[King Henry]

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity;

For wise men say it is the wisest course.

—William Shakespeare,

The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth,

Act III: Scene 1

1

With her sister looking on overhead, Mara trudged along the lighted streets of the decrepit Rancaster district, ever watchful of moving shadows or any kind of moment indicative of something lurking. She took a left through one thoroughfare of tattered marquees that had seen better days and stole glances inside them for any clue to the word, 'Clue.'

Mara was far from having the sharpest of minds, but she knew just enough to know that the word 'clue' came from 'clew,' the ball of string that Ariadne gave to Theseus to help him find his way back out of the Labyrinth after defeating the Minotaur. With this in mind, she kept looking for a ball of string or a length of string on the ground or even hanging from a spool on the storefronts, but nothing she saw fit that description.

What Mara actually saw made her take out the letter from her pocket to reread the P.P.S. to herself: "'In 'Clue,' there is one noun (plural), one verb, one preposition, and one noun (singular),'" she said, then sighed to herself, breathing out another foggy plume in the chilly air. "Why does it have to be word problems?"

Mara looked up into the twinkling night, wishing that her sister was with her. If Nico was in this predicament with her, they'd both get out of here in no time. Word problems were always Nico's specialty, after all.

She whispered, "Wish you were here, Nico."

And those very words, barely whispered above Mara's breath, filtered up into Nico's wandering spirit, words that filled her with warmth and substance. So she descended closer to her sister and breathed a part of her substance into Mara's face.

At this, Mara gasped and looked around the abandoned street for the source of that warmth, wondering if it was Nico. After a time, Mara spied the spectral flame emitting from the floating candle overhead, just under an old street sign that read, Balfour Street, in peeling paint and rust.

She then looked back at the word, 'Clue,' in the P.P.S., and said, "It's a acronym. 'C' stands for 'Candles.'"

With the other letters, she immediately guessed the letter 'e' as 'exit,' the end goal of the game and (she hoped) the end of her ordeal. That left the two middle letters, 'l' and 'u,' a verb and a preposition.

She then concentrated on those two letters, tackling the verb that starts with an 'l,' and given the context of her situation, she guessed, "Lead. 'Candles lead to exit,'" and then changed the 'to' to 'unto' and said, "'Candles lead unto exit,'" but then she started second-guessing herself, saying, "'Candles lead under exit.'"

Again, she looked up at the floating candle overhead, seemingly unaffected by the chance night breeze.

She wasn't sure which prepositions to use, so for the time being, she folded up the letter and placed it in her pants pocket and kept walking, keeping her eyes out for candles and hoping for an exit somewhere.

So for the next ten minutes, she braced herself against the cold and searched through the thoroughfares of the old district, happening on candles floating in the air or hovering just feet above the ground. All the while, she only had the cold to worry about, shivering more often as her hands and feet got colder from exposure.

After a time, though, Mara stopped at a small intersection where more than one candle floated in the air. Two choices.

She cursed, then dug out the letter and opened it and read from the first paragraph, saying, "'I merely meant that you are free to choose your fate. Your fate is in your hands, and in the Labyrinth before you, your fate lies somewhere in those twists and turns,'" then yelled, "Seriously, you're gonna make me choose?"

Then the speakers turned on with a hiss of static, and Lord Rancaster said, chuckling, "Yes, darling, I've granted you that much. It wouldn't be fair of me to restrict your God-given privilege to choose for yourself now, would it?"

"Fuck you!" Mara yelled, breathing out big foggy plumes. "What if every choice there is leads to a dead end or a trap?"

"I wouldn't be a good sport, if it were that way."

"I don't believe you!"

"Ah, come, come, darling," Lord Rancaster said. "I'm not—"

"You killed my family," she yelled. "Why the fuck should I believe anything you say!"

For a time, there was only static over the outdoor speakers. Then he said, "I'll admit that I have my eccentricities, but I at least have a modicum of humanity left in me—just enough to give you a sporting chance at life after the miracle you pulled off on the stage. Because of that, you've more than earned the admiration of the audience, as well as mine."

At the mention of the audience, Mara looked all around the place for any sign of hidden cameras, then said, "Can you see me? Are there hidden cameras?"

"Perfectly well, and yes. They're all around you."

So Mara kept looking for one camera, and spotted one hidden behind old boxes inside a decrepit storefront, and yelled so that he could hear, "If you can see me, then this is what I think of you," and she flipped off the camera with both hands. "There! What do you think of me now, huh?"

At this, only static sounded over the speakers for several moments, accompanied by several boos from the audience. Then he said, "I'm a patient man, but I have my limits. If you keep defying me this way, if you insist on being a bitch, then I'll treat you like a bitch!"

After that, a grating sound erupted throughout the Rancaster district, shaking the ground beneath Mara's feet, as though several enormous doors slid open on rusty tracks. Then howls filled the moonless night, filling it with dread.

A stab of horror shuddered through Mara's heart, and she took off down the left thoroughfare along a decrepit alleyway between two old restaurants, straying from the candlelit path and into an old square where she saw a pair of enormous wolves stalking the rooftops of the stores against a glowing backdrop of neon signs and twinkling street lights.

More underground doors slid open, grating and screeching on rusted slides, and more howls resounded through the night.

And on seeing those wolves, she attempted to halt and change direction, but she tripped over her feet and skidded her hands and knees on the ground, crying out in pain.

The wolves took notice and howled, attracting more howls from close by and far away. They leapt from the storefronts and into the square, stalking closer and closer, glaring through the darkness with spectral glowing eyes, sniffing the air and growling at their prey.

