The Mirror: Part I

         Chapter One
         “Looking In”
Looking back, it was definitely not the sort of day Jake would have expected anything significant to happen in; the sort of day when the weather was unmentionable, there was a whole lot of time-sucking nothing to do, and one was home alone.
         But Jake knew he would never forget it.
         Late-morning light pored through the patio door. Should he go outside? Nah. Nothing to do out there, either. Jake strolled like an aimless nomad back into his living room.
         He glanced casually at the mirror, even though he already knew what he looked like (average 14-year-old height, dark brown hair, light blue eyes, and an irritating freckle that his mom found adorable on his right cheek). Nonetheless, he glanced into his mirror, and what do you know, there he was, same old, same ol—
         He wasn’t there. Jake looked the mirror in the eyes, but the eyes looking back were not Jake’s.
         There were two sunken, bloodshot eyes framed with coarse, lank, and curly black hair. Prominent cheekbones and a thick, rectangular goatee brought even more attention to the face Jake couldn’t look away from, the way a person doesn’t want to look but can’t help gasping, horrified, at a gruesome train wreck.
         A creature from a human’s shadow—that was what the haggard man peering like a curious demon out into Jake’s world looked like.
The creature in the mirror flicked a glance to the world behind Jake’s back. He saw just what there was: Jake’s empty living room, save for the detritus any American family might have… a Cheeto bag, empty pop cans. But Cheeto bags and spilled soda were not of any interest to the creature in the mirror.
Jake was.
         Goosebumps dragged chilling fingers up Jake’s spine.
         The creature smiled.
         Jake twitched back involuntarily. It didn’t seem a good thing to have a demon smile at you, and it didn’t feel likely seeing crooked teeth fringed with brown and yellow could be a good omen.
         The creature looked conspiratorially over his own shoulder, as if about to divulge an excellent secret that could very well get them in trouble with the principal. Then, the creature leaned forward, smile still dancing around his thin chapped lips, and pressed his nose against his side of the mirror’s glass.
         His nose squished up against the surface, the oils on it making the absurd sight smeared. His breath misted the area around his nose, turning that section of his impish countenance opaque. The creature pressed his fingertips up to the glass at the level of his eyes.
         He stared down at Jake a few seconds; the mist covering his awful grin, then receding, then flooding his face again.
         Then, with no change in his gleeful, narrow-eyed expression, the man from the mirror brought his left hand off the glass, turned it around so the palm was facing himself, and crooked his angular index finger.
         He was beckoning Jake. Jake’s loosely clenched, paralyzed hands began to whisper of trembling. There was a different world in his mirror.
It was summoning him.
         The man from the mirror broadened his grin, then turned and skipped merrily off into the scenery he haunted. The final mist from the creature’s breath melted away, leaving the image of the skipping figure and his lush world pristine. Except for the oils the squished nose had left behind.
         Jake slowly, cautiously, stretched out a finger towards his side of the mirror. A quarter of an inch before human and portal touched, the patch of glass in front of his finger melted away without a trace.
         Jake pulled back his finger and looked at the diminishing man in the mirror. His figure was still skipping away without a care in the worlds. He hopped away over thickly green, gentle hills and ever towards a clear, motionless lake and the dark line of forest behind it. The forest stretched left, right, and onward further than the human eye could see, like a sea of, rather than blue water, black trees.
         Jake pushed his entire hand up to the mirror. The area melted away into nothing but a gap between Jake’s world and the creature’s. Jake paused, then hiked himself up onto the low, wobbly table in front of the gigantic mirror. The crash of the lamp startled Jake, but he quickly forgot he had even knocked it over.
         The creature’s form was still hopping carelessly off.
         Jake looked down through the mirror. The mirror’s bottom end rested in luscious grass blades at the zenith of a small, quickly sloping hill.
         Jake hesitated. The warped wooden clock dangling from a nail in the wall declared with the relentless tick, tock of time that it was nine in the morning. His parents would be home at ten tonight. His older sister was away at college. Their German shepherd had passed away a few months ago. Jake was alone, and a world had presented itself.
         A deep inhale, and Jake was no longer on Earth.

Chapter Two
“Being In”
With a thud Jake hit the mirror’s hill, and with a series of thuds he lost his balance and rolled down it. He was breathing quickly—for a moment of insanity not sure if that was what dying felt like, if he had just killed himself.
