Free The Night of the Solstice by L.J. Smith Page A

go through,” she said finally. “If there’s something dangerous on the other side—like Cadal Forge—I’ll come back fast.”
    She hesitated. “Everybody ready? Nobody has to go to the bathroom or anything?”
    â€œOh, let’s hurry!” Claudia couldn’t restrain herself any longer.
    â€œRight,” said Alys. She squared her shoulders and faced the mirror directly, one hand upraised as if to push aside a curtain of strung beads. She took a small step.
    â€œAlys through the looking glass,” said Charles, and he laughed nervously.
    Janie leaned forward, and with all her strength, gave Alys a sudden shove in the middle of the back.
    â€œHey—”
    â€œLook out!”
    Charles grabbed for Alys but could not check her. She fell directly into the mirror, but instead of shards of glass and blood and breakage there was a kaleidoscopic blur of light. Charles saw an orange-red figure like the silhouette of a falling girl on a shifting blue-greenbackground. Then the colors were gone, without even a ripple to show they had ever existed, and he was staring at his own openmouthed reflection.
    He rounded savagely on Janie. “What’d you
do
that for?”
    Janie’s purple eyes were fractionally wider than usual but she spoke calmly. “Just being helpful. I thought if I didn’t she’d never do it by herself.”
    Charles and Claudia were too excited and amazed to stay angry. “Let’s go in,” said Claudia. “
I’m
going.” She dove into the mirror as if she’d been doing it every day of her life. Again came the colors and the red-orange figure that passed through them.
    When the glass cleared Charles and Janie looked at one another, then Charles put down his head and charged. He did not feel the surface of the mirror as he passed through it, but for an instant the air seemed to thicken and quiver around him. Then his foot came down and he found that he had stepped into a room he had never seen before. Alys and Claudia were staring about them in wonder.
    â€œIt worked,” said Charles, looking at his own handsin surprise. His solid flesh had passed through solid glass.
    â€œHere comes Janie!” cried Claudia, vastly excited.
    Seeing someone come out of a mirror was even stranger than seeing someone go in. First the red-orange figure appeared and then Janie’s disembodied leg swung out of it and then Janie herself was standing there.
    â€œDoesn’t it feel funny?” said Claudia with a delighted shiver.
    Charles nodded. “Like electrified Jell-O.”
    â€œShhh!” said Alys, looking around uneasily. They were still in a hallway, or corridor, but the ceiling was now twenty feet high and the floor and the walls were made of blocks of rough, pale limestone. Arches in those walls held massive wooden doors cross-barred with iron, and the whole scene was lit by torches that burned eerily blue without smoking.
    â€œIt’s a castle,” whispered Claudia, and Charles stepped over to a window set deeply in the wall. Through the panes of thickly glazed glass he could see moonlight falling on the inner courtyard.
    â€œI don’t see anyone out there,” he whispered. “And I don’t hear anything, either.”
    Everyone listened. The massive walls held silence as thick as butter. Only the flickering torches moved.
    Alys let out her breath. “Maybe Cadal Forge isn’t here,” she said softly. “But we’ve got to be careful. All right, Charles, you and Claudia go to the dungeon—I mean the cellar. If you find Morgana, get her to the human side immediately, then come and tell us.” This last instruction had cost Alys a great deal of heartache, but she had finally decided that Morgana’s safety came before their own. “If you see anyone besides Morgana, run. Remember,
something got the vixen
.”
    Charles nodded alertly, and he and Claudia moved