Smoke in Mirrors by Jayne Ann Krentz Page A

delighted that the library is going to be put online. I’ve said for years that it was a shame thatthose books were not widely accessible to scholars. There are some very rare and interesting volumes upstairs. I suspect some of them are worth a great deal of money. Nathanial Eubanks collected them in conjunction with the antique mirrors.”
    “What was his fascination with old mirrors, anyway? He seems to have obsessed on them, from what I can see. Every surface in this house is covered with them.”
    “Very sad, really. Insanity ran in the family. Some say Eubanks had a crazy notion that as long as he could see his reflection in a mirror, he would not go mad like the others in his line. Others say he was convinced that he could see his past lives in some of the mirrors. All we really know is that the family’s bad genes caught up with him in the end. He committed suicide.”
    “I see.”
    It had been surprisingly easy to slip a librarian into Mirror House. Deke, as the head of the Bethany Walker Endowment Fund, had simply informed the Eubanks College administration that the fund was willing to pay to have a professional librarian put the Mirror House library online. In memory of Bethany Walker.
    College administrators never said no to money, even if they privately thought it was going down a drain.
    Leonora made it through half of the coffee before she excused herself.
    “Mind if I finish this upstairs?” She held up the mug of coffee. “I really should get to work. I want to do a survey of the collection. Get my bearings, as it were. I’ll return the cup later.”
    “Of course. Run along and don’t worry about the cup.” Roberta waved her off. “And please don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything I can do. My door is always open.”
    “Thanks.”
    Half-full mug in hand, Leonora went down the long hall toward the grand staircase. There were a handful of offices on this floor. Roberta and Julie occupied two of them. A third was dark. The sign on the door read Eubanks College Alumni Fund Development . It was the office that Meredith had used during her short stint as a fund-raiser. Roberta had mentioned her only briefly during the tour.
    Miss Spooner left on very short notice. Something about being offered a position in California. Fund-raisers are in huge demand these days, you know. We haven’t been able to replace her yet.
    There was a lot of activity here on the first floor. The mansion’s large public rooms were being readied for the major event of the upcoming alumni weekend, a formal reception. Leonora had to dodge members of the cleaning crew and a man on a tall ladder, who was replacing light-bulbs in a massive chandelier.
    Mirror House was well-named. Nearly every wall was covered with mirrors and antique looking glasses. But strangely, the enormous quantity of reflective surfaces did little to brighten the place. The interior of the old mansion, decorated in the heavy Victorian style with a strong emphasis on red velvet and dark woods, seemed drenched in perpetual twilight.
    It got worse at the top of the staircase. Leonora came to a halt and looked down the long, shadowed hall on the second floor. The library was four doors down on the left. The scrolled and gilded looking glasses on the walls glittered malevolently. Beckoning her into the gloom? Or warning her to stay out of the darkness?
    An inexplicable and almost overwhelming urge to turn and run swept through her. She gripped the carved banister until the sensation eased.
    After a few seconds, she made herself walk down thecorridor toward the library. She took refuge in the background research she had done before coming to Wing Cove. She knew there was a very logical reason why the mirrors and looking glasses that lined the walls were so dark and dim. They were all antiques, several of them dated from the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
    Vintage looking glasses lacked the brilliant optical properties of modern,