The Dickens Mirror by Ilsa J. Bick Page A

wasn’t insane; she didn’t want to
die
, no matter what Kramer said about those other slashes on her arms. (Those awful black stitches were the handiwork of the surgeon, Connell, the quack who’d mended her like a tatty piece of burlap.) Kramer insisted she must’ve made those cuts, and it was only luck that Constable Doyle happened by to save her from bleeding to death.
    Luck? Oh
yes
, she was just
sooo
lucky to have landed in Bedlamwith all these lunatics. And
happened by
? Happened by
where
? She couldn’t recall. All she could remember was that she’d been running, running, running from
    the whisper-man
    a monster? Or had it been—the image of a man, black hair, glasses, glimmered through her mind—had it been her
father
? Wishing to
use
her for something? Or perhaps—now this was a lunatic thought—put something vital
in
her,
hide
it away for safekeeping?
    not doing it right
    Will you plug your damn cakehole?
Panting, a brackish taste on her tongue, she paused, finger cocked, nail over her skin. Her heart thudded against her ribs, and she heard the slight
tick-tick-tick
of glass against tin from the necklace Kramer let her keep. Now
why
Kramer didn’t take that away—a very pretty glass bauble strung with two squares of tin on a strange beaded chain—was a mystery, just as she was unsure how she’d come by it. The tin had a good edge. She could easily cut … and yet she never did. The necklace was
special
    no, not special yet
    and had a strange name that boiled onto her tongue without her understanding what it meant or how the words came to be:
Sign of Sure
. What was that? The knowledge was there, but elusive. She had a sense it was like the Mirror: some kind of device, but one that needed … well, energy? Or perhaps the right wearer to make it work? Whatever the case, the glass was unique, and so was the tin. Not right to use them. Which probably proved just how mad she was.
    So—she gnawed a loose bit of skin from dry lips—maybe pryup a scab instead? New skin under there, pink and tender. Cut that, squeeze out some nice fat drops.
    PLIP-PLIP-PLIP
    No
. She winced against this one, a different and clearer voice that rose above the swamp in her mind to bob at the surface.
Please be quiet. Not you too
.
    SO DEEP IN MY HEART
    Fresh cold sweat sprouted on her upper lip. Of all the many voices, this very strong
Other
, with its thoughts of UNDER MY SKIN and STARBUCKS and MATCHI-MANITOU, IN HIS DEEP DARK CAVE and PLIP-PLIP-PLIP, frightened her most. Sometimes she actually felt it rustle and then shift, the way a dog turned on a bit of rug. One day, perhaps soon, she would look in a mirror and the
Other
would peer back through the glassy portholes of her eyes and give her a tiny wave with one jointed leg: WHY, HELLO, I DON’t BELIEVE WE’VE BEEN PROPERLY INTRODUCED.
    Come on
. Attacking the scab with a will, she gave a little cry of triumph as a long, rust-colored strip peeled away.
Yes
. “Got you now,” she muttered.
    “Miss.” A voice, not in her head but close to her ear, and about as real as things got these days. “Miss Elizabeth, you must stop.”
    “Yes,
thank
you,” she said, then wanted to kick herself for replying at all. She didn’t mind talking to some attendants; she liked one boy, Bode, best. Which did
not
please that old crow, Nurse Graves, who’d probably whispered in Kramer’s ear, because, all of a sudden, here Elizabeth had herself a companion.
To better anchor you in the here and now
was what Kramer had said
. Ha! Companion, my eye
. This girl was a spy.
    “It’s my body to harm.” She slipped her eyes up and to theright to find the girl’s impenetrable blue gaze. If it were possible for Babbage to build a difference
person
, a mechanized automaton that clicked and ticked through theorems and problem sets, that was
this
girl. She had all the heat and passion of a toad. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, and I don’t require your permission.”
    “But you know that