Mara picked herself up, feeling her knees aching from the effort, and ran as fast as she could while cursing in her mind (Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUUUUUCK!) like an escaped convict on the run from pursuing bloodhounds.

And before she knew it, two of the wolves pursued her, ready to pounce, when a darkness more than night flooded through the square and scared off the wolves, now mewling and squealing their way back along the nearby storefronts.

And in that void of no hope and no light and no life, there appeared a hazy figure manifesting in the center of that void, forming into wisps of fog around a pulsing but invisible core, a beating heart. And around that heart, beating like tempestuous waves on a rocky shore, something inside that hideous void imploded and scattered the darkness in stiff crosswinds, toppling Mara to the ground. Only to reveal that man in the white suit and black gloves, the man called Lord Aaron Rancaster, 6th Baronet Rancaster, the great and the terrible in all of his glory, staring over a frightened Mara Cairns.

Mara managed but a weak struggle to her feet when Lord Rancaster lunged forward and stiff-armed her in the stomach, pinning her to the ground with a gut punch, knocking the wind out of her.

And with his palm pressed up against her stomach, he clawed his fingers and dug down through her shirt and into her skin, and she cried in an agony of tears when he drew blood through her shirt, flailing her arms and legs for but a short while. Psychic waves kept pressing down on her, preventing her from getting up, as she watched him working his magic in horror, straining against the pressure waves digging into her stomach like knives, endlessly, relentlessly. A seal of black roses glowed on the ground, circumscribing Mara's body under his spell, pressure waves tracing a five-pointed star over her stomach, searing into her flesh. And Nico's blood came pooling up through the ground beneath Mara's body, trailing up over her stomach through her shirt and absorbing into her like a festering cancer.

Spasms and convulsions broke out into fits all over Mara's body, and she threw up bile and blood through gritted teeth, and she pissed in her panties, a spreading pool of it leaking onto the ground beneath her.

And all the while, a slasher's smile stretched across his face, almost from ear to ear, grinning and leering like a demon in heat. He was anticipating the moment of complete penetration and possession when he would break into her mind and become her master and she would become his slave.

Wincing and cringing and straining against the pain, Mara writhed and twisted but to no avail. The pressure was too strong, the pain too great, her nerves frying all over her body. So she squinted her eyes shut from the man's grinning face, but she found herself looking up at his transforming face.

And his face was the face of the dead come to life, now grinning and leering and licking his chops. He hovered over her ashen face, relishing her wide-eyed expression of fear, and savoring the sour stench of bile and blood, before clamping his mouth onto hers and consummating his spell.

Her arms and legs flailed anew, and she struggled to turn her head away, to break the lip-locked consummation of his spell. Then something warm and slimy snaked down her gullet and into her stomach, making her gag and choke and convulse, then paralyzing her movements and quelling her struggles. She was now hypnotized, not blinking or screaming, not even as tears streamed down her face and onto the ground. She was staring into those hideous glowing eyes, feeling his revolting warmth spreading throughout her body, and she screamed inside her mind, till nothing was left in her but a shell of herself, till her heart gave out and her mind split wider and wider apart and her sense of identity divided in half and her soul collapsed into a void. And in that void, Nico's spirit took root and grew, filling the cracks and taking hold of one of her sister's identities, reanimating her body with a new heart beating a different tune than Mara's.

Lord Rancaster recoiled from her body, breaking his seal before completion, but still pinning her to the ground with his hand. Something of fear flashed across his eyes, and he said, "What's this? Who are you?"

Nico began to struggle before his eyes, then glared at his hand pressing down on her stomach.

Then a psychic blast sliced through his hand, and his screams filled the night and shook the grounds of the abandoned district, and he staggered off of her on shaky legs.

He was holding the bloody stump of his wrist with his other hand, cringing and raging against the pain, while the severed hand still gripped at the girl's stomach. Then the hand started moving and crawled like a spider, crawling from her stomach and onto the ground towards him. The man picked it up and stuck it onto the stump of his wrist. Bones re-calcified, veins and muscle fibers and tendons and sinews reconnected, and skin reformed over resurrecting tissue, while the man gritted his teeth and scrunched up his face in agony, till he fully healed.

While Nico levitated off the ground and back onto her feet before him. She stretched out her hand in an invisible hold, and a kodachi manifested in her grip, then she spread her feet in a fighting stance, presenting her body in profile to the man.

And for the first time in a long time, Lord Rancaster stared in amazement, saying with a smile on his face, "I never saw this coming, I admit it. Give them a good show, I said, and you're giving them the spectacle of the century!"

"Go to hell!" Nico said.

"I've already been there," he said, stretching his hand before himself and manifesting his cane, grasping the handle and pulling out a long slender blade. "You should go there for a visit. It'll toughen you up."

At the sight of his sword, and his fighting stance, mirroring hers like a doppelgänger, Nico began having second thoughts. Her repertoire of combat consisted of pillow fighting and bed wrestling with Mara, not duking it out with some megalomaniac with a cane-sword and a penchant for French-kissing girls like an exorcism from hell. And on swordsmanship, her knowledge amounted to watching internet videos of kendo with katanas and kodachis out of boredom or half-hearted interest, because Mara wanted to watch them with her. Neither prepared her for anything like this.

"Are you getting cold feet, darling?"

And indeed, she was. Her feet were blistered and aching on the cold brick grounds of the square, and he was mocking her. Death by sword, death by cold, death by pun. She shook off these thoughts and ran for the street beyond the square and ran into another barrier, knocking herself onto her butt.

