After we were done making love, I carried Lizzie's sleeping body downstairs and put her to bed. I didn't want to leave her sleeping on the living room floor – no telling what could happen next.
Lizzie, dear Lizzie. Light as a feather. Cute as a button. Sexy as hell. I kissed her tenderly and bade her sleep well. There was no reply.
I double-checked Harry and India's rooms, but still no sign. I would have to go look for them.
I looked out a window. It was dark outside, well into the evening, maybe around six o'clock, but not too dark to do a search. Starlight upon the snow, a hint of moonlight also.
I was about to put on a coat, when I remembered the upstairs master – or in Bella's case, mistress – suite. I went back up again, on the off chance they had snuck up there and fallen asleep. Or been eaten by a werewolf.
Ascending the final flight of stairs, I was again overcome by a wave of weariness. Every step was agony, every breath a struggle. What was the point? Why did I fight it? There would be no happy ending for me. Bella was gone, Greg also. Abbie was home, back in the City, oblivious to what was going on up here.
It was just these seven youngsters and me. Even if the darkness didn't take us all? What then?
I'd never get Abbie. Not in the way I wanted her. As my friend and lover both. Just the two of us, no one else, forever. That ship sailed years ago. I was forever friend-zoned. If I was lucky. More likely, she'd figure me out one day and never speak to me again. I just had to accept that.
Play boyfriend and girlfriend with Lizzie then?
It would be nice, I was sure. Very nice. Best time of my life. For her too. For a while. But ultimately futile. A year. Two years. Five? Impossible to say. But we would grow bored with life and one another, yet too attached to make a clean break.
Maybe we'd compensate. Get a kid or two. Marry. A grand, hollow ceremony, tons of guests we hardly knew. Settle in a dreary neighborhood, have a single boring car between us, become wage slaves.
Kids. Me? Hell no!
I knew some kids. Had a couple of friends with kids. Only they were more like ex-friends now. Those little brats sucked the life right out of them and kept on sucking. Working parents with kids. The real-world version of the walking dead.
Not happening.
Then we'd break up, the kids would have issues and need therapy. One would do drugs, the other go through teenage pregnancy.
We'd both be broke and miserable, and wonder why the hell we wasted our best years on one another.
Then I could do like my sister, get another partner, and on the off chance it might actually be better the second time around, make all the same mistakes, all over again. Lovely!
Why not simply end it here, at the cabin? Go out into the night, and let the snow embrace me. It would not be such a bad death, or so I had heard.
I could carry the others outside too. Spare them the agony their miserable little lives would inevitably inflict upon them.
It would be the humane thing to do.
Finally, I managed to mount the last step. Never had anything been so hard to do. I had this idea that I must someday climb Everest without oxygen, just to see if actually was more challenging than reaching the top of these stairs.
I more stumbled than walked along the mezzanine and into Bella's boudoir. Everything was as neat and tidy as before. No Harry, no Indiana. Just me.
Just me. Me. My favorite person in the universe. The only one I really cared for. Me.
I looked at myself in Bella's antique mirror. I looked like a million dollars. No, a billion. So smart, so devilishly handsome. Men wanted to be me. Women wanted to be mine.
But there were hints of weariness in my face, and my eyes seemed feverish.
That's cabin life for you. Sooner or later, you get the cabin fever.
I laughed at my own joke. Not that it was funny or anything.
Then I nearly choked.
I had a reflection – but I had no shadow.
"What the..." I stuttered in surprise and stumbled backward, my self-adoration at an end.
I nearly went down after crashing into Bella's stupid little tea-table but managed to catch myself. I shook my head to clear it. Approached the mirror again. Sure enough, I could see my reflection, but I had no shadow in it.
"What kind of mirror is this?" It was a rhetorical question. I didn't expect an answer and didn't usually talk to myself.
"A magic mirror," the shadow-less me in the mirror replied.
"Not this..." I began and rubbed my fingers across the bridge of my nose.
I was definitely going crazy. Or already batshit crazy.
"I'm sorry, master," replied the mirror, "I can only answer questions, not engage in polite conversation."
I stopped rubbing myself between the eyes. Looked at the mirror again, more carefully. It wasn't my reflection in it, after all. It was more like an image of me, moving independently.
I pirouetted. The mirror image did not.
"You're a magic mirror?" I asked.
"Yes, I am," it replied with stoic calm.
"And you'll answer my questions?"
"Yes. You're a male witch, a warlock. I will answer your questions."
"What questions can you answer?" I inquired, deftly ignoring the bit about being a man-witch.
