I lift the mirror, its deadly reflective surface facing the back wall. “Nobody move. You two, drop your guns,” I order the cops.

Nobody moves. No one even looks at me. The cops are staring at the mayor, and the mayor is staring at her son.

My gaze darts back to Elliott, who’s also not moving—until he sways, just a slight motion, left to right like a ship listing atop a wave. He drops his hand to his side and his fingers slowly uncurl from around his mother’s gun. It falls heavily to the ground. Rust red is smeared across the matte black barrel.

Elliott is bleeding. When his mother fired at me he must’ve—what, blocked the shot with his hand?

He takes a step back. His heel catches on the floor and turns the step to a stumble. He twists sideways, and I get a view of his chest.

Of the ragged hole the bullet tore through it.

Elliott touches the spot. His hand comes away stained red. I feel the blood like it’s on my own hands: warm, wet, sticky beneath my fingernails. My brain fills in the scent of dryer sheets even though it’s not actually present.

The silence is bell-like, pealing. When he swallows everyone can hear it. “Mom,” he says, but this time the word isn’t a plea. It’s an acknowledgment, edged in something sad and jagged. This time his mother is the one to flinch when the word hits her.

“Elliott,” she replies, her voice lilting slightly upward at the end. The name isn’t a weapon anymore. It doesn’t arc with electricity. It’s a question, one that already has an answer but can’t help but be asked anyway.

Elliott exhales. He tries to take another step backwards, toward me, but his heel catches the edge of the stairs. He reaches for the railing to stabilize himself but there isn’t one. He grabs for the doorway—too slow.

He starts to topple over the edge.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE MAYOR REACHES AFTER ELLIOTT BUT SHE’S ON the ground and too far away. Everyone is too far away. The darkness swallows his head, his chest. He’s falling.

A feeling slams into me. It’s … panic and fury and helplessness and horror. It dumps adrenaline into my veins, pumps it hard and fast.

I use it to calculate.

The drop: one hundred feet, give or take, to the cavern floor below.

The angle of Elliott’s fall: slow, backwards, headfirst. He’s already overbalanced, the fall inevitable, but his feet haven’t quite left the stair yet.

The mirror: still in my hand. I throw it like I’m skipping a stone, face up. Can’t risk breaking it, need just the right angle.