Daisy’s first impression of the mansion snuggled between the hills, clouded as it was by vast billows of psychic mist, was that there was no way the analysts would have deposited them into the scenario like this. She consulted her body and found her legs had not just climbed down three hundred twenty-seven stairs. She consulted her memory and discovered the passage of a signifi-cant chunk of time.

  “These silver caps are trash,” she announced. “We should have retreated when we had the chance. If we had the chance.”

  “The caps work,” Lawrence said. “It’s that this Heart has learned to bypass them.”

  “When?” Daisy demanded. “How? What were we doing in there?”

  “. . . I don’t know,” Lawrence said slowly. She touched her own cap, then extended her hands before her, examining the silver gaunt-lets. “Nor do I know why it would not have killed us, if it had this knowledge.”

  “Maybe it can’t,” Daisy suggested. “Look at that mist! Could it be a pure psychic type? It might have reset because it didn’t have any victims strong enough to defeat us.”

  “I could kill you,” Lawrence said.

  That . . . was certainly true, if it came down to straight hand-to-hand combat. Less true if Daisy pushed Lawrence out a third-story window first. And Daisy would have, or would have done some-thing equally dire, if the mirror had created hallucinations that made her think Lawrence was someone or something else—such as the mirror itself. “So it didn’t want to kill us yet?” Daisy said. “Or maybe it wanted us to remember something again or to learn something differ-ently? Or maybe its control over us was strong enough to make us forget, but not strong enough to make us do what it wanted, so it’s trying again.”

  Lawrence flexed her gloved hands once and gazed down toward the mansion, her face smooth and blank and professionally unruffled. “This type of Heart tends to toy with its food.”

  Which didn’t mean, Daisy supposed, that that was necessarily what was going on here. She had to get closer, learn more. Or learn more again. “Now that you have warning, can you defend your mind from it?” she asked.

  “I can,” said Lawrence. “But it has made the house very dark. It will attempt to conceal our enemies in the shadows.”

  Daisy looked at her. The sun was at its peak, the air hot and floral. Light glared off the mist, transforming it into a sheet of blinding white. She could see the house through it only as glimpses: conical roofs and creeping vines, white shutters and red brick. A tremendous mansion, but thoroughly unlike the ones she’d met in Romance. She felt a rush of affection for how thor-oughly it repulsed her. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go meet the people who’ll try to murder us.”

  The mist enveloped them with cool prickles as they descended toward the house. Daisy’s boots tapped on the wooden stairs, and the front door opened before she could knock.

  Constance Jones turned out to be a tidy woman in gray and navy, with smooth white hair braided around her head, high cheekbones, and a stately carriage. Mist clung to her skin and infused her eyes. “Welcome, agents!” she cried. “We’ve been waiting for you!”

  Agents. Daisy began to be surprised and realized she wasn’t. Agents. Did Constance remember what had come before; was this merely the guess of a repeat offender; or was it, perhaps, the mirror’s knowledge? Not its control, not without threads . . . but who knew what Constance was seeing and hearing as she greeted Daisy within mist as flowing and silky and white as curtain sheers?

  “Naturally, I expected you to come,” Constance said. “How could you not, when I’d found a real supernatural mirror? But you’ll see for yourself. Please, come in.”

  Lawrence stepped up first, only to pause inside the entryway, peer-ing through the mist. “These are interesting engravings,” she said, tracing the imprinted wall plaster. “Dragons?”

  “Wyverns,” Constance corrected. “There are dragons in the piano room. My late husband’s ancestor must have been quite the fairy-tale aficionado—he put mythology and folklore in all his designs. I’ll point out more for you when I give you the tour.”

  One, two, three cameras: one standing in each corner, watching its small world with an uncaring lens. Frame by frame, each camera recorded and anchored reality. Each covered the others, and yet each also cast a shadow that the others could not see into. For them, the shadows were spaces that did not exist. For them, nothing existed beyond their vision. There was the room, their fellow cameras, and—presiding over them—the Lebensford Mirror. In this way, the cameras filled themselves with sounds and pictures of times gone by. They could not lie, but the images they recorded were no more real than hollow fantasies; for they recorded neither thought nor emotion but only outward forms. To under-stand the truth would require a human interpreter—and it would never occur to any human to take the opportunity before it was too late.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Bringing her guests upstairs to view the Lebensford Mirror for the first time, Constance proudly reflected that everything was going swimmingly.

  The concentration of mist, Daisy observed, increased as one approached the mirror. As for the mirror itself . . . it worried her that despite their depth (they must be nearly at the deepest layer), she couldn’t see any threads. She should be able to see them, she thought. Even pure psychic types had internal threads. They had to, to maintain their physical forms. So where were the mirror’s?

  Daisy blinked away from the mirror to Constance, Tinsley, and Oswald. The other guests were standing around, debating which moral framework was the best, and whether they should begin with a single maxim or hourly lessons. Shrouded though they were in mist, it was easy for Daisy to see that only one of the three cared about the result. Tinsley hated the mirror and would attempt to destroy it as soon as Constance couldn’t see. (An inept heroine constantly over-shadowed by her more talented peers). Oswald was talking on auto-pilot, more interested in checking out the women in turn, choosing between them. (A villain, Daisy thought, with a tragicomic fate.) Constance . . .

