Page 7 of Malcroix Bones Academy

Most of the windows were stained glass with iron frames.

Now here, in a locked gothic tower in Ankha’s front yard, was an enormous mirror that looked like an honest-to-God antique, possibly framed in solid gold.

My aunt caught hold of my arm. Her deceptively strong fingers tightened, and began pulling me roughly towards the mirror’s glass.

I tried to slow our progress, confused and now, disturbed.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Just do as you’re told,” Ankha sniped back. “No questions. I won’t be able to answer them, anyway.”

I struggled against my aunt’s fingers a few heartbeats longer.

My eyes widened sharply when she pushed her way through the mirror’s smooth surface. Her front-marching foot, wiry arms, and long nose went first. Her second foot and leg went all the way through next, breaching the glass as if it had been a still pool of water.

I might’ve made a squeak when my own arm and leg followed, pulled by my aunt’s insistent grip. As I passed through the opening, I glanced around at the gilded frame, the coiling snakes, the perfect-looking roses and birds.

Then I was on the other side.

My aunt released my arm.

I stood, panting, in a dark space. I gazed down the length of a dimly lit, dank-smelling corridor, which very much felt underground.

I stared around at the high, stone walls. Flaming torches stood in iron brackets, one roughly every eight feet until they receded in the distance.

After a few breaths, I looked behind me at a silver-framed, full-length mirror that looked identical to the other one, in everything but color. It even stood on its own stand, its silver frame covered in the same pattern of roses, snakes, birds, butterflies, and twisting vines.

There was no logical explanation for this.

I knewexactlywhat lay on the other side of that gothic structure in Ankha’s garden.

It was another stretch of weedy lawn, scattered rose bushes, a small pond choked with lilies and frogs, and eventually the wall with my parents’ grave stone. Nothing about us beingbeneaththe garden made sense, either. I’d taken barely two steps. The height of the walls around us meant a fall would have hurt us badly, if not killed us outright.

The only explanation had to be supernatural.

Or a science so advanced, it might as well be.

I looked behind me a second time, but the silver mirror only glinted in the torchlight.

Nothing but a tall, blank wall of rough stone stood behind it.

I faced forward to watch tiny torchlights twinkle in the distance along the faintly curved wall. Some other light-source tinted the walls and floor a greenish-gold.

“Come along, come along,” my aunt tutted. “We’re late. How many times must I say it?”

My feet followed mechanically as Ankha led us down the corridor.

After we’d been walking for a number of minutes, a brighter light appeared at the end of the passage. It grew steadily larger as we approached.

Ankha continued to mutter under her breath, but I scarcely paid attention. Her words ran too close together for me to make them out, anyway. Every now and then, she’d raise her voice tourge me faster, and my legs obeyed the command but I barely heard that, either.

After the mirrors, she stopped us only once.

By then, the light ahead had grown to roughly the size of a cricket ball.

She turned on me sharply, forcing me to come to a dead stop.

“You’re not to speak when we arrive.” Ankha held up a menacing finger. “Do you understand, girl? No foolish questions about where we are, what is happening, who is this or that, where I am taking you, why did this thing happen or that thing. Keep your mouth shut.” Her lips thinned. “They’ll only use it against us.”