It glints, reflecting the dim yellow bulb. Everyone spots it at once. The rainbow sheen flickers over its face as it closes the space between me and Elliott. The exit is open.

Elliott’s feet leave the stairs. The darkness envelops him to the knees. I can’t see his head, can’t see how far backwards he’s tilted by now. I can only hope that my throw was a good one.

The mirror flashes as it skims the ground, its handle making its spin slightly lopsided. For a second the glass surface looks like it’s still reflecting the yellow of the lightbulb, but then I realize it’s the wrong color—this is more golden, and there’s a slit of midnight-black running through its middle.

It’s an eye. The eye of a Being, a massive one. I remember the reflective forest, the vast wing, the feathers and scales and claws. The monstrous dark. It’s coming again.

But not for Elliott.

The mirror spins beneath him at exactly the right moment. It skims across his calf—and then Elliott vanishes.

I sag. It worked. I got him out. He’s awake on Mirage now. He won’t fall a hundred feet to his death, won’t be eaten by a Being … but he’ll still have that gunshot wound, and it looked bad.

I have to wake up. I have to find his real body. I know Mirage won’t have enough energy to heal us both, but maybe I could still get Elliott to Earth in time to save him.

The mirror is almost into the dark now. One last rotation—

—and then obsidian talons erupt out of the reflective surface. Each one is as long as I am tall, covered in shadow-edged scales, with tiny, delicate feathers blooming farther up. The claws are as sharp as razors. They latch on to the top landing of the stairs with an earth-shaking blow, and the staircase shudders and groans under the weight. The scales on the massive leg ripple as the muscles beneath them flex.

The mirror continues to fall. The Being pulls itself up and out.

Another set of talons. These stab into the wall, a good seventy feet away. The whole cavern shakes, the yellow lightbulb flickering, clods of dirt shaking loose from the ceiling.

Time to make my exit. Covering my head, I run for the elevator—and then freeze.

The mayor is in front of me. She’s scooped up her gun, its barrel still stained by her son’s blood, and she’s aiming it at me. Behind her, both Diaz and the older cop are scrambling through the elevator and back into the tunnel, but she makes no move to follow.

“What did you do to Elliott?” she demands.