Quicksilver by Amanda Quick

case. I am certain that both deaths were caused by paranormal means, but I do not think the killer was present at the time of the actual murders. He has come and gone on several occasions since the murders, however.”
    “You can detect those sorts of details so plainly?”
    “It is the nature of my talent, Virginia,” he said, willing her to understand and accept the compulsion that drove him.
    Virginia said nothing. She halted in the doorway of the small parlor. “There is a mirror over the fireplace. I may be able to discern something in the glass.”
    Owen stood behind her and waited. The light of the lantern flashed on the mirror, casting ominous shadows around the room.
    Virginia walked forward and stopped in front of the fireplace. Her eyes met his in the darkly silvered glass. He felt the atmosphere heat and knew that she had raised her talent.
    She turned her full attention on the mirror, gazing into it as though into another dimension. She concentrated intently, not speaking for a time.
    A moment later she lowered her talent and turned to face him with eyes that were still filled with mysteries.
    “The mirror has been hanging above the fireplace for a very long time,” she said. “There are certainly shadows in it but nothing distinct. Certainly nothing of violent death.”
    “That makes sense. The body was found upstairs in a bedroom. There is a mirror on the dressing table.”
    They went back out into the hall and up the narrow staircase.
    “I noticed that the mirror over your own mantel is new,” he said.
    “I purchased it when I rented the house. There was an old one in that room and another in the front hall. I removed both of them.”
    “You do not like old mirrors?”
    “Looking glasses absorb energy over the years. The old ones hold a lot of shadows. I find them disturbing.”
    “Yet Mrs. Ratford kept the old one in this house.”
    “Perhaps she could not afford to replace it. It is also possible that it did not bother her greatly. She had some talent, but she was not a very strong glass-reader. Only powerful glasslight-talents find old mirrors disturbing.”
    At the top of the stairs they paused. The light of the lantern revealed three doors. Two stood open. The one at the far end of the hall was closed.
    “That is the room where she died,” Owen said.
    They both heard the muffled scraping, clanking noise at the same time. It came from the nearest open doorway.
    “What in the name of heaven?” Virginia whispered.
    Owen angled the lantern for a closer look. An elegantly made mechanical dragon appeared from the darkened room. The clockwork device was the size of a small dog. Its segmented tail, set with crystals, snaked from side to side. Long, gilded claws rasped on the floor. The glass eyes radiated a cold, compelling paranormal fire.
    “Another one of those damned weapons,” Owen said. “Where the hell did that come from? It wasn’t here the last time I visited this house.”
    He seized Virginia’s arm and started to haul her back toward the staircase.
    She moved willingly and with some speed, but it was too late.
    A dark fog descended. The nightmare exploded around him, inundating the hall with hellish visions from a madman’s fevered dreams. The dead and the dying descended on him, mouths open in silent screams.

TEN
     
    A ll the terrible shadows that Virginia had seen in mirrors since she had first come into her talent at the age of thirteen prowled the eerie mist that filled the hall. The dying stared at her with horrified, dread-filled eyes, as if they somehow sensed that she bore witness to their deaths. They did not plead for her to save them. They knew there was no hope. They asked for something else from her, something she could almost never provide: justice.
    The ghastly visions whirled around her. She was suddenly dizzy. Her stomach roiled. For an instant she thought she would be ill, and then she realized she could not orient herself in the strange fog. There was no way