‘We should try to find a way out.’

Jay may be stating the obvious, but she’d forgotten he was there. In a hopeless stupor of staring through the mirrored, dull-eyed girls, forgetting was easily done.

Romy blinks, and heaves herself back. She’d been balls-deep in the past, and, for some reason, at her high school prom. She’d gone for the after-party, the same as everyone else. She’d assumed a grown-up, fashionable boredom, the same as everyone else. The music was lame, the theme too young, every group uncool until you got drunk, remembered the lyrics, the wonders of Disney, and your friends from year four. Her dress was black and rockabilly, and people kept calling her Wednesday. The fallacy was plain—Wednesday Addams would never go rockabilly—but to them, being sullen was enough.

This led on to Kira’s seventeenth birthday. She’s so abominably lucky to have been born on Hallowe’en, but abominably, finds it annoying. She can’t have a normal party, everyone just wants to dress up and get drunk, why would she want to spend her birthday losing herself, scaring people, and making out with strangers?

Why not? Romy always retorted. It was a pretty good life philosophy, although Kira sniffed at it like a snob…except on her seventeenth.

They were at a party. It was one of those thrown by sixth form guys still into high school girls, full of tacky drink and nineties music, and Peter was there. (Was he dressed as a Jedi? Or a druid? Whatever it was, it was him to a T—painfully overenthusiastic, but somehow winding up dull.) He’d been clinging to Kira all evening, like an anemone stuck on a rock: kissing her cheek, kissing her lips, kissing her mid-conversation, referring to her as “my girl, my girl.” It was all he ever did, without seeing that it drove her mad, and at some point that night, she was done.

Maybe after his ceremony of presenting her with a ring. A glorious gift for his glorious girl, he’d slipped it on her finger and joked—or not, Romy thought upon seeing the rubies, with a vague attempt not to grimace—about marriage. Maybe after his seventh appearance, butting into her conversations and joking (or not) about guarding his girl. Every time Romy saw her, behind her Venetian angel mask, her skin was getting tighter, and her uneven nails were growing ragged. They weren’t close, but she knew her sister. It signalled the furnace. The wrath.

The next time he interrupted her with a kiss, Kira exploded. Not long after that, he left. He was girl-less, chastised, and in possession of several lessons about respect, overattachment, and the meaning of personal space. The party clapped and cheered.

Later, Romy saw her in a corner with a guy. Later, she saw her with another.

Maybe she should have, but she didn’t intervene. She was startled by the quick seduction, by the shameless flirting by the table with the booze, but all she really thought was damn, about time. Peter was pathetic, an overbearing drag, and Kira needed some birthday fun; not to mention the satisfaction of seeing her lose control. It was nice not to be the only one who falls.

Boys and anger, anger and boys. As a kid, she loved to toy with boys; her ten-year-old self would declare she loved them, cut out intricate paper hearts, deliver intricate paper hearts, and spread rumours when she got bored. Mathew found it funny. Anna found it obscene.

Her parents; that’s where she’d ended up, when Jay decided to speak. Mathew making Anna her first mojito, astonished that she’d never tried. Anna finding it revolting, and spitting it over Kira, who didn’t know whether to laugh or puke.

Mathew and Anna, here and then gone. Or, in the case of her dad…

‘Okay.’ Romy sits up, wincing at the jerk. Her stiff, aching neck is still sore, and probably blue. Hell no to thinking about her dad. If she drops the drawbridge to all of that—to feel the click that means acceptance—she’ll tip into the pit and never climb out. ‘Any ideas?’

Jay blinks at her, then away. A part of her twinges, annoyed. His telepathy is useful, but it really is intrusive.

Jay pulls a face. Drawing into himself, he mumbles, ‘I know. Sorry.’

Romy twinges again. ‘Don’t be.’ Stamping the irritation down, she struggles to her feet. ‘It’s a learning curve for both of us. How did Alice return through the looking glass?’

She sweeps her eyes around the mirrors. Since Kira’s impossible hand, nothing’s changed. Grass. Glass. The chair, which makes her feel somehow dirty.

‘I haven’t seen the film.’ Glumly, Jay shrugs. ‘Or read the book. Is there a book?’ He plucks a stem of grass and adds it to a pile. It grows back at once, but after fifty repetitions, the novelty’s worn off. ‘We tried pushing already.’ Discarding a final, moody blade, he stands. ‘We tried shouting.’

