Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Thirty-Seven

From his bag Nick produced a flask of Gob, an alchemically devised adhesive, strong enough to adhere a brick to drywall. By line of sight Nick located the exact spot on the wall opposite the Black Mirror, marked it out with chalk, and then turned his attention onto the imitation mirror.

“Now apply Gob at each corner on the back,” Agravaine was saying, “three drops for each corner should suffice.”

“Yes, thank you,” Nick retorted. “I remember.”

Almost as soon as it was applied, the Gob began to fizz, reacting to the oxygen; within seconds it would harden. Nick hoisted the mirror and placed it over the chalk marking, holding it in place for thirty seconds.

“That should be long enough,” Agravaine said. “Next is—”

“Yes, I know,” Nick said, and he went to fish a sheet of paper from his bag. In his messy script it contained the old spell used to tether the Black Mirror to the wall, only it was written in mirror language, right to left, with the letters scrawled backwards.

Nick, using his footsteps to measure, determined the exact spot on the dusty floor where he would be equidistant from the mirrors, and then he stood straight-backed on the mark. He cupped his hands and breathed into them to warm them up.

“Clear your throat, like I taught you,” Agravaine advised. “Good, now, seven deep breaths, exhaling for seven seconds on the final breath.”

Half-afraid this technique would make him hyperventilate, Nick obeyed.

And then he retrieved the sheet and recited the mirror-version of the enchantment.

The words ‘Niamer ereh reverof’ nearly caught him up, but he fought his way through the tongue twister, thoughts of Rowling’s Mirror of Erised keeping him grounded and light.

When it was over, Nick looked around, cringing a bit as if expecting some phantasmagoric explosion. “Well,” he said after ten seconds of anticlimactic nothingness. “Did it work? Did you feel anything shift from your end?”

But Agravaine was no longer in the mirror. Something had changed.

Nick walked over to the scrying device, inspected it, and then reached up to grab it from both sides, dropping his paper in the process. Cold disappointment swirled within as he struggled to move it. Then, almost desperate enough to break it off, the Mirror detached from the wall under his ministrations. Now a faint puff, as of air gusting through a doorway, sounded, and the imitation mirror displayed an image of Agravaine.

The man with the sunglasses looked around, slightly disoriented. Then he nodded once. “It’s done. Run to the forest. Go, now!”

Nick paused only long enough to shrug into his backpack and to wrap the Mirror in the sheet. He hefted his burden and was out the door in twenty seconds flat. Within two minutes he’d made it back to the sanctum and resealed the passageway. The cloud had dissipated by this point and Mrs. Mannik was stirring.

Out of the corner of his eye Nick watched the teacher. Any second now her eyes would be opening, she would see Nick, and she would ruin everything.

He scurried along between the tables as fast he could safely go.

At the steps by the door he glanced back; Mrs. Mannik was sitting up. Nick juggled the Black Mirror and the door handle and was out of the sanctum sanctorum, but he thought he might’ve been seen by his Symbols and Sigils teacher.

Out in the passage he handed the Mirror over to Agravaine’s man and together they scampered through the chill tunnels. Bruno had gone, as per the plan. Near the atrium on the first floor, Nick peered around the corner. The atrium was empty. This string of good luck was beginning to feel like a set up. “It looks clear,” he waved the man on but stalled as he detected a sudden shift in the air.

Breath clouds puffed from his mouth. Slowly, Nick turned.

Hovering before him was the spook he’d seen once before, on his second day here during his trek to the Dean’s office.

Frozen in fear, Nick scrutinized the entity. It was semi-transparent but he could make out old wisps of clothing floating leisurely in the air. He could see the breezeway through the spook, and yet its eyes were still visible. The thing seemed to be inspecting Nick as well.

It moved its mouth. Though no sound came out, Nick was able to read its translucent lips; it was saying ‘Vessel.’

Nick turned and booked, as fast as he could through the atrium and out the front door, narrowly avoiding a worker toting his own mirror. The man did not give him a second glance.

He caught up with Agravaine’s man near the northeastern gateway about twenty minutes later, having gotten lost and taken a break to catch his breath. There was also the urge to glance back and make sure there weren’t any spooks with delusions of possession following him. Now that he knew the ghostly thing was the spirit of Grimwood, searching for its next sucker/vessel, and that Nick appeared to fit that bill, he wondered if returning to the Institute after his excursion with Agravaine would be wise.

It might be best to simply stick with Agravaine. Then again, the man was clearly unstable, with outlandish schemes and a grandiose sense of his own importance.

After crossing the gate, the man led the way, stomping through vibrant-but-soon-to-be-dead undergrowth. He wasn’t even scanning the forest. What if something crept up on the man? Meekness was a good quality for preacher boys like Richard, Nick thought, but not for a man walking through the Adirondack Preserve. There were things here that didn’t just go bump in the night; there were things here that turned you into the things that go bump in the night.

