Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(91)

I looked at the ring now on my left hand … Then realized, as I faced myself, that the ring on Beneath-magic Janet was on the right hand, as though I looked at my own reflection.

Reflections …

Emmett’s magic could split people into their essential parts, each an image of the other—if not exact in the case of the dragons. He wanted a magic mirror to enhance his abilities, doubling his power, or perhaps multiplying it infinite times. A mirror reflecting a mirror showed a never-ending corridor of possibilities.

Mirrors also showed what was truly there. My mirror had shoved me into the dreamwalking to explain to me what was truth, and what I had to face.

Emmett had broken the mirror when he’d come out of it. Because it had revealed his true self? The skin sunken into the skull, the eyes points of light?

Emmett had become that being by siphoning off power from mage after mage, stealing magic until he’d exhausted his mortal body. He had to keep up a glam in order to interact with the world. No client would have wanted to come to his sleek office building to entrust their money to him if they’d seen his real guise.

He’d made sure the glam was in place when he emerged from the mirror, because even he didn’t want to face the mirror and see the truth.

Reflections, I mused, even as the dark part of my brain screamed in pain. Reflections of reality—in a magic mirror.

And suddenly, I knew how to use the mirror against him.

The knowledge came to me on a whisper—no idea if it was a product of my own mind, the mirror, Mick, my grandmother, Elena, Cassandra—someone else trying to help me. It didn’t matter. I knew what I needed to do.

Both of me turned and extended the hand that wore the ring. “Smooth,” we said together.

Lightning crackled around the hand of the Stormwalker. A ball of Beneath magic balanced in the hand of the goddess. Together we threw the magic—lightning and white fire—into the mirror.

The mirror let out a sound of nails on glass—Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The pieces of glass flowed into one another, glowing as red as the mirror had under Flora’s spell. The two Janets moved their hands, and the glass slid to the edges of the frame, polished and whole. The mirror’s scream died suddenly away into thoughtful silence.

Emmett snarled and threw a black spell our way. Beneath magic Janet laughed and danced aside. The Stormwalker broke the spell with a bolt of lightning.

“Mick!” I shouted, the two voices of me rising together. “Hold him!”

A dragon talon obligingly came down, closed around Emmett, and shoved him where I pointed—against the mirror.

He fought. Emmett drove spell after spell into Mick with the speed of a machine gun. Mick flinched and shrieked, his claw and leathery skin heating to molten red then icy white, the talon cracking and bleeding.

But Mick was made of tough stuff. He could ignore pain to focus on what he wanted with dragon intensity. Right now, he wanted Emmett against the mirror.

Cassandra was on her feet, chanting words, her fingers moving. I heard her say “Bind,” then black threads fell over Emmett like a steel net. He struggled, but the threads were strong. They bound Mick’s claw as well, but again, Mick wouldn’t care as long as he finished what he set out to do.

The net kept Emmett from breaking free of Mick, but it didn’t stop his magic. He threw a spell at Cassandra, his hand shaped into a claw, and then started to suck off her magic.

Cassandra determinedly chanted again, though her face lost color and she had to slump against Pamela. Even so, she went on with her spell as though resolved that she’d dose Emmett good before she went down.

I didn’t worry about her, because I knew in the end, she’d be all right.

The double me moved to Emmett, neither of us touching the ground. We stood to either side of him, hands with the rings reaching out to the mirror’s frame.

“Reflect,” we said. “See what is inside you.”

I’d never before seen Emmett terrified. Worried a few times, but never out and out scared shitless. I did now. His gray eyes widened, his pupils became pinpricks, and a few drops of blood slid from his nose.

The sight of those scarlet drops bolstered my confidence. When I’d first met Emmett he’d said that when he’d initially begun using great magics, he’d get a nosebleed from the pressure of it, which he’d since learned to handle.

He couldn’t handle it today. That meant my idea was working.

Beneath-magic Janet grabbed the back of his neck and slammed him against the glass. The Stormwalker eased the shard of magic mirror she always kept with her from her pocket and held it behind Emmett, angling it so that the mirror repeated back on itself.