The Dickens Mirror (50 page)

“Jesus.” It was the scruffy boy, Chad. “Look at his face, look at his
face
!”

“It’s
regenerating
,” Black Widow said, awed. “But how?”

Regenerating?
He remembered what Battle had said: McDermott was obsessed with the science of revivification. Then Weber had been dead? His head broken to pieces?
This is madness. It’s the fog. We’re all mad here
.

“From Elizabeth’s blood and what’s bound to her from the Dark Passages.”

“Bound.” Fumbling out her purple spectacles, Black Widow jammed them on. “Good God. Are they …”

“Yes, they gave her power. They are her shadows, creatures of the Dark Passages, and with them,” Kramer said, “I will remake this world.”

The First

SHADOWS? DARK PASSAGES?
Emma hugged poor, sick Tony a little tighter, though mostly to comfort herself. That new girl, Elizabeth, scared the heck out of her. The way her face didn’t want to
be
any one person kind of reminded Emma of when her craniofacial doc showed her what faces fit her own deformed skull:
I can give you any number of looks
.

Until that second, Emma had been convinced she was way different. While the nightmare linked them all together, she’d figured
she
was unique, the one and only. Hadn’t the crazy lady said she was
singular
in her construction, whatever the heck that meant? But that was kind of close to the truth, too, wasn’t it? Her face
was
a reconstruction. So was her whole head. But still, she thought she was the
only
Emma.

But now she looked at Elizabeth—at the eyes that were an exact match to hers, and what were the chances of that, like ten trillion to one?—and thought,
Maybe not
.

ANOTHER THING: THAT
McDermott guy, the one with the black hair and glasses, seemed
awfully
familiar. The way he
stared
like he recognized her or something. If she let herself think about it too much, he almost matched the mental image she had of a dad: kind of handsome, looked real smart, seemed calm.

His wife, though … In Emma’s school, there were a couple cutters everyone whispered about, but everything they did was where you couldn’t see. Like under their blouses and on their stomachs and thighs and stuff. There was nothing hidden with this lady. Her arms looked like she’d taken a meat cleaver to them; they were that bad. So she must be really messed up. Like locked-in-the-hospital messed up.

Still, Emma felt a tug of sympathy for that woman, too. Heck, one look at that crazy lady in black, and
she’d
have felt like screaming her head off, too.

THAT CREEPY, HALF-FACE
guy, Kramer, said he would remake this world with what was in Elizabeth’s blood. Seemed to Emma that he’d been trying, like with the rock-morphing bit, although rock was way different than a person. Not as complicated, and you didn’t have to get all the different moving parts to work together. He did know how to make some things from scratch—those ooky android-looking guys with Silly Putty blobs instead of faces, for example—but maybe he couldn’t get beyond a certain point? Like give them faces and personalities and stuff?
And
somehow Elizabeth’s blood, these shadow-things, will help?
But how? She looked over at the big, ugly guy with the cratered skull. (If all this were a movie, she’d definitely be watching through her fingers.) She bet if she was close enough, she’d hear the high
smee-smee-smee-squee
of all that muscle and junk screwing itself back into place. Beneath a latticework of new bone, the insides of his head still boiled, like his brains needed more elbow room.

The guy’s head gets all smashed. Then Elizabeth’s blood, what, organizes all the pieces?
Like these shadow-things were the final ingredient, or a … come on, what was the word? A … 
catalyst
. Right. Something that sped up a reaction because the catalyst had a lower activation energy.

Energy was super important here, too. Probably why everything wobbled and wavered, like looking through heat shimmers radiating from superheated blacktop on a hot summer’s day. Here, people wandered around with tin arms, no legs, glass eyeballs. Creepy old Kramer, with that mask.
But they’re breaking down. So is this whole London, and that means there’s a ton of free energy down here
.

She wondered if that was why the crazy lady said there were blind spots. Light was energy; the colors were different wavelengths, and people couldn’t see every single wavelength, like UV. So what if some spots were
blind
because you couldn’t see them without panops or X-ray goggles or something?
Jack’s always looking
between
leaves and trees and shadows
. She glanced down at the animal. Standing at attention by her side, his tail twitching in spastic swishes, Jack was staring fixedly at this strange, wobbly energy-air. Boy, she’d pay good money to get a look at what he saw. Because Jack
could
slip into a blind spot. So maybe a blind spot was a way out? Or a … a kind of rip you could hide in?

