I jumped up. “Inori, do you have a black marker or something, and some paper?”

“Uh … yes, yes, of course I do. Hold on.”

She ran into the back room and came out with exactly what I'd asked for. She also had a huge smile on her face, and I knew that she knew that I'd figure it out.

I grabbed the marker and paper from her and began scribbling in huge letters across the entire face of it.

“Where's the bathroom?” I asked.

“This way.”

I followed her into the hallway and through a small door. She flipped the switch, and I held the piece of paper up against my chest and turned to the mirror.

Although most of the letters were backward, it read as easily as saying ABC.

Now I knew exactly what the Red Disk was. It was a mirror, and it needed to be burned in order to use it.

Which left only one question. Why in the world did I need a mirror?

“Do you have a fireplace?” I asked her, anxious and excited.

“Follow me.” She led me out of the bathroom and back into the main entry with the old brown couch. We went from there into the kitchen, where she had disappeared to make the sandwiches. It looked like something from an old museum—forty- or fifty-year-old appliances, terrible yellow patterned countertops, and a big thing with a handle on it that looked like a torture device.

But the object that stood out the most was an old fashioned stove made of iron, with a swinging, grated door inside of which a hot fire was burning. A pipe led up from the stove and disappeared into the ceiling. It seemed very out of place.

“What is that thing doing here?” I asked. “Inside a huge skyscraper?”

“Because I can have anything I want here—something you will understand later.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don't worry about it.” She grabbed a pot holder and opened the door of the stove. “Go on, throw it in.”

I looked at the disk, thinking it through one last time. I had to be right, especially considering the way Inori was acting. If I was wrong, she would've been much more hesitant to show me a fire.

I got a firm, two-handed grip on the disk, bent over toward the hot flames, and tossed it in.

The fire flared into a brilliant white burst of flame, like someone had thrown in a bucket of gasoline. I strained to see the disk and what was happening to it. The heat made it impossible to get too close, and the licking tendrils of the fire hid it from my view. I waited a few more minutes, hoping Inori would offer some insight.

When she didn't, I said, “So when and how do we get it out?”

Inori walked over to a cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a long iron tool that had a handle on one end and rounded claspers on the other.

“Use this,” she said.

I took it from her and tested the handle. When I pulled its lever down, the claspers came together with a snap. It looked like it would cut someone's fingers right off.

I grabbed the handle with two hands and put the other end into the fire. I felt around until the tool knocked on something hard and firm. I moved it around until my senses told me that it was in position, and then I pulled down on the lever. But when I pulled it out, there was nothing on the other end.

“You know what, I'm being an idiot,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“All I have to do is reach in there and grab it—the Shield will protect me.”

“Even your hands?”

“Sure. Worst-case scenario is it won't let me touch it.”

I reached my hand forward like a man trying to pet a vicious dog, scared of its bite. Shield or no Shield, it just felt wrong to put your hand into a roaring fire. But the Shield repelled the heat and flame as I got closer and closer. Soon I was past the lining of the door and inside the stove. My hand felt nothing but air.

I felt around and found the Red Disk. It was cool to the touch, and I didn't know if that was the Shield or just some new magic in my life. I gripped the Disk and pulled it out of the stove. It almost slipped out of my one hand but I caught it with the other just in time. I straightened to a standing position, and held out the disk so that Inori and I could both see it well.

The Red Disk was no longer red.

It was a perfectly circular, two-inch-thick mirror—not blackened or charred like it had just come out of a hot fire. I could see the ceiling and light fixture reflected back at me. Inori said nothing, and after a few seconds I held the mirror up to look at myself.

Except I wasn't there. Everything else behind me was reflected in perfect form—the refrigerator, the cabinets, the horrible wallpaper. But not me.

My face was nowhere to be seen.