lady hoped her leading man would
possess.
Sophia leaned against the glass, lower lip caught winsomely in her teeth as
she studied his mouth. If something could be done about his hair, he just might
do. It would help, of course, if he
Was Somebody, but the eerie story of
her life would bring in the fans even if her hero was an unknown.
"What do you think?" he asked. "Center stage behind us? C'mon, give me a hand
with it." He moved to the side, wrapping beautifully shaped fingers around the
mirror's frame. Terry groaned and came forward.
"How do I end up being the one helping with the heavy lifting?"
"You're always around. Ready? One, two, three —!" They hefted and Sophia
leaned forward, pressed against the inside of the mirror as they staggered out
of the closet bearing her prison.
Hard glass turned to the viscosity of quicksilver. Sophia tumbled forward
with a shriek, wincing even as the raucous tone escaped her throat.
Dulcet,
my dear, dulcet. The reminder, spoken in a man's voice in her memory,
scolded her even as she somersaulted across a marble floor. She landed entangled
in her skirts, hands spread before her face, fingers open so she might look
through them with an ingйnue's wide-eyed distress.
The man lurched forward, trying to catch her, leaving the mirror's weight
largely in Terry's hands. Sophia's distress turned sharply real, panic sending a
cold knife through her belly. "Don't drop it!"
Chapter Two
"Holy Jesus — what the —?!" Nonsensical curses burst from both Terry and the
nameless man, the latter wrenching himself back to re-catch the mirror's weight.
While he couldn’t articulate it, his question was obvious: Who was this
woman…and how had she just fallen from a mirror?
They both stumbled, then set the mirror against the floor with a resounding
clang, letting its weight pull it forward so they could rest it facedown on the
floor.
"No!" Sophia surged from her faint, deftly rolling her hip under so she might
support herself on one hand, the other stretched forward in desperate
supplication. "The surface must face the sky!" Oh, yes, she thought: that would
do nicely, as well. She cast a searching glance upward, as if the stars might
provide the answer she sought.
Not the stars, but rather the moon. In defiance of the still blazing sunset,
its pale form shone through skylights as encompassing as the picture windows
that surrounded the room. Sophia brought her outstretched hand back in,
delicately resting it against her breastbone as she breathed, "It's Halloween,"
in understanding.
Halloween, the anniversary of her entrapment, and even more, the night the
dead could walk among the living. Sophia wasn't precisely dead — but it had been
decades since she had been one of the living.
She brought her gaze back down to the mirror, for a moment ignoring the
bewildered pair who propped it up in favor of studying the reflective surface
that had become both prison and preserver. Its ornate gilt frame hid secrets
she'd learned to unlock. Even now she could see the crimson incantations written
into the intricate swirls and whorls, and found herself mouthing them despite
knowing the dangers. It had been a prop in the single film she'd made, but there
had been whispers that it'd been spirited out of Germany, even as Hitler's Nazis
had searched for it to add to the Kaiser's own occult collection.
The Occult. Sophia pressed her eyelashes shut, feeling them flutter
against her cheeks.
"I remember…" The words drifted out in a whisper and she gave a tiny shudder.
You ought not trifle with such things, Sophia. They're dangerous and
beyond your knowledge. Her director, Jeremy Claussen, had warned her time
and again.
These are dangerous days to express interest in things beyond this
world. Be careful, my darling Sophia. Be cautious.
He had been so many things that a young woman wanted. Handsome, in a hawkish,
dangerous way, his appeal from his presence as much as his looks. And, yes,
mysterious: how could she resist eyes that glittered so knowingly about dark
secrets? She had been drawn in, and in, and in, until she awakened one day
trapped like a fly in amber.
Sophia shivered, opening her eyes to look beyond the mirror and her erstwhile
rescuers. A familiar ballroom spread out around her, enormous picture windows
overlooking Los Angeles. She had begun her entrapment in the mirror in this very
room, one room among dozens in the mansion that had belonged to Jeremy Claussen.
It was perfect, she thought again: though the mirror had been moved many times
during her captivity, she had come back to where she'd started.
When she had been trapped, the room had been set for the premiere party for
her movie. Now, decades later, a stage was assembled against the windows at one
end of the room, clear preparation for a performance of some kind. Sophia drew
in a shaking breath, reveling in the warm scent of old dust, and finally heard
Terry's voice, rising with protestation.
"Alan, is this some kind of insane practical joke?"
"Ter, I'm not cool enough to come up with something like this. Help me put it
down."
"Please." Sophia's voice was a trembling whisper again. "Put it down face up.
As soon as the moonlight no longer touches it, I'll be pulled back in." She
lifted her eyes, beseeching, to meet Alan's.
Blackness ensnared him, thin wisps of darkness whipping out of the sunset to
wrap him in their embrace. He gave no notice, smiling at her with open
fascination as he and the woman gently set the mirror on the floor, its surface
reflecting the distant moon. Sophia's vision tunneled, spirits darting and
dancing around Alan. Spirits, but not the dead: Sophia knew them well after
sixty years on the mirror's cold side, and these were specters of life and the
future.
Alan's future. A thousand reflections of him, toned with sepia and leaping in
the narrow field that Sophia could still see. It was the mirror's gift, the
exchange given for holding her hostage behind it for decades on end:
precognition. It had not at all been the gift she sought when she crossed
through the looking glass, but at least it had given her something in return.
More than something, Sophia Robinson, she whispered to herself.
Death has passed you by.
But it would not pass Alan. A schism lay before him, a deep void that on one
side held a world Sophia both could barely recognize and at the same time knew
and coveted in a place beyond words. Brilliant lights shone down on him and
swept over a crowd of unimaginable size. They raised their hands, holding fire
and swirling sticks of neon into the air, and they screamed his name. Terry,
with her pixie-cut hair and a guitar, stood behind him, one of four who
supported Alan as he sang. All of them filled with passion so bright it burned
in their smiles and in the way they threw themselves around the stage.
Variations played on that future as quickly as the music Alan made changed, but
all of them were lifetimes of glory, and lasted beyond the mere span of years a
man could claim.
And the other side of that chasm was as unrecognizable and as easily known as
its antithesis. Weak lights and a noisy bar, beer bottles thrown at the cage
surrounding the band. Alan's long hair no longer healthy and styled, but lanky
with grease, and the light in his eyes burned out. Only Terry was still with
him, from the band Sophia had seen in the first vision, and she was as weak and
haggard as Alan. Passion no longer drove them — not even desperation. It was
habit, bleak and dulled with time. Those futures shattered into darker and
darker places, drugs and drink and a life that had ended years ago, without the
body catching on.
Sophia's breath caught and she pressed her fingertips to her lips. Alan and
Terry finished putting the mirror on the floor and he turned, still in a crouch,
to give her a smile filled with fascination and confusion. Even his question,
"What the hell is going on here?" seemed to hold no rejection, but rather the
impulse to delve into Sophia's story and learn the answers. He put his hands on
his thighs and stood, stepping toward her and offering a gallant hand.
Oh, yes. He would do. He would do
perfectly. He
Was Somebody,
or would be, just as Sophia had hoped. A hero to star in her story — strong,
silent and stalwart. Together they would rise out of the obscurity of
garage
bands — the phrase filtered up from her consciousness, a term learned while
the mirror had been in a television room during the MTV years — and
B-films,
making the bright future she'd seen for him come true.
"Sophia." She put her hand into Alan's. “Sophia Robinson." He drew her up,
bringing her in close with his warm grip, and slipped a hand into the small of
her back to steady her. She smiled through her lashes, feeling outrage pour off
Terry as Alan's smile deepened. She whispered, "Sophia," like it was a gift, and
his smile turned fatuous.
"Jesus Christ, Alan," Terry said, voice strained with a combination of
disbelief and confidence. "That's the chick who disappeared from a film set in,
like, 1942."
Chapter Three
"An actress who disappeared in 1942?" Alan brought Sophia up against him even
as he glanced toward Terry. "That's impossible. Besides, how do you know?"
"She just fell out of a mirror and you're telling me it's impossible?" Terry
demanded. "Haven't you ever
watched any of your grandpa's movies? It's
her. She disappeared the night the movie opened. It was a big scandal. For about
five minutes," she added pointedly.
"She's right," Sophia cooed, ignoring the dig. She could afford that, with
Alan's arms around her. She tilted her head up, pressing herself against his
chest. "I was the star of
The Maiden in the Mirror. I've been trapped in
the mirror all this time, by —" Her head snapped around, gaze suddenly fixed
hard on Terry as the woman's words caught up to her. "His
grandfather?
Jeremy Claussen?"
"Yea-aah." Terry accompanied the drawn-out word with a head waggle. "Alan,
she's
simpering on you. Ew."
Sophia fought the impulse to thrust Alan away, though she could see the drama
of the gesture in her mind's eye: the dark-haired hero at arm's length, the
heroine's fingertips outstretched, barely touching his chest — quivering with
rejection that was only meant to be denied as he caught her in his arms again
and crushed her against him. It would be a wonderful moment in the film.
But in a film he would have direction to return to her, whereas if she pushed
him away violently in real life he might become more aware of Terry's
objections. Sophia clung to him, atremble in his arms, and whispered, "Then you
may be the only one who can break the spell that holds me."
"Spell? Like magic?" Alan laughed. "There's no such thing." Sophia arched a
rounded eyebrow at the mirror, then looked back up at Alan, who twisted his
mouth in acknowledgement. "Okay. It's totally impossible, but okay." He set her
back a few centimeters, looking down at her. "How the hell did you get trapped
in a mirror?"
Sophia trailed her fingers down Alan's chest. "You have magic in your blood,
Alan. Whether you know it or not."
"Oh, for God's sake," Terry said. "Alan, you're not falling for this, are
you?"
Alan blinked at her, a sheepish grin starting to form. Sophie set her teeth
together, abandoning theatrics for direct action. "Jeremy Claussen asked me to
marry him the night the film opened and when I said no, he trapped me in the
mirror so no one would ever have me. I've been stuck there for — what year is
it?"
"Two thousand five," Alan said.
"God." For a moment the vapors Sophia suffered from were real. "For
sixty-three years. I can be heard when moonlight falls on the mirror, and I can
be free of it on Halloween — the same night I was trapped — but only while the
moon is reflected in the glass. If you're Jeremy's grandson, you really are my
only hope."
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi," Terry muttered. Alan shot her a glare over
Sophia's head, sending a quick thrill of triumph through the starlet.
"What do you want me to do, Teresa? Turn my back on her?"
"How about we put the mirror up on the roof where the moon'll be on it all
night, and then get ready for our gig?" Terry demanded. "You remember the gig?
Biggest break yet? Make-or-break moment? Any of that ring a bell? Cinderella
here can join the party and we'll see if we can figure out how to keep her from
turning into a pumpkin after the gig."
"You're a mercenary bitch, Terry." Alan said the words easily, as if they
were oft-repeated, but there was a coolness to them that Sophia sensed wasn't
usually there. Cords stood out in Terry's throat.
"Fine." Her voice was thready with hurt. "The guys and I will set up. You
have a good time with your fairy-tale girlfriend, Alan. Try to get your head in
the game to perform, though, huh? The rest of us kind of need you." She turned
on her heel and stalked away, hissing, "At least for tonight," under her breath.
"I'm sorry." Sophia gave Alan her most sincere, sad-eyed smile. "I didn't
mean to cause you and your girlfriend distress. Maybe you should just —" She
drew a quavering breath. "Just forget about me, and go on. I'll be fine," she
added bravely.
"Girlfriend? Terry? No way, it's not like that."
Images cascaded through Sophia's vision, the breach of Alan's future. Some of
the brighter possibilities faded away, leaving cold nights and too much alcohol
raining down in their place. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, and
Alan stepped forward to put his hands on her shoulders.
"It'll be all right," he promised. "How did this happen? I'm sure we can find
a way to undo it."
The urge to slip into drama, to turn away and whisper, hopelessly, "You
wouldn't believe me," siphoned through her. Alan would capture her in his arms
and promise that no matter how terrible it was, how unlikely, he
would
believe her — but no: it could be saved for the movie of her life. In
sixty-three years there'd been no chance at freedom like this one, and the
minutes were too precious to waste in pageantry.
