When I’d told Barrons about the mirrors I’d seen at the Lord Master’s house, he’d asked if they’d been “open.” If this was what he’d meant, they had been. When they were open, could the monsters inside them come out? If so, how did one “close” a Sifting Silver? Could it be as simple as breaking it? Could it be broken? Before I could glance around for something to try it with, the thing of stunted limbs and enormous teeth was gone.

I exhaled shakily. I now understood why BB&B had that strange sense of spatial distortion. I’d felt a similar thing in the Lord Master’s house, the day I’d gone into the Dark Zone and discovered my sister’s ex-boyfriend was Dublin’s Big-Bad, but I hadn’t put two and two together. These mirrors, these dimension connecting portals, somehow affected the space around them.

Now something else was coming, moving deep in the glass, whirling silver gusts back with its inexorable stride. I retreated to a safer distance.

Dark shapes drifted over the surface of the shivering mirror. Shadows that lacked definition yet tugged at primal fears. It was one of those times when running probably would have been a really good idea, but the problem was, I didn’t have anyplace to run to. This was my sanctuary, my safe haven. If I couldn’t stay here, I couldn’t be anywhere.

It was closer now, the thing that was coming.

I stared into the mirror, down the narrow, silvery lane fading into blackness at the edges, lined with skeletal trees, cloaked in wisps of jaundiced fog, littered with monstrous creatures forming and re-forming in the mist. It reeked of wasteland worse than a Dark Zone, and I somehow knew the air inside the mirror was a chilling, killing cold, physically and psychically. Only a hellish, inhuman half-life could endure in such a place.

As the dark shape glided down the nightmarish path, the shadow-demons reared back with soundless screams.

More smoky runes materialized on the shivering glass. I couldn’t tell if what was coming walked upright, or stalked on all fours. Perhaps it scuttled on dozens of claws. I strained my eyes trying to identify the shape of it, but the sickly fog concealed its attributes.

I knew only that it was huge, dark, dangerous . . . and almost here.

I exited the room on tiptoe, and pulled the door shut, leaving the smallest of slivers through which to peer, braced to yank it shut and run like hell.

The mirror belched an icy gust of air.

It was here!

Long black coat fluttering, Jericho Barrons stepped out of the glass.

He was covered with blood that had iced to crimson frost on his hands, face, and clothing. His skin was pale from extreme cold, and his midnight eyes blazed with an inhuman, feral light.