Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire

mirror.
    Cavalry? Her heart leapt. But then she remembered what Lothaire’s enemies would do to her. Harems, whoring, and horns.
    Ellie whirled around and flung open the door, racing back into the kitchen. “Hag!” she cried. “There’s—there’s something in the mirror , something that wants me to go with it.”
    Hag dropped the leaves she’d been sorting. “Mirror?” She collected a machete from a hook on the wall. “ Mariketa the Awaited . She must have searched every mirror in the world for your reflection.”
    “Who’s Mariketa?”
    “She is the leader of the House of Witches, a notorious band of mercenaries.” Weapon in hand, Hag started for the bathroom.
    This isn’t gonna end well for Mariketa. Ellie cautiously followed Hag. “Witch mercenaries? You have got to be kidding me!”
    “They’ve deciphered our boundary encryption. Or at least part of it.” At the door, Hag said, “Go inside and tell her that you want to go with her.”
    “Uh, all right.” Ellie entered, then faced the mirror. “Hey, are you there, cavalry?”
    The voice answered, “Don’t have all day, Bride of Lothaire. Got nickel beer and disco bowling tonight.” Mariketa sounded so human, so normal, that Ellie had misgivings. Especially when Hag crept to the side of the mirror and raised the machete.
    Mariketa continued, “I can’t breach the plane of the glass, ’cause of the old-skool boundary spell. But you can reach into the mirror and grab my hand. Hup-two, and I’ll do the rest.”
    Hag waved her on, so Ellie said, “Yeah, okay, here I come.”
    The fey eased her hand inside the mirror, as though dipping it into a pool of water.
    Mariketa said, “Gotcha.”
    Hag replied, “No, I’ve got you .”
    Her machete struck through the glass. A shriek erupted. “Ahhh! You BITCH!”
    In a spray of blood, the fey leapt back; Ellie gaped. Hag was holding the witch’s severed hand.
    As some kind of beast roared from within the mirror, energy began building in the air, making the fine hair on Ellie’s arms stand up.
    Using the blood, Hag frantically drew weird symbols onto the glass, finishing just as a flash of what looked like lightning torpedoed toward them.
    “Hold . . . hold steady,” Hag muttered. The bolt ricocheted off the plane of glass and back into that darkness. Another scream sounded— “You’ll pay for this, fey!” —then silence.
    The glass was solid once more, the symbols seeming to seep into the mirror before disappearing.
    Hag sagged back against the wall. “They knew enough of our key to find you. Dark gods, that was close.”
    “You saved me, thank you.”
    Her face paled. “It was too close. I should have changed the encryption an hour ago. You weren’t invisible to enemies. Lothaire will kill me for this.”
    “No harm, no foul? I don’t have a scratch on me.”
    “You do not know Lothaire.” Hag’s expression was stricken.
    “What if I didn’t tell him?”
    “And what would you want in return?”
    Ellie’s gaze dipped to her phone. “You know what I want.”
    “I vowed to the Lore never to betray Lothaire. Even if I wanted to let you call, it’s impossible to break an oath to the Lore.”
    “Then what can you give me?”
    Hag’s eyes darted. “I don’t know . . . I can’t think.”
    “Better hurry. He could return soon. Hey, maybe you could answer twenty questions for me.”
    In a rapid patter, Hag said, “I’d have to reserve the right not to answer certain questions if said answers might adversely affect Lothaire’s interests. A clever person could glean much solely from the questions I refused.”
    Like how I just gleaned that it was even possible for Lothaire’s interests to be adversely affected? And that you think I’m clever? “Then promise me information about this world, about immortals in general.”
    “Help me clean up, and I’ll make it worth your while.”
    “Um, yeah, I’m gonna need you to vow that to the Lore.”
    Hag squinted at Ellie. “I have a very portentous feeling about you. But I want to live. So, I vow to the Lore to give you information about our world.”
    “All right. Tell me what you want me to do. . . .”
    Hag gave her a powder to pour over the sink and along the machete to make the blood disappear while she disintegrated the witch’s hand in another vat.
    When everything was set to rights, Hag said, “It doesn’t matter how clean we’ve made it—you’re going to give us away. He’ll see right through