Page 93 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
It felt like Quinn hadn’t been able to breathe for days—like she was lost out in the ocean with waves crashing down over and over again. And she couldn’t feel or think, too stuck in a pattern, begging for survival . . . and it was just all too much. She needed space and time to get herself sorted. She needed the air and distance from her friends, but especially from the prince.
Hours passed in a blur. Her thoughts melted together like a potion brewing in a cauldron.
When awareness finally hit, she was in the middle of the Marina District, surrounded by a parade of masks and secrets. But her thoughts were still a mixture of thick, clotted paint.
The threats. The mirror bursting. Her parents. Jane. People kept dying, and now, if she didn’t find the last mirror, she might get her friends killed, too.
She was always seven steps behind the murderer and had no way of catching up.
It was hopeless.
As she walked, people sang odes to celebrate the end of the Vampire Gods and glorified King Emrys, the savior of the Blood Rebellion. Wine poured freely, and inhibitions melted to dust, leaving a maze of revelry, lies, debauchery, and sin. Wonderful sin.
People with visible mirror consequences freely walked the streets. There was a boy who cried tears of tar, a man who projected all his thoughts to walker’s by, and a girl who disappeared for a moment every thirty seconds.
Gramophones played the blues, and masked acrobats in elaborate costumes walked on tightropes, dangled from rings, and floated on trapezes. Mirror-Blessed contortionists spun their heads in full circles; actors performed social satire to a crowd of adoring fans. On the docks sat a makeshift menagerie, filled with every creature imaginable—real and mirror-created.
The night lit up with enchantment—a night of dreams and make-believe.
The external celebration stood in stark contrast to the devastation in Quinn. The investigation was nowhere nearer to being solved than it was when Jane died. Quinn was a complete and utter failure, and now her friends’ lives were on the line.
As she walked through the fantasy, tears trickled down her face, a light mist that turned into a river of feelings bursting out of her fractured heart.
Without realizing it, she’d walked all the way to the outskirts of the Nature District.
It was not a good place to be. The outskirts were filled with run-down buildings cobbled together from scrap wood, cardboard, and abandoned objects, creating an encampment that crawled with drugs and crime.
Passing under a bridge, Quinn glimpsed a shadow moving slowly and hauling something cumbersome. She should’ve continued on, but curiosity climbed up her throat. It was possiblethat Quinn’s biggest flaw was curiosity. Because if she heard a whispered secret floating through the air, she needed to know all of it. She couldn’t just drop it and let it go. Half of the trouble she’d gotten herself into over the past couple of days had come from eavesdropping. This knowledge should have stopped her and turned her around, but of course, it didn’t.
It only made her want to find out more.
Following close behind, Quinn watched as a man dragged a human-sized lump to a massive bonfire before struggling to lift it up and onto the pyre. Quinn moved closer to gawk—or help, but then she noticed an arm hanging limply.
A body.A lifeless body. And then the stench hit her. Visceral and suffocating.
The smell of burning flesh and pine trees.
She gagged. Quinn was used to the smell of dead bodies, but burning flesh was rancid and all-consuming, and it wasn’t something she was prepared for outside of a lab.
“What are you doing?” Quinn wrapped her arms around her stomach as if to protect herself.Oh, you foolish girl. Get out of here while you still have the chance.
“Burning him,” the man grunted.
Horror stroked up Quinn’s spine. “Burning him?” Her voice shook, and the horror intensified when her vision solidified, and through the embers, she saw that the bonfire was a pile of burning bodies, at least twenty deep. Twenty dead. “How did he die?”
The man shrugged. “Drink, drugs . . . who knows. I just burn the bodies so that they can move on to the afterlife.”
“Have more people been dying lately?” Quinn asked.
“Nineteen this week. More than usual, but it’s cold.”
Without asking, Quinn examined the corpse’s neck. There were too many bodies on the pile for them to be dying of natural causes or accidents. Someone or something was behind these deaths—first the mirror murders and now the homeless. Could it be connected? Possibly, if new vampires roamed the streets, they would need a food source.
“What are you doing, girl?” The man pulled the body out of her reach.
“I am . . . I’m a coroner. I just wanted to make sure he didn’t have wounds on his neck.” The body didn’t. His neck had no visible markings, yet suspicion still tingled in her chest.
“People die on the streets every day from the cold, starvation, overdose, and disease. Fancy people like yourself have never cared.”