Besides, such protestations might send her dark-eyed hero back to his own
pixielike lead guitarist, and that would never do.
"The mirror spoke to me," Sophie said instead, abruptly. "During filming."
She stepped away from Alan, crouching to put her fingers against the mirror's
heavy frame. "Every time I looked at it, it promised me my reflection would
always be the same. Eternally young, always beautiful. It was like a prophecy
whispered in my ear." Sophia laughed — a soft humorless sound as she watched her
image in the mirror. "And it was."
She traced the ornate border, not quite touching the faint red lines deep in
the heart of gold. "It told me how to read the grimoire in the frame, and said
that if I spoke them on Halloween night, under the light of the moon shining on
the mirror, I would be able to pass into the land of the deceased and bargain
for eternity with the Lord of the Dead."
"And you believed it?" Alan's voice was strangled. Sophia looked over her
shoulder at him, arranging her skirt to fall more artfully against the floor.
"I was young, and vain, and brash." Confessing the sins went against her
nature. A film star was meant to be mysterious and remote, not brutally honest
about her flaws. She smiled, feeling an ache of years in the expression, making
it far more real she was accustomed to presenting. "And the mirror
was
talking to me," she added quietly. "That made it easy to believe.
"I thought the night of the premiere, of all nights, I was at the height of
my perfection. The mirror was here, at Jeremy's mansion, part of the decorations
for the party afterward. I slipped away early to come read the spell, and
Jeremy — your grandfather — joined me just after I'd completed it. He proposed,
and I — I ran into the mirror. When I turned back, his face was full of
darkness, and he was shouting. There was a flash, and when it faded…I was
forever captured." Sophia lifted her chin, eyes moist with tears. Alan stepped
forward to offer her a hand up again, and she slipped her fingers into his,
smiling gratefully. She drew a shuddering breath to speak.
Metal crashed against stone, shrieks of sound that drowned out anything
Sophia might say. Cursing erupted. Alan swore, dropped her hand, and bolted from
the room.
Chapter Four
"Don't panic! Nothing's broken. Holy Christ, mate." A burly bald man appeared
in the ballroom doorway, hands lifted in supplication, though they dropped as he
saw Sophia. "I thought nobody was here yet."
"Nobody was," Terry said from behind him. "She fell out of the mirror."
"Right. Alan, give us a hand here, mate. You can flirt with your bird later."
The big man jerked a thumb over his shoulder and disappeared back out the door.
Alan shot Sophia an apologetic look and ran after him, leaving her alone and
stunned.
White light shattered through her vision, the intense heat of spotlights
warming her skin. The adoring crowds were spread before her again, this time as
if she stood on the stage beside Alan herself. She could hear his name chanted,
lifting him to the skies as if he were a god, and then the brilliance faded.
Sophia pressed her lips out, aware it made her look like a duck, but allowing
herself to revel in the unattractive expression for just a moment before she
squared her shoulders and marched after the men.
Equipment she could only recognize as
industry-related littered the
marble-floored mansion lobby she entered. Lights, enormous black boxes, musical
instruments — she cast an overwhelmed gaze around at them before flexing her
arms, reminiscent of an early Rosie the Riveter, and smiled at Alan. "Well, I'm
here. I might as well help out."
"In that outfit?" the bald man asked dubiously. Sophia glanced down at her
chiffon gown, then spread her fingers dismissively.
"Never mind that. It'll be fine." She put pluckiness into her voice,
a
don't you mind me Pollyannaism meant to make the menfolk insist she sit down
and be decorative.
"Okay. Help Terry with the speakers."
Sophia blinked, completely taken aback as the large man turned to his own
task. Terry gave her a sharp, knowing grin and lifted an eyebrow in challenge.
Sophia narrowed her eyes and rose to the occasion, clicking across the marble
floor in her heels to lend a hand.
Within moments, her hair fell out of its permanent waves, sweat sticking it
to her forehead as she put herself to utterly unaccustomed physical labor. To
her surprise, she found herself enjoying hefting speakers, even when she knocked
herself on the chin with one. For a few minutes there was camaraderie in doing
heavy work, and Terry's smile turned briefly approving. Sophia returned it,
fully aware she'd been out-played.
Before either could acknowledge it aloud, the bald man dragged a dolly into
the ballroom after him, narrowly missing the mirror. Sophia gasped in horror,
leaping forward in rescue as he did an awkward dance around it.
"Why's there a mirror in the middle of the fecking floor?!"
"It's Sophia's," Alan mumbled. "Look, Terry, maybe you were right. We should
put it on the roof."
"You want to put a mirror on the roof," the big man said. Sophia found
herself exchanging glances with Terry and Alan, none of them quite willing to
explain.
"Please," Sophia said after a moment, and the big man sighed.
"Have it your way, then. Alan, grab the other side." They lifted the mirror,
turning its face away from the skylights.
Sophia yelped and slid inside.
* * *
She exited on the roof with considerably more dignity than her first
appearance. Alan waited for her, grinning lopsidedly. "Rick bolted. He's kind of
freaked out now." Something happened to his smile, making it more wistful. "You
really did come from the mirror."
Sophia sighed and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. It had reverted to
its former perfection the moment she was caught in the mirror again, as had the
dress. Beauty in stasis, she thought. The price of immortality. "Yes. And you're
the only one who can help me break the spell."
"The way you say that makes it sound like a fairy tale." Alan offered his
hand. Sophia took it delicately, gathering her skirts as she stepped forward.
"I hope so. Fairy tales have happy endings." That would make another fine
line. Spoken with sadness and regret, as if her belief in fairy tales had died
long ago. Sophia looked across the rooftop at Los Angeles, so much busier and
brighter in the early stages of evening than she remembered, and thought the
sorrow wouldn't take much acting.
"So what am I supposed to do?" Alan drew her closer, smiling. "Does true
love's first kiss awaken the princess in the mirror?"
Sophia softened, turning a limpid gaze back up to the dark-haired musician.
Stars in her eyes, she whispered, "We can only see," and let her lashes tangle
together.
Premonition, the mirror's gift, crashed into her again. Demons scoured her
eyelids, black and red streaks of shaking death, as if a movie camera were being
yanked back and forth violently. Alan's face appeared in the discolored streaks,
gaunt, haggard, his eyes bloodshot. The hands he lifted to cover his face with
were all bone, and shook with effort. Sophia jolted back, breaking the kiss
before it began, and stared wide-eyed up at the startled man who held her.
"Let's…" Her eyebrows drew down, a perfect tiny frown making a wrinkle
between them. "Let's go back downstairs. They — they'll need you."
"Okay." Alan's own frown was deeper, more confused, but he stepped back and
led Sophia across the rooftop, their fingertips still tangled together as she
struggled to erase the line that creased her brow.
* * *
Being useful was slightly better than being ignored. Sophia plugged things in
where she was told, and climbed a ladder despite her skirts to adjust a
spotlight's fall. The room below was both so familiar and so alien she hesitated
there a few moments, watching the band setting up.
Sunlight had faded, leaving electric lights blazing, cutting out the view of
the city beyond the windows. The last time she'd seen the room so clearly was
the night of the premiere; since then, she had been shifted from one room in the
mansion to another. She thought it'd been sold — Jeremy Claussen hadn't been
there in decades, and new people had come in and out through the years. But now
a Claussen was in the house again.
Sophia found herself watching Alan, trying to see the grandfather in the
grandson. Jeremy's intensity seemed to have faded into a lower-key charisma of
potential smoldering glances and sly smiles.
"Cute, isn't he?"
Sophia tightened her hands around the ladder to keep herself from falling,
looking down at Teresa, whose gaze was very deliberately on Alan. "Kind of a
space cadet, but he's cute," she went on. "A real romantic, too."
"The kind to be besotted with women caught in mirrors?" Sophia asked.
Terry's mouth thinned. "I just don't want him to get hurt."
"I don't want to hurt him," Sophia answered. "I only want out of the mirror."
She paused. "How did you know who I was, Teresa?"
"I watched all of the old man's films when Alan and I got together." Terry
shot Sophia a look and amended, "When the band got together," through her teeth.
"I thought being up on family history —" She broke off, knowing she'd betrayed
herself twice, and went on tightly. "The point is I saw your movie and checked
out IMDB to see what else you'd been in."
"IMDB?"
Teresa cast another glance at her. "Never mind. Anyway, I found out it was
just the one movie, and I read all the stories about you disappearing. I thought
it was kind of cool, but Alan's not into old movies, and Mr. Claussen won't talk
about it."
"Mister — he's still alive?" Sophia took two steps down the ladder, clutching
a rung with white-knuckled fingers. "Jeremy Claussen still lives?"
Chapter Five
Sophia's heart hammered in her throat, making her too dizzy to dare stepping
further into the ballroom. Her every breath seemed too short, the fingers of one
hand fluttering at the hollow of her throat. "The man who trapped me in that
mirror
is still alive?"
"Sure," Terry said, oblivious to the impact of her words. "He's ancient, but
he's still alive." She shrugged. "Maybe when he kicks off, it'll break the spell
you're under." She curled a lip and shoved her hands into her jeans pockets,
destroying her pixie-ish projection. "Spell. Man. That's just not cool. I mean,
you see a lot of weird shit when you're playing small concert halls and venues,
but magic just isn't part of the gig."
"Are you certain?" Sophie breathed. Her focus was on Alan, but she looked
beyond the young musician, seeing his grandfather's angry face as she rejected
him and ran for safety inside a mirror whose gateway had been opened through the
reading of the spell worked into its frame. "You live in Hollywood," she went
on, still softly. "Wouldn't it make sense, sometimes, if some of the things you
saw here were simply…magic?"
"Are you
serious?"
Sophia finally dared unlock her fingers from around the ladder rung and
climbed all the way down to the ballroom floor. The spotlight she'd adjusted
fell perfectly on center stage now, where Alan would be performing. She stopped
shoulder-to-shoulder with Terry, finding herself equal in height to her. "After
six decades trapped in a mirror, do you think I'd joke about magic?" The line
delivered, she brushed by curtly, chin lifted.
* * *
The script had failed her.
Sophia stood against a window in the round ballroom, not quite letting her
shoulder press against the cool glass. Her fingers were gathered in her skirt,
body turned away from the business behind her; it would make her look frail and
waifish to anyone who glanced her way. A lost soul, in need of saving.
In sixty years of rehearsing and repeating, she had never clearly envisioned
how it was her dark-eyed hero would rescue her from the glass. It would be — and
she lifted her hand in a delicate flutter —
magic. The same magic that
had trapped her, incantations read beneath the light of the moon, but she'd
never had the chance to teach anyone to read the frame's grimoire as she'd been
taught. Perhaps she'd expected her hero to simply know what to do: that was how
it worked in the movies. There were no questions, no uncertainties, only a
preordained happy ending, the curtains closing on a kiss.
And that was all the stuff of dreams. Sophie curled her fingers against her
breastbone, a soft clutching motion as if she caught sorrow and held it still.
She had wanted the mirror's magic to be true, had thrown herself into studying
what it offered. She had dared the realm of the dead for an eternal future, and
had come to believe in a quiet magic that lay beneath the surface of the
everyday world. Alan, for all his heritage, had no reason to believe in that
magic himself.
"Figure it out yet?" His voice, a smooth warm tenor, startled her. Sophia's
fingers tightened at her breastbone before she lifted her head and turned
gracefully, offering a smile to the leader of the band. He stepped closer, his
body heat warming her after her sojourn by the window.
"You're done setting up?" she asked, rather than answer his question. Alan
shrugged a glance over his shoulder.
"They can handle the rest without me. I want to help you. What can I do?"
Sophia smiled without humor and turned her gaze back out the window. Her
reflection was mussed, delicate tendrils making ringlets at her temples. They
highlighted her heart-shaped face and full mouth, and for a brief moment Sophia
wished she could wear her hair that way, with a nod toward the twenty-first
century world she found herself in for a few hours. "I suppose you could
telephone your grandfather and ask him to come over here and break the spell."