Her kodachi fumbled from her hand, and blood leaked from her nose, but she got up and reached her hand out and touched the cold barrier of glass.

"There's no way out, darling," he said, keeping his position near the center of the square. "I'll admit that this isn't your fight. Your sister started it, but you'll have to end it."

At his words, another stab of horror pulsed through her heart, so she cursed and said under her breath, "He knows!"

"If you're not up to fighting, you can end it with honor," he continued, lowering his sword but not sheathing it. "What do they call it? Seppuku? But I much prefer hara-kiri. Just pick up that blade and run it through your stomach like a good little girl, and I promise I'll let your parents know you died with honor."

So she picked up the kodachi, thinking the unthinkable, death by her own hands. She lacked the strength of will and courage of heart that Mara had. She had done it before under the psychic duress on the stage, and she was feeling it now, the unseen force guiding her hands and about to point the blade at her stomach and thrust it home, but ere she did, Mara flashed across her mind, and something within filled her body with warmth and new strength, the strength to endure, the strength to move on.

For a moment, she wrestled with his spell and broke it, then rose to her feet, vowing to protect Mara's life. If Mara was the sword that slew Nico's monsters, then Nico was the shield protecting her from harm. When Mara attacked, she would defend, and when Nico attacked, Mara would defend. They would act as one, as two sides of the same coin, two expressions of the same will, two shades of the same soul.

Nico faced her opponent with glaring eyes and stood her ground at the entrance of the square, and waves of psychic energy flooded the space.

When Rancaster moved, she kept her distance. When he pursued her, she ran along the storefronts, keeping to the sides of the square, keeping her distance. But when he charged her and lunged across the square in a blur, she couldn't keep track.

She leaped and rolled, cursing in her mind (Fuck . . . Fuck! FUUUUUCK!) when his sword thrust sent shock waves against a storefront, shattering glass and splintering wood and kicking up huge clouds of dust. She picked herself up and ran to the center of the square, breathing hard and on aching feet, feeling her heart thundering in her chest, waiting for the dust to settle.

She waited and waited.

And a blur of the man rushed out of the cloud and up to her face, wielding his cane-sword, and feinted left with a slash that sent a shock wave hurtling at her, and feinted right with a thrust that sent another shock wave rippling towards her. But she dodged and she rolled and she wheeled to her feet as storefronts shattered behind her to her left, then twisted herself into another roll, just clearing the thrust as more storefronts shattered behind her to her right, and wheeled to her feet and ran back to the side of the square away from the destruction.

She was now winded and wobbly on her feet, feeling cramps in her legs, her thundering heart on the verge of an attack, and now breathing like she had just run a marathon. "This is insane! I can't keep this up for long!"

"Is it getting too much for you?" Rancaster said, sheathing his sword and making it disappear in his hand. "Looks like you're about ready to drop."

"Fuck you!"

"Ah, that's the fighting spirit!" So he raised his hand in the air and snapped his fingers, and the table plopped onto the ground, and two semiautomatic pistols plopped onto the table. Then he said, "Come out, bambina!"

And another girl Nico had never seen walked out of thin air and stepped up to the table. She had bobbed dark hair and teal eyes, and she wore a Shad-Row Academy uniform under an oversized hand-me-down jacket draped over her shoulders. It was chilly outside, but she had a blank expression on her face, not minding the chill or the guns on the table. And when she picked up a gun, a new wave of fear flooded through Nico.

"Why are you doing this?" Nico yelled at her, tensing when she heard her pull back the slide. "Who are you?"

"Her name's none of your concern, darling," he said. "Just make sure you don't die too quickly. She needs to work on her target practice," then added, "Have at it, bambina! She's all yours!"

"Thank you, Father." The 'bambina' aimed and fired, and Nico moved in time, the bullet grazing past her face and shattering a storefront window behind her.

"No head shots, bambina; I want her alive. Go for one of her limbs, instead," he said.

"Of course, Father," she said, pulling back the slide and chambering another round, then taking aim at Nico's limbs.

He then said to Nico, "Each gun holds eleven rounds each, one in the barrel and ten in the magazine. Twenty-two rounds in all, minus the one she just fired. If you survive this, darling, you've earned your reprieve, and I'll send you out of here myself. How does that sound?"

"You're fucking crazy!"

"I'd save my breath if I were you," he said, then smiled sadistically from ear to ear. "Happy dodging, darling."

So Nico bolted left along the storefronts as bullets scorched marks on the ground she had tread, because the 'bambina' was aiming for her legs. She then skipped and rolled, barely avoiding the shots whizzing past her body, then sprang to her feet and sprinted the other way along storefronts with broken windows, crunching over glass strewn on the grounds, seeking shelter from the onslaught, but her luck ran out. When she leaped through a shattered storefront window and rolled hard into the linoleum floor strewn over with glass, she bloodied her hands and skinned her knees and cut the back of one of her shoulders. Bullets shattered into fragments on the floor, jumping like shrapnel and hitting her in the stomach. She was struggling to crawl, holding onto her stomach and wincing from the pain, now bleeding out onto the floor and leaving a path of it behind her.

The onslaught had stopped just in time for Nico to crawl behind the shelves and pull herself up into a sitting position, now feeling cramps stabbing at her stomach. She had lost her kodachi under a storm of bullets, and all she had now were bloody hands and knees and shoulder and stomach. Her pajamas were scraped and ripped and bloodied, and her shirt was now a dark warm crimson over her stomach.

