Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“That is I,” she said. She turned Blue’s head to the mirror on the right. “That is vous.”

“Explain.”

“I have been a sword and I have been a thunderclap, and I have been a burned-out comet and I have been a word and I have been a mirrrrrror!”

Blue waited until the song was done. “So you’re saying you’re a mirror.”

“Of the deepest blue,” Gwenllian whispered in Blue’s ear. She leapt back so that she could trace the shape of Blue in the air with her fingers. “Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. All around. And me. It’s what we do.”

“Oh. Our auras? Okay, sure. But Persephone says that you’re psychic, and I am definitely not.”

Very bored, Gwenllian spread her arms out dramatically. Both hands once again pointed at the mirrors. “Mirrors! I am telling you, that is what we do.”

Something prickled in Blue, uncomfortably. She eyed the mirrors; Neeve had used them for divination, Calla said. She’d stood between them and seen endless possibilities for herself stretched out on either side, in either mirror.

Maura was always shuffling the page of cups out of her tarot deck and showing it to Blue: Look, it’s you! Look at all the potential she holds!

“Yes,” Gwenllian said, shrill. “You’re getting it. Do they use you, blue lily? Do they ask you to hold their hands so they can better see their future? Do you make them see the dead? Do you get sent from the room when things get too loud for them?”

Blue nodded dumbly.

“Mirrors,” Gwenllian cooed. “That is what we are. When you hold a candle in front of a glass, doesn’t it make the room twice as bright? So do we, blue lily, lily blue.”

She leapt onto her mattress. “How useful! A wonderful addition to the stables. Like the steed of Gwythur and Gwarddur and Cunin and Lieu.” She broke from her song to shake her head and say, in a more normal voice, “No, not of Lieu. But the others.”

Blue couldn’t quite believe that she had finally met someone who was like her. She hadn’t known it was possible. “What is blue lily, then? Where is that name from?”

Gwenllian charged the mirrors, stopping just short of going between them. She flung herself around to stand an inch in front of Blue. “Witches, my little floral cushion. That’s what we are.”

A delicious and wicked thrill went through Blue at the word. It was not that she had aspirations of being a witch; it was that she had been a nameless accessory for so long that the idea of having a title, or being anything, was a delicious one.

But misguided.

“Maybe you,” Blue said. “But the best I can do is not help people. Sometimes.” She thought about how she had pulled the plug on Noah in Monmouth but had been unable to at Jesse Dittley’s. That, she realized, had been Gwenllian.

“People!” Gwenllian laughed gloriously. “People! Men? What makes you think you are a friend to men?”

It could be argued, Blue thought, that Blue was only a friend to men, but she didn’t feel it was useful to bring it up.

“Whoever wants to talk to people!” Gwenllian gestured grandly to the two mirrors. “Go! Stand in there! Stand!”

Calla had previously made it quite clear that she didn’t want to stand between Neeve’s two mirrors. And she’d also implied that doing so might have had something to do with how Neeve had disappeared.

Blue did not want to stand between them.

Gwenllian shoved.

Blue hurtled toward them, arms wheeling. She could see the light flashing off their surfaces. She teetered. She stopped short.

“Okay, I —” she said.

Gwenllian shoved her again.

Blue only stepped back once, but that was enough to put her squarely between the two mirrors.

She waited to be vaporized.

She waited for monsters to appear.

Neither thing happened.

Instead, she peered slowly to her left and then to her right, and then she looked at her hands. They were still visible, which was notable because her reflection was in neither mirror. The mirrors merely reflected each other, again and again. There was something a little dark and troubling about the images inside them, but nothing more.

“Where am I?” Blue asked Gwenllian.

Gwenllian laughed and sprang about, clapping gleefully. “Grieve not for your stupidity! Mirror magic is nothing to mirrors.”

Blue took the opportunity to step out quickly, back into the middle of the room. “I don’t understand.”

“Nor I,” said Gwenllian carelessly. “And I starve from this idle talk.”

The woman started down the attic stairs.

“Wait!” called Blue. “Will you tell me about my father?”

“No,” Gwenllian replied. “I will get mayonnaise.”

36

The very first supernatural artifact Greenmantle had acquired had been a haunted doll. He’d bought it on eBay for $500 (the price included two-day shipping). The auction listing had promised that the doll had spent the last two weeks in the seller’s basement growling and rolling its eyes into its head. Sometimes, the listing noted, a scorpion would crawl out of the doll’s ears. The listing warned that this was not a child’s toy and indeed was only being offered to augment Satanic or left path rituals.

Greenmantle had purchased it with equal parts skepticism and hope. To his annoyance but not surprise, the doll was unremarkable upon arrival. It did not growl. Its eyes closed and opened only when the doll was tipped. There was no sign of any insect life.

Piper — his girlfriend at the time — and he had spent the evening eating take-out sushi and throwing edamame beans at the doll in an attempt to provoke some demonic activity.

Afterward, Piper said, “If we had a puppy, it could pick up those beans for us.”

Greenmantle had replied, “And then we could sacrifice it and use its blood to activate the doll.”

“Will you marry me?” she asked.

He thought about it. “I love myself the most, though. Are you okay always coming in second?”

“Samesies,” she replied. Then she cut herself and smeared her blood on the doll’s forehead, a level of personal involvement that Greenmantle had yet to achieve.

The doll still never growled or bit anyone, but that night, Greenmantle put it in a box in the spare bedroom, and in the morning it was lying on its face by the front door. He felt the appropriate level of thrill and fear and delight.

“Lame,” Piper said, stepping over it on her way to her ladies’ fencing class or her na**d baking club. “Find me something better.”