A few minutes passed. Nick could see the tight copse of trees where the traveling mirror was hidden up ahead. He was getting crick a in his neck from all the glances around at every little creak and wind-tossed movement of leaf. Something was following them.

Shadows flickered and danced. Duchaine’s amulet around Nick neck began to grow warm, giving him a tiny sense of comfort against his flesh, but also a foreboding that ran much deeper.

Birds quit singing as they flittered away. Insects stopped chirping. The forest grew quiet.

“Something’s out there,” Nick whispered to the man. “I think we should hurry up.”

But the man took no heed of Nick or of the section of shadow detaching itself to their left. His pace remained sedate, even as the wraith stretched and morphed from one shadow to another, getting closer and looming larger.

“Sir,” Nick tugged on the man’s shirt as the amulet burned hot against his flesh.

Wraiths were rarely seen, and yet because of their nature and abilities they were by far the most terrifying of mythics. Other than for a slim hope in powerful talismans like the one Duchaine had given him, Nick knew of no method of defense against these entities.

As the man refused to pick up the pace, Nick tugged at the mirror, yanking it from his grasp. He sped for the copse of trees.

He did not hesitate or look back until he’d reached the small opening to the alcove.

About fifty paces back, the wraith expanded its incorporeal black form over the man and promptly phased through his body. The man stopped moving. Now behind him, having stretched into and merged with the shadows of a maple, the wraith slithered over the ground, a flat puddle of black death in the monstrous shape of a nightmare. It passed through the frozen man once more, slinking into a slim line to reach and become the shadow of a tree on the other side of the man.

Breathlessly Nick observed this horror show.

If he was not seeing it for himself, he would not have believed it were possible; the man was transforming, becoming thinner—anorexic-level thin—and losing color. When the wraith phased through him a third time, the man’s flesh appeared to melt, taking on the amorphous appearance of a shadow.

Nick looked away, darting into the alcove, heart thudding. That could’ve been him. Would’ve been him if he’d been out there alone and if he hadn’t been wearing the talisman.

He clutched the mirror and took a deep breath to calm himself. Then Nick spoke the words to activate the traveling mirror. The Enochian symbols glowed. The surface of the mirror softened and began to swirl. Drained but determined, Nick stepped through.

All sense of location, smell, sight, balance, and hearing vanished, assaulted by the ravages of spatial dissemination.

The sorcerer was there in his sanctum when Nick arrived. Agravaine snatched the Black Mirror from Nick’s clutches and studiously set about preparing it for the ritual. Meanwhile Nick sat down to collect himself. Traveling via mirrors was not his favorite method, and as he meditated, he experienced a distinct sense of wrongness: humans were not meant to travel this way.

He pondered on the circumstances of his flight from the school, of how he had felt someone following them—someone, not something, such as the Grimwood spook. Someone had followed him from the sanctum sanctorum, through the school, and out into the forest. Then, during the wraith attack, that someone had fled. Thoughts of Agravaine’s poor servant, now destined to become a wraith, made Nick realize the sorcerer had not asked after him when Nick arrived and his man had not.

“Aren’t you wondering about the man you sent to me?” Nick asked.

Agravaine was bustling about, tossing aside alter candles and other magical paraphernalia from a junk drawer in search of . . . something else, apparently, and was therefore much too busy to answer. Nick crossed his arms, tired of meditating and a little sick at this man’s cavalier attitude toward the lives of those in his employ. Agravaine had even said that the shifter whom he had hypnotized into pretending to be Agravaine to fake his capture, would end up dead in the Department’s dungeons once the warlocks figured out it wasn’t the real Agravaine.

“Lint!” the sorcerer yelled. Two seconds later, when no Lint arrived, he yelled a second time, louder and shriller. “Lint!”

“What?” the leprechaun asked in an annoyed tone, appearing at the door.

“What took you so long?”

“Is that what you summoned me here for, spellslinger? To ask what took so long?”

Agravaine waved this query aside. “Where’s the vial of concentrated mugwort?” He continued rifling through his drawers, tossing things aside with abandon. Unstoppered bottles oozed their contents onto the floor, basking the room in an assortment of aromas.

“I don’t know what you gammy just said,” Lint drawled. “Can I go?”

“You can go when you get me the concentrated mugwort!”

“Fine!” Lint wriggled in between Agravaine and the low cabinet he was currently scavenging through. With the keen senses of his species, Lint swiftly scanned the cabinet—and came up empty. “Well, the concentric muggle warts don’t seem to be here.”