Now her vision started blurring in and out of focus, and her diaphragm ached every time she breathed. How many times she had been shot, she had no idea. She was dying; that's all she knew.

No. Mara was dying; Nico was already dead. Nico had failed her sister, failed to protect her.

Then she heard two pairs of footsteps cracking along the glass shards, and she waited for the inevitable. They were talking about something, but she didn't catch the words, for their voices started merging into one continuous stream of auditory static.

At this point, she just wanted the pain to end, and be able to meet with Mara in the after life, if there was such a place for wretches like them.

When the glass-crunching stopped, she looked up at Rancaster and the 'bambina' staring down at her. Their faces kept blurring in and out, and Nico began getting dizzy.

At that moment, her last conscious words were these: "Why are you doing this?"

Then she blacked out into the sleep of the dead.

2

Several turns later through the hallways, Madison knew she was lost. Every hallway she passed seemed the same, just row after row of mirrors and doors in perfect maddening symmetry, just to thwart the intentions of one bratty sister.

She cursed, then sighed, then said, "I'm gonna have to talk to Kathy about this place."

She continued down yet another hallway, wishing she had brought a compass with her, but then she cursed again. This place was a part of the Phantom Realms, after all, and real-world compasses and maps need not apply. North could be south, and up could be down, and left could be right, and everything she saw in this very place may as well be up the constipated woozle hole of Kathy's imagination.

She kept going right till she reached a side hallway that she hoped led to the inclined passageway towards the grand staircase, looking for any gradation (no matter how slight) in the wear of the carpet. Then the myth of the Minotaur flashed through her mind, and she cursed yet again for forgetting to bring a marker to write directions on the wall; at this point, she was willing to endure one of Katherine's tirades if vandalizing one of her walls meant getting out of this place. Then her smartphone entered her mind, and she dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, but found them empty except for her wallet, and cursed because she had probably put her phone in the pocket of her jacket, then cursed because Katherine made her remove her jacket before entering the door. Then her father's big ring of keys flashed through her mind, and hope fluttered through her heart when she could use one of the keys to get out of here, but she cursed over Katherine taking them with her. Coincidences kept dogging her through the awful chain of mishaps passing through her mind, and all of it had started with that damn phone call from Katherine over what Celia did.

It was always 'Celia did this,' or 'Celia did that,' and Madison had to share the burden with Katherine over crap outside of her control. Thus, she had stood up another date she had promised to go out with in the park. Now it was this monstrosity of a pickle, yet another turn of a vicious cycle. For all she knew, Celia would be going out with her date, and Katherine would be hounding her over getting lost in her dream realm again.

She sighed, then said to air, looking up at the ceiling, "What else do you have up your sleeve, huh? I swear, I was born in the wrong fucking family!"

And so she trudged onwards through the hallways with no end in sight, simmering in today's miseries till they became cliches, when another thought flashed through her mind. A heinous act fluttered on the edge of action, on the edge of a thoughtful possibility, and she stood before one of the myriad mirrors and looked at her reflection. A mischievous smile curled up her face at the thought, and she placed her hand on the mirror's surface.

It was so simple that she mentally kicked herself for not seeing it sooner. She could just break one mirror, and Katherine would know where to get her, and Madison could tell her about the bloodstained carpet in the hallway.

Then she cursed again.

If she had just kept her cool and stayed where she was and broke the damn mirror where the blood stain was, she would've already warned her sisters, and they would already be out of here, and Madison would be in her room plotting revenge on Celia right now.

But she thought about it, first. Breaking mirrors caused seven years of bad luck, but given the state of her misery now, she guessed that she had already endured seven years of it in the seven wretched hours of today from writing up yet another last-minute paper for class to waiting in the park for two hours for a truant date to the blasted phone call from Katherine and Celia's subsequent trolling.

She then checked her watch and was disappointed. It had only been six hours since her professor assigned her that paper topic before class ended at 11:15 a.m., and now it was barely 5:10 p.m.

"One more hour of this hell," she said to herself, "and I'll have every damn reason to break these mirrors, Kathy be damned!"

But then she spotted one ahead of her and gasped.

She darted towards it in disbelief. The mirror was broken into a spider web of cracks, and on closer inspection, she found blood seeping through the center of it.

She raised her hand to it and felt the same traces of that man reverberating through her head. But this time, another person's presence now accompanied him.

"What's going on here?"

She looked at the cracks in the center caked over with blood, then ran the fingers of her other hand to the larger shards near the edges of the mirror. And in the reflection of one of the shards, she saw a girl with bobbed hair at the end of the hallway.

Madison turned and saw nobody there.

3

Nico's first conscious thoughts were a continuation of what she had shared with her sister many times, till it changed into something she wanted to forget but couldn’t. In that dream, she was hugging and kissing Mara and fondling her breasts, making love to her sister the way she had always done, till Mara’s face morphed into that of the 'bambina' girl’s, yet something about her eyes seemed different. Unlike the ‘bambina’ girl with the blank face and eyes, this 'bambina' girl had roving predatory eyes like those of a she-wolf. And what’s more, this ‘bambina’ girl was much rougher than Mara, grabbing her hands and holding her down and planting suffocating kisses on her mouth and going down her body with kisses and pinches, till she reached her pubic hairs and began to . . .

Through it all, even as her mind blanked out at that moment, Nico's worst impression (beyond doing it with another girl) was that she was enjoying it.