In her arms, Tony let out another soft moan. When she touched his cheek, she felt the slow slither of a squirmer gliding under her palm—and then it hit her.

What if Elizabeth’s blood could heal Tony?

SHE LOOKED OVER
at Meme, who’d finished bandaging Bode’s head. To her relief, Bode’s head was rolling, like he was waking up. When Bode raised a hand to a temple, Meme took it, then bent to murmur something and even smiled when Bode’s eyes fluttered open. The two of them were kissing close. She thought Meme wanted that. From the long look Bode gave her, maybe he did, too, but there was something else in his face Emma couldn’t read. Whatever it was, Meme straightened abruptly and let go of Bode’s hand.

Neither saw Elizabeth’s eyes flick their way, or the way the other girl’s face changed into something half suspicious, half … well, not
fear
. Like Meme really
bothered
Elizabeth, or was a tough problem that needed figuring out.

Meme bugged the crap out of her, too. Sure, she
seemed
okay on the outside, even if she did have a stick jammed up her bum. (On the other hand, this was
England
after all, and all those guys were into good manners and everything. Well, when they weren’t chasing you with an ax or making you fight zombies.) She and Rima hadn’t had a chance to talk about it, but when Tony asked Rima what Meme looked like through panops, he hadn’t heard her response the right way: how Rima said
nothing
. Not
oh, it’s fine, it was nothing
. No. This was when
nothing
meant
something
. Meant,
Holy crap, Tony! When I looked through those glasses, there was
nothing there!
Like maybe what Rima saw was a walking androidgirl with a Silly Putty face. Or no girl at all.

At that thought, she felt one of those lightning jolts, like when you’ve worried over a tough math problem for a long time and then the answer just—
blam!
—comes out of the blue.

What if
that
explained why Meme was so bland? So
nothing
? Because she
was
the same as the man-things but more advanced, like a better model that’s almost but not quite human?

So Kramer made her, too, but only got to a certain point? Because Kramer didn’t have either the know-how or that last secret ingredient to make Meme a real person?

How
Star Trek
was that? But she thought she was onto something here. Meme was missing a certain essential ingredient—call it personality—and she didn’t react normally. Like she’d never once noticed or commented on Jack, asked where the cat had come from, or how come they hadn’t made stew out of him or something. All kinds of
ding-ding-ding-ding
warning bells went off then. That’s why she’d said something to Bode. No matter what Meme looked like on the outside, she wasn’t wired like them. In a way, she was the reverse of Elizabeth. There was a whole
lot
going on inside
that
girl.

Going on inside
 … Emma felt her heart jump. Another
aha
bolt.
Whoa, wait just a second
. Elizabeth had saved Bode’s life. She said it was nothing. That it was
CPR
.

CPR. In
this
London. Elizabeth
knew
CPR.

Oh, holy crap
. Emma stared at the other girl’s freaky face, which glimmered and shifted, and those eyes that matched hers—and thought,
Just who
is
inside you?

“WHO ARE YOU?
How did you get in there?” Peering through her purple glasses, the crazy lady pointed a trembling finger at Elizabeth. “I don’t know
what
you are …”

“We’re not things,” Elizabeth said—and Emma thought,
Oh yeah, right. Your face is all wobbly, like it can’t figure out who you’re supposed to be now
. “We’re what’s left of the people we were,” the other girl said.

“Leave her alone!” It was that poor woman in the far cell. “Stop badgering her. I don’t know what’s going on here or what you are, but that is
my
daughter.”

The crazy lady whirled. “You ask what
I
am, Meredith? Look in the mirror and ask the same of yourself.”

“I
know
what you are. I don’t understand why Frank did it, but …” The woman named Meredith faltered. “Wait a minute, where did you get those? The glasses?”

“What? These?” Slipping them off, the crazy lady gave her spectacles a look, as if seeing them for the first time. “You mean,
my
panops?”