They have. For a while, they yelled and pounded, with their fists and their feet, for all their caged-bird lives were worth. The glass didn’t splinter, let alone crack.

So what’s left?

‘Right.’ Swallowing her feeling of dirty, dirty, Romy seizes the wicker chair. ‘We’ve tried everything except this. Which mirror?’

Jay’s eyes fly wide. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Read my mind, Yoda.’ Romy cuts her gaze around. ‘Which—actually, never mind.’ Cementing her grip on the arms, she braces. ‘They’re all the fucking same.’

Swinging around like a discus thrower, Romy rams the chair into glass.

With a throbbing bang, a sonic boom, the many mirrors shatter. The chair rebounds and ricochets back, ramming Romy’s stomach. ‘Fuck!’

She crashes down. Jay hits the floor, curling up tight. The room is crumbling, fracturing, falling. No longer solid, the ground starts to shake, less like grass and more a bouncy castle, and the booming, the booming, the booming. Dashed with splinters and jolted at the wrists, Romy slams her hands to her ears. Light spasms off the shards of mirror, blinding prisms in her vision, but Jesus, god, the noise; she’s been to a hundred metal concerts, battling against being Barbie in the mosh pit, but they were never as loud as this. This is a cracking, a screeching, a thundering, clanging on her ribs and tugging at her goose bumps, rattling her teeth so they taste like blood.

The ground bucks. With a cry, Romy topples, squeezing her juddering eyes shut. It’s going to make her vomit. It’s going to knock her out.

With a cataclysmic bellow, it stops.

The aftershock throbs on. Five pulses, ten, twenty. Sprawled on her side, her vision sparkling, Romy slowly looks up.

Jay is uncoiling, watching the ground beneath them settle to stone. Half-dead and dull, the chair disappears. The glass glints away like rain.

Incense drifts toward them. Romy blinks, and in that second, the dust-lit church reforms.

‘Oh, my—’ She scrabbles to her feet. The stained glass is back, vivid and rich. Her breath retreats inside her, musty, freezing her blood. Lunging for Jay, she hauls him toward her. Is the priest here? Something else? Something worse? The pews hulk. The corners lurk. Those damn doors mock her. She smashed the mirror and shattered the illusion, literally. And now?

Jay gasps. Romy pivots.

A chill rain walks through her.

Her gasp joins Jay’s, and she stiffens. It’s autumn drizzle clinging to mist, but instead of her hurrying through it, it breezes through her body. A second of cold. Gone. Every inch of her tingles.

‘Romy,’ Jay says hoarsely. Floating somewhere outside herself, Romy turns.

For several seconds, her lungs don’t work. Walking down the aisle are Kira and Callum.

‘Kira.’ Romy’s voice hitches. She jolts forward. ‘What are you doing?’

The crooked thought hits her then: they’re the autumn mist. Callum and Kira are ghostly, unreal, faded, flickering holograms. Perfect pictures lacking dimension. Romy stares. From mirrors to mirrors to mirrors; it’s going to drive them mad.

In front of the altar, the mirrors stop. Their faces tilt up. Romy frowns. They’re carbon copies, beautifully synced. Is anything she’s seeing real? The past? The future? Neither? Both?

She glances at Jay. His fists clench, his lip downtrodden. His eyes drill holes in Callum’s head. Can he hear them, if they’re ghosts?

‘Romy!’

Romy spins back. Screaming again, torn and primal, the ghost-girl throws herself at the altar. Romy looks up, up, up.

Splashed like art on the cold church wall, the two of them hang from crosses.

Aghast. Sickened. Stricken. Repulsed. Jay snaps his face away with a gulp, a small, tortured noise. Digging her nails into her scalp, Romy scrapes her hands through her hair. Is this real? It can’t be. The two of them are bleeding, replicas of Jesus, sawn to pieces by sacrilege. Lifeless. Darkness yawns, but she can’t look away.

A tinny, Eastern tune winds up, like a gramophone lodged in her skull. With an indistinct shout, Callum barges past Kira, staggering up the steps. Screaming, staring up at the crosses, Kira cracks to her knees.

But they’re not dead. They’re not dead.

‘We’re here!’ Romy shouts, as Jay whimpers beside her, as Kira screams and screams. She’s never seen her sister so wild, distraught. Screaming, screaming, screaming. ‘We’re alive!’

‘Jay!’ Callum roars.

Jay flinches. Romy tenses. ‘Fuck it.’

