Servants bustled everywhere, footmen in black jackets and maids in long skirts, cleaning and polishing. It was the night of the first big party at which she’d been allowed to sit with the adults when company came over. She’d been ten years old.

She looked down. The ground under her feet was still marble flagstones, and the sky over her head was still a misty gray. But the mirrors all around her reflected the house in such detail that she could almost believe she’d stepped back in time. Back to another life. Normally it felt like those memories belonged to another girl, another Alice. Or just a dream I was having before waking up.

“Is it to your liking?” The mirror image stood unobtrusively in a corner of the hall, still in her party dress. Behind her, peeking out from a doorway, Alice saw two more copies of herself, both wearing blank-faced masks.

“It’s amazing!” Alice said. “There’s my old tutor Miss Juniper, and father’s man Cooper. And Elpseth, who left when she had a baby. And old Mr. Spiven.” She’d forgotten how many servants they’d had in the old days. They’d always been kind to her. She found herself blinking back tears. “How did you know about all of this?”

“Time and distance are illusions when you look from this side of the glass.” The mirror image leaned forward again, eager. “What else? What else can we show you?”

Alice wavered, a wave of fatigue running through her. It had been a long climb up the marble steps, and a trying day even before that.

“Can you show me what’s happening now?” she said. “Somewhere else?”

“Of course, of course. It’s all the same, from where we stand.”

Alice frowned, still not convinced. “Then show me Mr. Black.”

The scene in the mirrors shifted in a flash, and Alice was looking in on the Library storeroom, where she’d once played a deadly game of hide-and-seek with the big servant. Now he was shifting sacks and boxes, muttering to himself as he rearranged the supplies and restacked the crates.

It certainly looks like Mr. Black. “What about Ashes?” she said.

The mirrors changed again. She was standing in the library, among the dusty shelves, watching a small gray cat stalk silently forward with tail outstretched. A white mouse came into view, sniffing the air, and Ashes leaped. The mouse, too quick for him, darted under a shelf, and he landed in a puff of dust and sneezed.

Alice grinned as she watched him look around, to see if anyone had noticed his failure. Satisfied that he was alone, he gave his dusty paws a couple of licks and sauntered off.

“All right,” she said, warming to the idea. “Can you show me Isaac?”