Lena and Maks break into an abandoned villa and find a mirror that doesn’t reflect them, but a stranger world watching back.
Lena pushed through the scrubby bushes first, the strap of her rucksack cutting into her shoulder, while Maks followed a step behind, muttering that this was a terrible idea. The abandoned villa loomed at the end of the overgrown garden, darker and stranger in person than it had looked in the grainy photos passed around at school. Boarded windows stared out blind. Ivy crawled over the walls like something alive.
"We should go back," Maks said again.
Lena only glanced at him and kept walking.
The front door gave under her hand with a long, protesting groan. Cold air rolled out of the house, carrying the smell of dust, old paper, and damp stone. Inside, the hallway was dim enough to make every shadow seem deliberate. Their footsteps sounded too loud. Somewhere deeper in the house, a floorboard creaked, though neither of them had moved.
They climbed the stairs in silence.
Upstairs, the air was colder still. At the end of a corridor with peeling wallpaper, they found a room that looked untouched by time. In one corner stood a mirror nearly as tall as Lena herself, its frame carved with twisting leaves and unfamiliar faces.
She stepped closer.
Her reflection did not move with her.
Instead, a girl in a long silver dress stood where Lena should have been, pale and still, staring straight at her as if she had been waiting.
Maks swore under his breath and leaned in beside Lena. The instant he did, his own reflection vanished, swallowed by the glass as if it had never existed.
The girl in the mirror lifted one hand and pressed her fingers against the inside of the surface. Behind her, a faint light began to gather, and shapes moved in it, blurred at first, then sharper. Faces. Too many of them. Some of them looked horribly familiar.
The mirror shivered in its frame.
Lena stepped back, but the room seemed to tilt toward the glass. A cold draught brushed the back of her neck, and from somewhere beyond the surface came a sound like whispered voices, all speaking at once.
Then the silver girl smiled and reached out for her.