I bring the beam of light up. It arcs over the monsters that are even now coalescing behind our reflections. What will be in the mirrors all around us? What else am I scared of?

So much. Everything.

Elliott doesn’t ask what I mean. He looks at me, and I can see in the set of his jaw, in his squared shoulders, that he understands. Ever practical, he asks, “Then how do we fight them?”

And that’s when it hits me.

If I’ve learned one thing from my OCD, it’s that you can’t run from your fears. And the more you do to stop them, the more powerful they become. We’re surrounded by fears made literal, Beings made of darkness that could tear us limb from limb, and I finally know exactly how to fight them.

I look back at Elliott. “We don’t.”

He looks at me like I’ve suggested lying down and letting the Beings eat us, which must be what it seems like from his perspective. He doesn’t have the experience with fear that I do; he doesn’t understand. He shakes his head. “Do what you want,” he says, and hefts his flashlight like a weapon. “I’m going down fighting.”

The scorpions flood around us, cut off our escape. They make a circle. It starts to close.

My hand starts to tingle, another wave of agony rising. The darkness in the mirrors starts to solidify: a slitted golden eye the size of my torso. A vast wing covered in delicate feathers. Scales. Claws. Teeth.

The tugging in my ribs gently reels me in. It’s a question. A dare. And I never turn down a dare.

I grit my teeth. I look around. There’s a tree next to Elliott, a big pine-turned-mirror, that’s just barely inside our quickly narrowing scorpion-free circle.

“How much do you trust me?” I ask him.

He gives a ragged smile, eyes on the Beings. “Not at all.”

“That’s what I thought.” Only one thing for it, then.

I take a deep breath. I launch myself at him. And I push us both toward the mirror.

My shove catches Elliott off guard. He only has enough time to turn his head, to grab my arm, to widen his eyes, and then we’re falling toward the silvered pine. I hit its cold, glassy surface first. There’s a buzz like static electricity on my skin. It folds over me. The mirror—liquefies. It’s mercury, ice, a silvery sort of coldness that drags me in and swallows me up. The forest is gone. The Beings are gone. The mirror has pulled us through.

The world breaks down into a kaleidoscope of sensations.

A chemical smell. Something acrid. Something burnt.