Free Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) by T.A. Pratt

send flowers to her funeral, anyway. It’s worth a try, talking to him.”
    “I’ll see if I can track him down,” Bradley said.

Through the Mirror
    “He doesn’t have a phone?” Marzi asked.
    Bradley shook his head, then adjusted the angle of the full-length folding triple mirror minutely. “Nope. Jason’s off the grid, and changing locations every day or two, doing his best to be a ghost. According to Cole’s divinations, tonight he’s in a derelict farmhouse in western Pennsylvania. The place doesn’t even have running water, as far as we can tell, or electricity, or any other amenities beyond a roof and walls, and those probably have holes in them. I’d fly in to find him, but there’s no reason to think he’ll be there even a few hours from now, and I’d rather not chase him all over the countryside. The direct approach is best. Besides, I’ve been wanting to try this for months.” He glanced toward the corner, where Pelham sat, hands folded in his lap, expression alert. The small man was dressed impeccably as always, in a suit with a waistcoat, and not a strand of his thinning hair was out of place, but Bradley was perceptive, and he could see Pelham was wound as tightly as the innards of his own antique pocketwatch.
    “I thought Jason was some kind of smooth operator?” Marzi arranged small white candles on the carpet, referring often to a diagram Cole had drawn. “Shouldn’t he be living in a penthouse and scamming old ladies?”
    “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s probably hiding out from the consequences of a recent job.”
    “He is no gentleman,” Pelham murmured.
    “Right. You guys think maybe he’s hiding out with Marla?” Marzi took a box of wooden fireplace matches, struck one, and began to light the candles.
    “The thought has crossed my mind. Hard to imagine the two of them being all buddy-buddy, but I have it on good authority that families are weird.” Bradley stepped back, cocked his head, and nodded in satisfaction. The candles, arranged in a complex asymmetrical pattern, were all reflected in the central mirror, and the mirrors on either side were angled to double, triple, and quadruple those lights in their own reflections, creating the illusion of an infinite series of corridors. An illusion that could be turned into reality, if he did this right.
    “You sure you don’t want me to go?” Marzi said.
    Bradley shook his head. “I don’t even want Pelham to go. Travel by mirror is so risky that even people brave enough to teleport tend to avoid it. If you’re unlucky with teleporting, you get maimed or you die. If you’re unlucky with travel by mirror, you just wish you were dead. And sometimes, the person who comes out of the mirror isn’t the person who went in . Cole says my natural ability to see through illusions should keep me relatively safe, but for anybody else, it’s very easy to get... lost. You don’t need to come, Pelham, really—I can handle it.”
    “If there is a chance that Mrs. Mason is on the other side of that glass, then I am going.” Pelham was the definition of unflappable, so Bradley shrugged.
    “Okay then. Marzi, kill the lights. Keep the candles burning while we’re gone, all right? And Pelly, stay close to me.”
    Pelham rose and joined him, putting a hand on his right shoulder. Bradley stared into the mirrors, letting his eyes blur, looking past his own reflection and into the lighted depths: a sky full of stars, a sea full of luminous fish. He didn’t let himself blink, and as his eyes watered, the view before him softened further. Bradley took one deliberate step forward, and then another, and then another, until he passed the point where he should have crashed into the glass.
    As a little kid, he’d seen a cartoon about a little boy who walked through a mirror into a world on the other side. It wasn’t an adaptation of Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There —it had definitely involved a little boy, and not a