Throwing sense to meet the wind, flying into ghosts, she breaks into a run. Her feet smack the stone, and ring. The music is a sultry haunt, a resonant echo, the hiss of dancers, spirits, smoke. It stands her hair on end. ‘Kira!’

In the stained-glass light, Kira shudders, fit to shatter. The wafting incense gusts, growing with the song.

‘Kira!’ Coughing, Romy tears up the altar steps. ‘We’re alive! Turn around, please, Kira, we’re here, we’re all right.’

She grabs Kira’s shoulder, to shake her, turn her, but her fingers drop straight through. Instinctively, Romy jerks back. Her hand could have plunged into Arctic water.

Gritting her teeth, she tries again.

Again.

Again.

‘Agh!’ Romy yells, when Kira still doesn’t feel her. Balling up her frozen fingers, she swaddles them in her sleeves. If she’s not mistaken, they’re purple. ‘Ah!’

Her whole body chills.

‘This is all your fault!’ Stepping from her aura, Callum, ghost-Callum, heaves Kira to her feet. His unearthly knuckles pale on her shoulders, he shakes her. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

Romy’s eyes widen.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ Callum hauls her around, for a full-on view of the crosses. Kira’s sobbing is appalled, her protests burbling, as stricken as if she’s been struck. ‘Jesus.’ His mouth skews, an ugly twist. ‘I should have listened to my mother. I should never have agreed to help Romy. I should never have talked to you on New Year’s Eve.’

Kira wrenches herself from his grip. ‘Get off.’ She’s red and swollen. ‘What’s wrong with you? This is not my fault.’

‘The hell it isn’t.’

‘The hell—you what?’ Viciously, Kira swipes at the air, at the sonorous, perfumed church. ‘I didn’t do this. Not any of this. I tried to stop you coming, and I tried to sneak away, so I’d stop hurting you and your family.’ She jabs a finger at him. ‘It was you who decided you had to be involved, and you who ended up here.’

Her face sets to bitter stone. Romy’s own anger surges, beating back the horror. God, Callum’s got some hell to pay. His fingers flex. His face is fire, his Adam’s apple straining. His eyes dart between Kira and the crosses. Once, directly, seeingly, they seem to dart to her.

‘Blaming me won’t help,’ Kira says, when all he does is fume. She’s slapped a tremulous calm on her voice, like wallpaper worn thin. ‘You said yourself that this isn’t our fault, and that we need to keep going, together. We can’t start fighting. We’re in too much trouble.’

Boom.

‘My brother is dead!’ Callum roars. Storming forwards, he grabs her arm. ‘Do you get that?’

Kira’s calm explodes. ‘You know what, yeah, I do,’ she shouts, yanking herself away. ‘God, I thought you were better than this. I thought you knew better than this. We’ve no idea if it’s real or not, but they’re screwing us over regardless. They’re winning.’ Her face contorts. ‘This is just what they want. Do you get that, Callum? Are you ignorant, now, as well as a twat?’

‘Stop.’

‘No.’ She shakes her head, folding her arms, hurt and thrown and lost. ‘I can’t—I can’t believe you. I can’t. I’m sorry about Jay—god, you don’t know how much—and I’m sorry that any of you got involved, but this is not my fault.’

Callum’s hand snaps out, and he slaps her.

‘Hey!’ The sound in the church is a gunshot. Romy lurches forward, smacked with white heat. With a cry, Kira reels back. Romy stops. ‘Oh, my god, I’m useless!’

Clenching her fists, she swallows a storm, a locust plague of rage. Kira rights herself, glaring at Callum, holding her flushing cheek. Romy grinds her teeth. Talk about doling out a piece of her mind; when they find each other, she’ll strip Callum’s flesh and feed him to the Chlause in scraps.

‘Romy.’

Fingers on her arm make her wheel around. ‘What?’ she snaps.

Jay hunches inwards, away from the scene by the altar. Romy’s anger is touched, but not dowsed. ‘Remember what Talie said,’ he says, his voice as pale as his skin. ‘About Urnäsch, and the Chlause.’

‘Talie’s a cheapskate, two-faced liar.’ Romy swivels back. ‘Whatever she said, I can’t think about it.’

Not when Callum continues to shout. Not when he’s hit her sister once, and could well do it again. If there’s any kind of god here, make him stop. She’ll repent. She’ll convert. She’ll—

Grasping Kira’s shoulder, Callum shoves her backwards. She hits the stone with a yell.

