The mirror soaked them all up. Rachel might as well have been hitting thin air.
The light from the last spell faded to reveal Rachel’s reflection standing on the other side of the mirror, untouched. She was still smiling. She lifted up my knife, turning the blade to show the blood on it.
The anger in Rachel’s eyes began to turn to fear.
“Alex!” Shireen shouted. “Make it stop!”
“I told you,” I said, not looking at her. I couldn’t take my eyes off Rachel. “It’s not me.”
“Then open a gate! Take her out of Elsewhere! You can do that, I know you can!”
The mirror Rachel looked down at Rachel, then opened her mouth very wide, her jaw gaping.
“No,” Rachel muttered. She held up a hand, sea-green light glowing around it, but there was nothing to strike at. All of her deadly battle-magic was useless. The light around her hand winked out.
The mirror Rachel reached into her open mouth with her free hand. She gripped her tongue between thumb and forefinger.
“No,” Rachel said, her voice rising. “No!”
The mirror Rachel raised my knife. Metal glinted as she pointed it down towards her mouth.
“Shireen!” Rachel screamed.
“Alex!” Shireen screamed desperately. “Please!”
I hesitated, looking at Rachel. Just for a second I felt the urge to help.
Then I thought about what had happened only last month, when Crystal had controlled my body and forced me to beat Anne until Anne had snapped. I remembered how I’d been left on the floor, crippled and helpless, just as Rachel was now, and how Rachel had laughed at my tears, her eyes bright with happiness.
The urge to help died.
The mirror Rachel brought the knife down, stabbing through her tongue and pinning it to the floor of her mouth.
Rachel gave a horrible choking scream. The mirror Rachel dragged the knife out, blood welling up. Rachel clutched her face and threw her head from side to side in agony, red droplets spattering on the floor.
“Rachel!” Shireen screamed and ran to Rachel’s side. She tried to pick Rachel up, cradle her in her arms, but Rachel thrashed wildly, hitting Shireen in the face and knocking her flat. Rachel managed to pull herself up onto one knee, looked up at the mirror to see that her reflection was still standing. The lower half of her reflection’s face was a mask of blood, but its eyes were still fixed on Rachel.
It was holding my knife against its neck.
Rachel stared back at her image, then slowly, she turned to face me. The bloody mess of her jaw matched the image behind her. Her eyes met mine, and for once there was no anger there, only fear. She tried to speak through her mangled tongue but the words were incomprehensible.
I was still looking into Rachel’s eyes when her reflection cut her throat.
A horrible wound opened up across Rachel’s neck, starting below one ear and going all the way around to the other, the skin slicing and tearing like a paper bag. Blood spurted from the arteries, and the trachea gaped open. Rachel convulsed and collapsed, making a wet gargling sound.
“NO!” Shireen screamed. Again she ran to Rachel’s side and again she was knocked away. Rachel was thrashing wildly, blood spurting out to pool around her. Shireen looked around desperately and ran to me. “Help her!” she screamed. She beat at my chest with her fists. “Alex, you bastard! Do something!”
I looked back at Shireen coldly and stood my ground.
Rachel died slowly and horribly. She thrashed and clawed, but as the blood gushed out, her movements became slow and sluggish. At last her hands clutched at the stone a final time and then went still. Her head fell to one side and her eyes began to glaze. Her chest rose and fell more and more slowly until it stopped.
The instant that it did, the wisps of light around Rachel brightened tenfold. Physical bodies of any kind don’t last long in Elsewhere. A living creature can hold together for a while—a dead one can’t. Rachel’s corpse dissolved from the outside in, the hair and fingers going first and the rest following, the body coming apart into flaring particles in an eerie imitation of the disintegration magic she’d used on so many other people. From start to finish it took less than ten seconds. A last few wisps of light trailed upwards, then faded.
Rachel was gone.
Shireen was left alone, staring at the empty patch on the floor. Even Rachel’s blood was gone. “You . . .” she began, and trailed off.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
Shireen shook her head.
“I didn’t want it to end like this,” I said. “But I just couldn’t afford to let her keep trying to kill me every time I turned my back.”
“Stop it,” Shireen said softly.
“I gave her as many chances as—”
“Stop it,” Shireen said. “Stop talking!” She turned on me. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
I looked at her silently.
“When Rachel Harvested me, she took a piece of me,” Shireen said. “That was me!”
I sighed. Suddenly I felt very old and very tired. “I know.”
“I told you to redeem her! That was what I was waiting for, all these years! I helped you, because I thought you were going to help her! And you do this?”
“She chose the other way. I’m sorry.”
“She chose the other way? You think this was her? You sound like—”
Shireen cut off. She lifted a hand, staring at it. For a moment I couldn’t see what was wrong, then I realised that I could make out the outlines of her chest through her fingers. Shireen was fading. She stared at her hand a moment longer, then her eyes rose slowly to me. “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “All this time, I never saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“Richard set us against each other,” Shireen said. “He wanted to see who’d be the last one. I thought it was over, but it wasn’t!” Her voice rose. “It was you! First you killed Tobruk, then you killed Rachel, now you’ve killed me! I thought it was Rachel that was Richard’s Chosen. But it was you!”
My heart went cold. I couldn’t answer.
“It was you!” Shireen laughed wildly. She was transparent now, the walls and floor clearly visible behind her. “All this time, I thought I was helping you save her, and you end up taking her place! Well, enjoy it, Alex! You’re the last one, so enjoy it! You finally get what you wanted! You finally get . . .”
Shireen faded away. Her words lingered a little longer, echoing, before dying away.