Chapter 3

  I looked at the dead woman and the mirrors that surrounded her.

  I stared into the seven mirrors and only saw a foggy haze, which was normal because I hadn't seen my face in a mirror for almost six years now. I didn't even remember what my face looked like.

  Like Mr Bean from that comedy series, if I wanted to look at my face, I would have to go into one of those old-fashioned (non-digital) photo shops and have my photo taken. Mirrors and most digital appliances like phones and digital cameras didn't show me my face; others could see it but I couldn't. All I saw was a haze of fog.

  Which was what I saw in the mirrors now. But that was fine, I didn't want to look at my face. I wanted to see if there was anything unusual in how the mirrors were placed or if there was anything special about them.

  The mirrors were placed in such a way that the woman's whole body would have been visible to someone standing in front of her. Clearly, some sort of dark magic that involved killing her and then performing some rituals in the mirror. An easy way to check: I went around to the back of the mirrors and saw that runes had been drawn in blood.

  Yes, this was a sacrifice of some sort, but why?

  Why a middle-aged woman of no consequence? Human sacrifice, while not super common, did happen now and then. The victims were usually young and attractive women, at most in their twenties but usually in their teens. If there were men, they were usually rich and powerful, the type of people who would be missed and whose sacrifice would mean something.

  Nobody sacrificed the homeless. Even the demonic world didn't care for them.

  My heart broke a little when I thought of this. I had been homeless some time ago and I knew nobody cared for us. If one of us had died on the street, people would just walk over us to get to their important places. The bodies of my homeless brothers and sisters would only be discovered when the garbage men came to clean the streets and discovered them blocking the way.

  And yet, somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to sacrifice this poor homeless woman.

  “Don't worry, dear. The police or the authorities might not care, but I care. I will get your vengeance. I will get your justice,” I whispered to her.

  I went to the front of the mirror to look at them again.

  The world shifted.

  The haze in the mirrors disappeared and the face of a woman appeared. The woman was smiling. A very attractive woman, she looked around sixteen and could pass for a movie star.

  But she wasn’t.

  Not just not a movie star, she wasn’t even human. Her attractive look was a trap, the way a spider would create a lovely home for a fly to visit. Come in, have a tea, we are all lubbly-jubbly friends here.

  Shit, now this was real trouble. She was like that wicked fairy, every time you saw her someone would die, or you would get extreme bad luck.

  I would look behind you rather than at my attractive face. Your mirror phobia means you don’t see the very obvious threat walking towards you.

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  I turned around, I saw a fist flying towards me. I didn't even see who the fist belonged to before it smashed into my face and sent me flying back and tripping over the dead body. I hit one of the mirrors and it shattered into a hundred pieces. Superstition says this is bad luck, but I knew my bad luck had started the moment the woman appeared in my mirror. She only appeared when things were going to hell.

  I tried to get up to fight, but the man who was punching me was far too strong for me. I had barely gotten on my knees when he hit me again, and again, and again until I was bleeding from my whole face and couldn't move.

  And that's when he pulled out a nasty looking knife. A knife that would look better in movies like Rambo than in real life.

  “ I'm gonna fuck you over,” he said. “You shouldn't have come here Royce”.

  He knew my name, which was bad. This wasn't a random mugging or someone just taking an opportunistic shot at me to relieve me of my wallet. This guy knew who I was and what I was doing here. Which meant he had to be connected to the murder. He must have been staking out the place. I should have been more careful, but my whole attention had been on following the dead woman here.

  I had made a rookie mistake and was going to die for it.

  Call me, said the most wicked woman I knew.

  I am not wicked, and I am not a woman, sweetie, she replied.

  And then she did something I had rarely seen her do. She stepped out of the mirror. That was bad. It was against our agreement.

  I know it's against our agreement, darling, but you are about to die and so I will temporarily alter our agreement. Just for your sake. Because I love you so much.

  She sat by my ear and whispered in my ear. Say it or I will.

  The knife was a few inches from my left eyeball.

  I hated this part. Death was preferable, but if I died here who would get justice for the homeless woman? Certainly not the police. Certainly not the uncaring public.

  No, I had to survive. Even if it shattered my mind.

  “Sweetie, help me!” I screamed as loud as I could. I had to call her sweetie or darling or she wouldn’t respond. “Try not to kill too many people please. Just the one, just the one!” I repeated a few times to make sure there was no confusion.

  Anything for you, my favourite human.

  My killer froze. His whole body was paralysed. I could see he was surprised and tried to struggle, but struggle was useless. He was like a fly trapped in a spider's web. His death was now certain.

  Had been certain for some time now.

  His death certificate had been signed the moment he had entered the building. The moment he had drawn a knife to kill me. The moment he had even thought of killing me, he had been a dead man.

  He had been dead for several minutes. A walking corpse who didn’t know he was walking to his death.

  The woman in the mirror could see into the future. I don’t know how far but she always knew when I was in danger and she always interfered, and it always ended in death. The only thing I could control was how many people died. Not a lot of choice, but I would take what I could.

  I could see the man's brains melt and flow out of his eyes and ears in a thick, viscous red liquid. Like that horrible, crushed ice shake the kids love so much.

  I could see into this skull and see that it was now empty. The police would have a hard time explaining this, and it would only make things worse for me. A homeless woman with her throat slit, they could explain away, but no way could they explain this. Reports would be written, questions would be asked. Questions that would lead to me.

  And then there were the mirrors. The surface of the remaining six were now as black as a dark night, like somebody had burnt them to a crisp. Mirrors do not usually burn like that, and so this would be another thing the police would notice, and they would certainly put two and two together.

  This had happened far too many times when I was around. They would come straight to my home, and if I was lucky, I was facing a murder charge. If I was unlucky, this killer guy's friends would visit me first. They certainly knew me and so must know of my extreme bad luck when it came to mirrors. Either way, some really nasty people were going to pay me a visit soon.

  I wasn’t worried.

  I had bigger and more urgent problems to deal with.

  I knew it was coming; I knew it would hurt. That's why I didn't like using her powers, but she had left me with no choice this time.

  Even though I had been expecting it, when the attack came it hit me like a hammer to the chest and head. My whole world exploded. My mind shattered. Everything went black.