“Oh, get out of the way,” Agravaine shoved the leprechaun aside. “Go get me Leona. She’ll know where it is—Erruu!” Agravaine suddenly stopped moving as he made a sound like a hyena getting steamrolled. He hoisted a small vial of potion over his head and gazed adoringly at it.

“Savage,” Lint snorted. “I’ll alert the others.” He trekked out of the room.

With the Black Mirror set up at an angle on a dais, Agravaine traced a large chalk Circle around its base, proceeded to drizzle seven drops of the concentrated mugwort over the surface of the glass, and then nestled himself within the Circle. The frame—eponymous black—showed signs of its age; here and there slivers of wood were missing, lending the elder wood a stressed look and bespeaking former misadventures. Nick speculated on what wonders the Mirror had shown other sorcerer’s over the centuries.

What visions had John Dee, its creator, seen? Had he witnessed his own pathetic poverty and demise? Had any real and tangible good ever come from this Mirror and the visions it had revealed? Would good come from it now?

“Okay,” Nick said, as Agravaine stepped back to the edge of the Circle. “What do I do?”

“Stand back and keep quiet,” the sorcerer said, never taking his gaze off the Mirror. He then spoke in a low murmur, as if to himself. “So long. It’s been so long. But it’s not too late. Show me the fate of the Old One. Show me—”

“Hey,” Nick stepped into the Circle. “We agreed you would teach me how to use it so I can see about my parents and—”

SLAP!

Agravaine backhanded Nick, hard, sending him flailing out of the Circle to go sprawling onto the floor. Only now did the man turn his focus onto Nick. “This is far more important.”

“Why?” Nick shrieked. “So you can figure out how to borrow into the Old One? You’re not going to prevent it from waking and going on its rampage—you’re going to cause it to happen! I told you before, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re not going to save anyone, you’re going to wake it and kill us all! You frigging moron!”

“Leprechauns!”

Three leprechauns trekked into the sanctum. The sorcerer pointed, and they latched onto Nick with their stumpy limbs. “Keep him from doing anything stupid while I work.”

“You said I could use it!” Nick screamed, panic rising as a cold rush in his chest. “You promised to help me replace out exactly what my parents did.”

“Bind his mouth.”

One of the leprechauns, a female judging by her attire, snapped her fingers, and a roll of tape flicked through the air from a drawer to land in her clutches. She bit off a strip and clamped it over Nick’s mouth.

The sorcerer made a real show of conjuring, raising his arms and waving them about with grand flourishes while speaking in Enochian. The seven drops of concentrated mugwort steamed and hissed where the sorcerer had applied them. A brilliant yellow glow was soon emanating from the Black Mirror. As the light faded, an image filled the reflective surface; an unfamiliar location of what Nick was sure had to be within the Preserve. He watched, enthralled, as the image resolved into a clear picture of a meadow.

It was a peaceful beautiful day—and then fire reigned from the sky. A meteorite, huge and burning and misshapen, crashed into the meadow, instantaneously transforming the peaceful morning into pure chaos. As trees and grass and wildlife burned all around, the meteor cracked and a mass of tentacles spilled out from between its jagged edges. The sporadic fires died. Tree limbs twisted and shrank as though instantly drained of all moisture and life. Grass wilted and shriveled. For dozens of yards in all directions the world appeared to wither and die.

The thing from outer space never moved.

New images swirled. The sorcerer was waving his right hand before the Mirror, like a techno scrolling for the right page on his smart phone.

Eventually he settled on a hazy vision of the Old One in the meadow. It was difficult to see at first, but Nick observed that this vision must be taking place years, possibly even decades, after the last one; every fragment of the meteor had gone.

Nick appeared within the vision of the Mirror, standing before the Old One in the midst of the dead meadow.

In the sanctum Nick struggled against his three mythic captors to steal a closer look at the vision. The scene in the mirror backtracked. Agravaine it seemed was somehow controlling it through gestures and—likely—his will. Now the sorcerer could be seen some distance behind Nick; from his slouched position it was clear that Agravaine was borrowing into Nick, perhaps in an attempt to get closer to the Old One without being outright killed.

The clues were subtle but, considering it was himself he was seeing, Nick realized he was fighting the sorcerer for control in the vision. Ley lines burst into sight within the Mirror. One particular line, brilliant blue and shimmering, stretched from Agravaine into Nick, filtered through the boy and suddenly planed into the Old One.

As it zipped through him in the vision, Nick watched his future self crumple to the ground, where he lay motionless. The Old One began to stir.

Was it under the ministrations of Agravaine?

In the foreground of the vision the sorcerer remained sprawled on the ground; having used Nick’s unique magic as a conduit, he had borrowed into and awoken the sleeping giant.

Nick, using his tongue, worried the tape off and screamed. “Release me, now!”