He looked up. The creature had stopped and turned around, his eyes shining with delight that his plaything had indeed followed him in. He pranced back over to Jake.
Jake looked up at the menacing man, thoughts flickering in his brain about possible impending death and he should have done his homework first and where was this place and who was this creature who…looked vaguely familiar…
The creature merely crooked his finger again and turned to repeat his merry sojourn to the lake and its dark forest backdrop. Jake got up unsteadily. He pushed thoughts of thinking this through out of his head, and jogged after the familiar, foreign man.
The creature didn’t turn around to check if Jake was following, but threw his arms merrily about to augment his skipping jaunt. The skipping was getting steadily more irritating, but Jake doggedly jogged after.
“Hey!” he hailed the nameless skipper.
The creature froze, theatrically, in mid-skip, turned his head back at Jake, and cocked it at him like some cute puppy. Jake found himself trying to remember who this person reminded him of.
“Where are, what’s your name?” was the muddled sentence that presented itself.
The haggard man gave a theatric sigh, except Jake didn’t hear it. Jake wondered at this, but continued to watch him. The man dropped his arms, smiled open-jawed, and Jake knew that if the man had had a tongue, it would be sticking out at him.
Again the involuntary, minute twitch. The creature’s tongue, once upon a time, had been severed.
Before Jake could mull this over too much, the creature was off on his cheerful skip again, his energy seeming only to increase the more he used. Jake once again jogged after, nearly tripping.
The lake was steadily getting closer, and then, there it was. Jake stopped moving.
The lake was broad and oblong. The waters were perfectly clear, and the strangely purplish-yellow light cast by this world’s sun sent pretty rays all the way down to its faraway depths. At the bottom, blocks of colorful… was it marble?… sat. Tendrils of unmoving algae rose up several feet, but were still ages away from reaching the top.
Jake was amazed at how clear, how perfect the lake was. He felt he could stare at it for hours, days, and see all his pleasant memories swim through like pretty little silver fish.
The magic was broken as a current of yellow floated into Jake’s sight. He squinted at it, sad that the water wasn’t perfect anymore, and confused as to what it was.
He looked up. The man was laughing silently and uproariously as he zipped up his pants.
Jake felt himself twitching forward, disgusted at the imp’s actions, dying to give this pig’s feces a solid kick in the goods for destroying the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Why didn’t the creature make any sound? He just spat a crooked grin of enjoyment in Jake’s angry direction.
Then he was off again, bounding towards the dark line of forest. Jake shuddered, infuriated, but again jogged after him.
The shadow of the forest reached Jake before Jake reached the forest. The silence of the grassy knolls was put to shame by the silence achieved in this thick world of trees and moss.
Jake stopped his jogging and walked slowly deeper in. His black hiking boots made muted crunching on the damp soil and rotting leaves beneath his feet. What was this place?
Jake continued stepping in, pulled by the allure of the Unknown and the Amazing. The creature was skipping silently away, disintegrating into the shadows, his figure trembling with encased laughter at some inside joke.
In a moment, the strange man was gone.
Jake still proceeded, this time tendrils of fear pulling at his ankles. He turned to look at where the forest line ended behind him.
His heart jumped. The forest’s end and the lake’s beginning had vanished. Jake took a cautious step forward, vague thoughts of finding the man playing in his mind.
Suddenly the air was filled with a high warble, a foreign battle cry. Jake jumped and turned full circle, trying to pinpoint where the cry was coming from.
A faceless, willowy figure, charging at Jake. Jake stood rooted as he stared at the crazed person flying like an arrow towards him, warbling a cry of impending victory.
The forest warrior was upon him. Jake fell back as the person threw his full weight into Jake, knocking the wind out of Jake’s chest. The attacker’s eyes were a pale silvery color, reminiscent of moonlight’s pallor. But the overtaking aspect of the warrior’s eyes was not the color, but the clear and fearsome insanity.
The attacker, a silvery dagger glinting uncannily in the forest’s shadows, was about to deliver death’s plunge. Jake’s knocked-out breath returned with a gasp.  He sent a prayer to God, knowing his moment had come.
Chapter Three
“The Elf and His King”
         But then, the insanity in the warrior’s eyes began to shimmer. The fist clenching the dagger bobbed in space, then fell to the side. The insanity flickered, and like a flame in a storm, was gone.
In its place came the look of a person who has just passed out. The newest individual collapsed and fell to the sweetly rotting, damp, mossy forest floor.