4

The ‘bambina’ bore witness to yet another atrocity that Rancaster was now committing over this hollowed-out vessel of a girl, this pitiful specimen of humanity, this girl she knew nothing about save for what had been said about her. Rancaster was on top of her again, stiff-arming her onto the ground with a five-pointed star tracing itself over her stomach and another seal of black roses inscribing Mara’s body on the grounds of the square. He then bent over Mara’s face and repeated the spell, consummating it once again through a lip-locked enchantment of a wayward Prince over a Sleeping Beauty.

The ‘bambina’ squirmed at the sight and looked away, or attempted to look away, yet something inside her kept her gaze on the atrocity. Something had been eating away at her since she had watched Nico’s death on Rancaster’s stage, something inside her that was yearning to get out, something that was keeping her entranced at the atrocity before her.

Whatever was budding inside her was now in the process of keeping her entranced upon the violation of another girl, though her rational faculties were screaming at her to look away. She wanted to, by God, she wanted to avert her eyes, but she couldn’t. For the life of her, she couldn’t!

So she did the next best thing: she closed her eyes.

And for a few moments, the action worked, and her nerves calmed down a bit, and her breathing smoothed out into even exhalations of relief, till a mirror appeared before her in the darkness of her mind.

She peered at that reflection of herself, till the reflection smiled and said, “Hello, girl-character.”

“Who are you?” the ‘bambina’ said.

“I’m you,” she said, “but only when you’re not looking.”

The ‘bambina’ opened her eyes and found herself aiming her gun at Rancaster’s back as he had finished his spell over Mara, gripping her gun in a two-handed grip. Yet just as she put her finger on the trigger, a psychic hold kept her from moving.

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, bambina,” Rancaster said, looking back over his shoulder at her. “And you can’t shoot me with an empty gun now, can you?”

The ‘bambina’ cried.

5

When Nico woke up, she woke up screaming at the sight of the same Rancaster hovering over her head after completing his blood seal over Mara's body, taking his hand off of her stomach. Her lips were now clammy and cold with his saliva evaporating in the nighttime chill. Her mouth felt violated after the consummation of the God-awful spell, and her throat felt sore, and her breathing was labored, and her voice came out coughing and hoarse. She wanted to throw up, but felt as though the contents of her stomach had been squeezed dry, now only aching and growling. How long since she had eaten, she could only guess. She may as well have been starving for a week.

She was still breathing, but she wanted to die after the horror of witnessing Mara suffer and her parents die, after getting shot at and bleeding out onto the floor, and after witnessing and experiencing that bastard's elongating tongue snaking down Mara's gullet not once, but twice. At all these collective traumas, Nico broke down and cried where she lay in the center of the square, turning onto her side and cupping her face in her hands.

She cried for a time, in which nothing else mattered but the present moment. Her mind was still processing what had been done to her, still assimilating it into the depths of her subconscious, where it surged and tossed and frothed like a storm in the middle of an ocean, till (little by little) it began to settle.

When Nico calmed herself down, still lying on her side, she avoided looking at Rancaster's face and only looked up at the girl who had shot her and focused on her eyes.

And even this 'bambina' girl, looking down at her with that expressionless face, seemed to lighten up with something resembling pity or maybe even mercy with the hint of tears that had been wiped away. This girl turned away and walked towards the table that held both guns, one empty of bullets and the other one with its magazine still full.

The girl placed her hand over the unused gun and said to Rancaster, "May I, Father?”

The man looked down at the sniffling specimen of humanity and nodded his head. He had successfully imprinted his spell over Mara, his spell tingling over her astral form, but Nico still managed to block him from completely taking over Mara’s mind. As long as Nico held out, however long that would be, there was nothing that he could do to make Nico’s beloved Mara his.

“Yes, you may,” he said.

So the 'bambina' picked up the gun with one round already in the barrel and aimed it at Nico's head, perhaps as a show of mercy to a beaten and violated girl.

The ‘bambina’ looked down at Nico and said, “I’m sorry,” and fired a round through her head.

Though the shot made no mark on Mara’s forehead, it severed Mara’s connection with Nico, sending Mara deeper into slow-wave sleep and pushing Nico into a free fall through Mara's subconscious mind.

6

The 'bambina' relinquished her gun in Rancaster's waiting hand, who put it back on the table.

Then he walked over to Mara's still form, kneeled on one knee, and again placed his hand over Mara's stomach for another attempt, crossing into Nico's psychic barrier, but the psychic pressure waves still resisted his entry. He kept pressing and digging with all his will, sinking deeper and deeper through the barrier shielding Mara's mind, but it proved too strong for him, even now with Nico dispelled from Mara’s astral form.

Despite his efforts, another psychic blast blew Rancaster off, forcing him back a few feet amid a tsunami of energy flowing through the air and spilling over the grounds of the square. Then the ground beneath Mara's body glowed in a seal of red roses circumscribing her in its wake, and an enormous red rose opened and pillowed her body in its luxurious petals, then closed over her and sank through the ground and into the underground below the square.

“Damn that Nico!” Rancaster said.

The 'bambina' winced at his use of foul language and said, "Did I do anything wrong?"

"No," he said, walking over to her and ruffling her hair with his hand. “I know tonight’s been difficult for you, bambina, and for that, I’m sorry. But for what it’s worth, you made me proud today. Remember that.”

The 'bambina' tried to manage a smile, yet failing that, she turned and walked away from him, leaving the square.

“Where are you going, darling?” he said.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

7

All the while, Nico (still clinging to Mara's astral form) fell through the tunnel of forgotten dreams and landed in the garden area of the sukiya-zukuri mansion, wherein Colbie and Celia were playing with Kendra, and she rocked the grounds and their mansion, relinquishing her hold onto her sister on impact. She now hovered above the scene, looking in from a bird's-eye-view at three girls sprawled over each other.