“Yes.” Meredith swallowed. Her fingers knotted. “You can’t possibly have … that is,
I’ve
got the only pair.”

“Oh. Well.” The crazy lady gave a careless shrug. “I guess you’re mistaken then, and don’t tell Kramer, because he’s got a pair, too. What do you use
yours
for?”

The small muscles in Meredith’s jaw twitched. “When I make my Peculiars.”

Peculiars
. Emma sat up a little straighter. So Meredith could
make
this weird and funky fog? Or was she talking about something else?

“And I use them when I check Frank, after he comes back from …” Meredith scrubbed air with a hand. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

The crazy lady’s eyes glittered like a crow’s. “Understand what? That you use panops to check our dear, darling Frank for hangers-on after he cuts himself to bind one of those things from the Dark Passages? After he’s gone off, disappeared, traveled to a
Now?
Because you want to make sure, don’t you? Nothing left inside, bound to the blood?”

“Yes.” Meredith’s voice was really small, like the crazy lady had just slapped her. “But how do you …”

“Meredith,” the man—Frank—said, and put his arm around her. He shot the crazy lady a glare before smoothing hair from his wife’s forehead. “Sweetheart, don’t say any more.”

“But Frank, how does she know? How can she? I still don’t understand.
Why
did you make her in the first place? What possessed you? I’m here.” Meredith’s lips wobbled, and Emma wasn’t sure if she was trying on a smile—which was awful, terrible, like watching a poor dog that just knew it was in deep doo-doo for chewing that table leg—or working on not crying, which was just as bad. “Aren’t I enough?”

“
Make
her? Sweetheart?” The crazy lady showed her teeth in a grin Emma had seen on the faces of really popular girls, right before they took out your jugular with a class-A snark. “Isn’t that nice. How he must care for you.”

“Stay out of this.” If looks were lasers, that crazy lady ought to be burnt to a crisp. “Your argument is with me,” Frank said.

Frank and the crazy lady know each other
. Then, Emma thought,
Well, of course they do, you dope. Look at
Meredith
and then look at …

“But what if I want to hear what she has to say?” Meredith
turned to face the crazy lady. “How do you know about all those things?”

“How do you think? You really believe you’re the
first
? The
only
? You’ve seen all this—doppelgängers and doubles and the malleability of matter—and you still believe you’re unique?” The crazy lady spread her arms in a
ta-DA
. “Then how in God’s name do you explain me? How do you explain my
daughter
?”

“She’s not yours,” Meredith said.

“Don’t!”
Frank snapped at the crazy lady. “Can’t you just
leave
it!”

“Do
not
dictate to me.” The crazy lady drew herself up like a queen. “You are no longer master here. Or are you afraid? What is it, dear Frank? Isn’t she strong enough? No better luck this time around?”

This time around?
Emma’s eyes fixed on Meredith’s bandaged arms. Her stomach gave a sick little flutter.
Sure; of course; that would explain why he did it. Because what if
this
time—the arms, the hospital, her being sick and wanting to die—what if all that isn’t the
first
time?

“What does she mean, Frank?” Meredith said, slowly, though Emma couldn’t tell if Meredith had already guessed and wanted Frank to lie. (Because, sometimes, people really want that. Sometimes the truth hurts so much, you’d rather close your eyes and let someone tell you a nicer story, one that feels better to believe.) “This time around … what is she talking about?”

Oh boy
. Frank looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to cry or claw his eyes out. Emma actually felt sorry for him.
Meredith, you really don’t want to know
.

“Nothing. Darling, sweetheart … 
please
.” Frank’s voice was as watery and wavery as the air. “Let this go.”

“Let it go? Frank, we’re in a goddamned cell. I don’t even know how we got here. One second I’m on the ward, in the bathroom, just out of a shower, brushing my teeth, and … there was the mirror, so foggy. I thought, well, it’s the steam, or my eyes even, not wanting to focus. They’d given me a shot, and I had the strangest dream.” Meredith pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. “About
us
, Frank. I was
afraid
of you because you couldn’t stop with some damned book, and so I took Lizzie … except it wasn’t her. I mean, it
was
, but she was so young, a little girl again, and then we’re in the car and there’s an explosion and this strange fog began chasing us …”