Page 55 of Fangs

I don’t hesitate. The blade slices across my left palm. Pain flares, sharp and immediate. Blood wells from the wound, dark and viscous, dripping onto the floor.

I lift my bleeding hand and press my palm against the cold glass of the portrait.

The surface ripples.

Like water disturbed by a stone. The glass shimmers, shifts, accepts my touch.

I close my eyes.

“I love you.” The words tremble on my lips. “I love you. I love you.”

Three times. The truth of my heart spoken before the glass.

I force my eyes open. Nothing.

The portrait remains still. The violet-blue eyes don’t blink. The surface of the glass is solid and cold beneath my hand.

I sag against the frame, the book slipping from my fingers. It hits the floor with a soft thud.

It didn’t work. Of course it did not work. Love is not a magic spell. It can’t break a curse that has held a demon for two centuries.

I was a fool. I press my forehead against the glass, my tears sliding down my cheeks in hot, silent tracks. The cold seeps into my skin, into my bones.

“I will find another way,” I whisper.

The shadows in the corners stir.

“Lucille.”

His voice. I know it.

I lift my head, my eyes searching the darkness. “Blake.”

“What did you just do?”

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. From the shadows, from the glass, from the very air around me.

I turn back to the portrait, and my breath catches.

The surface has changed. It is no longer solid glass. It has become like gel—translucent, viscous, yielding to the touch. I press my fingers against it, and they sink in.

A magnetic pull tugs at my core, deep and insistent. It calls to me from inside the frame. From the world beyond the glass.

I should hesitate, consider the consequences, weigh the risks.

I don’t. I step forward.

The gel swallows me whole.

Cold envelops my body. Darkness presses in from all sides. I can’t see. Can’t breathe. Can’t feel anything but the pull, the inexorable drag toward something I can’t name. Light.

I stumble forward, gasping, my hands braced against—

Nothing.

I’m standing in a vast, empty space. The floor beneath my feet is black marble, polished to a mirror shine. The ceiling arches overhead, impossibly high, painted with stars that seem to move and shift. And the walls—The walls are mirrors.

Every surface reflects my image back at me. I see myself from a thousand angles—my crimson uniform, my bleeding palm, my wild red hair and flushed cheeks.