Alan chuckled, a quiet sound. "Grandfather hasn't been near this place in
sixty years. He met my grandmother here." He broke off, frowning at Sophia. "The
night of the premiere for
The Maiden in the Mirror, in fact. She used to
tell me about it."
Sophie looked back at him, catching the line of her cheekbone in the
reflection as she did so. Fragile, delicate, ethereal: another excellent shot.
"Who was she?"
"Her name was Lorena Quinn. She did a lot of movies with Grandfather in the
'40s and early '50s, before they got divorced."
Sophia's eyebrows drew down. "I didn't know her. Why was she at the
premiere?"
Alan flashed a grin. "Isn't that what people do, turn up at premieres for the
party? She used to tell me she was new in town just that day. Grandfather said
once she was really old-fashioned."
A trickle of familiarity slid down Sophia's throat and she put her hand
against the window. "Old-fashioned?"
"Yeah, like she'd walked out of the nineteenth century. He said she wore her
hair in one of those pompadour things." He made a vague round gesture around his
head. Sophia's eyebrows rose.
"A Gibson girl?"
Alan snapped his fingers. "Gibson girl, that's it. Grandfather said that was
what caught his eye about her in the first place."
Sophia wet her bottom lip, drawing it into her mouth. "Do you have a picture
of her?"
"Sure, I carry one around all the time." Alan pulled his chin in, one eyebrow
shooting up with playful sarcasm. "Doesn't everybody haul around pictures of
their grandparents?"
"Of course not." Sophia felt her shoulders drop and gave a little sigh,
turning her gaze down. "It was a silly question."
"Look, hey." Alan touched her shoulder apologetically, then wheeled on his
heel to call, "Hey, Rick, you got your laptop? Can you get a signal up here?"
The burly man looked up with a flinch, eyes skittering off Sophia. "It's in
the foyer, mate. All set up."
Alan slipped his hand down to Sophia's. "Come on. I can get a picture."
* * *
"This is the Internet Movie Database." Alan crouched in front of Rick's
laptop, which was, unexpectedly, a flat box with a screen and keyboard.
Sophia touched the screen.
"IMDB. Teresa told me about it. She said I was in it."
"Yeah, I'll pull you up in a second, but…here." The screen changed again,
bringing up a page with the name Lorena Quinn printed in bold letters, and a
photograph of an austere, dark-haired woman who looked not in the least
old-fashioned. She was broad-cheeked with handsome eyes and a proud expression.
She would be well-cast as a villainess, Sophia thought.
"I don't know her." She shook her head. "I don't know why I thought I might."
Alan heard the discouragement and gave her a regretful smile that was
temporarily banished by hope. "Maybe this'll help. There are a couple of film
clips linked in." He clicked on an underlined set of words and the screen
changed again, becoming a shot from a film. The dark-haired woman flowed into
action, hurrying across a set to catch a man's arm.
"Donald, no. You mustn't go. This war — it'll be the death of you. It'll be
the death of all of us."
Ice shivered over Sophia's arms, recognition making her cold. "Alan, that's
the mirror's voice. That's the woman who taught me how to read the grimoire."
Chapter Six
Sophia swayed, clutching Alan's shoulder for support. "I'm sure it's her,"
she whispered. "I listened to that voice for hours, Alan." She watched the movie
clip unfurl on the laptop screen, no longer hearing the words the dark-haired
beauty on the screen spoke, only the rise and fall of her voice. "How could the
mirror be a living, breathing —"
She caught her breath, stepping back with her hand pressed against the hollow
of her throat, eyes wide. "It was a trap.
A trap!" Outrage mixed with
humiliation in her voice: sixty years a prisoner inside a mirrored shadowland,
and never once had it struck her that the gambit to have her enter the mirror's
scape might have been trickery.
"Sophie." Alan got to his feet, leaving the laptop behind as he gave her an
uncomfortable smile. "You can't be serious. That's Lorena Quinn. She's my
grandmother. You can't really think she stuck you in a mirror somehow. Look,
I'll stick with you and we'll find a way to undo this, but —" He pushed his hair
back, the shoulder-length waves settling into place again as if he hadn't
touched it. Sophia could see the strength of jaw and the line of brow that
Lorena Quinn had lent him across a generation as easily as she could see his
grandfather in the shape of his nose and mouth. They had conspired, however
unwittingly, to make a movie-star handsome grandchild.
A chill swept Sophia again, wrenching away her own thoughts in favor of the
mirror's gift:
premonition. Premonition and eternity, paired together at
the cost of an immortality spent hidden on the wrong side of life, watching it
from beyond death's gate.
Movie-star handsome. Those were her terms, Sophia's way of seeing the
world.
Rock-star handsome fought its way into her mind, a by now familiar
vista cropping up in her vision. Alan on stage, hands lifted in the air as he
grinned and accepted adulation from the masses. But black rain began to fall
down around him like acid melting rice paper, until his good looks were streaked
with ill health and the weight of poverty. Misery washed off him in waves,
sucking everything it touched down with him, until it created a whirlpool of
malevolent emotion that seemed to grasp at Sophia's feet, trying to drown her in
it.
Sophia gasped and staggered back, putting a hand out for a wall to support
her. Alan surged forward, catching her around the waist, eyebrows crinkled with
concern.
"Are you all right? That's the second time you've gone all pale and freaky."
"I —" Sophia turned her gaze away, afraid to meet Alan's worried eyes. "I'm
all right. You should get ready for your show," she added in a whisper. "I just
need some time to think."
"Are you sure?" Alan demanded. "You look sick, Sophie. I don't want to leave
you alone."
Sophia closed her eyes against another onslaught of dark images, ink staining
cracks into the marble floor beneath her feet. "I'm sure." She put determination
into her voice and dredged up a smile. Not a brave smile, designed to tell her
hero that she was terrified and desperate for his reassurance but unwilling to
hold him back. She knew that smile, had it in her repertoire, and the leading
man would recognize it and refuse to go on his mission. No: Sophia's smile had
to be a genuine one, soft and brief. "I'm sure," she murmured again. "Go, Alan."
Her smile grew stronger for a moment and she put her hand against his arm. "The
show must go on. Do they still say that?"
As if despite himself, Alan cracked a wry grin. "Of course they do. Freddie
Mercury even wrote a kick-ass song titled that. I'll sing it for you later." His
grin faded into anxiety again. "Look, Sophie, if you need anything…."
"I know." She put her hand on his arm and smiled again. "Let me just think a
while, all right?"
"Okay." He touched her chin briefly, like he might steal a kiss, but then
turned and jogged back into the ballroom where the evening's performance would
be held. A shower of starlight followed him, bright promise for a future that
changed every few moments, and that only Sophia could see.
She sank back down next to the laptop, hesitantly brushing a finger over the
pad Alan had used to navigate. Lorena Quinn's film clip began to play again, and
Sophia folded an arm around her own ribs, lifting the other hand to bite her
knuckle, a habit she'd deliberately ousted from her quirks as a young woman.
There was nothing elegant or movie star about gnawing on her own hands, though
even as she noticed it she didn't stop. It was old comfort.
Old-fashioned, she thought, and played the clip a third time, though
she no longer saw it at all.
Instead, she saw the script of her own life in a way she'd never envisioned
it. The story of another woman captured in a mirror beyond death's door, caught
for…decades. Not centuries, despite the inherent drama in the lengthier time
span.
Sophia closed her eyes, seeing beautiful, youthful Lorena Quinn standing
before the gilt-framed mirror, hearing another woman's voice promise her
immortality and eternal youth just by reading the spell worked into the heavy
frame. That Lorena Quinn would be corseted, with her thick dark hair worn in a
Gibson girl pompadour, the sleeves of her dress fashionably puffed. She would be
at the height of her beauty and her vanity, things Sophia Robinson knew all too
well, and she would chant out the spell under the light of the moon.
And find herself trapped forever, as the mirror's voice was finally freed to
live her life again, years or decades or even centuries removed from when she'd
begun.
Sophia lowered her head, eyelashes pressed together against tears. Sixty
ageless years of blaming Jeremy Claussen had been time wasted. Worse still, if
her one-time director hadn't captured her, then it was unlikely that Alan
Claussen, his grandson, would have the power to free her at all.
One trap
after another, Sophia thought, reveling briefly in bitterness. There was no
way out.
"Sophie?" Terry — Teresa, pixielike despite her broad shoulders, and the girl
Alan said
it's not like that about — appeared in the ballroom doorway.
"Look, I know it's Halloween and you look pretty much totally in costume to us,
but I thought maybe since you'd been stuck in that dress for pretty much
forever, you might want to borrow some jeans and a shirt or something and be in
costume for yourself. I could do something with your hair," she offered.
Sophia lifted her gaze slowly, unshed tears making the light around Terry
glitter until she might well have been the pixie Sophia was reminded of. It
refracted into spotlights, and the rush of voices cheering filled Sophia's ears
as it had with Alan when visions of his future came over her.
A future that Sophia saw Terry sharing with him.
A future that could be Sophia's own.
Sophia pushed to her feet very slowly, focusing on the other woman. "Terry?"
She put light curiosity in her voice, like the cat eyeing the cream. "Would you
like to learn how to read the mirror's grimoire?"
Chapter Seven
Terry laughed, startled and uncomfortable. "You want to teach me magic?"
Sophia smiled again, feeling like the milk was curdling. "I don't know very
much," she said lightly, "but it seems like a shame to let it disappear back
into the mirror."
Terry's smile went more strained. "I don't think Alan's going to let that
happen anyway, Sophia." She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked away,
shrugging. "He's in there jabbering about you like you're a muse or an angel or
something."
"Then why are you being nice and offering to lend me clothes and do my hair?"
The question was too blunt, carrying no refinement, but for an instant Sophia's
desire to know overrode her usual flair for drama. Whether Alan thought it was
or not, Sophia could see clearly that it
was "like that," at least from
Terry's side.
Teresa gave her a sharp look, then knotted her fists in her pockets. "Because
there's no point in rocking the boat. Alan's a rock star, or he's going to be.
Rock stars have groupies, not girlfriends. Getting bent out of shape over it
just makes me look like the big B."
"The big B?"
Terry sighed. "Bitch. The big bitch. You really are from a different time
period, aren't you?"
Sophia glanced down at herself, at the backless chiffon gown and the
wheat-pale permanent waves that fell over her shoulders, all precisely chosen to
make her look like the model of an era now sixty years gone. "What," she said,
more to herself than Teresa, "it shows?" The humor of the question was
self-deprecating, a wry acknowledgment that would play beautifully to the
cameras.
The script that played in her mind, the one that had told the story of her
life for six decades, knew exactly what lines she should say. They would speak
to Terry's vanity, even play into the feelings she obviously had for Alan, and
would lead to the pixie-haired woman reading the mirror's spell aloud under the
moonlight.
A camera would pick up the subtle play of emotions across her face as she,
the heroine of her own story, struggled with the choices she had to make. The
price of betraying an innocent against the cost of her own freedom. The sorrow
of sixty years spent alone with almost no contact with the world beyond the
mirror. A thousand thoughts played across her expression inside a moment, and
then Sophia drew herself up. She was the
heroine, not the villainess, and
she put a smile on. "Do you really think you have clothes that would fit me?"
* * *
Jeans. Sophia had never worn
jeans before. Barefoot, she'd
proven three inches shorter than the musician, but between Terry ruthlessly
shortening the hem and Sophie's curves balancing out Terry's height, the jeans
rode a noticeable distance below her belly button, which Terry promised was how
they should fit. She also offered a cropped T-shirt that said, in sparkling
rhinestones,
Movie Star. Sophie found herself torn between horror and
delight at wearing it.
She had to wear her own shoes. Terry had been astonished at Sophia's tiny
feet and hadn't even tried coming up with a pair, but the strappy, sparkly
forties sandals, she assured Sophia, were perfect with the outfit. They pulled
her hair into a sleek, high ponytail, leaving it otherwise unadorned. When they
made their entrance before the performance, Alan said, "Holy sweet shit," which
made Terry flash Sophie a grin that was both smug and resigned.