Shaken voices came out of the mansion, followed by Kendra checking into the garden where Nico left Mara's form in a big crater in the garden.

For the next several moments, Nico watched the proceedings of these three girls trying to help her sister through the turmoil, and their actions rekindled her hopes and strengthened her resolve.

So when the whole house shook with Mara's scream, pulsing through the space with the anguish of her voice, with the fury in her eyes, with the hatred in her soul, with the beating of her heart that was slowly breaking . . .

And shattering . . .

And dying . . .

And dissipating into nothing—

In that solemn void, Nico's voice rang out across the Astral Plane . . .

8

For a moment, Katherine and Celia stared at Nico in shock. Throughout the story, Celia's hold on Nico's hand had tightened into a sweaty grip across the girl's knuckles, and only at the end did she realize it and let go.

"I'm sorry," Celia said. "Did I hurt you?"

"No," Nico said under her breath.

Her gaze was fixed on the intricate design of the parquet flooring before Katherine's feet next to the solon sofa, but her mind's eye still dwelled over the contents of her story. Her face was a mask of repressed emotions, with tracks of tears still visible under watery eyes.

Katherine got up from the sofa, placed her hands on Nico's shoulders, and crouched down at eye-level with Nico, breaking her introspective gaze. She said, "Are you okay?"

"No," Nico said, then stood up from her chair and extended her arms over her head, stretching her back and shoulders after sitting the whole time. She took a few deep breaths, and she seemed a little better for it. She looked at the two Hearn sisters, new tears welling in her eyes and trailing down her cheeks, and said, "I feel like hell."

And at her looks and at her words, both sisters got up and hugged Nico, wrapping their arms around her in sisterly commiseration.

"I didn't mean for you to relive that," Katherine said, and sighed. "If I'd have known it was like that, I wouldn't have pressed you to go further." Then she sucked in breath, feeling something horrible lurching in the pit of her stomach, unclasping her arms from Nico and looking anxiously into nothing.

"What's wrong?" Celia said, but her sister didn't reply. "Kathy, what's going on?"

"I can't track Maddy's location."

"WHAT! I thought you said you had mirrors all over this place!"

"I do," Katherine said, summoning a large mirror in front of her and peering into the reflection for Madison's location, "but I can't sense Maddy anywhere! Shit," she cursed. "Someone's tapped into the mirrors!"

Celia and Nico traded fearful looks.

Celia grabbed onto Nico's hand. "Do you think it's Rancaster?"

"It has to be."

"Then I'll get her," Celia said.

"No, you won't!" Katherine said.

"But Maddy's—"

"No mean no, Celia. I can't have you teleport, willy-nilly, where I can't find you—especially with that Rancaster bastard out there!"

"But I can use my blood seal and—"

"I'm not letting you, damn it!" Katherine yelled, grabbing Celia’s hand in an iron grip. "You used it already today; if you use it again, you might die!"

"What do you expect me to do then?" Celia said. "Let Maddy die?"

"No, just . . . God, let me think!"

"Guys!" Nico said, and both sisters looked back at her. "I can help you out, okay?"

"How?" Katherine said. "I can't locate her through the mirrors."

"Just let me handle it," Nico said.

"Are you sure?" Celia said.

Nico saw the concern on Celia's face, so she leaned closer and kissed her lips and then her eyes, then took one of Celia's hands and pressed it on the center of her chest, shocking Katherine into dropping her jaw. At this, a knowing smile pursed Nico's lips as she began to float from the ground and fade away into nothing. "My eyes are now your eyes. When I locate her, you'll know." And she disappeared through the ceiling, but her voice resounded through the library as clear as day:

Don't worry. You'll see her when I find her.

9

Madison was dumbfounded, turning back to the broken mirror only to find it in pristine condition. Immediately, she took a double take but saw nobody behind her like before, and turned back to the mirror. No cracks anywhere on the reflection, no dried blood seeping through the cracks, not even fingerprint smudges after she had run her fingers across one of the larger shards.

She looked at her other hand and still saw blood on her fingers, so she raised her fingertips to the surface of the mirror and was about to touch it, but stopped short. Something in the back of her mind raised the hairs on her neck.

She backed away from the mirror and gulped, and her red hair began to float and flutter from her shoulders.

She turned one way, then the other.

The carpet in the hallway to the left showed no sign of foot traffic, but the carpet in the hallway to the right showed only a minuscule amount of wear, as though someone (like Katherine) had walked that way often enough to warrant some interest.

Then Katherine's naughty room flashed through Madison's mind, and she turned to go that direction where the naughty toys and dvd's were secreted away, when she looked back again at the other end of the hallway.

The girl with bobbed hair was standing there.

Madison drew in breath and said, "Who are you? How did you—" But the girl turned and walked into the left side of the hallway ("Hey, get back here!"). So she ran after her, rounding the corner and expecting to see that strange girl just ahead—

And halted in her tracks.

The strange girl was there, all right, but with her was that man in the white suit.

Madison folded her hands into fists, glaring at the man, and said, "What are you doing here?"

"I tried to find the proper entrance, believe me," Rancaster said, "but it seems there's no front door."

"Get out of here—now!"

"And void my invitation?" he said, and all at once, the reflections in the hallway mirrors blackened into inky pools. "That wouldn't be very punctual of me now, would it? Bambina," he said to the strange girl, "take care of this bitch for me."

