Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(82)

I forced a smile. “Why, this is your bedroom, don’t you remember? It doesn’t exist anymore, as I’m sure you know. Plowed down with the rest of the houses on this block to make way for condos. Miami real estate waits for no one.”

She tentatively took a step before reaching out for the bedpost. “Mon dieu. What have you done?” A quick anger flared behind her eyes, but the rumble of a truck passing by on the street outside made her flinch.

Putting some distance between us, I headed to the curtains on the inner wall and wrenched them open to reveal what lay behind. Built-in bookshelves lined the wall below my waist. The lower shelves near the floor were filled with occult books—mostly first-edition copies of my parents’ greatest hits—and on top were a velvet cloth and several ritual items: a chalice, a ritual dagger, a salt cellar, a caduceus staff, and a carved wooden box for red ochre chalk.

Innocuous stuff found in every magician’s home. I kept far more dangerous things in Tambuku.

But it was the thing above those supplies that drew my interest. A small two-way mirror let me see into the room beyond. A child’s room with a small bed, bookshelves, a toy chest. A picture map of the constellations on the wall and plastic stars pressed into the ceiling.

And on the floor, in the middle of a round rug with a woven man-in-the-moon design, sat a slightly older version of the Sélène I’d glimpsed in the winter home. Perhaps four or five years old, she lay on her stomach, engrossed in a picture book, lazily kicking her feet in the air.

“Did you watch me through here all day?” I asked. “You could’ve played with me instead. Or were you trying to keep your distance so you didn’t develop any pesky maternal feelings?”

My mother walked up to the window and drew in a sharp breath, a look of amazement on her face. But when the shock wore off, her shoulders dropped as she quietly stared at the child in the other room. I could practically feel her guard drop. “This . . . is an incredible ability.”

“Useful. It’s good to see the past as it really was. Especially since you stripped so many of my memories.”

“Enjoy your stroll down memory lane. I will find better uses for this ability.”

“ ‘Better’ is subjective, but I don’t doubt you would use it for something more ambitious,” I said. “This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? I’m sure you stood here watching that child in there, dreaming of having access to powers like this.”

She tore her gaze away from the glass long enough to give me a once-over. “I certainly did not dream of commanding them in that ugly reptilian body you’re wearing, but now that you have made a hash of my dreams, I suppose I will learn to tolerate it.”

“Hey, you’re the one who mated with a serpent, not me.”

Oh, the look she gave me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it burned right through my eyeballs and out the back of my skull. In the past, that look would have been enough to make me cower but not here. Not now. And when she saw this, the fire fizzled and was replaced by something less sure. She scratched at the bloody symbols drying on her arm and refocused on the mirror. “At least your body is still young.”

“And I’m not a notorious serial killer wanted by the FBI, so you wouldn’t have to duck security cameras in airports anymore.”

She cocked a brow. “When I get possession of those powers, every camera in the world will want to take my photograph.”

That sounded about right. She was always happy when she was commanding attention.

“Can she hear us?” my mother asked. I didn’t answer—I honestly didn’t know for certain—so she tapped on the glass with a knuckle. Five-year-old me jerked her head to the side and stared up at the window, which I remembered looking like an ordinary framed mirror above a desk from her point of view. “She hears us,” my mother whispered.

More than heard us, apparently, because little Sélène pushed off the rug and warily walked toward the desk below the mirror. She pulled a chair out from beneath it and stood on top of it, peering right at us. My mother stared back at her. No one spoke. After a few seconds, little Sélène gave up and headed back to her book.

“Extraordinary,” my mother murmured. “You could always see things no one else could.”

“Maybe it’s not just me. Maybe you should walk to the kitchen and say hello to your younger self.”

A small laugh bubbled from her mouth. “You have no idea how to wield this power.”

“And you do?”

“Darling, I know things about your powers you couldn’t fathom.” She lifted her chin to the mirror. “In your head, you are still that little girl in there. Naive. Submissive. And only breathing because I’ve allowed you to live. Would you like me to show you the fruits this ability can yield?”

“I don’t need any more magical instruction from you, thank you.”

“Oh, I’m done teaching. And I’m done waiting. I’m ready to take the reins now.”

“And you really believe I’m so submissive that I’m just going to allow you to slip inside my body without a fight?”

A slow smile spread across her face, cracking the dried blood on her skin. “Ma petite lune, you already have.”

I snorted, ready to hurl a retort, but there was something about the absolute confidence on her face. It tripped me up. Made me doubt.