That had been hours earlier. There were two opening acts before the main
event, and the mansion that Sophia had once known as a Hollywood glamour home
seemed to fill that role again — vampires and ghosts, witches and warlocks and
an endless variety of other costumed party-goers flooding in the doors to drink
and dance and play. An ape wearing a name tag that said "You can call me King"
asked what she was, and Sophia shrugged, yelling, "I'm a forties movie star
wearing modern-day clothes," in return. The ape gave a thumbs-up and disappeared
into the party.
Alan appeared at her side to join her for a series of spasmodic dances as the
opening bands played, their music piped through the entire house. As they
closed, he took her hand to pull her toward the ballroom. "C'mon, you have to
watch us play!"
Sophia laughed, allowing herself to be dragged through the rooms. This wasn't
a movie she was familiar with: it was modern and quick-paced, frenetic instead
of deliberate, and to her surprise it was every bit as enjoyable as the more
stylized manner of production that she tended to view her life in.
Alan left her on the dance floor, making his way up to the stage, where the
rest of the band already waited. He had no opening comments, no method of
drawing attention to himself or the band. They merely went from silent
preparation into sudden pure music, literally stopping the crowd around Sophia
with their first notes. Then voices raised in screams and shouts of appreciation
and the entire mob surged forward, getting closer to the young gods on stage.
Sophia lost track of time and of songs, wholly caught up in dancing and the
purity of music as it pounded through the mansion. Even without much knowledge
of modern music, she could tell the band was good, maybe better than good. A
flash of brilliance, spotlights and dreams, washed over her, and she knew they
were better than good: the futures she could see told her.
Abruptly and for the first time since he'd taken the stage, Alan lifted his
hands, leaning into the microphone to speak instead of sing. "All right, y'all
listen up now. I've got a friend in town, one night only, and I want her to come
up here with us. Sophie? Sophia Robinson, you're the next contestant on the
stage of life!"
Dismay and excitement swept Sophia as she elbowed her way through the crowd,
laughing, and then yelping as she was simply lifted up and passed forward toward
the stage. The sheer tactile sensation was overwhelming and thrilling at once,
her heart hammering as she trusted strangers to not drop her to the floor. Then
she was tilted forward and Alan offered his hand, pulling her on stage. "I can't
sing!"
Alan laughed. "You don't need to," he promised as he returned to the
microphone. "This song's for Sophie," he told the crowd. "I just didn't know it
when I wrote it." He stepped back, pulling the microphone free of its stand and
raising his hands above his head to clap out a rhythm. Sophia found herself
glancing toward Terry, who gave her a brief, tight smile before striking the
opening chord.
All alone, I walk along an empty shore
Friends wave me down, but I'm looking for something more
Haunted steps pull me to the sea
And all I need is one chance to set me free
'cause we were
Ill met by moonlight
First kiss, stolen late at night
Captured hero, and you, my fairy queen
Dreams and dancers with nothing in-between
The battle's over, and no one really won
The gods are waiting until we know it's done
But I can't stop searching for the world I knew
The one that started and ended all with you
'cause we were
Ill met by moonlight
Can't give up, not without a fight
And you, Titania, you're my fairy queen
Dreams and dancers, with nothing in-between
Dreams and dancers, with nothing in-between
In Sophie's eyes, black rain fell down around him as he sang.
To be continued...
Come back on Monday, October 31 to read the next chapter.
Chapter Eight
“Ill met by moonlight, and you're my fairy queen."
Sophia sang the words under her breath, watching behind her eyelids as images
of disaster unfolded. Addictions, regrets: a lifetime of sorrows were carried in
the lyrics of the song that had been written for her, but the sorrows weren't
her own. They were for the musician who had written the song. For Alan Claussen,
whom Sophia had thought might be her leading man.
Sophia had escaped the stage where he'd sung to her, fully aware of the
irony. She, who had spent a lifetime trying to achieve the spotlight and who had
cast her lot into a mirror filled with dark magic to obtain immortality and
eternal youth, now ran from it. Instead, she ran for the mansion's roof, where
the mirror that had been her captor lay in the moonlight, keeping her free for
the few hours left in the Halloween night.
She could still hear the band in the ballroom below, Alan calling out names
over the crowd's cheers. One of those names brought with it its own wash of
premonitions, centered on Alan, just as the ones involving Sophia herself were.
But with this name, rather than black acid trickling over his future, Sophia
saw film crackling away in a burst of heat and light. Alan walked out of that
brightness, a guitar lifted in one hand as if he stood in the spotlight,
grinning as fans screamed their adoration. Half-a-step back, holding his hand
and sharing the spotlight while acknowledging him as the leader of the band,
came Terry.
Teresa, pixie-haired and broad-shouldered, unlike any of the women Sophia had
known six decades earlier. She didn't flutter or vamp to get Alan to do what she
wanted — simply stood by him regardless of the apparent bumps in the path they
walked on together.
It was the double-edged sword that being trapped sixty years out of time
carried for Sophia: the ability to sense the future. “Dreams and dancers, and
nothing in-between.” The mirror with its grimoire worked into the frame
responded not at all to the half-vocalized song, but the repetition of the lyric
sent a cold wash of darkness through her again.
"You got the words wrong."
Sophia startled, lifting her head to find Terry standing a few feet away,
studying her. "It's, ‘dreams and dancers with nothing in-between.’ What're you
doing up here? Alan wanted you to come take a bow."
"He's very sweet," Sophia murmured. Terry arched an eyebrow and sat down on
the mirror's far side, looping her arms around her knees.
"Sweet, huh? What, you decide he was too young for you? I mean, you must be
like eighty-five by now, right?"
"Only eighty-two." Sophia cast a brief smile at the mirror, reaching out to
touch its moonlit surface. "It struck me that I don't know him at all. All I see
when I look at him is my leading man." She gave the mirror another faint smile.
"The hero in my story. But he isn't."
"He'd like to be."
Sophia looked across the mirror at Terry, shaking her head. "That would be a
mistake. He already has a leading lady, and his own story to tell." Her smile
turned quick and wry. "Even if he doesn't know it yet. He will."
Terry tilted her head, a wary motion. "Okay, now why are
you being
nice to
me?"
Sophia felt her smile become fuller, a real, depth-filled expression that
would lead to lines at the corners of her mouth, and let it turn all the way
into a grin. "Because you're going to be famous, and I want you to keep playing
that song Alan wrote for me."
Terry laughed. "Of course. It's all about you. I should have…" She trailed
off, laughter reversing itself into a slow frown. “You're not staying. You
figured out how to get out of the mirror, didn't you? But you're not staying."
Surprised guilt colored Sophia's cheeks, the heat enough that she knew it was
visible even in the moonlight. She glanced away, and Terry leaned forward. "You
weren't even going to tell us, were you? That's why you're up here. You were
just going to vanish again. Poof."
"Poof," Sophia agreed quietly, still watching the skyline rather than meet
Terry's gaze. "The mirror doesn't just keep me young," she said to the horizon.
There was no drama in the delivery, none of the drawn-out tension she felt the
moment should hold. Instead it was an admission, sacred as the confessional. "I
see glimpses of the future. And I can see that I don't belong here. Not here,
not now. I —" she glanced back at Teresa, exhaling "— complicate things. For you
and Alan, and for your band." She gave Terry a fleeting smile. "I know what it
is to want the world on a silver platter. I'm not going to get in the way of you
and Alan achieving that."
Terry rolled back to sit on her tailbone, absorbing what Sophia said. "On the
one hand," she said slowly, "it sounds like you're telling me the band's going
to be a huge success, so all I want to do is dance around and yell
bonus!
On the other…" She pursed her lips, studying Sophia. "You weren't going to say
goodbye because…?"
Sophia lifted a shoulder and let it fall, a motion that the camera would read
as world-weary and resigned. "I thought Alan wouldn't understand."
"Alan wouldn't understand what?" he asked from behind her. Sophie lost her
world-weary facade and frowned at Terry, who gave her a quick, unapologetic
smile. "You disappeared on us," he went on, coming around to crouch beside
Sophia. "I thought maybe the moon had set. We don't have a lot of time left to
figure out how to get you out of there."
"It's all right," Sophia said. "I'd just like you to do one thing, really."
She lifted her chin, the brave, tear-glimmering look of a woman about to face
her worst demons. Terry snorted and Sophia, taken off-guard, broke character
with a laugh, then got to her feet, stepping up to the mirror's edge. Alan stood
with her, eyebrows drawn down in distress as he took her hands.
"Of course. Anything."
My dear, Sophia added silently; that was how the line would be
scripted.
Anything, my dear. She loosened her hands from Alan's and
touched his cheek lightly, changing her weight so she could vanish the instant
her words were spoken. It would be dramatic that way, she thought in pleasure.
Heart-wrenching. The heroine sacrificing herself so that another's true love
might conquer all. It was perfect.
"Put the mirror somewhere so I'll be able to talk to people on moonlit
nights, please," she murmured. An unspoken promise flooded Alan's face as she
stepped backward into quicksilver viscosity.
The world vanished around her.
* * *
I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror.
I can see you all the time. When you brush your hair, when you change your
clothes, when you climb into bed with a lover.
When moonlight falls on the mirror, I can whisper secrets from the future
into your ear.
And someday, when the time is right, I'll step through and rejoin the world
again for…
…ever.
The End
Ill Met by
Moonlight
By
C.E. Murphy
Chapter One
I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror.
I can see you all the time — when you brush your hair, when you change
your clothes, when you climb into bed with a lover.
When moonlight falls on the mirror, I can whisper secrets from the future
into your ear.
And sometimes, when the time is right, I can step through and rejoin the
world for a single day.
Sophia turned her back on the mirror frame, leaning against it with a soft
sigh. "At least I could," she whispered, putting a trembling flutter into the
words, "until my mirror was hidden from the light."
That phrase sounded better than
until my mirror was put in a closet.
It could also more believably be filled with regret and sorrow as she spoke in a
voice she'd once nurtured so magazine articles would refer to it as
dulcet.
They would never do so again: her throat had largely recovered from the
screaming some decades ago, but there would always be a rough burr left in her
words.
Her voice was almost all that had changed. The years had taken no toll on her
figure or face, and her wheat-blond hair had gotten no longer. She still wore it
coiffed, with permanent waves that fell around her shoulders and down her back
in a deliberate homage to the great Veronica Lake.
The late, great Veronica Lake, Sophia corrected herself. She'd watched
the blond siren pass through the valley of death, just as every other giant of
her time had. All of them. Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich —
everyone but Sophia Robinson, whose disappearance had been the topic of brief,
titillating gossip and speculation, and who had then been forgotten as quickly
as any starlet whose first film failed.
Ironically, of course, her film hadn't failed at all. It had done
spectacularly well, thanks to Sophia's disappearance. It was the stuff of
legends. It was the stuff, better yet, of movies. But after a month or two, the
topic of conversation at parties on the other side of the mirror ceased to be
her, and Hollywood soldiered on, brave and lonely, without its brightest rising
star.
Sophia tipped her head back against the mirror frame, tracing the fine line
of her jaw with her fingertips. Slow, elegant movements, the kind that she'd
studied and learned in order to impress upon her public that she was more than
just a flash in the pan. She was Sophia Robinson,
Movie Star. Her hair
brushed along her spine, a soft reminder that the glittering, backless gown she
wore was for a premiere party. It was to have been her first great moment in the
public eye.
She had, as they said, been unavoidably detained.
I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror, she began
again. In sixty-some years, she'd pared down the script to its essentials,
leaving it cool and, she thought, ever so slightly dangerous. She would, of
course, star in the movie. It was, as it had always been, all about her. The
rougher voice she'd acquired would suit a vocal overlay well. It would tell the
audience that the woman who spoke those words had been through something — been
through a certain kind of hell, and came through again, braver, more beautiful,
and full of an untouchable light. The woman who spoke those lines would be an
icon.