All three leprechauns instantly relinquished their hold on him. Nick had stolen a respite here, but he had only moments to use this advantage before Agravaine sprang into action to restrain him. Nick knelt, swung his bag around and thrust a hand into its depths. It was in there somewhere. He’d packed it on a whim, after experiencing an ominous spell of distrust, where he’d suspected Agravaine might want to use him in some nefarious manner.

Ah, there she is.

Nick ripped his hand back out, clutching the multi-pronged plastic ball he’d been searching for. The leprechauns were watching, still too shocked by their inexplicable obedience to stop him. Agravaine, meanwhile, was too enthralled by the vision in the Black Mirror to notice. The two prongs were each covered with slim sheaths and hard toppers. Nick removed these and leaped forward to impale Agravaine.

At the last second the sorcerer caught sight of Nick out the corner of his eye. He whipped around, catching Nick’s wrist.

“What do you think—”

Nick opened his hand, dropping the device into his left; he then slammed it home in Agravaine’s chest. Through his palm Nick could feel the ball getting lighter as it injected its contents into the sorcerer’s bloodstream.

Agravaine released Nick. Staggering outside the Circle, he ripped the ball from his chest. Two drops of blood coated the prongs. He inspected the device, head cocked, curious.

“A little alchemical device we warlocks have been cooking up,” Nick boasted as his opponent dropped to his knees, eyes glazing over. “It delivers a toxic dose of bloodroot, to avert evil spells. It’s still in the trial phase, and designed for use against mythics, so I’m not exactly sure how it’ll respond to the human nervous system. But, mixed in with your evil blood, I can’t imagine it’ll be anything fun.”

“I need to . . . stop the Old One,”

“Give it a rest,” Nick said. “You’re not the hero. You were going to kill me to gain control of the world’s most powerful being.”

“For the . . . greater good—”

“Enough!” Nick kicked the sorcerer, who was by now lying on his back. “Stop pretending. You are a sorcerer. Our kind always looks out for number one.” He shut up, realizing that, at some point over the last few weeks, he had come to identify more with this man than with his peers at school.

“Warlock . . . you’re a . . . warlock?” Agravaine quit moving.

Nick had given away his secret without realizing what he was doing. “Idiot,” he scolded himself, but turned his attention to the Black Mirror. The image pane had gone back to normal. He summoned the memory of Agravaine’s ritual, drizzled three drops of concentrated mugwort onto select areas of the Mirror frame, and then spoke the Enochian with only minor deviations in the sentence structure.

Eyes closed, third eye opening, Nick drew energy from the Mirror, and permitted it, in turn, to siphon from him, merging their energies and promoting elevated awareness.

It wasn’t always clear when it happened to the practitioner during a working, but they often used only their third eye to view the world around them. Within five minutes Nick perceived—through his third eye—a coruscating vision within the Mirror; his physical eyes remained closed. The apparition remained static. In mimicry of Agravaine’s ministrations, Nick raised his arms and attempted to control the future/vision.

The revelation resolved into a picture of the Hammond home, approximately three months ago. Nick recognized the day. It was one of celebration. He observed himself, dancing idiotically in his bedroom, having just received word of his invitation to the Adirondack Institute of Magic. He dropped his arms a few degrees to display his parents communing downstairs in the kitchen. With only a minor application of his will, Nick called up sound.

“We agreed we would do this,” mom was saying. “It was part of the arrangement. If we don’t—”

“He’s just a boy,” dad intervened. “How can you ask us to put this on his shoulders?”

Mom turned her back on dad, faced the sliding glass doors looking out onto the backyard. “Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you put the blame on me. We were both desperate to have a child; and you were the one who summoned that . . . that sorcerer from another dimension.”

“Dammit!” dad slammed his hand against the countertop and stormed out of the room.

Mom covered her mouth and slumped to the floor. Then she did something Nick had never before witnessed: she wept. He made a rolling gesture, and the vision skipped ahead. He paused it when he observed mom walking into dad’s den. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . . we were dumb to trust him, I realize that now. And I don’t like that feeling. And now we have to use Nick, just like the Mythmage used us. Once we put him on this path . . . He’s going to so feel alone.”

“He’ll be an outcast,” dad agreed. “He might even turn to sorcery, like the Mythmage warned.” He took her hand in his. “But if the man is right—”

“Don’t call him a man,” mom hissed. “That monster is no man.”

“If he’s right,” dad continued, “then this is the only way to save our people in the Preserve. And our son will be the one who makes it all possible.”

“Yes,” mom dropped into the chair beside dad. “He’ll be a hero—and he’ll be gone.”

“Maybe not,” dad said after a lull. “He might surprise us.” But neither parent displayed any sign of believing this statement.