Chapter 16 · A New Line Before Curtain

The last shard of mirror spun across the floor and came to rest against Eli’s boot.

In its silvered surface, Jonah’s face twitched beneath the blue-white wash of an emergency-room monitor. His lips parted. No sound came out. Around him, six other patients lay motionless beneath thin blankets, their chests rising and falling in perfect, terrible unison.

Then all seven stopped breathing.

Maeve’s lungs locked.

“No.” She dropped the fire extinguisher. It struck the stage with a hollow boom that rolled through the mirror hall. “No, no, no—”

The image fractured again. Jonah’s eyes opened, glassy and unfocused. A red line appeared beneath his nose.

Eli caught Maeve’s wrist before she could lunge for the shard. His fingers were cold. Blood had soaked through the side of his shirt where the mirror-double’s knife had pierced him, but his grip remained stubbornly real.

“Don’t touch it,” he said.

“You saw him.”

“I saw a version of him.”

“He’s dying.”

“So am I.”

The words landed between them, bare and brutal.

Maeve looked down. A dark stain spread across Eli’s ribs, warm blood slipping beneath her fingers where she pressed the wound.