Sophia shook her hair over her shoulders again and gave the silent
shadowlands a coy, sideways smile, careful to not let it crease deep lines in
her still supple skin. Youth was beauty, and beauty was power. She'd been a
little girl the first time she'd seen a film starring Greta Garbo, and she'd
understood in one glorious moment what youth and beauty could bring a woman.
Immortality.
"I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror," she purred, and for
the first time in years, light flooded a rectangle in the plainscape. Sophia
lurched around, forgetting elegance and grace, and slapped her hands against her
side of the mirror. "Hey!" she bellowed. "Let me out!"
A voice from the other side of the mirror said, "Holy shit, look at this."
* * *
The light was far too bright. Sunlight, its intensity blinding, not
moonlight's pale, freeing touch. Sixty years of habit asserted itself and Sophia
lifted a hand to her brow, palm out and fingers curled delicately to shade away
the worst of the light without forcing her to resort to squinting. The light had
a purity she barely remembered, molten gold pouring in without warming her, the
mirror's silver backing keeping anything that smacked of life just beyond reach.
A figure separated itself out of the astounding light — black and slender,
shadow cutting through gold. The block of torso came first, then sunlight winked
around shoulder-length hair and gave the figure a head. Finer details, the arms
and legs, blurred into visibility an instant later, until a silhouette stood
between Sophia and the world outside.
"Holy shit," the voice said again, and the figure put his hand on the mirror,
fingertips pressing against metal that Sophia knew from experience was cool to
the touch, even after long days under stage lights. "Hey, Terry! C'mere and
check this out!"
"What?" A woman, impatient, appeared in the filtered light, and her presence
was enough to change everything. Shadows sprang fully formed into shapes and
forms; so much to look at that Sophia suddenly couldn't choose where
to
look. Sunlight behind the pair flooded in from a picture window so broad and
bright Sophia couldn't see its frame.
The sun itself flared red even as she watched, half astonished she could
still remember what colors looked like.
Sunset. She put her hands against
the mirror again, matching her fingertips to the man's, and whispered, "Put me
in the moonlight." He wouldn't hear her, couldn't, unless the mirror was placed
in moonlight, but she whispered it with all her heart, anyway. The tremble in
her voice bespoke of desperation and loneliness. That was perfect, she thought;
she would have to remember it for her movie.
"Right, that's pretty damned cool," the woman — Terry! What a ridiculous name
for a woman — agreed. She was pretty, in a pixieish way, with short cropped
brown hair and wide green eyes, but her shoulders were much too broad. She would
never be a Hollywood glamour puss. Sophia indulged in a disdainful sniff and
turned her attention back to the man, who flashed a grin over his shoulder at
the ill-named Terry.
His hair was as ridiculous as the woman's name. Shoulder-length and wavy,
practically feminine, though the still grinning face he turned back to the
mirror was strong-jawed and indisputably masculine. He had dark eyes and a
sensual mouth, the sort that every leading lady hoped her leading man would
possess.
Sophia leaned against the glass, lower lip caught winsomely in her teeth as
she studied his mouth. If something could be done about his hair, he just might
do. It would help, of course, if he
Was Somebody, but the eerie story of
her life would bring in the fans even if her hero was an unknown.
"What do you think?" he asked. "Center stage behind us? C'mon, give me a hand
with it." He moved to the side, wrapping beautifully shaped fingers around the
mirror's frame. Terry groaned and came forward.
"How do I end up being the one helping with the heavy lifting?"
"You're always around. Ready? One, two, three —!" They hefted and Sophia
leaned forward, pressed against the inside of the mirror as they staggered out
of the closet bearing her prison.
Hard glass turned to the viscosity of quicksilver. Sophia tumbled forward
with a shriek, wincing even as the raucous tone escaped her throat.
Dulcet,
my dear, dulcet. The reminder, spoken in a man's voice in her memory,
scolded her even as she somersaulted across a marble floor. She landed entangled
in her skirts, hands spread before her face, fingers open so she might look
through them with an ingйnue's wide-eyed distress.
The man lurched forward, trying to catch her, leaving the mirror's weight
largely in Terry's hands. Sophia's distress turned sharply real, panic sending a
cold knife through her belly. "Don't drop it!"
Chapter Two
"Holy Jesus — what the —?!" Nonsensical curses burst from both Terry and the
nameless man, the latter wrenching himself back to re-catch the mirror's weight.
While he couldn’t articulate it, his question was obvious: Who was this
woman…and how had she just fallen from a mirror?
They both stumbled, then set the mirror against the floor with a resounding
clang, letting its weight pull it forward so they could rest it facedown on the
floor.
"No!" Sophia surged from her faint, deftly rolling her hip under so she might
support herself on one hand, the other stretched forward in desperate
supplication. "The surface must face the sky!" Oh, yes, she thought: that would
do nicely, as well. She cast a searching glance upward, as if the stars might
provide the answer she sought.
Not the stars, but rather the moon. In defiance of the still blazing sunset,
its pale form shone through skylights as encompassing as the picture windows
that surrounded the room. Sophia brought her outstretched hand back in,
delicately resting it against her breastbone as she breathed, "It's Halloween,"
in understanding.
Halloween, the anniversary of her entrapment, and even more, the night the
dead could walk among the living. Sophia wasn't precisely dead — but it had been
decades since she had been one of the living.
She brought her gaze back down to the mirror, for a moment ignoring the
bewildered pair who propped it up in favor of studying the reflective surface
that had become both prison and preserver. Its ornate gilt frame hid secrets
she'd learned to unlock. Even now she could see the crimson incantations written
into the intricate swirls and whorls, and found herself mouthing them despite
knowing the dangers. It had been a prop in the single film she'd made, but there
had been whispers that it'd been spirited out of Germany, even as Hitler's Nazis
had searched for it to add to the Kaiser's own occult collection.
The Occult. Sophia pressed her eyelashes shut, feeling them flutter
against her cheeks.
"I remember…" The words drifted out in a whisper and she gave a tiny shudder.
You ought not trifle with such things, Sophia. They're dangerous and
beyond your knowledge. Her director, Jeremy Claussen, had warned her time
and again.
These are dangerous days to express interest in things beyond this
world. Be careful, my darling Sophia. Be cautious.
He had been so many things that a young woman wanted. Handsome, in a hawkish,
dangerous way, his appeal from his presence as much as his looks. And, yes,
mysterious: how could she resist eyes that glittered so knowingly about dark
secrets? She had been drawn in, and in, and in, until she awakened one day
trapped like a fly in amber.
Sophia shivered, opening her eyes to look beyond the mirror and her erstwhile
rescuers. A familiar ballroom spread out around her, enormous picture windows
overlooking Los Angeles. She had begun her entrapment in the mirror in this very
room, one room among dozens in the mansion that had belonged to Jeremy Claussen.
It was perfect, she thought again: though the mirror had been moved many times
during her captivity, she had come back to where she'd started.
When she had been trapped, the room had been set for the premiere party for
her movie. Now, decades later, a stage was assembled against the windows at one
end of the room, clear preparation for a performance of some kind. Sophia drew
in a shaking breath, reveling in the warm scent of old dust, and finally heard
Terry's voice, rising with protestation.
"Alan, is this some kind of insane practical joke?"
"Ter, I'm not cool enough to come up with something like this. Help me put it
down."
"Please." Sophia's voice was a trembling whisper again. "Put it down face up.
As soon as the moonlight no longer touches it, I'll be pulled back in." She
lifted her eyes, beseeching, to meet Alan's.
Blackness ensnared him, thin wisps of darkness whipping out of the sunset to
wrap him in their embrace. He gave no notice, smiling at her with open
fascination as he and the woman gently set the mirror on the floor, its surface
reflecting the distant moon. Sophia's vision tunneled, spirits darting and
dancing around Alan. Spirits, but not the dead: Sophia knew them well after
sixty years on the mirror's cold side, and these were specters of life and the
future.
Alan's future. A thousand reflections of him, toned with sepia and leaping in
the narrow field that Sophia could still see. It was the mirror's gift, the
exchange given for holding her hostage behind it for decades on end:
precognition. It had not at all been the gift she sought when she crossed
through the looking glass, but at least it had given her something in return.
More than something, Sophia Robinson, she whispered to herself.
Death has passed you by.
But it would not pass Alan. A schism lay before him, a deep void that on one
side held a world Sophia both could barely recognize and at the same time knew
and coveted in a place beyond words. Brilliant lights shone down on him and
swept over a crowd of unimaginable size. They raised their hands, holding fire
and swirling sticks of neon into the air, and they screamed his name. Terry,
with her pixie-cut hair and a guitar, stood behind him, one of four who
supported Alan as he sang. All of them filled with passion so bright it burned
in their smiles and in the way they threw themselves around the stage.
Variations played on that future as quickly as the music Alan made changed, but
all of them were lifetimes of glory, and lasted beyond the mere span of years a
man could claim.
And the other side of that chasm was as unrecognizable and as easily known as
its antithesis. Weak lights and a noisy bar, beer bottles thrown at the cage
surrounding the band. Alan's long hair no longer healthy and styled, but lanky
with grease, and the light in his eyes burned out. Only Terry was still with
him, from the band Sophia had seen in the first vision, and she was as weak and
haggard as Alan. Passion no longer drove them — not even desperation. It was
habit, bleak and dulled with time. Those futures shattered into darker and
darker places, drugs and drink and a life that had ended years ago, without the
body catching on.
Sophia's breath caught and she pressed her fingertips to her lips. Alan and
Terry finished putting the mirror on the floor and he turned, still in a crouch,
to give her a smile filled with fascination and confusion. Even his question,
"What the hell is going on here?" seemed to hold no rejection, but rather the
impulse to delve into Sophia's story and learn the answers. He put his hands on
his thighs and stood, stepping toward her and offering a gallant hand.
Oh, yes. He would do. He would do
perfectly. He
Was Somebody,
or would be, just as Sophia had hoped. A hero to star in her story — strong,
silent and stalwart. Together they would rise out of the obscurity of
garage
bands — the phrase filtered up from her consciousness, a term learned while
the mirror had been in a television room during the MTV years — and
B-films,
making the bright future she'd seen for him come true.
"Sophia." She put her hand into Alan's. “Sophia Robinson." He drew her up,
bringing her in close with his warm grip, and slipped a hand into the small of
her back to steady her. She smiled through her lashes, feeling outrage pour off
Terry as Alan's smile deepened. She whispered, "Sophia," like it was a gift, and
his smile turned fatuous.
"Jesus Christ, Alan," Terry said, voice strained with a combination of
disbelief and confidence. "That's the chick who disappeared from a film set in,
like, 1942."
Chapter Three
"An actress who disappeared in 1942?" Alan brought Sophia up against him even
as he glanced toward Terry. "That's impossible. Besides, how do you know?"
"She just fell out of a mirror and you're telling me it's impossible?" Terry
demanded. "Haven't you ever
watched any of your grandpa's movies? It's
her. She disappeared the night the movie opened. It was a big scandal. For about
five minutes," she added pointedly.
"She's right," Sophia cooed, ignoring the dig. She could afford that, with
Alan's arms around her. She tilted her head up, pressing herself against his
chest. "I was the star of
The Maiden in the Mirror. I've been trapped in
the mirror all this time, by —" Her head snapped around, gaze suddenly fixed
hard on Terry as the woman's words caught up to her. "His
grandfather?
Jeremy Claussen?"
"Yea-aah." Terry accompanied the drawn-out word with a head waggle. "Alan,
she's
simpering on you. Ew."
Sophia fought the impulse to thrust Alan away, though she could see the drama
of the gesture in her mind's eye: the dark-haired hero at arm's length, the
heroine's fingertips outstretched, barely touching his chest — quivering with
rejection that was only meant to be denied as he caught her in his arms again
and crushed her against him. It would be a wonderful moment in the film.
But in a film he would have direction to return to her, whereas if she pushed
him away violently in real life he might become more aware of Terry's
objections. Sophia clung to him, atremble in his arms, and whispered, "Then you
may be the only one who can break the spell that holds me."
"Spell? Like magic?" Alan laughed. "There's no such thing." Sophia arched a
rounded eyebrow at the mirror, then looked back up at Alan, who twisted his
mouth in acknowledgement. "Okay. It's totally impossible, but okay." He set her
back a few centimeters, looking down at her. "How the hell did you get trapped
in a mirror?"
