Only . . . it wasn’t the giggling, doted-upon girl from earlier. This reflection was slightly older, perhaps nine or ten, mousy and fidgeting, and we were not quite twins, though her features strongly resembled mine. What’s more . . . she wasn’t standing in some idyllic scene, pantomiming a reality for me to envy. Instead, she stood still in the stairwell mirror, staring directly at me. Waiting. My mouth went dry.

I was staring at The Lady.

“No.” I clenched my fists and walked quickly past her. The Stair of Mirrors was supposed to show my reflection. “I’m not The Lady,” I snapped to the Lady-abiku in the mirror, who followed after me as I mounted the stairs with renewed rigor. “So if you’re trying to entice me, you’d better try something else. We are not the same.”

“I know that,” the child wailed. “I know that, Made-of-Me.”

I nearly toppled onto the hard glass stairs, grasping Iranti’s horn for balance. “You can talk,” I rasped. “The other ones. They . . . they didn’t talk.” I shuddered. Did these illusions get more powerful as I went along? Perhaps this meant I was almost to the Oruku Breach. I shook myself to regain my bearings and charged on.

“Wait,” ordered the reflection. Still, the abiku followed me, the spitting image of my mother as a young girl. “Wait. Please Made-of—I mean—” She cringed. “Please, Tarisai.” I paused, just for a moment . . .

And the illusion reached through the mirror, placing a firm, cold hand on my arm.

I jerked back, heart pounding. “You’re not allowed to do that,” I shrieked. “Abiku may not touch a living thing in the Underworld without permission. It’s—it’s—” It was the Storyteller’s law. Which meant, in theory . . . it was unbreakable.

The reflection sighed, holding out her hand again. “I am not an abiku, Tarisai. I am your mother. Your real one.” She fidgeted. “I know I look . . . different. They say the longer a soul stays down here, the more themselves they become.” Her musical voice, higher and thinner than the one I’d grown up with, yet altogether familiar, sent shivers up my spine.

“You’re lying,” I whispered.

But she had touched me. Ye Eun and Mongwe would have warned me if there were exceptions to the Storyteller’s rule.

“I don’t understand,” I said at last. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you go to Egungun’s Parade?”

The child stared at me for a long moment, her brilliant black eyes wet and tortured. “I tried,” she said at last. “I tried to do the parade. I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t think . . .” Her strong chin quivered—then tears rolled down her dark, soft cheeks. “I have hurt so many people. And in such different, terrible ways. How could I have been so bad?”

I watched with morbid fascination, struck by a need to comfort her. Then the impulse cooled, congealing into rage.