Quick as a flash, the 'bambina' manifested two semiautomatic pistols in both hands and aimed and—

Madison cursed, bolting out of the path of bullets, rounding the corner and sprinting back down the hallway along rows of inky mirrors and locked doors, seeking the next turn at an intersecting hallway, wondering why Katherine wasn't here yet . . . And praying that her sisters would come and aid her.

Then Madison halted at the three-way intersection of hallways and crouched down, placing her palm flat on the carpet, sending out dozens of seals along the hallway before her like land mines over the carpeting and booby traps on the walls and mirrors.

Soon after, the 'bambina' bolted around the corner at the other end of the hall ("Careful now,” Rancaster said. “She's a tricky one.") but stopped short of crossing into Madison's traps, so she raised her guns at the redhead before her.

While Madson cursed when she realized she had underestimated the range between herself and the 'bambina,' putting herself at a disadvantage, saying, "Kathy, Celia, where the hell are you?"

Shots fired, and bullets whizzed towards Madison at mach two, cutting through the air before she could hear the gun blasts, just moments from carving through her flesh, when a circle of roses appeared below Madison's feet, and Celia appeared a nanosecond later and blinked her sister out of sight—

10

And into the library one floor below, both girls shaken and breathing hard in front of an anxious Nico and Katherine.

"Christ," Madison breathed. "Why'd you have to cut it so damn close? Any closer, and I'd be a goner!"

"At least you're here, Maddy," Katherine said.

"Yeah, I'm here," she said, "but how come it took you so long?"

"I wasn't able to locate you through my mirrors."

"We had to rely on Nico to find you," Celia added.

At this, Madison turned and faced Nico in shock, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders. "You? You found me?"

"It took longer than I thought," Nico said. "I had to look through most of the hallways, but I don't think they found me out. At least, I hope not."

Silence followed Nico's words, as each girl deliberated on the next action to take, especially Katherine. She separated herself from the girls and stood apart, rolling the pros and cons of her next actions through her head, her face stern and her eyes steely and her breathing calm and controlled. Yet something within her swarmed and raged like a sea in a tempest, flooding the library with an awful chill, shuddering the space from the ceiling to the floor and shaking the furniture and the books on the shelves, and giving her companions goosebumps.

At this, Madison walked up to her on tenuous feet and said, "What are you thinking?"

Katherine made up her mind and said, "Celia, take Nico and Mara out of here. Maddy and I will handle it."

"But you just said—"

"This is my dream world," she said. "He can control my mirrors, but he doesn't control me. I'll make sure he knows who he's messing with. Nobody fucks with my family and gets away with it!"

Both sisters flinched at her use of f-bombs.

Celia complied and took Nico's hand, summoning a seal beneath her feet and saying, "I hope you know what you're doing, Kathy. Be careful," and blinked Nico and herself out of sight—

11

And into Katherine's boudoir, where she summoned another seal below their feet encompassing herself, Nico and Mara on the bed, and blinked out of sight again.

But the spell couldn't complete its circuit and dropped them back inside the boudoir. Celia's face now fluttered with dread, as she released another spell encompassing all three girls and blinking them out of sight, only to have them reappear back in the boudoir. That's when Celia came to a horrible conclusion.

"Shit!" she said.

"What's wrong?" Nico said.

"I can't get you out of here,” Celia said, her mind racing for more options, one of which impressed itself on her more and more despite what Katherine said. "Fuck, I have no choice! Stay here," she told Nico. "I need to let my sisters know."

And with that, Celia threw another seal below her feet and blinked out of sight.

Nico sat on Mara’s bedside and stayed silent for a moment, looking at her sister still lying asleep. She said, “I hope you wake up soon,” and reached out and held her hand and waited for Celia’s return and occupied herself with looking at the contents of the room again, until she noticed the reflection of the one-way mirror next to the vanity blackening into a swirling mass of energy. Nico got up and pressed her hand against the reflection and jerked her hand away as fragments of Rancaster’s life flashed through her mind.

She then looked back at Mara’s bloody clothes.

12

Meanwhile, Celia appeared back in the library just as Katherine and Madison were walking through the doorway and heading towards the stairs.

"Wait!" she yelled.

Both sisters doubled back and spotted her, and Katherine said, "Why are you back here? Didn't I tell you to get out of here?"

"I can't get out," Celia said. "Something's blocking me!"

Katherine cursed, summoned another large mirror in front of her and peered into the murky one-way reflection inside her boudoir, and cursed yet again. "I can't believe this! The bastard tapped this one, too." She then placed her hand against the reflection and sensed the mirrors in the house contaminated with Rancaster's influence. "He's got this whole place covered already. He's got to every mirror except mine." She then sighed, knowing what she had to do next was going to be a painful act for her, and said, "Maddy, place your hand over mine on this mirror."

And Madison did so. "What are you planning?"

"To blow up every mirror in this house."

"Are you crazy?"

"Every mirror except mine," she said. "Mine stays whole. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll try, but . . ." she said. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"I'm sure."

So she placed her hand over Katherine's, synching up with Katherine's mind, and placed her seals over all the mirrors in the hallways above them, as well as the mirrors on the floor they were in, but hesitated over the one-way mirror leading into the boudoir where Nico and Mara were. "Including the one in your private bedroom?"

"That, too."

So she did so, saying, "You know this will hurt you, right?"

"I know. Just do it already!"

With that, Madison released her spell and exploded every mirror in the house, shaking the place to its foundations, rattling the bookshelves and furniture in the library, and loosening the flooring beneath their feet.