         High above, unseen and unheard, the bearded man from the mirror frowned angrily. His ploy hadn’t worked, and now he was disinterested. He climbed away through the treetops, as silent as shadows will forever more be.
         Jake’s heart was beating as though he had just run for miles and miles, and his face was bloodless with fear. He bowed his head and sent a prayer of thanks to the LORD.
         The would-be assassin was breathing deeply, peacefully. Jake leaned closer. What was this person? A pointed ear stabbed through wispy hair. Jake had seen humans with pointy ears, but never like this.
         He looked at the loose fist still grasping the dagger. The fingers were long, elegant, inhuman. Jake tenderly reached out and slid the lethal blade out of the sleeping creature’s hand. He glanced at the sleeping murderer to assure himself he was still wandering harmlessly in lulu land, then shifted his attention to the dagger.
         A near-invisible etch murmured its presence in the silver blade. Jake leaned closer still, trying to make out the form in the weak, purplish forest light.
         It was a vine. But the vine was spelling something; something in characters Jake had never seen the like of before. The hilt was formed, Jake could see, for hands of the attacker’s race. The hilt was grimy, but discernibly of the same element as the blade.
         A faint groan drifted over to Jake. The warrior was stirring.
         Jake quickly stuffed the blade into his own boot, between his sock and the side. The warrior’s hand twitched, and the silvery eyes opened slowly but steadily. A feathery murmur emanated from the creature’s throat. “Are you a human?…”
Jake blinked. Human?
         Then he nodded. “What are you?” he countered.
         The person slowly slid into an upright position and folded his legs in front, one crooked parallel to the ground and one crooked perpendicular. The upright knee was only inches away from the person’s chin.
         “How did you get here? Do they know you’re here?”
         Again, Jake blinked. The creature’s eyes no longer spoke of insanity or unconsciousness, but of acute awareness and perception. He breathed deeply, as if each breath had been begged from a cruel master.
         “The, mirror,” came Jake’s shaky reply. “What… who are you?”
         “I am a member of the Efend Clan,” he answered proudly.
         Jake looked blankly at him.
         The creature suppressed his disdain with a weak effort. “Efend Clan, Clan of the Elf King?”
         A pause, then, “You’re an… elf?”
         The elf breathed deeply and serenely, pushing irritation out of mind and logic in. “You aren’t safe here. The Seripmav are after your kind; they’re starving, you know.”
         The forest’s silence encompassed them again. Seripmav, thought Jake. Has to be another elf clan.
         “I need to get back to my… home,” said Jake.
         The elf, nearly invisibly, started. “I can’t let you do that. You must come with me. You won’t be harmed.” The elf didn’t blink as he looked piercingly into Jake’s eyes. Thoughts of safe warm home suddenly seemed… silly. Jake didn’t know why, but he was quite sure that going home would be silly.
         This elf was right. Yes.
         An almost-imperceptible smile played at the Efend Clan elf’s lips.
         “I will take you to the king. Come; tread silently, take long steps.” The elf got up gracefully without using his arms, and Jake followed in a more human style—awkwardly.
         And the elf and the human tread silently, with long steps, into the heart of the forest and the heart of the Elf King’s Nation.
~
         Back at 4568 Baker Street, the house was silent. The only light was glinting through the patio door, and from the upturned lamp lying on its side under the unnatural mirror.
Two houses down, Jake’s best friend since the second grade sat, hot tears sliding slowly down her cheek and nose. Lorryn looked at her purple digital clock. The bus would be leaving at six; it was ten-seventeen now. She slowly rubbed the welt on her shoulder, the parting gift her mom had left before heading off to a bar.
There was nothing here for Lorryn. She had a cousin in Denver that might take her in. It was a risk worth taking, she figured.
         But what to write? She would leave a note, telling her mom not to worry, but she couldn’t help but wonder whether her mom would actually need to be told.
         She would miss Jake, she supposed. More than her mom, anyway, and whatever boyfriend she would drag home today—tonight.
         Boyfriend. She thought of her own boyfriend, Victor. She no longer loved him, as she once thought she had. He was overpowering, awful, a bully grown up.
         She was afraid of him.
         She thought a little bit about her dad. Was he happy where the leukemia had taken him?
         She scribbled her note to Jake, then put the purple pen down. Was it good? Would Jake miss her? Would he try to find her? Would anybody even care?
         Now all there was to do was wait for the bus.
