CHAPTER 139

"I wonder..." Shadow Emily's face stretched into a grin. "I wonder what would happen if I killed one of them? Do you think I could get away with it? Maybe the gargoyle? Or that nasty little goblin?"

Emily was now frantic, and she was clawing at the glass.

"Oh, I know. I could use my magic and cave in part of the nymph's spring. She's been asking some rather uncomfortable questions recently, and it would be a shame if I forced you to watch."

Emily was silently shouting 'No!' behind the glass.

"Then tell me what you did!" Shadow Emily pressed her hands to the reflection, right on top of Emily's. "Tell me what you did or I kill the nymph!

Emily's face scrunched up with resolve, and the glass between their hands glowed bright yellow.

"Are you seriously trying to take your body back?" Shadow Emily laughed, but Emily's face scrunched up in concentration. As Shadow Emily kept laughing, Emily's hands slid through the glass and merged with the shadow's arms, as if they were being worn like gloves. The laughter stopped as Emily used those hands to strangle her own body.

The gasps became whispers, and dark veins sprouted along Shadow Emily's face. Inky black tears fell from her eyes as Emily kept squeezing, and after several minutes, her body went limp.

Emily gave her a push, and her body slumped to the floor. Shadows fled, and the mirror image stepped outside of the glass, looking down at her own corpse with satisfaction.

Outside the room, the air filled with the song of a banshee. Emily took a step away from her own corpse and was almost out of the room when she grabbed at her temples in pain. Darkness streamed into the room like water and forming into claws that grabbed at her face and pulled. The hands whipped about, and then turned toward Mike.

"Shit!" Mike stumbled backward and fell into the wall as the vision burst.

Emily shook on the bed as the darkness enveloped her, crawling into the hole in her head. The room was now full of whispers that he couldn't decipher, and she turned into static once more and, with a final shriek, burst.

He ran out of the room and down the stairs to where Yuki was waiting. Without saying a word, he dragged her outside and didn't stop until they were at the edge of the fountain. Gasping for air, he looked up to see Amymone looking at them.

"Told you she was a cunt."

As if to punctuate the dryad's point, Emily's shrill scream resonated over the courtyard, and Mike covered his ears in the hopes of drowning it out.

As the echoes faded, he shook his head. Like everything else in his life, this was far more complicated than it had at first seemed.

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Beth sat on the front porch, going over the documents one more time. In front of her, Sulyvahn was meticulously culling some dead roses from the bushes, whistling quietly to himself.

Mike's Will had been fairly easy to write, but she couldn't help but worry that she had missed something. All it would take is a missing signature, or even an unfortunate typo, and a lawyer with the financial backing of the Society would be all over it.

It also hadn't helped that Marco had been weird about it. While she had been able to draft the documents, it created a weird legal issue to write a Will for her employer and leave half of everything to herself. She had called her former coworker up and had him come over to properly notarize everything and act as a third party to prevent any accusations of legal malfeasance.

She had vastly underestimated Marco's suspicion of Mike. Before Mike's departure, they had done the signing in the front yard, surrounded by centaurs that Marco couldn't see. What should have been a relatively straight forward meeting had become a debacle.

"You all right, luv?" Sulyvahn had paused to look at her, scissors in one hand and a dying rose in the other.

"Yeah, just thinking." She had wanted Marco's help in going over her own documents as a second set of eyes. Instead, he acted hostile toward Mike the whole time, and Beth couldn't figure out why Mike hadn't noticed—until he told her that Death had been doing a running commentary of the proceedings over his shoulder.

Marco, mistaking Mike's attitude as condescension, had become even more agitated when Dana arrived looking (rightfully) half-dead. In the end, Beth had had to tell Marco to shut the fuck up and notarize their documents or she would tell his boss about his unprofessional behavior. Seething, Marco had rushed them through the process, then stormed off once they were done.

"Ye be looking more lost than anything, darlin'." Sulyvahn found a suitable rose bud and tucked it behind her ear, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "Maybe we could be going fer a—"

The front door slammed and Lily came outside.

"Oh, there you are! I've been looking for you for hours now." She sat next to Beth and crossed her legs, then tossed her hair over one shoulder. "I had a question about who gets me when daddy dies."

Sulyvahn laughed. "It ain't been hours, ye scandalous harlot. I saw ye moping about on the roof just a wee bit ago."

Lily stared daggers at Sulyvahn. "Are you still here? Shouldn't you be hanging around a cemetery giving handjobs to lost souls or something?"

"Whoa, hey." Beth set her paperwork down. "That's no way to talk to each other."

"Oh, I dinna mind. The temptress has a harsh tongue, but it bothers me none at all." Sulyvahn picked another rose and held it out to Lily. "It's just banter, nothing personal, don't ye know."

Lily eyed the rose suspiciously, then took it. She gave it a sniff, then tucked it into her blouse so that the bud rested just above her cleavage.

"There, see?" Sulyvahn smiled. "Now I be having have something pretty to look at instead of that thing ye call a face."

"Suly!" Beth looked at Lily, afraid of how she would react.