And with the explosion, Katherine winced and felt the concussive blasts of all the mirrors breaking into shards and digging into her chest in a vicious grip over her heart. She became dizzy and winded, nearly fainting, buckling her legs under the stress and falling to her knees and vomiting onto the floor under wave after wave of nausea.

Her sisters came to her aid, Celia and Madison grabbing both of her arms and dragging her limp body towards the couch, easing her onto the cushions.

"Are you okay?" Celia said.

"I'll be fine. Just give me a sec," she said, taking several deep breaths to steady herself, then lifting herself on tenuous feet. Both of her sisters held onto her, and she asked them to help her get to the mirror that now had a clear view into the boudoir and expanded its dimensions to fit all three of them inside it. Then all three walked through it—

13

And into the boudoir, where they found Nico in her underwear frantically undressing Mara on the bed, pulling the blood-stained shirt over her sister's shoulders and revealing her bra and bare stomach and panties. All three Hearn sisters gaped and stared, wide-eyed, at the scene before them.

"What are you doing?" Celia said.

Nico looked at the shocked faces of Celia, Madison, and Katherine and blushed, saying, "It's not what it looks like. I'm just changing into her clothes, that's all."

"Why?" Madison added. "Because that's kind of creepy, you know."

Nico gave her a death-glare, making the older girl flinch, and said, "I'm doing it, so if Rancaster gets here, he'll have to deal with me to get to Mara. So there!"

"Okay, okay, we get it," Madison said. "Don't get your tits up, geez!"

Celia and Madison then took Katherine to the vanity table, where Celia wiped away the remaining shards of glass from the table top and the seat pan, before easing her onto the chair for her to sit and rest. Katherine slouched in the chair, viewing the mirrorless backing that used to be her vanity mirror, then placed her head into her arms over the desk, refusing to let her sisters see her tears—to see her so weak and vulnerable.

Celia said, "You sure you'll be okay, Kathy?"

"I'll be fine," she said. "Just give me a minute."

After pulling Mara's shirt over herself, Nico paused at the sight of Katherine crying onto the vanity table. "What happened?"

"She asked me to break all the mirrors in this place," Madison said. "It's not something I'd do, unless it's an emergency."

"What do you mean?"

"Kathy has an affinity with mirrors," Celia said. "It's a rare skill among magic users, so she's very good at using them, and she knows it, too, but it has its downsides."

Nico thought about it and said, "You mean, like, vanity?"

"That's the one," Madison said, "but it's more like confidence. Kathy's mirrors reflect her will power, so breaking a lot of them at once will bring her down a few notches."

Katherine slammed her fist on the desk, shaking all three girls from their discussion, and said, "I can hear you! Stop harping on the obvious, okay? It's pissing me off!"

Celia, Madison and Nico clammed up and backed away from her, all three seeing a dark red aura emanating from Katherine's body.

Nico grabbed Madison's arm and whispered, "I've heard of mood swings, but that's crazy!"

"I know, trust me," she whispered. "My mood swings are nothing compared to hers."

"Does she always get this mad?" Nico asked.

"Not often, thank God."

That's when the room turned drafty and cold, a swirl of energy emanating from the epicenter that was Katherine's corner of woe. When she lifted her head off the tabletop and wiped tears away with her sleeve, then slowly turned to face them in her chair, she froze them where they stood with an icy glare, till they each turned white and trembled on wobbly legs.

"Don't . . . talk . . . behind . . . my back," Katherine said like a strict schoolmarm lording over three delinquents, "unless . . . you want . . . to die!"

At this, the girls gulped and kept nodding their heads till she finally stopped her murderous stare, all three breathing in relief as though coming up for air from a deep dive.

When Katherine settled her emotions, she took another deep breath and breathed out the remnants of her anger. "I'm really sorry, guys. I didn't mean to explode you like that."

"That's okay, Kathy," Madison said, edging towards her elder sister and placing a comforting hand over her shoulder. "Just get some rest, okay? That last spell took a lot out of you."

"But I—"

"You need to rest, okay?" Celia said, coming up beside Madison and placing her own hand on Katherine's other shoulder. "I know you're used to giving out orders, but you're only human. You need to take a break some time."

And before Katherine protested, Nico came forward in between Madison and Celia and added, "We all need rest, Ms. Hearn. Let's hole up in this room for a while, and I'll keep a lookout for the time being."

At her formality, Katherine deflated somewhat and sighed. "I guess you're right. Till I get my strength back, I'm not much use, anyway. But Nico," she said, turning around and facing the girl, "please, just call me by my first name. Same thing with my sisters, too. None of us are strangers here."

"Okay," she said, keeping her gaze to the floor.

Katherine eyed Nico. She seemed so distant all of the sudden, as if she was trying to keep something inside from collapsing in on itself, a desperate strength on the edge of breaking into a waterfall of tears. So Katherine got up from her chair and hugged Nico close to her, saying, "It's okay. You don't have to keep it bottled up. Just let it all out, okay? Just let it out."

At her words, something inside Nico released like an overflowing dam, and her wide-eyed expression of being caught in a moment of weakness now melted into fits of crying over the dead and the hell Mara experienced to the edge of her plight. She let all that baggage out in a cascade of regret, as she fell to pieces in Katherine's embrace and cried into her shirt.

All the while, Celia and Madison looked on in wonderment and followed suit, wrapping their arms around both girls in commiseration. Even at her weakest, Katherine proved herself their pillar of strength, their rock amidst the storm, their shield against the sword.

つづく