Sophia trailed her fingers down Alan's chest. "You have magic in your blood,
Alan. Whether you know it or not."
"Oh, for God's sake," Terry said. "Alan, you're not falling for this, are
you?"
Alan blinked at her, a sheepish grin starting to form. Sophie set her teeth
together, abandoning theatrics for direct action. "Jeremy Claussen asked me to
marry him the night the film opened and when I said no, he trapped me in the
mirror so no one would ever have me. I've been stuck there for — what year is
it?"
"Two thousand five," Alan said.
"God." For a moment the vapors Sophia suffered from were real. "For
sixty-three years. I can be heard when moonlight falls on the mirror, and I can
be free of it on Halloween — the same night I was trapped — but only while the
moon is reflected in the glass. If you're Jeremy's grandson, you really are my
only hope."
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi," Terry muttered. Alan shot her a glare over
Sophia's head, sending a quick thrill of triumph through the starlet.
"What do you want me to do, Teresa? Turn my back on her?"
"How about we put the mirror up on the roof where the moon'll be on it all
night, and then get ready for our gig?" Terry demanded. "You remember the gig?
Biggest break yet? Make-or-break moment? Any of that ring a bell? Cinderella
here can join the party and we'll see if we can figure out how to keep her from
turning into a pumpkin after the gig."
"You're a mercenary bitch, Terry." Alan said the words easily, as if they
were oft-repeated, but there was a coolness to them that Sophia sensed wasn't
usually there. Cords stood out in Terry's throat.
"Fine." Her voice was thready with hurt. "The guys and I will set up. You
have a good time with your fairy-tale girlfriend, Alan. Try to get your head in
the game to perform, though, huh? The rest of us kind of need you." She turned
on her heel and stalked away, hissing, "At least for tonight," under her breath.
"I'm sorry." Sophia gave Alan her most sincere, sad-eyed smile. "I didn't
mean to cause you and your girlfriend distress. Maybe you should just —" She
drew a quavering breath. "Just forget about me, and go on. I'll be fine," she
added bravely.
"Girlfriend? Terry? No way, it's not like that."
Images cascaded through Sophia's vision, the breach of Alan's future. Some of
the brighter possibilities faded away, leaving cold nights and too much alcohol
raining down in their place. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, and
Alan stepped forward to put his hands on her shoulders.
"It'll be all right," he promised. "How did this happen? I'm sure we can find
a way to undo it."
The urge to slip into drama, to turn away and whisper, hopelessly, "You
wouldn't believe me," siphoned through her. Alan would capture her in his arms
and promise that no matter how terrible it was, how unlikely, he
would
believe her — but no: it could be saved for the movie of her life. In
sixty-three years there'd been no chance at freedom like this one, and the
minutes were too precious to waste in pageantry.
Besides, such protestations might send her dark-eyed hero back to his own
pixielike lead guitarist, and that would never do.
"The mirror spoke to me," Sophie said instead, abruptly. "During filming."
She stepped away from Alan, crouching to put her fingers against the mirror's
heavy frame. "Every time I looked at it, it promised me my reflection would
always be the same. Eternally young, always beautiful. It was like a prophecy
whispered in my ear." Sophia laughed — a soft humorless sound as she watched her
image in the mirror. "And it was."
She traced the ornate border, not quite touching the faint red lines deep in
the heart of gold. "It told me how to read the grimoire in the frame, and said
that if I spoke them on Halloween night, under the light of the moon shining on
the mirror, I would be able to pass into the land of the deceased and bargain
for eternity with the Lord of the Dead."
"And you believed it?" Alan's voice was strangled. Sophia looked over her
shoulder at him, arranging her skirt to fall more artfully against the floor.
"I was young, and vain, and brash." Confessing the sins went against her
nature. A film star was meant to be mysterious and remote, not brutally honest
about her flaws. She smiled, feeling an ache of years in the expression, making
it far more real she was accustomed to presenting. "And the mirror
was
talking to me," she added quietly. "That made it easy to believe.
"I thought the night of the premiere, of all nights, I was at the height of
my perfection. The mirror was here, at Jeremy's mansion, part of the decorations
for the party afterward. I slipped away early to come read the spell, and
Jeremy — your grandfather — joined me just after I'd completed it. He proposed,
and I — I ran into the mirror. When I turned back, his face was full of
darkness, and he was shouting. There was a flash, and when it faded…I was
forever captured." Sophia lifted her chin, eyes moist with tears. Alan stepped
forward to offer her a hand up again, and she slipped her fingers into his,
smiling gratefully. She drew a shuddering breath to speak.
Metal crashed against stone, shrieks of sound that drowned out anything
Sophia might say. Cursing erupted. Alan swore, dropped her hand, and bolted from
the room.
Chapter Four
"Don't panic! Nothing's broken. Holy Christ, mate." A burly bald man appeared
in the ballroom doorway, hands lifted in supplication, though they dropped as he
saw Sophia. "I thought nobody was here yet."
"Nobody was," Terry said from behind him. "She fell out of the mirror."
"Right. Alan, give us a hand here, mate. You can flirt with your bird later."
The big man jerked a thumb over his shoulder and disappeared back out the door.
Alan shot Sophia an apologetic look and ran after him, leaving her alone and
stunned.
White light shattered through her vision, the intense heat of spotlights
warming her skin. The adoring crowds were spread before her again, this time as
if she stood on the stage beside Alan herself. She could hear his name chanted,
lifting him to the skies as if he were a god, and then the brilliance faded.
Sophia pressed her lips out, aware it made her look like a duck, but allowing
herself to revel in the unattractive expression for just a moment before she
squared her shoulders and marched after the men.
Equipment she could only recognize as
industry-related littered the
marble-floored mansion lobby she entered. Lights, enormous black boxes, musical
instruments — she cast an overwhelmed gaze around at them before flexing her
arms, reminiscent of an early Rosie the Riveter, and smiled at Alan. "Well, I'm
here. I might as well help out."
"In that outfit?" the bald man asked dubiously. Sophia glanced down at her
chiffon gown, then spread her fingers dismissively.
"Never mind that. It'll be fine." She put pluckiness into her voice,
a
don't you mind me Pollyannaism meant to make the menfolk insist she sit down
and be decorative.
"Okay. Help Terry with the speakers."
Sophia blinked, completely taken aback as the large man turned to his own
task. Terry gave her a sharp, knowing grin and lifted an eyebrow in challenge.
Sophia narrowed her eyes and rose to the occasion, clicking across the marble
floor in her heels to lend a hand.
Within moments, her hair fell out of its permanent waves, sweat sticking it
to her forehead as she put herself to utterly unaccustomed physical labor. To
her surprise, she found herself enjoying hefting speakers, even when she knocked
herself on the chin with one. For a few minutes there was camaraderie in doing
heavy work, and Terry's smile turned briefly approving. Sophia returned it,
fully aware she'd been out-played.
Before either could acknowledge it aloud, the bald man dragged a dolly into
the ballroom after him, narrowly missing the mirror. Sophia gasped in horror,
leaping forward in rescue as he did an awkward dance around it.
"Why's there a mirror in the middle of the fecking floor?!"
"It's Sophia's," Alan mumbled. "Look, Terry, maybe you were right. We should
put it on the roof."
"You want to put a mirror on the roof," the big man said. Sophia found
herself exchanging glances with Terry and Alan, none of them quite willing to
explain.
"Please," Sophia said after a moment, and the big man sighed.
"Have it your way, then. Alan, grab the other side." They lifted the mirror,
turning its face away from the skylights.
Sophia yelped and slid inside.
* * *
She exited on the roof with considerably more dignity than her first
appearance. Alan waited for her, grinning lopsidedly. "Rick bolted. He's kind of
freaked out now." Something happened to his smile, making it more wistful. "You
really did come from the mirror."
Sophia sighed and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. It had reverted to
its former perfection the moment she was caught in the mirror again, as had the
dress. Beauty in stasis, she thought. The price of immortality. "Yes. And you're
the only one who can help me break the spell."
"The way you say that makes it sound like a fairy tale." Alan offered his
hand. Sophia took it delicately, gathering her skirts as she stepped forward.
"I hope so. Fairy tales have happy endings." That would make another fine
line. Spoken with sadness and regret, as if her belief in fairy tales had died
long ago. Sophia looked across the rooftop at Los Angeles, so much busier and
brighter in the early stages of evening than she remembered, and thought the
sorrow wouldn't take much acting.
"So what am I supposed to do?" Alan drew her closer, smiling. "Does true
love's first kiss awaken the princess in the mirror?"
Sophia softened, turning a limpid gaze back up to the dark-haired musician.
Stars in her eyes, she whispered, "We can only see," and let her lashes tangle
together.
Premonition, the mirror's gift, crashed into her again. Demons scoured her
eyelids, black and red streaks of shaking death, as if a movie camera were being
yanked back and forth violently. Alan's face appeared in the discolored streaks,
gaunt, haggard, his eyes bloodshot. The hands he lifted to cover his face with
were all bone, and shook with effort. Sophia jolted back, breaking the kiss
before it began, and stared wide-eyed up at the startled man who held her.
"Let's…" Her eyebrows drew down, a perfect tiny frown making a wrinkle
between them. "Let's go back downstairs. They — they'll need you."
"Okay." Alan's own frown was deeper, more confused, but he stepped back and
led Sophia across the rooftop, their fingertips still tangled together as she
struggled to erase the line that creased her brow.
* * *
Being useful was slightly better than being ignored. Sophia plugged things in
where she was told, and climbed a ladder despite her skirts to adjust a
spotlight's fall. The room below was both so familiar and so alien she hesitated
there a few moments, watching the band setting up.
Sunlight had faded, leaving electric lights blazing, cutting out the view of
the city beyond the windows. The last time she'd seen the room so clearly was
the night of the premiere; since then, she had been shifted from one room in the
mansion to another. She thought it'd been sold — Jeremy Claussen hadn't been
there in decades, and new people had come in and out through the years. But now
a Claussen was in the house again.
Sophia found herself watching Alan, trying to see the grandfather in the
grandson. Jeremy's intensity seemed to have faded into a lower-key charisma of
potential smoldering glances and sly smiles.
"Cute, isn't he?"
Sophia tightened her hands around the ladder to keep herself from falling,
looking down at Teresa, whose gaze was very deliberately on Alan. "Kind of a
space cadet, but he's cute," she went on. "A real romantic, too."
"The kind to be besotted with women caught in mirrors?" Sophia asked.
Terry's mouth thinned. "I just don't want him to get hurt."
"I don't want to hurt him," Sophia answered. "I only want out of the mirror."
She paused. "How did you know who I was, Teresa?"
"I watched all of the old man's films when Alan and I got together." Terry
shot Sophia a look and amended, "When the band got together," through her teeth.
"I thought being up on family history —" She broke off, knowing she'd betrayed
herself twice, and went on tightly. "The point is I saw your movie and checked
out IMDB to see what else you'd been in."
"IMDB?"
Teresa cast another glance at her. "Never mind. Anyway, I found out it was
just the one movie, and I read all the stories about you disappearing. I thought
it was kind of cool, but Alan's not into old movies, and Mr. Claussen won't talk
about it."
"Mister — he's still alive?" Sophia took two steps down the ladder, clutching
a rung with white-knuckled fingers. "Jeremy Claussen still lives?"
Chapter Five
Sophia's heart hammered in her throat, making her too dizzy to dare stepping
further into the ballroom. Her every breath seemed too short, the fingers of one
hand fluttering at the hollow of her throat. "The man who trapped me in that
mirror
is still alive?"
"Sure," Terry said, oblivious to the impact of her words. "He's ancient, but
he's still alive." She shrugged. "Maybe when he kicks off, it'll break the spell
you're under." She curled a lip and shoved her hands into her jeans pockets,
destroying her pixie-ish projection. "Spell. Man. That's just not cool. I mean,
you see a lot of weird shit when you're playing small concert halls and venues,
but magic just isn't part of the gig."
