Page 2 of Reap & Sow

That shut him up. Eda led Bartholomew to the back of the shop, through the mazelike shelves as tall as hedgerows and down two steps to a door in the back wall. She withdrew the key from her pocket with a jolt of unexpected dread.

She’d opened this door many times but never without Ben or Lawrie present. Their absence was a phantom all its own. Eda knew the shop as well as she knew herself—it was her job to mind it while Lawrie ran errands and Ben worked—but this expectant quiet was unfamiliar. Oppressive. She felt it breathing down her neck.

The key rattled in the lock. Steady hands, Eda, you damned fool.

The door swung open.

Bartholomew’s breathing quickened. She’d interacted with many dealies over the years, and guilt was a persistent companion, but Eda had grown adept at smothering it. This was necessary, and it needed doing quickly. Her brothers were not here to stop Bartholomew if he tried to run.

She lit the sconces as they descended the twisting iron staircase. The cellar was always cold, and the firelight did little to conjure illusions of warmth. It smelled vaguely musty down here, earthen and primal. She was reminded of tombs and catacombs. Places where the living did not belong.

Eda lit the final sconce before turning to Bartholomew.

He gripped the stair rail with white knuckles, staring. “Is that it?”

She followed his gaze. The Shaws’ cellar was entirely bare of ornament…save for the lonely mirror propped against the wall. “Yes,” she murmured. “This is a Gateway.”

The mirror stood more than six feet in height and half as wide. It was carved from a single block of thick obsidian. All Gateways were made of it, centuries ago when no one followed the teachings of the Faith or the Lordfather but instead a pantheon of pagan gods. Now such deities were only worshipped by witches and heretics, if at all.

A wild age, she recalled Lawrie reading aloud from one of his history books. A time when false divinities ruled and their unenlightened supplicants crafted for them terrible tools of power. Blackest obsidian from the deep mines of the northern mountains, where the veil between worlds is thin; this was their material. Blood magicks to imbue the rock with life—this is how Gateways were made.

“How in the Lordfather’s name did you get it?” Bartholomew tentatively stepped closer. “And so well preserved. I thought the Faithhood destroyed every last one in Wesland.”

“My father found this mirror. None of us know how he managed it.” Eda’s nails bit into her palm. She had no desire to speak of Oswin Shaw, least of all now. Better to move on. “Are you ready?”

Bartholomew’s voice quivered. “For what, precisely?”

Good enough.

She approached the Gateway. Its frame depicted a riotous assortment of imagery, carved in such detail that each subject might have simply grown from the rock itself—roaring mountain lions, hissing serpents, thorned flowers. Hiding betwixt the petals and vines were strange, less familiar creatures: the grinning face of a hook-nosed imp, fearsome birds, a fanged horse. Atop them all at the mirror’s apex, a group of naked figures knelt in supplication.

Eda shuddered.

Despite the frame’s grandeur, it was the mirror itself that held power. Its surface bore no reflection: black as a starless night, smooth as a still lake. Unease danced icy fingers down Eda’s spine no matter how many times she looked upon it.

She touched the crystallized rock. Warm, where no warmth should exist. The cellar was frigid, but wherever lay on the other side of the mirror was not.

“Mr. Night, I summon you.”

The surface rippled like water about Eda’s hand.

Bartholomew made a wounded sound. “That’s its name?”

“The only one I know him by.”

The mirror turned as glossy as a jewel and undulated like tar. Eda retreated to Bartholomew’s side, tried to calm her quickening pulse. She knew, logically, that she had nothing to fear. But her body never quite learned the same lesson.

“What’s happening? Why is it taking so long?” Bartholomew’s upper lip was moist with sweat. He clutched his cloak about himself as though he might disappear within it.

Eda grabbed his arm. He seemed to think she was simply steadying him, which was well enough. She only feared he might make a break for it. “He’s not a dog, sir. He will come when he’s ready.”

“It’s—it’s always the same one? I thought any demon might be called through a Gateway.”

“The mirror you see before you also exists on the other side, in the Otherworld. Most demons cannot keep a Gateway all to themselves.” She glanced sideways at him. “Mr. Night isn’t most demons.”

This might have been the wrong thing to say, considering Bartholomew’s stricken expression, but it hardly mattered. The mirror’s surface turned suddenly iridescent, like an oil slick beneath a gloaming. Through it stepped a man.

He wasn’t a man, of course. But he looked eerily close.