Yes, where?
Around them it was so dark that Jacob barely saw his own hands. He stumbled over a cable, and when he tried to steady himself, his hand touched heavy velvet.
‘Kto tu jest?’
The floodlight that flared up above them was so bright that Fox pressed her hands to her eyes. The pieces of the mirror crunched under her boots as she stepped backwards and got tangled in a black curtain. Jacob grabbed her arm and pulled her to his side.
A stage. A table, a lamp, two chairs, and between them the mirror. A prop. Nothing else. How had it got here? Had it been hidden for years among dusty theatre props? Had anybody used it since Guismond passed through with his knights, or had it kept its secret since? How had the Witch Slayer got hold of it? So many questions. The same ones Jacob had asked himself countless times about the other mirror. Where did they come from? How many were there? And who made them? For a long time, he’d searched for the answers, but still the only clue he had was the piece of paper he’d found in his father’s book.
Two more lights came on at his feet. Rows of red seats faded into the darkness. It was a large theatre.
‘Rozbiliscie Lustro!’ The man stumbling towards them stopped dead when he saw the bloody outline of the moth on Jacob’s shirt.
Jacob slid his hand into his pocket and gave the man his friendliest smile.
‘Przykro mi. Zaplaçe za nie.’ That was about the extent of his Polish – if what he’d heard was, in fact, Polish. Jacob had done some business with an antique dealer in Warsaw, but that was a long time ago.
Luckily, he still had a half-decent coin on him, but the man eyed the gold piece warily, as though Jacob had paid him with stage money.
Just get out of here, Jacob.
He took Fox’s hand and pulled her towards the stage steps. He still felt like a reborn man.
Dressing rooms. Another staircase. A dark foyer and a row of glass doors. Jacob found one that wasn’t locked. The air that greeted him and Fox was heavy with the smells and sounds of his world.
Fox stared aghast at the four-lane road in front of them. The lights above it were so much brighter than anything in her world. A car passed them. Traffic lights tinged the asphalt red, and on the other side of the road a skyscraper stretched towards the night sky.
Jacob took the swindlesack from Fox’s hand and pulled her close.
‘We go back soon,’ he whispered to her. ‘I promise. I just want to check on Will and find a good hiding place for the crossbow.’
She nodded and wrapped her arms around him.
It was over.
And it was all good.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
THE RED
Jacob lived.
The moth was gone and he lived.
How?
The Red Fairy yelled her rage across the water that had borne her.
Nothing could break the most powerful curse of the Fairies. It brought death to any mortal. Eradicated them as though they never existed. Nothing else could ever bring her peace. She wanted her only memory of him to be that of his death.
Yet he lived.
The lake turned as black as the night sky, and the water showed her the weapon that had broken her sister’s curse like a brittle twig.
The Red flinched.
Alder wood.
A string of flexible glass.
An engraved pattern on the gilded shaft.
No.
They were gone. For a long, long time.
All of them.
Banished into the trees that had given them their name. Not one had escaped.
The Red wanted to turn away, but there was something drifting among the lilies. She knelt down and reached for it.
It was a card.
A wilted leaf was stuck to the white paper. Startled, the Fairy pulled back her hand.
Only once before had winter come to her island.
No.
They were gone.
All of them.