He leaned back against something in the mirror that she couldn’t see, folded his arms over his chest, and crossed his booted feet at the ankles. She narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute, how did you get your clothes back in there?”
“I’ve had centuries to test the glass. Though the elements comprising it are beyond my fathoming, I’ve learned to exploit it after a fashion. ’Twas designed to hold humans, not inanimate objects, and I’ve learned to summon in inert items that reside in my field of vision.”
She blinked, glancing around. Kilt—gone. Boots—gone. Even his thigh sheath and knife were gone. Apparently he’d drawn those items back in while she’d slept. Oh, she had a million questions about the nature of that artifact! But first things first: her continued survival. “So?” she prodded. “How often?”
He shrugged. “Try again now.”
Jessi drew a deep breath. She really didn’t want him out of the mirror at the moment. She wasn’t prepared to deal with him in the flesh—all that rippling, sexy, horny male flesh, at that—just yet. Still, she needed to understand the parameters of their situation. She recited the chant to release him.
Nothing happened.
He inclined his head. “I didn’t think so. I cannot answer your question precisely. I can tell you only what has occurred in the past. On occasion, when Lucan wished something of me, he afforded me a temporary freedom. Once, several centuries ago, he released me on four consecutive days. Each day I was allotted a different interval by the glass. One day I had but a few hours, another five or six, the fourth day I had the entirety of a day and a night. There is no predicting it.”
“So, you can come out every day, for at least a while,” she clarified.
“Aye.”
“Which means you probably can’t come out again until tomorrow morning?”
Another shrug. “I doona ken. You should continue trying at frequent intervals.”
“How do you intend to protect me if you can’t stay out of that glass?” she said peevishly.
“Lass, we need only evade Lucan for a number of days. Twenty more, to be exact. Scarce any time at all. I assure you, I will keep you safe and well until then.”
“ ‘Twenty days’? Why only twenty?” That didn’t sound so bad. She hadn’t known there was a time limit to how long her life was going to be screwed up, and it was a relatively short one. Surely she could get her life back on track after only twenty out-of-control days, if things really would be resolved by then. She was grateful that she’d had the foresight not to call in sick. Her odds for survival and a return to normalcy were suddenly looking considerably brighter. One whopper of a good story might take care of things. It might not even have to be half as inventive as some of those her students tried to feed her.
“Because the Compact that holds me bound to the Dark Glass requires that a tithe of purest gold be passed through the mirror every century to reaffirm the Unseelie indenture. The next tithe is due this Hallows’ Eve, on the thirty-first day of October, at midnight.”
Crimeny. Tithes, Compacts, indentures: Anytime she began thinking about resuming a normal life, she was reminded that she was currently up to her eyebrows in a fairy-tale world of spells and curses.
And the scary part was that it was all beginning to sound somewhat reasonable to her. The longer she interacted with a man who lived inside a mirror, the more inured she became to the strangeness of subsequent oddities. His existence was so inexplicable in and of itself that it seemed pointless to squabble over further inexplicabilities. Though she never would have believed it, magic existed. There was proof of it right in front of her eyes. Arguments over, case closed.
Shaking her head wonderingly, she pushed off the bed—she’d slept fully clothed but for shoes and socks—and went to stand in front of the mirror. She studied the fabulous frame with its odd symbols, stroking the cool gold of it, trailing her hand down over the silvery glass.
Inside the mirror, Cian raised his hand, too, and traced the path of her passage, making it appear as though their fingertips met. She felt only cold glass.
When the tips of her fingers passed over the black stain at the edge, she snatched them hastily away. It had felt icy, just like that strange E-mail, and it had seemed to almost . . . well, kind of . . . stick to her skin like a psychic leech as she’d pulled away, as if reluctant to release her. She made a mental note to tell him about the Myrddin-guy and his goose-bumpy E-mail. But first, more questions.
“ ’Tis because it is an Unseelie Hallow, lass,” he said softly.
“What?”