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

I tried a second spell, refusing to admit defeat.

“Protect,” I said, trying a basic spell this time. Nothing happened. Sometimes, even moments filled with nothing can help us later on, but I didn’t trust the magic to work, since I didn’t feel the usual gust of wind.

I tried a different mark, drawing it more carefully this time.

“Protect her fate,” I breathed, and this time, something chimed across her fingertips, a shiver running up my back.

I sat back, feeling as though I’d just run a mile. Even though I was sitting down, my legs shook from the exertion of so much magic. Protection spells take much more magical firepower than, well, fire spells, for example.

I tried to even my breathing, but I couldn’t manage it. I trusted my magic, and I trusted Claire not to do anything reckless, but there was no way of knowing when Adrian’s prediction might come true.

“Explain,” Claire said. “Now.”

My heart pounded in my throat. Any second, I expected her to begin to turn to ash, to cascade to the ground in the musky, damp air of the motel bedroom, but she was still fine, so either the protection spell had worked or Adrian’s prediction hadn’t come true yet.

More than I’d ever wanted anything before, I longed for my spell to have worked. It would make giving up my last shot at Robin College and a life of magic worth it.

I took a long, deep breath.

“Magic is real,” I said, the three words spoken in such quick succession that they sounded like one.

She looked at me with that pitying gaze of hers and I realized that she hadn’t actually supported my obsession the way I’d thought she had...she’d just been waiting for me to wear myself out.

“Oh, honey,” she began, but I tapped her hand. It was still bound to the table.

“Need more evidence?” I asked. I’d be in big trouble for this; even though doing magic in front of people who didn’t know of its existence wasn’t technically banned, talking about magic with such people was strictly prohibited.

She tried to pull her hand from the tabletop and couldn’t manage it.

“It’s hypnosis or something,” she told me. “That’s no proof.”

I held my hand between us, palm up, and said “fire” with intention.

Flames shot four feet into the air, scorching the already cracked ceiling. The flames glowed golden in her eyes.

“Oh—” she started, but couldn’t find words to say anything else. “I...that’s...what…”

“Magic,” I repeated. “It’s magic.”

In the pause that rested between us, I couldn’t help but fear what she’d say next. My skin crawled with fear, my breath catching in my throat, and the panic in my sister’s eyes made me want to bolt.

I stopped myself when I was already halfway out of the chair.

No more running. I’d run from the ghosts at my apartment. I’d run from Vivi all my life. I’d been looking over my shoulder as long as I could remember.

No longer.

Finally, Claire reached out with tremulous fingers and gripped my shoulder.

“You were right,” she breathed. “You were right, M—” she cut herself off, but it took me a moment to realize why. There, at the fingertips she held to my shoulder, she had begun to disperse.

There was my sister, sitting across from me in the artificial light. There was my sister, beginning to turn to ash.

“What’s happening?” she asked, confusion dulling her fear.

I couldn’t keep my breaths steady. In a moment, I was out of my seat and around the table. I grabbed my sister and pressed my hand to her chest, praying to any god that might listen to save my sister or to give me the power to do it myself.

Where was my magic when I needed it?

I tried to find a miracle in my heart. It had to be somewhere, hidden deep in my bones. There had to be something…

“Hey,”  Claire said. “Hey. What’s this? What’s going on? Is this some sort of spell?”

“It’s…” I started. “It’s not me.”

“That’s not funny,” she told me. “Stop it. Put me back.”

“I...I can’t. It’s not me,” I said, trying to focus on pulling a miracle out of some residual magic I might have had.

“No, I’m serious,” she said. “Put me back. This isn’t a joke.”

“I know,” I replied, my voice close to breaking. I felt tears well up. My face warmed as they spilled down over my cheeks. “I know it’s not a joke. It’s another magician. I need to—”

I flipped through my spellbook with one hand and refused to let my sister go with the other one. An odd calm tried to grab me, but I pushed it away.

“Maybe…” I started, but she grabbed my forearm tight enough to silence me. Her other arm was already gone. Her torso had begun to crumble, too.

“Hey,” she told me. “Fix it. You can fix it, right?”

“I don’t...I don’t know.” I could barely see through my tears. Maybe a different binding spell would work? I grabbed my Sharpie and began to scrawl across her remaining arm, muttering the titles of spells as I went.

“It’s got to be one of these,” I said—I begged—as ink bloomed across my sister’s arm.

She shook me loose.

“Fix it,” she told me. Her neck was half-gone by now and her eyes had started to fade. Her breath was next to nothing. My tears flowed harder. “Later. Figure out how to fix it and then bring me back. You can do that, right?”

“I won’t have to,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Always an optimist,” she rasped, and then she was gone. I was left holding her arm, ink scrawled across it, until I had to let go for fear that the ash might take me somewhere else. The remnants of my sister floated up and onto the tabletop, where I’d bound her mere minutes before, a pile of ash much smaller than my sister had been.

I kneeled, dumfounded, until day broke.

XXVII

I carried my sister’s ashes in a Coke bottle in my pocket, which might not have