Elliott looks down at me. He knows what neither of us are saying: that I’m as dead as the spider-bit girl, whether I die right here or hours from now.

The pain ebbs, retreating until it’s a throbbing coldness in my left hand. It’ll be hours, then. There’s a part of me that wants it over now, but my well-honed survival instinct rears up and overshadows it. It pulls me, staggering, to my feet. It orders me to move. Move. Don’t think about what other fears could come true. Don’t think about—

That crackling noise from a moment ago ripples out around us again, loud even in the storm. The sound reminds me of a chandelier: a thousand pieces of glass clinking against each other.

Gingerly, slow with the echoes of pain, I pick up my flashlight and hold it out. I turn in a circle. I take a step—and yank my foot back with a hiss. Something sharp is sticking up from the ground. I aim the flashlight downward. The fog is thicker than ever, and I have to bend low to make out what’s stabbed me.

I blink. It’s a blade of wire grass. This plant isn’t too tall, maybe three inches, but each thin blade that arcs up and out from it looks as hard and sharp as a knife. And it’s difficult to tell through the fog and the night, but the grass is a strange color—a sort of yellow-white, and almost metallic. I reach out to touch it with a fingertip. Something like static electricity crackles off it, buzzing beneath my skin, and I pull my hand back before touching it.

Lightning flashes. The fog catches its light more brightly than ever, sparkling like blue magic, and the blades of grass sparkle blue too. Almost like they’re …

Reflective.

My inhale freezes somewhere in my throat. Veins of frost reach into my lungs, wrap in icy bands around my chest. This time it’s not an effect of the venom. It’s terror.

The grass isn’t grass. It’s mirrors. Every blade, every tuft, is an impossibly detailed silvered-glass sculpture. Numbly, I lift the flashlight. More grass. More bladed mirrors. A nearby pine tree: every knobby flake of bark reflects the flashlight’s yellow-white beam back at me. I point my light at the ground. I take a step. My foot skids on the flat, glassy dirt. It’s slippery with the rain that now beads on its surface, streaming across it in rivulets.

Mirrors everywhere, I thought a moment ago. And now my fears have come to life.

But something flickers behind my breastbone—a protest, a thought, a single ragged heartbeat. We aren’t supposed to be able to change anything big. Elliott said it himself. Only small things, he claimed. Only reasonable things.