~
         Jake sat in a gigantic, warm room, hidden beneath the roots of a gargantuan tree that certainly did not grow on Earth.
         King Amadeus, lord and ruler of the Elves, sat before him on an intricate, grandiose, spindly wood throne. The same silvery-moonlight eyes that the warrior elf had were peering intensely at Jake. A thin tubing crossed the King’s face, feeding carbon dioxide into his nostrils, keeping him sane.
         “Now. Explain to me your presence in my Nation.” Amadeus’ voice was deep and resounding, the voice of a king. It reminded Jake of a gigantic tree, with roots spreading out for miles.
         Jake didn’t know where to start. What did the elf king want to know?
         A smirk lifted the corner King Amadeus’ mouth. “Beginnings are good to start explaining at, but some like to start at the middle and work out.”
         The crowd of elves tittered at the not particularly amusing joke. No one could miss the sense of urgent curiosity permeating the entire court. Jake blinked, feeling very small next to a King, who was taller sitting than Jake was standing.
         “I was… at my home, on… Earth… ?… when my mirror… in the mirror was this… a man, but he didn’t look like a man so much, but he had a beard, and dark hair, kind of curly… never mind, anyway he was in the mirror…”
         Jake felt so stupid, and could feel a thousand moonlight eyes turned on him, focusing their rays on his every word.
         The king’s scepter straightened as his grip grew agitatedly tighter. “Did he get through the mirror?” he demanded.
         “No. But I think he could have, if he’d wanted, because I got through to here.”
         The court’s breath quickened, a million calculating minds whirring.
         “What happened then?” said the king serenely, leaning back in his chair, faking regality in the heat of the stress and racing thoughts.
         “He led me to the lake in the hills, and then he…” Jake’s face got red with embarrassment and renewed anger, and he decided to skip that part.
         “Then we went—”
         “You skipped something,” stated the King, his eyes narrowing.
         The atmosphere rippled as everyone became either suspicious or curious and leaned in forward.
         “He—peed in the lake.”
         Angry, surprised gasps filled the court. The elf king’s knuckles became white as he clenched his scepter tighter still.
         Eager to change the subject, Jake continued with the story until he got to the end: to where he was, standing before an Elf King in a world he had never heard mention of.
         Silence.
         “And what was the last you saw of our urinating friend?” the king said with a tinge of bitterness, discreetly shifting his grip on his scepter.
         Jake thought.
         “He disappeared after we got into the forest.”
         The king’s left eye scrunched and unscrunched in quick thought. For a moment, that eye seemed to glow brighter. Then he called out, rising from his throne, “Urion and Germiv, come forward.” The eye was as it had been once more, and Jake assumed nothing had changed in the King’s eye.
         As the crowd shuffled and the two elves half came half got pushed forward, Amadeus, speaking to though not looking at Jake, stated, “We know of this… man from your mirror. His name is Linkunz Id.”
         Linkunz Id, thought Jake. Sound’s like—Lincoln’s Id. Jake placed the name and gasped when he realized who the creature had reminded him of.
         Abraham Lincoln.
         Id—the dark side of Abraham Lincoln.
         The creature from the mirror was America’s sixteenth president’s evil side, suppressed for the entirety of Lincoln’s life and now come to freedom in this, this Otherworld.
         “Lincoln Id is an ally of the Seripmav. He knows things about your Earth, and he is a rotten core of rancid evil. Forgive my people if they associate you with him. I will make sure they do not cut your tongue out and cast any such silencing enchantment on you.”
         Jake looked around. A few elves looked mutinously disappointed.
         “Urion and Germiv, have either of you sighted Lincunz Id within the last hours?”
         Germiv’s voice had a strange grinding quality as he bowed deep and said no.
         “What was the last you saw of Lincoln Id, Urion?”
         The luminescence of Urion’s eyes gleamed off the knots of scar tissue writhing on his tanned face. He looked straight at the King and said, “King Amadeus, Lincoln Id has created a portal to Earth. The Seripmav plan to move to Earth because humans still exist there.”
         The king’s grip on his scepter tightened. “We’ll have to get there first.”
         Somewhere in the court of elves a child started crying. Jake twisted to find it. Every elven face looked irritated, like the cry was interrupting important thought chains. Nowhere through the glowing countenances could Jake find the wailing child.
         The King seemed gracious, but stoic. “Queen, take the child away. He’s too young for talk of vampires.”
         “Vampires?” asked Jake. Nobody heard.