  Constance meant every word, for all the good it’d do her.

  One, two, three sets of human eyes attached to minds yearning for their own ideal realities, playacting their own hollow fantasies. They saw only what the mirror wished; and whatever they did, it devoured.

  Tinsley was used to dealing with tiresome old ladies set in their ways. Arguing with them accomplished nothing; they would only wave their canes at you, accuse you of grandfilial impiety, and send you to your room. So she agreed with Constance, suggested they start by teaching the mirror the Golden Rule, and promised to faithfully record any murderous impulses in her journal. They worked until Constance grew tired, as Tinsley had known she would.

  “I’ll walk you to your room,” Tinsley offered, because she knew she’d hear about it later if she didn’t.

  “I’m not so old as that,” Gran protested.

  Tinsley smiled politely at how proud the old shrew was feeling today—just as if she had anything to conceal from Tinsley, who had for years helped her with everything and knew all her foibles and decrepitnesses and pathetic secrets.

  Gran had claimed the master suite, of course: left of the back stairs, around the corner, and past the front stairs. Tinsley’s arm was aching by the time they arrived. Nevertheless, she helped Gran into her lacey nighty and then under the green silk covers. Tinsley might have left then, but she wanted to make sure Gran wouldn’t follow. She therefore picked up the book on the side table and opened it to the bookmark. The story turned out to be an old mystery about an immensely fat, orchid-loving armchair detec-tive and the handsome assistant who dashed about on his behalf.

  What garbage, Tinsley thought. It must be from her book club. She read aloud for half an hour, until Gran fell asleep. Then she quietly got up, taking the big brass key from Gran’s desk drawer. She locked all three of the suite doors leading to the hall—bedroom, bath-room, and sitting room—and dropped the key into her pocket. It gave her some comfort to consider that, if she failed to return, Gran would be trapped inside forever.

  Oswald stayed behind in the mirror room, ostensibly to study the frame and actually to study the two women there. It was problematic that they’d stuck together so far, but surely even twins separated some-times. They interested him far more than that wet rag of a video-grapher. She’d be easy, like those girls who put on low-cut shirts to flirt him into higher grades. He’d never cared about that sort of thing. These two, though. He liked that they were so self-assured. He had students like that, and he’d always thought it’d be a pleasure to knock them down. Not only a peg either, but until they cracked, screaming and begging for forgiveness they’d never get.

  Oswald caressed the mirror’s heavy gold frame, fingers running over mischievous sprites and leafy griffins. Would the mirror lend him its power? He didn’t feel any different. Perhaps, he thought, he needed to offer it some-thing first.

  In the corner of the room, the twins were talking closely, making no move to separate. Well, he could always come back for them.

  Tinsley listened hard for the soft noises of Daley and Leslie passing her room. She cracked open the smooth old wooden door and leaned against it, looking down the long runner, up the wainscotting to the plaster beyond. She slithered out, pulling the door shut behind her, and took shelter behind a phonograph. Her skin tingled and her breath rasped up her throat. One hand plunged into her pocket, feel-ing the little steel hammer that she had taken from her car, the combination seatbelt cutter and window breaker. It was a good brand, one she could trust. She had three more like it in her suitcase.

  The way was clear; she must not hesitate. Gripping the hammer strongly, Tinsley flitted along the wall and up the stairs.

  She stopped outside the mirror room. She could see it there, waiting for her. Judging her. Evil. Her hand sweated on the hammer shaft, and she knew she had to move quickly. One, two, three strides and she stood directly before the Lebensford Mirror. Only then did she lift her hand from her pocket; only as she swung the hammer did she reveal it. Only when it was too late for the mirror to react.

  Glass cracked under the first hit, shattered under the second, disinte-grated under the third. Tinsley stamped over the fallen pieces, ground them into the ugly wood of the floor until embedded slivers sparkled everywhere. She was panting, bleary-eyed with adrenaline, her mind ringing. She felt like she hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t drunk a glass of water in weeks.

  A knock on the door jolted her. Instead of a hammer, she held a shard of glass in her hand. It fit perfectly, but blood was streaming down her arm, stain-ing her white sleeve and dripping to the floor. She stood in the nursery bath-room, before the empty frame of its shattered mirror. The nursery door behind her was open, but she’d locked the hall door. Her eyes were white with mist.

  The knock came again, insistent. “Coming!” Tinsley called absently. She lowered her hand but gripped the shard of glass more tightly. “Coming, Gran, coming!” she repeated, flustered as she unlocked the hall door and pulled it open.

  The professor stood on the other side. Sweat gleamed on his bald spot, and he fidgeted like a man wearing wool in August. She could see her reflection in his moist eyes.

  “I came back for you,” he rasped. “Lend me your strength.”