“It’s too late for that kind of game, Saint Jonathan. I have a life of my own now. Your mother was right you know. You are getting thinner. Soon there won’t be anything left of you. All that goodness will vanish like a puff of smoke in the wind.” It laughed. “That’s when I’ll come back and take over your body. It won’t be like dying, not at all like dying. I’m too much a part of you for that, the biggest part of you. Just a few more days—a few more days and we’ll be together again.”

The eyes looking out at me glowed with an unholy fire.

“Oh, the things we’ll do then, Jonathan! We’ll start with your sister, probably. Or maybe your mother. Yes, maybe your mother. That would be nice, don’t you think?”

“Stop!” I shouted. I felt the surge of my anger flow into the thing in the mirror and suddenly realized it was goading me, pushing me to give it more strength, more power.

I did the only thing I could think of. Moving as slowly and calmly as I could manage, I turned to the umbrella stand behind me.

I picked it up.

Then I threw it into the mirror.

The glass shattered. The pieces crashed and tinkled to the floor.

My sense of triumph lasted only a second. With a sudden hiss a flare of blue light crackled around the black lacquer frame.

A moment later my other self came crawling over the edge.

“How kind of you to set me free. Earlier than I expected. But not unwelcome. No, not unwelcome at all.”

It lunged at me. I screamed and jumped back as my own face, burning with hatred, riddled with oozing sores, surged up at me. I dodged to the right, racing around the creature. It clutched at me. I jumped forward, tripped over the black lacquer frame—and fell into the world of the mirror.

The creature followed close behind me. I could hear it scrabbling on the floor, panting, not from exertion, but from a lust to possess me.

“I don’t want you!” I cried as I ran through the mirror version of Mrs. Hubbard’s house. “I don’t want you. You’re not part of me anymore!”

“I’ve always been part of you,” laughed the creature. “And now you will be part of me . . . Saint Jonathan.”

The last words were spit out with such contempt that I felt my fear double. If this thing that hated me so much were to catch me, what would it do to me? What would it do to those I loved?

I stumbled around a corner, regained my balance, saw a door and a stairwell. I took the stairs rather than the door, because to lead this thing out of the house and into the world—even the mirror world—was too awful.