My reflection gazed at me, until something over my shoulder caught her eye. The hair at the base of my neck stood on end and I spun around to see what was behind me. Nothing was there.
I turned back to the mirror in time to see my reflection’s eyes widen and her body jerk. Blood bloomed over her heart. It spread along the fabric of her white dress, an outfit I wasn’t currently wearing. Her lips moved, but without sound I couldn’t understand what she said. She staggered, then fell.
I couldn’t stand watching any more. I left the mirror and skipped over the others, moving to the last mirror, the largest of them all. It took up almost the entirety of the wall opposite the door.
The crystal chandeliers above me dimmed lower and lower, until the room was mostly cast in shadow. My breathing sped up as I watched my unchanging reflection.
Only it was changing. The shadows seemed to flicker, playing tricks with my eyes. The darkness gathered and formed behind my reflection. I had to glance over my shoulder to make sure the events were contained within the mirror. They were.
I faced the mirror again. Behind my reflection the darkness had formed into a man.
I took a step back, not realizing that my reflection would also do so. She bumped into the man in the suit.
As soon as she did so, her movements no longer mirrored my own. She glanced up at the devil. I could see the whites of her eyes when she realized just who she’d run into. He smiled down at her, and the sight of it made my skin crawl. My reflection looked as though her fear had paralyzed her. The man in a suit ran the back of his hand along her cheek.
He glanced up and he met my gaze.
This is very, very bad.
“Good evening Gabrielle,” he said to me. Unlike the other reflections, I could hear his voice. Not good.
He let go of my reflection and she stumbled away from him. I took one step back, then another, as he stalked towards the mirror.
“Miss me?” he asked. The shadows around him quivered.
I turned and ran. An infinite number of reflections stretched out in all directions. Only for a moment did they all line up. Once the moment ended, they began to diverge. Some smiled, some screamed, some aged, some fought off invisible assailants.
“You can’t run from me, Gabrielle.” I didn’t bother with the handle of the door. I kicked it open. “Look for me on Samhain because I’m coming for you.”
***
I didn’t stop running until I made it back to the ground level of the castle. Even then, I only walked because people were now loitering in the halls around the ballroom. I glanced over my shoulder frequently. But if the devil was following me, he was doing a great job of remaining invisible.
The devil was coming for me. And Samhain was in less than a week. The thought made me feel unclean.
I mentally kicked myself. I just had to go looking for trouble, didn’t I? And just when I really had enough on my plate.
As soon as I exited the front doors, I ran across the campus, using the rain as a convenient excuse to burn off my adrenaline. My dorm appeared through the hazy rain. Now all I needed was a hot shower and a feel-good movie to make me feel safe once more.
My run slowed to a jog, but my breathing remained ragged and uneven. Only now as I closed in on my dorms, I noticed the sleek black car pulled up next to my building. I’d been so scared back in the castle that I hadn’t noticed the current of energy that had been building, but now it consumed me.
“Gabrielle, are you alright?”
Andre’s velvety voice was full of concern. Suddenly he was in front of me, his hands clasping my upper arms and his eyes roving me over.
I glanced over my shoulder, but there was no one there. Andre followed my line of sight. “What are you looking at?”
“The devil,” I said before I could stop myself.
His hands tightened on my arms and I brushed them away. “What do you mean the devil?”
We stood out in the rain, and it reminded me of the last time Andre had parked outside my dorm and waited for me on a rainy evening.
I rubbed my arms. “I mean, he’s no longer there . . . but I saw him.” I was babbling, and bless Andre’s damned soul, he didn’t look at me like I was a freak.
His mouth thinned and his dark eyes hardened.
He shrugged off his leather jacket. “Here,” he said, throwing it over my shoulders. The fact that I didn’t immediately shrug it off scared me; I was too rattled by the man in the suit and perhaps too comfortable with Andre to tell chivalry to eff off.
“Why are you here?” I asked, distracted. We hadn’t made plans to meet up tonight.
He tried leading me to the car, but I wasn’t budging until I got an explanation. I hadn’t completely lost my edge.
He ran a hand through his soaked hair. “I was going to ask you on a date.” He watched me, the raindrops glistening against his skin. I wished I looked half as good as he did wet. “I tried to get ahold of you, but you weren’t picking up.”