"Are you certain?" Sophie breathed. Her focus was on Alan, but she looked
beyond the young musician, seeing his grandfather's angry face as she rejected
him and ran for safety inside a mirror whose gateway had been opened through the
reading of the spell worked into its frame. "You live in Hollywood," she went
on, still softly. "Wouldn't it make sense, sometimes, if some of the things you
saw here were simply…magic?"
"Are you
serious?"
Sophia finally dared unlock her fingers from around the ladder rung and
climbed all the way down to the ballroom floor. The spotlight she'd adjusted
fell perfectly on center stage now, where Alan would be performing. She stopped
shoulder-to-shoulder with Terry, finding herself equal in height to her. "After
six decades trapped in a mirror, do you think I'd joke about magic?" The line
delivered, she brushed by curtly, chin lifted.
* * *
The script had failed her.
Sophia stood against a window in the round ballroom, not quite letting her
shoulder press against the cool glass. Her fingers were gathered in her skirt,
body turned away from the business behind her; it would make her look frail and
waifish to anyone who glanced her way. A lost soul, in need of saving.
In sixty years of rehearsing and repeating, she had never clearly envisioned
how it was her dark-eyed hero would rescue her from the glass. It would be — and
she lifted her hand in a delicate flutter —
magic. The same magic that
had trapped her, incantations read beneath the light of the moon, but she'd
never had the chance to teach anyone to read the frame's grimoire as she'd been
taught. Perhaps she'd expected her hero to simply know what to do: that was how
it worked in the movies. There were no questions, no uncertainties, only a
preordained happy ending, the curtains closing on a kiss.
And that was all the stuff of dreams. Sophie curled her fingers against her
breastbone, a soft clutching motion as if she caught sorrow and held it still.
She had wanted the mirror's magic to be true, had thrown herself into studying
what it offered. She had dared the realm of the dead for an eternal future, and
had come to believe in a quiet magic that lay beneath the surface of the
everyday world. Alan, for all his heritage, had no reason to believe in that
magic himself.
"Figure it out yet?" His voice, a smooth warm tenor, startled her. Sophia's
fingers tightened at her breastbone before she lifted her head and turned
gracefully, offering a smile to the leader of the band. He stepped closer, his
body heat warming her after her sojourn by the window.
"You're done setting up?" she asked, rather than answer his question. Alan
shrugged a glance over his shoulder.
"They can handle the rest without me. I want to help you. What can I do?"
Sophia smiled without humor and turned her gaze back out the window. Her
reflection was mussed, delicate tendrils making ringlets at her temples. They
highlighted her heart-shaped face and full mouth, and for a brief moment Sophia
wished she could wear her hair that way, with a nod toward the twenty-first
century world she found herself in for a few hours. "I suppose you could
telephone your grandfather and ask him to come over here and break the spell."
Alan chuckled, a quiet sound. "Grandfather hasn't been near this place in
sixty years. He met my grandmother here." He broke off, frowning at Sophia. "The
night of the premiere for
The Maiden in the Mirror, in fact. She used to
tell me about it."
Sophie looked back at him, catching the line of her cheekbone in the
reflection as she did so. Fragile, delicate, ethereal: another excellent shot.
"Who was she?"
"Her name was Lorena Quinn. She did a lot of movies with Grandfather in the
'40s and early '50s, before they got divorced."
Sophia's eyebrows drew down. "I didn't know her. Why was she at the
premiere?"
Alan flashed a grin. "Isn't that what people do, turn up at premieres for the
party? She used to tell me she was new in town just that day. Grandfather said
once she was really old-fashioned."
A trickle of familiarity slid down Sophia's throat and she put her hand
against the window. "Old-fashioned?"
"Yeah, like she'd walked out of the nineteenth century. He said she wore her
hair in one of those pompadour things." He made a vague round gesture around his
head. Sophia's eyebrows rose.
"A Gibson girl?"
Alan snapped his fingers. "Gibson girl, that's it. Grandfather said that was
what caught his eye about her in the first place."
Sophia wet her bottom lip, drawing it into her mouth. "Do you have a picture
of her?"
"Sure, I carry one around all the time." Alan pulled his chin in, one eyebrow
shooting up with playful sarcasm. "Doesn't everybody haul around pictures of
their grandparents?"
"Of course not." Sophia felt her shoulders drop and gave a little sigh,
turning her gaze down. "It was a silly question."
"Look, hey." Alan touched her shoulder apologetically, then wheeled on his
heel to call, "Hey, Rick, you got your laptop? Can you get a signal up here?"
The burly man looked up with a flinch, eyes skittering off Sophia. "It's in
the foyer, mate. All set up."
Alan slipped his hand down to Sophia's. "Come on. I can get a picture."
* * *
"This is the Internet Movie Database." Alan crouched in front of Rick's
laptop, which was, unexpectedly, a flat box with a screen and keyboard.
Sophia touched the screen.
"IMDB. Teresa told me about it. She said I was in it."
"Yeah, I'll pull you up in a second, but…here." The screen changed again,
bringing up a page with the name Lorena Quinn printed in bold letters, and a
photograph of an austere, dark-haired woman who looked not in the least
old-fashioned. She was broad-cheeked with handsome eyes and a proud expression.
She would be well-cast as a villainess, Sophia thought.
"I don't know her." She shook her head. "I don't know why I thought I might."
Alan heard the discouragement and gave her a regretful smile that was
temporarily banished by hope. "Maybe this'll help. There are a couple of film
clips linked in." He clicked on an underlined set of words and the screen
changed again, becoming a shot from a film. The dark-haired woman flowed into
action, hurrying across a set to catch a man's arm.
"Donald, no. You mustn't go. This war — it'll be the death of you. It'll be
the death of all of us."
Ice shivered over Sophia's arms, recognition making her cold. "Alan, that's
the mirror's voice. That's the woman who taught me how to read the grimoire."
Chapter Six
Sophia swayed, clutching Alan's shoulder for support. "I'm sure it's her,"
she whispered. "I listened to that voice for hours, Alan." She watched the movie
clip unfurl on the laptop screen, no longer hearing the words the dark-haired
beauty on the screen spoke, only the rise and fall of her voice. "How could the
mirror be a living, breathing —"
She caught her breath, stepping back with her hand pressed against the hollow
of her throat, eyes wide. "It was a trap.
A trap!" Outrage mixed with
humiliation in her voice: sixty years a prisoner inside a mirrored shadowland,
and never once had it struck her that the gambit to have her enter the mirror's
scape might have been trickery.
"Sophie." Alan got to his feet, leaving the laptop behind as he gave her an
uncomfortable smile. "You can't be serious. That's Lorena Quinn. She's my
grandmother. You can't really think she stuck you in a mirror somehow. Look,
I'll stick with you and we'll find a way to undo this, but —" He pushed his hair
back, the shoulder-length waves settling into place again as if he hadn't
touched it. Sophia could see the strength of jaw and the line of brow that
Lorena Quinn had lent him across a generation as easily as she could see his
grandfather in the shape of his nose and mouth. They had conspired, however
unwittingly, to make a movie-star handsome grandchild.
A chill swept Sophia again, wrenching away her own thoughts in favor of the
mirror's gift:
premonition. Premonition and eternity, paired together at
the cost of an immortality spent hidden on the wrong side of life, watching it
from beyond death's gate.
Movie-star handsome. Those were her terms, Sophia's way of seeing the
world.
Rock-star handsome fought its way into her mind, a by now familiar
vista cropping up in her vision. Alan on stage, hands lifted in the air as he
grinned and accepted adulation from the masses. But black rain began to fall
down around him like acid melting rice paper, until his good looks were streaked
with ill health and the weight of poverty. Misery washed off him in waves,
sucking everything it touched down with him, until it created a whirlpool of
malevolent emotion that seemed to grasp at Sophia's feet, trying to drown her in
it.
Sophia gasped and staggered back, putting a hand out for a wall to support
her. Alan surged forward, catching her around the waist, eyebrows crinkled with
concern.
"Are you all right? That's the second time you've gone all pale and freaky."
"I —" Sophia turned her gaze away, afraid to meet Alan's worried eyes. "I'm
all right. You should get ready for your show," she added in a whisper. "I just
need some time to think."
"Are you sure?" Alan demanded. "You look sick, Sophie. I don't want to leave
you alone."
Sophia closed her eyes against another onslaught of dark images, ink staining
cracks into the marble floor beneath her feet. "I'm sure." She put determination
into her voice and dredged up a smile. Not a brave smile, designed to tell her
hero that she was terrified and desperate for his reassurance but unwilling to
hold him back. She knew that smile, had it in her repertoire, and the leading
man would recognize it and refuse to go on his mission. No: Sophia's smile had
to be a genuine one, soft and brief. "I'm sure," she murmured again. "Go, Alan."
Her smile grew stronger for a moment and she put her hand against his arm. "The
show must go on. Do they still say that?"
As if despite himself, Alan cracked a wry grin. "Of course they do. Freddie
Mercury even wrote a kick-ass song titled that. I'll sing it for you later." His
grin faded into anxiety again. "Look, Sophie, if you need anything…."
"I know." She put her hand on his arm and smiled again. "Let me just think a
while, all right?"
"Okay." He touched her chin briefly, like he might steal a kiss, but then
turned and jogged back into the ballroom where the evening's performance would
be held. A shower of starlight followed him, bright promise for a future that
changed every few moments, and that only Sophia could see.
She sank back down next to the laptop, hesitantly brushing a finger over the
pad Alan had used to navigate. Lorena Quinn's film clip began to play again, and
Sophia folded an arm around her own ribs, lifting the other hand to bite her
knuckle, a habit she'd deliberately ousted from her quirks as a young woman.
There was nothing elegant or movie star about gnawing on her own hands, though
even as she noticed it she didn't stop. It was old comfort.
Old-fashioned, she thought, and played the clip a third time, though
she no longer saw it at all.
Instead, she saw the script of her own life in a way she'd never envisioned
it. The story of another woman captured in a mirror beyond death's door, caught
for…decades. Not centuries, despite the inherent drama in the lengthier time
span.
Sophia closed her eyes, seeing beautiful, youthful Lorena Quinn standing
before the gilt-framed mirror, hearing another woman's voice promise her
immortality and eternal youth just by reading the spell worked into the heavy
frame. That Lorena Quinn would be corseted, with her thick dark hair worn in a
Gibson girl pompadour, the sleeves of her dress fashionably puffed. She would be
at the height of her beauty and her vanity, things Sophia Robinson knew all too
well, and she would chant out the spell under the light of the moon.
And find herself trapped forever, as the mirror's voice was finally freed to
live her life again, years or decades or even centuries removed from when she'd
begun.
Sophia lowered her head, eyelashes pressed together against tears. Sixty
ageless years of blaming Jeremy Claussen had been time wasted. Worse still, if
her one-time director hadn't captured her, then it was unlikely that Alan
Claussen, his grandson, would have the power to free her at all.
One trap
after another, Sophia thought, reveling briefly in bitterness. There was no
way out.
"Sophie?" Terry — Teresa, pixielike despite her broad shoulders, and the girl
Alan said
it's not like that about — appeared in the ballroom doorway.
"Look, I know it's Halloween and you look pretty much totally in costume to us,
but I thought maybe since you'd been stuck in that dress for pretty much
forever, you might want to borrow some jeans and a shirt or something and be in
costume for yourself. I could do something with your hair," she offered.
Sophia lifted her gaze slowly, unshed tears making the light around Terry
glitter until she might well have been the pixie Sophia was reminded of. It
refracted into spotlights, and the rush of voices cheering filled Sophia's ears
as it had with Alan when visions of his future came over her.
A future that Sophia saw Terry sharing with him.
A future that could be Sophia's own.
Sophia pushed to her feet very slowly, focusing on the other woman. "Terry?"
She put light curiosity in her voice, like the cat eyeing the cream. "Would you
like to learn how to read the mirror's grimoire?"
Chapter Seven
Terry laughed, startled and uncomfortable. "You want to teach me magic?"