         “Spread this Message,” declared the King. “All Elf Clans convene in the City tonight. A portal to our life source has been located. Tonight, the Vampire Nation is defeated.”
         The great hall began to vibrate, to thunder. The elves were stomping their feet, yelling triumphantly, “The Seripmav are defeated tonight!” The king was stood like a viking surveying his conquered land. A pleased expression played in his smirking face.
         The booms from the crowd resonated to the highest reaches of the hall to the deepest core of Jake’s chest. “What are the Seripmav?” he yelled to the King, struggling to be heard over the din.
         Amadeus glanced, bothered, in Jake’s direction. He said as simply and coldly as a sheet of ice, “Vampires.”
         
Chapter Four
“The Seripmav”

         “The Seripmav have killed all the humans in our world. Humans are the only food source that will keep them alive. They became gluttonous, and now they face either starvation, or emigration to your world, where humans are still plentiful.
         “The Seripmav, the vampires, have never been of great concern to elves before; the humans and the Seripmav always kept each other in check.
         “But elves don’t breathe oxygen. We breathe carbon dioxide. Without it, we can stay alive, but we go insane.” Jake noticed anew the thin tubing stretching into the King’s narrow nostrils. “The humans are gone now. Except for a small city still in hiding. We only have a limited supply of oxygen, and the Elf Nation accounts for nearly two million. Every clan except the Efend and the Darpé is out of carbon dioxide.
         “They rest have gone insane. No one is safe anymore. Already the death toll is nearing three thousand.”
         “But… I thought lack of oxygen didn’t kill,” queried Jake.
         And now King Amadeus turned his towering stature to face Jake square. His midnight’s light eyes focused on Jake’s unmagical brown ones, fixed on them like a serpent’s fangs in its prey. “Its not the insane elves that die. It’s the people they murder.”
         Jake felt the chilling memory of the attacking elf. That elf’s eyes hadn’t gleamed entirely differently than the King’s were right now.
         The King turned and addressed Urion, apparently wearied from an explanation that barely made sense to its audience. “When do the Seripmav intend to leave?”
         “Your Highness, they are leaving tonight.”
         The hall erupted into greater chaos. The king held back a small gasp, and no one knew the difference. He let his clan convene a few moments more, then tapped his scepter.
         The sound was unlike any Jake had ever heard before. It was like a bell, but how could a wooden staff sound like a bell? It was beautiful, awful, wonderful, and commanding.
         The people instantly silenced.
         “I speak to you now as your King.” Amadeus stepped forward, standing erect at his full, towering height.
         “This is our chance to save our people.” The King nodded out to his citizens, and they all nodded back in understanding of what he meant.
         Jake glanced around, wishing someone would explain. No one did. The moonlight eyes were deep in thought.
         The king turned to Jake. “Thank you. You have done a great service to our people. Take him to the Humans’ City.” He nodded at Urion and Germiv.
         Jake opened his mouth but nothing came out. He had to warn his family, his city, his country—vampires were coming, his entire race might be doomed—
         But Urion and Germiv swept him away and deep into the maze of the King’s palace. Jake twisted round, trying to stay oriented.
         “Don’t get ideas.” Urion jerked Jake’s arm forward, nearly pulling it out of its socket. Jake was a prisoner of war, and his homeland was about to be attacked by an incoming tide of blood-thirsty vampires. I have to get back.
Jake was slowly but surely becoming hopelessly lost.
~
         Lorryn sat, fidgeting with a sudoku puzzle on her lap. She couldn’t concentrate. She sucked at these things anyway.
         Another glance at the purple digital clock; five sixteen. Could time go any slower?
         She looked at the sudoku puzzle disinterestedly. She drew a grid and started drawing X’s and O’s, and just as Lorryn O was about to call tick-tack-toe and triumph over arch nemesis Lorryn X, the decrepit doorbell rang.
         Lorryn looked up towards the closed curtain. Who would it be? She remembered the Shakespeare sonnet books she’d ordered off of Yahoo Auctions and figured it must be the delivery. She stood up, doubting she wanted to be compared to a summer’s day right now, but moving to get the package anyway.
         She opened the door. It was no UPS man.
         Jake stood there, his jeans and T-shirt ripped and dirty. His hair had some sort of exotic, dead purple leaf in it. She opened her mouth in surprise, seeing her best friend’s desperate expression. She quickly unlocked the storm door, and saw a strange silver hilt glinting out of the hiking boots she had given Jake for his fourteenth birthday a few weeks ago.