"Anything I can answer, master. I am not omniscient. That which I do not know, I cannot answer. But I do not know what I do not know, so I cannot tell you what I cannot answer."
"Ok..." I said, slightly confused.
The man in the mirror didn't reply.
I took a moment to think before asking.
"Is there really a dark spirit inside me?"
"There is indeed, master."
"Why? How?"
The mirror image shrugged. "Because you are an Awakening warlock. Because it is in the spirits' nature to yearn to cross over into the real world. And you are the bridge that can make this happen."
"Can you tell me more?"
"That was a very imprecise question, but I'll try: It is in the process of taking you over, so to speak. It has hooked its barbed tentacles into you. Soon, before this night is over, it will finish the process and fully possess you."
"What happens then?"
The image shrugged again. "I'm no oracle. But, based on historical events, I'll warrant your soul goes to Hell or wherever these fiends really dwell. Then it makes a big feast for itself, rapes and murders anyone else in this place, feeds on their hearts, before going out into the world to spread chaos, death, and destruction. Hopefully, it will quickly be intercepted by a coterie of witches and banished. Your body will not survive the process."
"Yeah," I mumbled. "I figured you'd say something like that. Just wanted to get a second opinion."
"Not a question. Can't help you."
"Can it be stopped? The 'possession' thing I mean," I asked.
"Yes."
"How?"
"Any witch of sufficient power and skill can use the binding ritual to prevent the spirit from taking over."
"You mean Bella and her magic ritual? The one that would make me her pet?"
"That is one way of putting it," the mirror replied. "But yes."
"Is there another way of doing it?"
"Do you happen to have a white witch on hand," the mirror said.
"No, I don't. I don't know any white witches. Didn't even know they existed until now."
"Then the answer is, to the best of my abilities, 'no.'"
"Shit," I said.
"Not a question."
"How about," I began, "if I sate the spirit. While it's in me, I mean. Give it enough food, drink, and sex to make it really satisfied. Sex, most of all. Would it leave my soul alone then?" I finished on a hopeful note.
The mirror didn't reply right away.
I hoped the delay was a good sign since it didn't call it stupid right away. Maybe it was thinking things over? Or calling a friend?
"Perhaps..." my not-reflection finally replied. "If it is indeed sated, it would become docile. But only for a while. Then the hunger would rise again, so unless you have some way of breaking the bond that's already been established, it would only delay the inevitable. It would return. In a day. In a week. In a month. Maybe longer. Impossible to say. Too many variables. But it will return. And what I described earlier would happen."
"A delay is better than nothing," I said to myself. Maybe I could try to get hold of Bella again, make her help me out, for old time's sake.
If she wouldn't, I could gut her like the swine she was and use her own entrails to hang her. Then I'd eat her dark heart and burn her body on the pyre. For old time's sake.
"It would be useless anyway. This spirit is strong. You'd need a whole harem of women to satisfy it – no single woman would suffice."
"How about six women and one guy? Could that be enough?"
"That could be enough," the mirror agreed.
"Any tips?"
"Sleep with them until they fall into a deep slumber. That is a sign they have given you all they can... that they too have been sated. It will prevent any lesser spirits from entering them."
"Lesser spirits? There are more than one?"
"Very many. Countless, like a swarm of locusts. And they are all drawn to your Awakening. But only the strongest can claim you. The rest will fight over the scraps if there are any."
"So, if I, hypothetically, had like those six girls and one guy, at the cabin with me, during my 'Awakening' or whatever, that could bring more spirits into the world?"
"Hypothetically, yes," the mirror replied. "But who would be dumb enough to bring seven mundane people to an Awakening?"
"Not a reply to my question," I replied. "Besides, you already know the answer, I think."
Mirror man nodded. "I think I do."
"Actually, it's not that bad. I already did five of them. And the last two seem to have split. You think that's enough?"
"How would I know," said the man in the mirror. "Do you feel satisfied, do you feel sated."
"No, not really," I admitted.
"Then you should get on with it. At midnight it will be too late. If you are to do this, you must do it now."
I looked at the mirror not-me. "That wasn't an answer to a question."
The shadow-less man started to fade. "Good luck, Felix the Magnificent," he said and was gone, leaving the mirror opaque and useless. Maybe it had used up its battery or something? How did you recharge a magic mirror anyway?
So my plan actually could work. Eat. Drink. Fuck. Repeat as needed until spirit sated. Then get the hell away from here, find Bella, make her banish the spirit for good. She owed me that much after ordering Greg to cut off my head. Fucking bitch!
Now I only needed to find Harry and India. For all our sakes, they better not lie frozen to death in the snow.