Mirrored by Alex Flinn Read Free Book Online

laughed.
    “It seems trivial, I guess.” I knew it wasn’t.
    “No, eyelashes are very important.” She wasn’t kidding.
    “Is that how it always works? Does magic come from rage and hatred? It did with Nick and Nathan too.”
    But not with the bird. How had that happened?
    “Maybe hatred and rage, maybe fear, maybe even love, though I’ve never tried that one myself. It comes from a strong emotion that overwhelms you like an ocean’s waves. For me, it began with desperation. When I was your age, a terrible plague swept through my town. My father died, mother too. Then, one by one, each brother and sister was taken from me until, finally, I had only one left, my youngest brother, Charlie. And Charlie lay dying in his bed.”
    “That must have been terrible. No one could help?” I didn’t have siblings, only my mother. But the thought of losing her was too terrible to bear.
    Kendra had a faraway look in her eyes. “No, no one could help. I was thirteen and alone. Half the town lay sick and dying. The rest mourned as I did. Every day, Mr. Howe, the gravedigger, brought his wheelbarrow down our street, asking if we had any dead to bring out, and one by one, my family left me.”
    I shuddered. “What did you do?”
    “I went to a woman, a healer in town. Her name was Lucinda, and she had been my friend, had told me that someday, I might be a healer like her. But she was gone too.”
    “Was she dead?”
    Kendra shook her head. “She’d just disappeared. At that moment, I felt more emotion than ever before, emotions crowding inside me, crawling over one another, clamoring to get out like Pandora’s box, anger, grief, desperation, loneliness, and they poured out of me and onto Charlie.”
    I remembered the night before, the room spinning, my vision going purple.
    “So the emotions were what triggered your magic?”
    “I didn’t know at the time, but yes. When I woke the next day, Charlie was awake, alive. He was cured of his sickness as if nothing had been wrong. This had happened to no one else. Everyone who had sickened had died. There was only one reason this could have happened: me. I had cured him.”
    “Wow.” It was incredible to think that such powers existed, that I could have them too. “Wait. When was this?”
    Kendra hugged herself, her slim hands crushing down the black fabric of her dress. “The year the plague struck England. 1666.”
    “ Sixteen sixty-six?” It was impossible. “So you’re . . .”
    “Immortal, yes. All witches are.” With a wave of her hand, she transformed again, this time into a young girl from another era, blond braids streaming down her back. She wore a long, blue dress with full sleeves and a red apron. “It is a blessing, but a curse as well. One gets lonely. There are so few of us.”
    From another room, I heard a clock ticking. “So nothing can kill you . . . us?”
    “Nothing but the flame. I have managed to avoid it these three-hundred-odd years, sometimes just barely.” She waved her hand and was herself again, at least, the self I’d seen before. “Come now, let’s work on making some magic.”
    I wanted to. I especially hoped to be able to work magic without passing out. Kendra made it look so easy.
    “So, my friend, what should we try next? Something small.”
    “Does it have to be small? People at school wouldn’t even notice if I showed up six inches taller. I’m invisible to them.”
    “You’d be surprised what people notice.”
    I thought of Molly from the bathroom. I nodded.
    “And once people notice, they look for ways to use your magic against you. That’s how people like my friend, Lucinda, disappear.”
    “But you said she was immortal, unless . . .” I shuddered, picturing someone being burned at the stake, the wood piled high around her, flames lapping at her feet. Would the fact that she couldn’t die except by burning mean she couldn’t asphyxiate, that her heart couldn’t burst, but rather, she would have to be