Aine Crabtree - The Thief

“Or better yet...”

I spin again, furious, desperate for something to hit.

“Tag,” he says, right into my ear.

I swipe at him, but he’s already running, and fast, into the woods. I let out a roar of frustration and tear off after him.

Hemlock

“No!” I screamed, hauling myself up from the hole. I hadn’t seen him. He must have slid into the room when I was focused on her. Up through the floor, maybe. In through the window, maybe. Mirrormakers can change anything in this tower. Sneaky little abomination. I should have killed him when I had the chance.

“I wonder if this has ever been used on a Tailor before,” Simon sneered, twisting the sword with a horrible squelching sound, combined with the crunch of broken glass. Juliet’s eyes went glassy as she slumped over the blade. He pulled it out, blood streaming, and she collapsed to the floor in a red pool of glinting shards. She looked up at him, her mouth gaping like a fish. He watched her life drain away, expressionless. She wanted to say something, it was clear, but her lungs were filling with blood.

“You idiot!” I hissed, moving toward her.

Simon pointed the Tailor’s Sword in my direction, and I froze. “That’s one less weapon for you to collect,” he said.

I backed away, hands up. My final chance for vengeance was dying on the floor, but I wasn’t going to lose my soul for her. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” I told Simon.

Her blood is sinking into the cracks in the stone floor, the glittering bits of glass along with it. Does he see the Tower devouring her life? Did he really hate her so much that he would be this stupid?

“Rhys!” Juliet shrieked at last. A shockwave of power burst from her, rocking us both back. A dark violet-black energy curled up from the floor around her body, ghostly tendrils of power that sunk into her skin and vanished. Blood burbled from her lips and she went still. Juliet Graham was dead. The ever-present avarice I’d regained with my body gripped me with full force.

“That was mine!” I roared.

The Tower rumbled beneath our feet. The first look of confusion crossed Simon’s face. “You need earth for an earthquake.”

Magic fizzled from the mirrors ringing the room, tiny little ghosts of static filtering through the air. Another shockwave rocked the Tower, and several of the mirrors cracked.

I turned slowly, not quite prepared for the source. Lightning crackled around the Ryan boy I’d bound. My vines were dissolving into sand in front of my eyes. He was stock still, his colorless eyes wide and frozen on Juliet’s lifeless form.

The ceiling burst. Hunks of glass skittered across the floor. Some folded into sand. Some embedded themselves against the floor and melded there. Crackles of electricity arced out from him through the room, lighting the drapes of the bed on fire.

“Get out,” he murmured.

He could have been his uncle. For a moment, I felt actual fear, and backed away. I hadn’t expected this. He was unproven, he shouldn’t have this much power...

“Who the hell are you?” Simon demanded, shifting his grip on the sword. But it wasn’t until he stepped into Rhys’s line of sight, between him and Juliet, that Rhys reacted.

“GET OUT!” he howled.

A violent wind ripped through the room, rocketing in through the window. It whipped both Simon and I against the walls but left Rhys and Juliet untouched. The glass debris in the room whirled; I held up my arms to shield myself from the razor-sharp fragments.

“Know your exit, rookie,” I said, inclining my head toward one of the standing mirrors. Simon could activate it and we could escape the grief-stricken boy. The last time I’d seen someone this berserk, he’d destroyed the entire city of San Francisco. But that had been a Wolf. Mirrormakers were something else entirely.

Simon hesitated, but Rhys was gaining focus, and his focus was on Simon and the sword still dripping his girlfriend’s blood.

“YOU,” the boy roared. Lightning crackled and glass whirled around him.

With no further hesitation, Simon pressed his hand to the mirror. The surface shimmered and he jumped through. I dove after him, uncaring of the destination.

I rolled across a dusty wood floor, with moonlight filtering through a hole in the roof overhead. Stacks of old boxes and rows of bottles were scattered around. The lumbermill? It connected to the storeroom of the old lumbermill? I looked back at the mirror I’d exited from. Static arced from the frame like grasping fingers. Eyes wide, Simon picked up the closest thing, a broken chair, and hurled it at the mirror. The crash resounded through the mill and into the forest. The broken glass twitched on the ground for a moment, as if animated, but as the static dispersed they fell still. Silence ruled again. Simon took a steadying breath, pushing his hair back from his face. So he was at least intelligent enough to fear the boy’s raw power. I wondered which of them was stronger. Time would tell, I supposed.

Simon reached for the iron sword he’d set aside, but it had vanished. He spun, turning on me, but I held up my hands innocently.

“You stole it once already,” he stated.

I hesitated. I remembered stealing it from the Tailor household, but I didn’t remember why. I shook off the confusion. “And I’d do it again,” I said, “but you don’t have to be the Thief to steal.”

“Who said I’m stealing?” said a voice from up in the rafters. “It’s more like borrowing. But permanent.”

We both looked up; an Asian boy was perched on the edge of the hole in the roof, turning the sword over in his hands. He was a student at the school - one of Umino’s minions, if I remembered right. When I thought of the school, my mind felt hazy, like large parts were blanked out.

“We had a deal, Kei!” Simon yelled up at him.

“You got what you wanted out of it,” the boy said, looking with interest at the blood coating the blade. “It doesn’t belong to you, anyway.”

“What could you possibly want with it?” Simon demanded.

“What does a scarecrow need with a brain, or a tin man with a heart?” Kei postulated. “Ciao.” He vanished with a little salute, taking the sword with him.

Simon looked at me across the room. His expression changed as he realized he was alone with me, and without the only weapon in the world that could do me permanent harm. The shards of the broken mirror rose to twirl around him in a protective barrier. “So,” he said. “You want to do this now?”

I smiled at him. “Do you even know who I am?”

“Hemlock,” Simon stated. “I’ve been researching mirrors and the Afterlands for fifteen years. Give me some credit.”

“So you’re aware you’ll lose.”

The shards whirled faster, in time with Simon’s breath speeding up. Hybridize lines as disparate as the Grimms and the Ryans and you were bound to get some awkward results. He had the power and neuroses of a Ryan and the single-mindedness of a Grimm. And the bullheadedness of both. Too complicated to keep in play.

I smirked as he backed away. No one would mourn this one. What would be easiest? Strangle him? Poison?

“She said you’d do it,” he said. “She said you’d kill me just to remove the complication.” Fear oozed from his pores.

Of course that was why Simon had taken my mirror. To find her . It could locate anyone, speak with anyone, and there was only one person he’d ever been that devoted to.

I frowned. How dare she try to anticipate my moves! She thinks she can get in my head? That child ?

“And how is Kyra? Oh wait, I’ll ask her myself,” I said, sliding my hand inside my jacket to retrieve the handmirror. “Show me Kyra Harman,” I told it.