         She opened the door. “Jake, what’s wro—”
         “You’ve got to come. Come on.” He turned and stumbled away off of her front deck.
         “Jake, what’s wro—”
         “Just come.”
         She hurried out of her house and closed the door behind her, following Jake’s intense pace with her own worried one.
         They came up to his house, where the front door stood ajar. They hurried in.
         “Jake, what’s wrong?” she finally got out.
         They stepped into the living room. Jake glanced at her, then pointed to the mirror above an overturned lamp on a table.
         “Oh my—”
         “Yes.”
         Lorryn did not see the mirror she’d seen every other time she’d been in this room. She saw rolling, lush hills, a faraway lake, and a line of dark trees wavering in a slight breeze.
         “Come here,” said Jake, walking toward the mirror. She followed tentatively, awed. “Touch it.”
         Lorryn thought he looked a little crazy, but then she realized she must be seeing the same thing he was. Either they were both crazy or both sane, and Lorryn was pretty sure she was sane.
         She reached out a tentative hand.
         A hole in the glass appeared. A faint breeze played up her sleeve.
         “Jake. What’s going on.”
         “Lorryn, will you believe me if I tell you?”
         She turned to face him, dropping her hand away from the mirror. His eyes were earnest.
         He’d never lied before.
         Lorryn was a fairly trusting girl.
         She nodded. “Yes.”
         “I woke up this morning and when I walked in here a guy was looking out at me through—” he pointed at the mirror.
         Lorryn blinked in understanding, and Jake continued on.
         “I went through the mirror—”
Lorryn mentally connected the tipped lamp to Jake clambering onto the rickety table to step through the mirror.
         “I went through, and the man led me to that forest.” He pointed at the wavering tree line beyond.
         Lorryn reached her hand out again toward the mirror, to reassure herself of reality.
         She was barely believing this.
         Jake continued. “Okay. So… do you promise you’ll believe me?”
         Lorryn hesitated, not sure what to think. But she nodded, suddenly sure this was true as her hand actually passed into the Otherworld.
         “Elves and humans and the Seripmav—vampires, Lorryn, the Seripmav are vampires. They live there. The elves’ve pretty much gone insane because the vampires killed off all the humans, well almost all of them, there’s an underground city and they’re half crazed, too, and they wanted to put me there but I just escaped, and elves breath in what we breath out. And so now the humans are killed, the elves don’t have anything to breathe, and the vampires are starving, because there aren’t any humans left where they’re at because they killed them all.”
         Jake paused, wondering if he was making any sense at all. Probably not, he realized.
         Lorryn was listening intently, drifting her hand around the mirror, watching the glass melt away and then reappear on the trail her hand left. Her forehead was scrunched up.
         “Lorryn, the Seripmav—the vampires are coming here. They’re coming here, because—”
         Lorryn gasped, jerking her hand away from the mirror. The glass healed itself as she whispered, “Because there are humans here.”
         They looked at each other for a breathless moment, and then Lorryn turned back to the mirror, squaring herself to it.
         “And the elves are going to kidnap humans. They need humans, or they’ll all end up insane. And they can do it, too, they can knock us all out if they want and float us back. The only thing they don’t have is a portal, and now they do,” finished Jake.
         Lorryn looked deep into the mirror, suddenly and inexplicably longing to live there, to be there, anywhere but her own life where she was going to run away and try to make it on her own, where she loved her mom but her mom was never there, where Victor was becoming a menace and a nightmare come true, where grief from her dad’s death overwhelmed. Where can a person run to escape from themselves?
         She looked into the lush hills, the beautiful lake, the forever sky. Her mind latched on to this place as if it was suddenly an attainable Utopia that sanity dictated she couldn’t have.
“We’ve got to break this mirror. They can’t come if there isn’t a, a portal.”
         She reached out for the lamp, wanting to get it over with before she could think about what kind of life she might live inside the mirror.
         “No!”
         Lorryn jumped back. “What? Why not?” she said worriedly.
         “The guy who made the mirror a portal… Lincoln, Lincoln Id, he’s still in there. Even if we destroy this mirror, he’ll just make another one for the Serip—the vampires. And they’ll come anyway, and the elves will come too, and we won’t know when or where.”
         Lorryn paused, forcing her quick breath to slow down, her thoughts to rationalize.
“Then how are we going to stop him?”