Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 13 of 21

The gold seal held, but Agatha slept badly anyway. A year of quiet was a debt of its own. When the seal broke, the mirror would call something worse than Peter. She would not wait for that. She would find a way to be rid of the frame without shattering it. So she went looking for a door that led somewhere she could throw the thing away. Wanda had once mentioned a hall of doors. Every door opened onto a different world. If any world would swallow a haunted mirror, it was there. Agatha followed a strange path to reach it. The trail was woven from velvet and chocolate, studded with clustered mushrooms, soft and absurd under her boots. It ended at a tall stone tower crowded with doors. Runes glowed on every threshold. The hall watched her arrive. A human woman waited on the steps. She wore a crown too large for her, and pixies circled her head. This was Lucy, who ran a house staffed by faeries. Agatha had heard of her. Lucy negotiated with her small workers rather than command them. Now she stood counting doors, her mouth tight. "You want to leave something here," Lucy said. She did not ask. "A mirror," Agatha said. "Sealed. It calls things. I want it gone." "Then you want the wrong hall." Lucy pointed at a door with a black door-knob. "That one leaked last week. A guest was robbed. The thief came through there." She folded her arms. "These doors don't hold what you push in. They send it back. Whatever you drop returns worse." Agatha felt the cold truth of it. The hall was not a grave. It was a mouth that spat things out. If she left the mirror here, the summoning would open every door at once. "I need it destroyed," Agatha said. "Not stored." Lucy studied her. "Then don't hide it. Empty it." She tapped her own crown. "A door only calls if something answers. Cut the voice, not the glass." Agatha understood. She had tried to silence the mirror, then trap it, then bury it. Each plan kept the frame whole and the door alive. Lucy was right. The mirror screamed because a name still sat behind it, waiting. She had to unmake the summons itself, not the object. "You know someone who cuts voices," Agatha said. "I know one," Lucy said. "You won't like her." A pixie whispered at her ear. Lucy nodded. "The sea witch collects them. Voices. Names. She could pull the summons clean out." Agatha laughed once, without joy. Ursula. The one enemy who wanted her ruined. She left the hall of doors with nothing dropped and one plan killed. The mirror could not be hidden or buried. It had to be emptied. And the only creature who emptied voices had promised to take double from her. Her year of peace now had a price with a face.