“Mmmm, richer.” His hand wrapped around mine, taking the needle back. It vanished in a smear of ever-after, and his grip shifted to my bleeding finger. “Give me a taste?”

I jerked back as far from him as I could, my arm stretched out between us. “No.”

“Leave her alone!” Ceri pleaded.

Slowly Al’s grip loosened. He watched me, a new tension rising in him.

I wrestled my hand away and put another step between us. I clutched my arms about me, cold despite the heater blowing on my bare feet.

“Get on the mirror,” he said, his face expressionless behind his smoked glasses.

My gaze shot to it waiting for me on the floor. “I—I can’t,” I whispered.

His thin lips pressed together, and I gritted my teeth to keep silent when he picked me up and set me on it. I inhaled, eyes widening when I felt like I slipped two inches into the mirror. “Oh God, oh God,” I moaned, wanting to reach for the counter, but Al was in the way, grinning.

“Push your aura off,” he said.

“I can’t,” I panted, feeling myself hyperventilate.

Al pulled his glasses down his thin nose and looked at me over them. “Doesn’t matter. It’s dissolving like sugar in the rain.”

“No,” I whispered. My knees started shaking and the pounding in my head worsened. I could feel my aura slipping away and Al’s taking a stronger hold on me.

“Capital and fine,” Al said, his goat eyes on the mirror.

My gaze followed his, and I clutched at my stomach. I could see myself in it. My face was covered in Al’s aura, black and empty. Only my eyes showed, a faint glow flickering about them. It was my soul, trying to make enough aura to put between Al’s aura and me. It wasn’t enough as the mirror sucked it all up and I could feel Al’s presence sink into me.

I found I was panting. I imagined what it must have been like for Ceri, her soul utterly gone and Al’s aura seeping into her like this all the time, alien and wrong.

I shook. Hands clasped over my mouth, I looked frantically for something to throw up in. Gagging, I lurched off the mirror. I would not spew. I wouldn’t.

“Marvelous,” Al said as I hunched over, my teeth clenched and my bile rising. “You got all of it. Here. I’ll just slip it into the vat for you.”

His voice was cheery and bright, and as I peered at him from around my hair, Al dropped the mirror into the potion. The brew flashed to clear. Just like I knew it would.

Ceri was sitting on the floor, crying with her head on her knees. She pulled her head up, and I thought she looked all the more beautiful for her tears. I only looked ugly when I cried.