Sophia smiled again, feeling like the milk was curdling. "I don't know very
much," she said lightly, "but it seems like a shame to let it disappear back
into the mirror."
Terry's smile went more strained. "I don't think Alan's going to let that
happen anyway, Sophia." She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked away,
shrugging. "He's in there jabbering about you like you're a muse or an angel or
something."
"Then why are you being nice and offering to lend me clothes and do my hair?"
The question was too blunt, carrying no refinement, but for an instant Sophia's
desire to know overrode her usual flair for drama. Whether Alan thought it was
or not, Sophia could see clearly that it
was "like that," at least from
Terry's side.
Teresa gave her a sharp look, then knotted her fists in her pockets. "Because
there's no point in rocking the boat. Alan's a rock star, or he's going to be.
Rock stars have groupies, not girlfriends. Getting bent out of shape over it
just makes me look like the big B."
"The big B?"
Terry sighed. "Bitch. The big bitch. You really are from a different time
period, aren't you?"
Sophia glanced down at herself, at the backless chiffon gown and the
wheat-pale permanent waves that fell over her shoulders, all precisely chosen to
make her look like the model of an era now sixty years gone. "What," she said,
more to herself than Teresa, "it shows?" The humor of the question was
self-deprecating, a wry acknowledgment that would play beautifully to the
cameras.
The script that played in her mind, the one that had told the story of her
life for six decades, knew exactly what lines she should say. They would speak
to Terry's vanity, even play into the feelings she obviously had for Alan, and
would lead to the pixie-haired woman reading the mirror's spell aloud under the
moonlight.
A camera would pick up the subtle play of emotions across her face as she,
the heroine of her own story, struggled with the choices she had to make. The
price of betraying an innocent against the cost of her own freedom. The sorrow
of sixty years spent alone with almost no contact with the world beyond the
mirror. A thousand thoughts played across her expression inside a moment, and
then Sophia drew herself up. She was the
heroine, not the villainess, and
she put a smile on. "Do you really think you have clothes that would fit me?"
* * *
Jeans. Sophia had never worn
jeans before. Barefoot, she'd
proven three inches shorter than the musician, but between Terry ruthlessly
shortening the hem and Sophie's curves balancing out Terry's height, the jeans
rode a noticeable distance below her belly button, which Terry promised was how
they should fit. She also offered a cropped T-shirt that said, in sparkling
rhinestones,
Movie Star. Sophie found herself torn between horror and
delight at wearing it.
She had to wear her own shoes. Terry had been astonished at Sophia's tiny
feet and hadn't even tried coming up with a pair, but the strappy, sparkly
forties sandals, she assured Sophia, were perfect with the outfit. They pulled
her hair into a sleek, high ponytail, leaving it otherwise unadorned. When they
made their entrance before the performance, Alan said, "Holy sweet shit," which
made Terry flash Sophie a grin that was both smug and resigned.
That had been hours earlier. There were two opening acts before the main
event, and the mansion that Sophia had once known as a Hollywood glamour home
seemed to fill that role again — vampires and ghosts, witches and warlocks and
an endless variety of other costumed party-goers flooding in the doors to drink
and dance and play. An ape wearing a name tag that said "You can call me King"
asked what she was, and Sophia shrugged, yelling, "I'm a forties movie star
wearing modern-day clothes," in return. The ape gave a thumbs-up and disappeared
into the party.
Alan appeared at her side to join her for a series of spasmodic dances as the
opening bands played, their music piped through the entire house. As they
closed, he took her hand to pull her toward the ballroom. "C'mon, you have to
watch us play!"
Sophia laughed, allowing herself to be dragged through the rooms. This wasn't
a movie she was familiar with: it was modern and quick-paced, frenetic instead
of deliberate, and to her surprise it was every bit as enjoyable as the more
stylized manner of production that she tended to view her life in.
Alan left her on the dance floor, making his way up to the stage, where the
rest of the band already waited. He had no opening comments, no method of
drawing attention to himself or the band. They merely went from silent
preparation into sudden pure music, literally stopping the crowd around Sophia
with their first notes. Then voices raised in screams and shouts of appreciation
and the entire mob surged forward, getting closer to the young gods on stage.
Sophia lost track of time and of songs, wholly caught up in dancing and the
purity of music as it pounded through the mansion. Even without much knowledge
of modern music, she could tell the band was good, maybe better than good. A
flash of brilliance, spotlights and dreams, washed over her, and she knew they
were better than good: the futures she could see told her.
Abruptly and for the first time since he'd taken the stage, Alan lifted his
hands, leaning into the microphone to speak instead of sing. "All right, y'all
listen up now. I've got a friend in town, one night only, and I want her to come
up here with us. Sophie? Sophia Robinson, you're the next contestant on the
stage of life!"
Dismay and excitement swept Sophia as she elbowed her way through the crowd,
laughing, and then yelping as she was simply lifted up and passed forward toward
the stage. The sheer tactile sensation was overwhelming and thrilling at once,
her heart hammering as she trusted strangers to not drop her to the floor. Then
she was tilted forward and Alan offered his hand, pulling her on stage. "I can't
sing!"
Alan laughed. "You don't need to," he promised as he returned to the
microphone. "This song's for Sophie," he told the crowd. "I just didn't know it
when I wrote it." He stepped back, pulling the microphone free of its stand and
raising his hands above his head to clap out a rhythm. Sophia found herself
glancing toward Terry, who gave her a brief, tight smile before striking the
opening chord.
All alone, I walk along an empty shore
Friends wave me down, but I'm looking for something more
Haunted steps pull me to the sea
And all I need is one chance to set me free
'cause we were
Ill met by moonlight
First kiss, stolen late at night
Captured hero, and you, my fairy queen
Dreams and dancers with nothing in-between
The battle's over, and no one really won
The gods are waiting until we know it's done
But I can't stop searching for the world I knew
The one that started and ended all with you
'cause we were
Ill met by moonlight
Can't give up, not without a fight
And you, Titania, you're my fairy queen
Dreams and dancers, with nothing in-between
Dreams and dancers, with nothing in-between
In Sophie's eyes, black rain fell down around him as he sang.
To be continued...
Come back on Monday, October 31 to read the next chapter.
Chapter Eight
“Ill met by moonlight, and you're my fairy queen."
Sophia sang the words under her breath, watching behind her eyelids as images
of disaster unfolded. Addictions, regrets: a lifetime of sorrows were carried in
the lyrics of the song that had been written for her, but the sorrows weren't
her own. They were for the musician who had written the song. For Alan Claussen,
whom Sophia had thought might be her leading man.
Sophia had escaped the stage where he'd sung to her, fully aware of the
irony. She, who had spent a lifetime trying to achieve the spotlight and who had
cast her lot into a mirror filled with dark magic to obtain immortality and
eternal youth, now ran from it. Instead, she ran for the mansion's roof, where
the mirror that had been her captor lay in the moonlight, keeping her free for
the few hours left in the Halloween night.
She could still hear the band in the ballroom below, Alan calling out names
over the crowd's cheers. One of those names brought with it its own wash of
premonitions, centered on Alan, just as the ones involving Sophia herself were.
But with this name, rather than black acid trickling over his future, Sophia
saw film crackling away in a burst of heat and light. Alan walked out of that
brightness, a guitar lifted in one hand as if he stood in the spotlight,
grinning as fans screamed their adoration. Half-a-step back, holding his hand
and sharing the spotlight while acknowledging him as the leader of the band,
came Terry.
Teresa, pixie-haired and broad-shouldered, unlike any of the women Sophia had
known six decades earlier. She didn't flutter or vamp to get Alan to do what she
wanted — simply stood by him regardless of the apparent bumps in the path they
walked on together.
It was the double-edged sword that being trapped sixty years out of time
carried for Sophia: the ability to sense the future. “Dreams and dancers, and
nothing in-between.” The mirror with its grimoire worked into the frame
responded not at all to the half-vocalized song, but the repetition of the lyric
sent a cold wash of darkness through her again.
"You got the words wrong."
Sophia startled, lifting her head to find Terry standing a few feet away,
studying her. "It's, ‘dreams and dancers with nothing in-between.’ What're you
doing up here? Alan wanted you to come take a bow."
"He's very sweet," Sophia murmured. Terry arched an eyebrow and sat down on
the mirror's far side, looping her arms around her knees.
"Sweet, huh? What, you decide he was too young for you? I mean, you must be
like eighty-five by now, right?"
"Only eighty-two." Sophia cast a brief smile at the mirror, reaching out to
touch its moonlit surface. "It struck me that I don't know him at all. All I see
when I look at him is my leading man." She gave the mirror another faint smile.
"The hero in my story. But he isn't."
"He'd like to be."
Sophia looked across the mirror at Terry, shaking her head. "That would be a
mistake. He already has a leading lady, and his own story to tell." Her smile
turned quick and wry. "Even if he doesn't know it yet. He will."
Terry tilted her head, a wary motion. "Okay, now why are
you being
nice to
me?"
Sophia felt her smile become fuller, a real, depth-filled expression that
would lead to lines at the corners of her mouth, and let it turn all the way
into a grin. "Because you're going to be famous, and I want you to keep playing
that song Alan wrote for me."
Terry laughed. "Of course. It's all about you. I should have…" She trailed
off, laughter reversing itself into a slow frown. “You're not staying. You
figured out how to get out of the mirror, didn't you? But you're not staying."
Surprised guilt colored Sophia's cheeks, the heat enough that she knew it was
visible even in the moonlight. She glanced away, and Terry leaned forward. "You
weren't even going to tell us, were you? That's why you're up here. You were
just going to vanish again. Poof."
"Poof," Sophia agreed quietly, still watching the skyline rather than meet
Terry's gaze. "The mirror doesn't just keep me young," she said to the horizon.
There was no drama in the delivery, none of the drawn-out tension she felt the
moment should hold. Instead it was an admission, sacred as the confessional. "I
see glimpses of the future. And I can see that I don't belong here. Not here,
not now. I —" she glanced back at Teresa, exhaling "— complicate things. For you
and Alan, and for your band." She gave Terry a fleeting smile. "I know what it
is to want the world on a silver platter. I'm not going to get in the way of you
and Alan achieving that."
Terry rolled back to sit on her tailbone, absorbing what Sophia said. "On the
one hand," she said slowly, "it sounds like you're telling me the band's going
to be a huge success, so all I want to do is dance around and yell
bonus!
On the other…" She pursed her lips, studying Sophia. "You weren't going to say
goodbye because…?"
Sophia lifted a shoulder and let it fall, a motion that the camera would read
as world-weary and resigned. "I thought Alan wouldn't understand."
"Alan wouldn't understand what?" he asked from behind her. Sophie lost her
world-weary facade and frowned at Terry, who gave her a quick, unapologetic
smile. "You disappeared on us," he went on, coming around to crouch beside
Sophia. "I thought maybe the moon had set. We don't have a lot of time left to
figure out how to get you out of there."
"It's all right," Sophia said. "I'd just like you to do one thing, really."
She lifted her chin, the brave, tear-glimmering look of a woman about to face
her worst demons. Terry snorted and Sophia, taken off-guard, broke character
with a laugh, then got to her feet, stepping up to the mirror's edge. Alan stood
with her, eyebrows drawn down in distress as he took her hands.
"Of course. Anything."
My dear, Sophia added silently; that was how the line would be
scripted.
Anything, my dear. She loosened her hands from Alan's and
touched his cheek lightly, changing her weight so she could vanish the instant
her words were spoken. It would be dramatic that way, she thought in pleasure.
Heart-wrenching. The heroine sacrificing herself so that another's true love
might conquer all. It was perfect.
"Put the mirror somewhere so I'll be able to talk to people on moonlit
nights, please," she murmured. An unspoken promise flooded Alan's face as she
stepped backward into quicksilver viscosity.
The world vanished around her.
* * *
I'm the thing you think is watching you in the mirror.
I can see you all the time. When you brush your hair, when you change your
clothes, when you climb into bed with a lover.
When moonlight falls on the mirror, I can whisper secrets from the future
into your ear.
And someday, when the time is right, I'll step through and rejoin the world
again for…
…ever.
The End