Free The Slanted Worlds by Catherine Fisher Page B

sat on the mahogany dressing table.
    Wharton pointed up. “Horatio. Quite lost without his master.”
    She saw the marmoset. It was huddled in a heap of misery on the very top of the great curtain rail. It spared her a miserable glance, its tiny face screwed up.
    â€œHoratio!” She reached up, her voice soft. “Come on. Come down.”
    The creature turned its face away.
    â€œJust won’t eat,” Wharton said gloomily. “If Jake gets back and finds him dead, there’ll be hell to pay.”
    Suddenly he turned to her. “Though what if he never gets back, Sarah. What if . . .”
    â€œDon’t panic.” She kept her voice firm. “Of course he will. Pass me that chair.”
    It took ten minutes to coax Horatio down, but the grapes she found proved too enticing, and finally he jumped into her arms with a screech and snatched the fruit.
    â€œBrilliant.” Wharton was delighted. “I knew he’d like you.”
    She clambered down. The marmoset’s fur was soft and lustrous. It looked up into her face and chattered. Then it took another grape, held a handful of her hair, climbed onto her shoulder, and sat there, sucking. Its tail was a soft tickle around her neck.
    She turned. “Right. Let’s go to the mirror.”

    At first she was amazed that Venn had left it unguarded. Then, as she ducked through the viridian web that was spun about it, she noticed the new bank of security devices, the alarms and laser-thin beams of light that Wharton held her back from.
    â€œVenn is more and more afraid of theft. Getting paranoid. There’s the control panel, and they’ve wired it up like the crown jewels. If there’s any sign of Jake coming back, the whole house will probably explode with alarms. This is what the portraits are paying for. We can’t go any closer than this.”
    Sarah hissed in frustration. “Crazy.”
    â€œMaybe. But that thing scares me . . . It seems to have a life of its own.”
    The obsidian mirror.
    It leaned, facing her, a dark sliver of glass in its jagged silver frame. In the angled shadowy surface, she saw a slanted image of herself, and her own face looked different, subtly altered. The mirror showed her herself, but for the first time a stab of doubt pierced her—did it show what was there now, or were its reflections warped and rippled through by time, so that she might be seeing herself seconds ago? Or did the mirror show not only the outward form but how a person felt? Their emotions? Their soul?
    Wharton was talking. She dragged her attention back.
    â€œ. . . can do about any of it. I never thought I would miss that infuriating, arrogant wretch.”
    She realized he was talking about Jake.
    â€œJake can look after himself.”
    â€œSo could his father. But what if we never see him again, Sarah?”
    She patted his elbow, and walked as near as she dared to the network of lights. “Don’t worry. Keep believing. Gideon will find him. He promised.”
    Wharton snorted. “If Summer knows that, Gideon might be torn into pieces by now.”
    â€œYou really have to . . .” She stopped.
A brief glimmer, like lightning.
“What was that?”
    â€œWhat . . .”
    â€œDid you see!”
    She felt him hurry beside her. “I can’t see anything except . . .”
    The mirror flickered
.
    For a brief, terrible moment it was not even there. They were in a place of utter darkness, the air a choking dust; all around them and over their heads, a crushing, suffocating mass of rubble and brick.
    Sarah gasped.
    Wharton swore.
    Then the mirror was clear.
    â€œWhat . . .
whe
r
e
was that!”
    Sarah stared at the obsidian glass, seeing her own eyes, wide and startled. She stared into the fear that the black hole had reached even here to engulf the world.
    â€œThat was death,” she whispered.

    Jake sat on the