Smoke in Mirrors(82)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

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 take you home.”

The killer was on the staircase now.

She staggered forward along the shifting hall. A reflection flickered in one of the dark looking glasses on her left. Her own face? Or one of the trapped ghosts laughing at her?

No such thing as a ghost in a mirror. You’re a trained librarian. You don’t believe in ghosts. And you didn’t drink all of the damned coffee. Keep moving. You stop, you die.

Resolutely she kept her eyes on the floor, counting doorways, not looking in any of the mirrors. The library was the fourth door on the left. She remembered that very clearly.

“I’m sure the hallucinations are very bad by now, Leonora.” Roberta spoke from the top of the staircase. “I gave you a very large dose and the drug acts very swiftly. My husband invented it shortly before he died, you know.”

Don’t listen. Count doors.

“Dear George. He was really quite brilliant. But he never saw the full potential of his creation. I did, of course. I had to get rid of him. But first, I made him write down the formula. Quite simple, really, when you have the correct ingredients. Why, you can whip it up in your own kitchen.”

She tried to tune out Roberta’s voice. She had to concentrate on counting doorways.

Number two.

Number three.

Desperation turned her stomach to ice. The library was too far away. She would never make it before Roberta caught up with her.

She staggered past the third door. It was getting harder and harder to avoid looking into the mirrors. And she was getting tired. So tired.

An image glittered briefly in the gilded looking glass on the right. Unable to resist, she looked into its depths. She could not make out the reflection in the dark glass, but she heard words in her head. Words from a dream.

You can’t sleep yet.

Car keys.

What good would it do to get her keys? She could never get past Roberta. She might as well just sit down here in the corridor and wait for the end.

No. She couldn’t do that. She had a date for dinner with Thomas.

The thought sent another surge of adrenaline through her, knocking back some of the drug’s effects.

“The drug can be made in various strengths. The weaker versions create amazing hallucinations and cause a person to be quite suggestible. Stronger versions also produce hallucinations, but not for long. One gets very drowsy, very quickly.”