The Crumpled Mirror Elizabeth Loea (best historical biographies txt) 📖

from the envelope, the neat handwriting and careful salutation that greeted me struck me as uncharacteristic of such an ominous envelope.

Dear Ms. Clementine, it read. I have a gift for you.

X

It wasn’t a very long letter, and it was made shorter by the handwriting. It had been written in an oddly spare hand—unexpected for someone writing on paper that looked as though it had been made for copying down sonnets. Maybe, I thought to myself, the writer was trying to mask some quirk of handwriting that would have given them away.

Given them away as whom, though? I didn’t know that many people—at least, not many people who would want to send me cryptic notes. It could have been Indigo, but I’d seen him disappear through to his world as I’d returned to mine and there was no way he could have gotten to my apartment before I had.

Vivi peered up at the note as I read it. On instinct, I turned it so she could see better.

The note said:

Dear Ms. Clementine,

I have a gift for you. The gift has three parts: the first, advice. The second, a spell. The third, a secret. You’ll probably like the spell more than the secret.

Probably, I thought. Secrets were silly and difficult to keep. I’d rather have a spell to do than a secret to hide.

The advice: avoid Mint. He will hurt you if he can. Use him, make yourself strong, and escape. That is the only way you will be safe.

That should have surprised me more than it did, but Mint wasn’t exactly a soothing presence. He was much taller than a human man, oddly spindly, his many voices unflinchingly eerie. I hadn’t trusted for a second.

Although...maybe this note was even less trustworthy, and listening to it would be unproductive. No matter what, though, it complicated things. I’d have to be alert.

More alert than before.

Vivi scowled next to me as she read the note over my shoulder.

This note also meant something particularly distressing: whoever had left this here knew where I lived. They knew not only my building or my mailbox, but my actual apartment. Oh, well. There was nothing to do about that except to lock my door and windows and to stay vigilant. If this was a magician—and it surely was—locks probably wouldn’t do much, but there wasn’t anywhere else I could go.

I sighed and kept reading, a headache congealing at my temples.

The spell: drawn below is a charm. Draw it on something you can sit on comfortably, and you will have a more convenient way to get around than that silly bicycle. Machinery does not suit a sorceress.

A sorceress? I supposed that was what female magicians had often been called, but I’d never imagined sorceresses as unkempt young women who pirated soap operas and bought antiperspirants from their local CVS. I don’t know where I thought sorceresses would get their soap operas and antiperspirant—maybe a special magic CVS, or something.

The secret: the journal page I’m leaving with you will be useful to you. It is the first page in a story you desperately need to know.

Be careful.

The note ended with a short goodbye:

Good luck. You’ll need it. For the record, you’re my favorite. That should count for something.

Amaranth

P.S. Do not mention my help to the others or you will stop receiving it.

Maybe you’ve been a teacher’s favorite student before, or a favorite child or grandchild. This was different. Being the favorite of someone you respect is an honor, but being the favorite of a stranger who knows where you live is absolutely horrifying.

“Amaranth,” I said out loud.

Vivi made a noise—a real noise. She hadn’t said anything in ten years. That deafening, strangled noise echoed through the stairwell, the sound of a bird sliding down a window it had just run into facefirst.

I slammed my apartment door behind me and turned on all the lights as quickly as I possibly could. Moments later, I had my back against the wall next to my bed. I propped my head between my knees. I held the note in front of me, my elbows propped on my knees, and stared at it, half expecting it to sprout wings and fly away.

Amaranth, the note had said. I’d never met anyone named Amaranth.

Clearly, Vivi was afraid of them. I just had no idea why.

It took a minute for me to process the rest of the note. Spell. Secret. Amaranth. Sorceress. Luck. Favorite. This was what I’d been looking for during the past decade. This was the world that had been looking for me.

It took everything in me to look away from the note and read the journal page that had been folded into the envelope. It was nearly inscrutable, the handwriting squashed together and practically dripping neuroses. It was clearly not Amaranth’s writing. It looked a little like my own notes, in fact, but it wasn’t my writing, either.

It read:

I’m starting this journal to keep track of everything that goes wrong. First: we were supposed to pick names today. Apparently it’s traditional for this test, but Penelope refused, so we’re all using our real ones. Rose says we shouldn’t, but I trust the others.

One of them doesn’t trust us, though. He won’t tell us his name, but he won’t make one up, either. He just said he’ll know when we’re referring to him. I don’t want to say I hope he fails, but I certainly hope he doesn’t pass with us.

The first test wasn’t much—just sparring to figure out what our natural inclinations were. I didn’t expect mine would be foresight, but it makes sense. When I was little, I always got this sense of deja vu whenever something major happened, as though I’d seen it happen already. Now, it’s getting stronger.

The only remarkable one of us at this point is the nameless kid. I didn’t expect much of him, but he held out his hand, palm-up, and the trees around the edge of the clearing burnt. Artie didn’t even bother coming near him