‘No!’ Romy’s lungs implode, and she doubles over. This isn’t happening. How is this happening?

‘Romy.’ Jay’s breaking voice wobbles. ‘Listen to me. It’s important.’

Romy’s heart could literally be in her mouth. ‘Important?’ she manages, caught and strangled. The music swells and resonates, that smoky, sinister, god-awful dance, at its spirit-summoning peak. ‘This is important. My sister, your brother.’

‘They drive you mad, they torture you, and make you one of them.’ Jay rushes the words, and grabs her sleeve. ‘Listen. It might not be real.’

The smoky, sinister, god-awful dance crescendos, peaks, and dies.

Suddenly, her breath is too loud. Her temple beats a fearsome drum, and Romy turns to the altar.

The church is an empty, echoing husk. No bleeding crosses. No violent ghosts. ‘Mary, mother of god,’ she murmurs. The silence winds her, spins her around, and drags her through a hedge. ‘How do we tell what’s real?’

Jay shrugs, glancing back at the altar. No one but the burning girl is there to meet his eye. ‘At least we know that some of it can’t be. If that was real, they saw us dead, and believed it. And if it wasn’t…’ He kinks his knotty fingers up into his sleeves. ‘Don’t know. They could be okay.’

Or not. Slowly, Romy nods. ‘If it was real, it was to get to them.’ She lowers herself to the altar steps. ‘And their fight was to get to us. That’s what we’re thinking?’

Jay says nothing. She looks up. ‘Jay.’ His eyes are closed, and he’s started to shake. ‘Oh, Jay.’ She pushes up again, awkwardly taking his arm. He’ll hear her mind before she speaks, and she’s fairly rubbish at comfort, but her specialty is destructive thoughts and the way they nibble and gnaw. ‘Jay, that’s not going to happen to us. We’re not going to die on the cross, like some psycho’s Satanist joke.’ She pulls him into a stilted hug. ‘We’re not going to die at all. Okay?’

Although he stands stiffer than boards, Jay’s head wilts to her shoulder. ‘Mmm.’

‘No “mmm.”’ Romy rests her chin on his shaggy Callum hair. ‘“Okay.”’

It’s not okay, but he echoes her. Sighing, Romy hugs him close. How did everything get so screwed so atrociously, monstrously fast? A week ago, she was planning with Harvey, getting hyped for New Year. She was cursing coursework, and dreaming up gifts. If there’s one thing she’s worse at than kids, it’s Christmas.

‘You smell of Callum,’ Jay mumbles. A pause. Turning his head, he mashes his face in her coat. ‘Romy?’

‘Yeah?’

He sniffs. ‘I really want to go home.’

The words are bleary, masking tears. Romy’s discipline ruptures. The pit is inviting, dull and destroying, obliterating, a void. Home.

They never should have left.

‘You will.’ She sets her mind to a buzz. ‘We’ll find Kira and Callum, I’ll find out whether I need to kill him, and then you’ll both go home. With me and Kira here, we’re untraceable, so the police have to leave him alone.’ Gingerly, she rubs Jay’s back. ‘He has alibis for everything. You’ll go back to normal.’

Wetly, Jay huffs.

‘You will.’ Romy shuts her eyes. ‘You will. Whatever happens’—she squeezes him tight—‘I promise we’ll get you out.’

And her? The thought draws blood. And Kira? What happens to them, the blamed, the indicted, here, stuck on the run? Hiding in other worlds?

Shut up. She snaps this off and stamps it out. Gone. Compartmentalised. Squashed in a cabinet, squished in a box, and given a meaty kick. Not today.

At least therapy taught her something. Without her boxes, and without her cabinets, her personal hell would explode.

‘Ghost-Kira was right, though.’ She pulls away from Jay. He’s not as bleary, not as drained, and his attention is unashamed. ‘We need to keep going, together. We need to hang on to our hats, and our shit, and not’—she stabs a finger at the altar—‘end up doing that.’

Jay sketches a withered smile. ‘Yeah. If it was actually real.’

It feels like moulding gold, but Romy returns the effort. ‘If it was actually real,’ she agrees. ‘You’re too short to be a match for me, but either way, let’s avoid it. And now…’ She spins, desolated. ‘We have a new game to play.’

She lets the thought ring: what’s the time, Mr. Wolf?

Jay looks around. ‘So we don’t wake the priest.’

‘I knew it.’ Romy winks. ‘You’re the clever one. Now hush.’