“And the food.” Alex pushed the last bit of fortune cookie into his mouth. “I absolutely love the food. We didn’t have Chinese takeout like this when I was there last.”
I crumpled up a napkin and threw it across the table at him. He started sliding the books into his pack again until I put my hand flat on the table, pinning a single volume under my palm. “I’m keeping this one,” I said, my eyes firm and holding his.
Alex looked at the book. “You don’t need to ...”
I picked up my father’s journal and held it against my chest. “Yes, I do.”
Chapter Five
I slammed my hand against the nightstand again, trying to quell the infernal racket of the morning-show DJs cackling on my alarm clock. Instead I managed to knock the whole thing over. “Crap,” I muttered, sitting up in my bed.
It was just after six-thirty and the last time I looked at the clock—just before I fell asleep in the greying light of dawn—it was five-forty. My eyes stung and my eyelashes were clumped with bits of post-sleep goo. My cheeks felt tight from the hours of inexhaustible tears and the spine of my father’s journal was wedged into my rib cage, leaving an angry—though impressive—red indentation.
I made it to the bathroom without completely opening my eyes and yawned through a hot shower. It wasn’t until I was showered and pink and standing in front of my fogged-over bathroom mirror that I noticed it. In the snatches of clear mirror my reflection looked odd—my fire-engine red hair had a noticeably silver hue and rather than the usual wet-rat look of my post-shower curls, my hair fell in elegant long waves. I yanked off my towel and used it to scrub the steam from the mirror.
I looked at my reflection.
It looked back at me.
I ran a hand through my hair, patted my cheeks, leaned forward, and scrutinized myself.
My reflection did the same, and then it started laughing.
I jumped back, slipped on my discarded towel and steadied myself by ripping down the shower curtain. I landed in a naked vinyl heap on the bathroom floor, jaunty electric-blue shower-curtain fish swimming over my naked stomach.
“What the hell?” I screamed.
“Now, Sophie Annemarie Lawson. Watch your mouth. Hell is a heck of a place and you don’t want to mention it too much.”
I scrambled to my feet, steadying myself with both hands against the bathroom sink, then used one finger to poke at the offending mirror.
“That is so annoying. Now I know what all those poor fish feel like at the dentist’s office. Poke, poke, poke.”
I watched my grandmother’s index finger poke against the mirror glass, watched the windy ridges of her fingerprints smudge the inside of my mirror.
“Grandma?”
“Ah!” Grandma said from behind the glass. “She remembers me!”
I rubbed my head, looking behind me, trying to recall if my naked acrobatics had resulted in a head wound.
No such luck.
“Grandma, are you in the mirror?”
Grandma nodded slowly, her expression a combination of amusement and annoyance that I remembered from breaking curfew in my teen years.
I swallowed. “But you’re dead.”
“That’s my Sophie,” Grandma said, snapping her fingers. “Smart as a whip.”
“No,” I said again, my hands on hips. “You’re not here. You’re dead.”
Grandma crossed her arms in front of her chest, her lips set, her expression indignant. “And you’re naked. Really, Sophie, you amaze me. Is seeing your dead grandmother in your bathroom mirror really all that unbelievable? Really? Maybe we should ask your vampire roommate. Nina, is it? Nina ...”
Witches, I’m used to. Banshees, vampires, werewolves, trolls, hobgoblins, and other—provided that “other” was a corporeal being. My dead grandmother showing up in my bathroom mirror (and me being buck naked to receive her)—was odd. Very, very odd.
I pulled my bathrobe from the hook and yanked the belt tight around my waist. “What are you doing here?” I asked as I wrapped my hair in a towel turban. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you. Where are you?” I leaned in closer, peering around the sides of the mirror, trying to see behind her. “Are you in Heaven?”
Grandma raised an eyebrow. “No, I’m in your bathroom mirror.” She dragged another finger across the glass. “Which could use a very good cleaning, by the way. Really, Sophie, I haven’t been gone that long. I know I didn’t teach you to clean house like this,” she tsked.
“Can you come out here?” I stepped back, offering her a space.
“No. Specters—that’s what we are, specters—isn’t that just a darling way to refer to us? So much better than dead or afterlifers or life-retired. Anywho, specters can only be seen on shiny surfaces.”