Smoke in Mirrors

into the dark soil.
    When she turned around, the room wavered a little at the edges. The angles straightened in the next instant, but she did not find that reassuring. Something was wrong with her. She was ill.
    She had to get home. Maybe call a doctor. No, that wouldn’t work. She didn’t know any doctors here in Wing Cove. She would call Thomas.
    Yes. That was the answer. Call Thomas. He would take her to a doctor.
    First things first. She needed her car keys. They were in her satchel. The satchel was in the library.
    Okay. That was easy. Go upstairs to the library and get the satchel.
    Step One, go through the door.

    What was it about that door, anyway? Then she remembered what Roberta had said that first day when she had given her a tour of Mirror House.
    My door is always open.
    But Roberta’s door was closed now. She noticed that an antique mirror hung on the back.
    It was an eight-sided, convex mirror framed in heavily worked, badly tarnished silver. Dragons, griffins and sphinxes cavorted and writhed at the edges of the dark glass. A phoenix decorated the top.
    Late eighteenth century, probably, Leonora thought. She was becoming a real expert, thanks to all the time she had spent in the library upstairs.
    She had seen this mirror illustrated in some book. She just couldn’t quite remember the title.
    The room wobbled a bit.
    She moved unsteadily to the desk and leaned on it, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
    When the world was stable again she found herself gazing into the old mirror.
    And quite suddenly, through the growing fog that was creeping through her mind, she remembered where she had seen a picture of this particular mirror.
    Page eighty-one of the Catalog of Antique Looking Glasses in the Mirror House Collection .
    It occurred to her that when Roberta was seated at her desk with her door closed the old looking glass would reflect her image.
    The face of a killer.
    That was the message that Bethany, hallucinating wildly from the effects of the drugs, had tried to leave behind when she had circled the drawing in the catalog.
    The room blurred again.
    Drugged. She had been drugged. Just like Bethany. Just like Meredith.

    She breathed deeply. The lines and angles of the room steadied again. She walked very carefully around the desk. With luck Julie would still be here. She would ask her to drive her home. Roberta would not be able to stop both of them.
    She did not look into the depths of the convex mirror when she reached the door. She was afraid of what she would see. She got the door open and went out into the hall.
    There was no sign of Julie or Roberta, but she heard voices somewhere in the distance, coming from the front hall. Too far away. She could not understand what was being said.
    But there was no mistaking the faint sound of the mansion’s front door closing.
    Julie was gone. Despair threatened to freeze her right where she stood. It would be so much simpler to just sit down here in the hall and close her eyes.
    You can’t sleep yet.
    Of course she couldn’t just sit down and go to sleep. What was wrong with her? She had to get out of here. She had only swallowed a few sips of that drugged coffee, not the whole cup. She could do this.
    Think.
    Okay. There would be no help from Julie. That meant she had to get herself out of here.
    Keys. She needed the keys to her car.
    She pushed through the panic and started down the corridor toward the main staircase.
    Footsteps echoed in the distance. Roberta was returning to her office.
    Hurry. Need to hurry. The library. Keys in the library.
    She was on the staircase now. One foot in front of the other.
    The risers were uneven. Some steps were too high.Others were too low. She gripped the banister with both hands and used it the way a mountain climber used ropes to haul herself up the face of a steep cliff.
    “Leonora?” Roberta’s voice came from downstairs. “Where are you? I see you finished all of the coffee. You must be feeling quite woozy by now.”
    Time was running out. Roberta was searching for her.
    She made it to the top of the staircase, but she had to stop for a few seconds to get her bearings. The hall of dark mirrors had become a wormhole, a twisting path into another universe. Panic injected a dose of adrenaline into her bloodstream.
    Forget the wormhole. Don’t think about the world on the other side of the mirror. You’re not going there. You’re just here to get your car keys.
    “It’s all right, Leonora. I’ll