He didn't bother to get up and go around the table. Instead, he came over it. The bowl went flying, cereal and milk falling every which way. My chair and I also went flying, results of a tackle that would've done the NFL proud. I managed to get a knee in Niko's stomach and flip him off. Before I could move, his hand latched on to my ankle. Swiveling my hips, I turned, planted a foot in his abdomen, and pushed hard enough that he slid several feet on the cheap linoleum floor. Scrambling to my feet, I ran. Two steps later he caught up with me and I was tossed through the air like a child's Frisbee. Landing on the couch, I was struggling to sit up when the heel of a hand jammed under my chin with ruthless force. It was a good move, kept your opponent's head hyperextended. Could be painful if done wrong, could be lethal if done right.

I grinned up into narrowed, steel-colored eyes. "Feel better?"

The eyes narrowed even further to nothing more than molten slits. Niko lowered his face until it was a bare inch from mine. "There was one thing Jonah didn't have, however," he said with chilling calm, forcing my head back another half inch.

"What was that?" I croaked as the tension on my neck increased.

"The absolute knowledge that there was someone who would get him out." He released me and slapped my cheek lightly with a sigh. "I guess he wasn't quite as lucky as me after all."

I sat up and rubbed my chin with a wince. "Why is it I can never get that move to work on you?"

"Because you never practice, Grasshopper." Leaning back, he tilted his head toward me with a faintly rueful air. "Thanks for the distraction, Cal. I do believe I needed it."

Snorting, I jabbed my elbow into his ribs. "Go take your shower, Cyrano, before you make me cry like a little girl."

He gave my offending elbow a painful pinch to the nerve. Ignoring my yelp, he stood and stretched, careful of his burns. "All right, then, a shower." Pinning me with a demanding gaze, he went on, "And afterward we pack."

"Afterward, we pack," I lied with ease, and nodded. Let the man have a few minutes of relief before we started that argument up again. I wasn't sure if he believed me or not, but he gave in without further comment and disappeared into the bathroom. Within seconds I heard the door close and water running. Then I heard him call out.

"Cal, what in the world have you done to the mirror?"

Oh, shit. I'd forgotten about that.

It had been Alice again. I'd stuck with the name I'd given it at the Waldorf. It was a good one as any for something living through the looking glass. Of course, it wasn't the original Alice. I didn't think a little blond girl who was too nosy for her own good was really responsible for scaring the crap out of me—at least I hoped I wasn't that far gone. Then again, considering I hadn't actually seen anything in the mirror last night before I'd covered it up with a towel, maybe I was a few fries short of a Happy Meal after all.

I'd heard it a few hours after Niko had had his nightmare. Another unusual sound, but this one wasn't that of a restless sleeper. But neither was it dramatic or even that spooky, not really. It was a humming. Faint. Barely audible, but melodic. It wasn't ominous in the slightest until I realized where it was coming from. Then instantly it became eerie as hell. Tracking down the sound, I'd padded down the hall on silent feet. With one of Niko's spare knives in hand, I stopped by the bathroom door. The humming had continued, and it was definitely the product of vocal cords, but not mine or Niko's. Even if I had somehow missed hearing Nik getting out of bed, I would've recognized his voice. What I was hearing wasn't it.

Feeling my stomach clench like a fist, I'd pushed open the bathroom door with careful fingers. The musical murmur lowered to the faintest whisper as I moved into the room. I didn't turn on the light. There was enough illumination from the single bulb in the kitchen drifting in to cut the edge on the velvety shadows. I could make out the tub, the toilet, the yellowing porcelain of the sink, and nothing else. Empty. I'd always heard about the alligators in the sewer, but I seriously doubted one was singing a ditty through the pipes. I switched the blade to my other hand as I scowled and wiped a moist hand on my sweats. I did not need this shit.

Swiveling on my heel, I listened hard. In an instant I pinpointed the source of the rhythm, even fainter now but still clear as the chiming of a bell. The mirror. It was coming from the mirror. Goddamn it. Not this, not again. I'd pretty much managed to convince myself the episode at the Waldorf had been a fluke, just a hiccup of my nervous system. But here was the hiccup again, only this time it was more tangible and a helluva lot harder to dismiss as just a fluke.

I raised my eyes to the mirror over the sink. It was harder to do than it sounded. What is it about mirrors anyway? In nearly every B movie, a mirror is gleefully waiting to spring a demonic reflection back at anyone who passes. Movies, books, episodes of those creepy half-hour TV shows—evil mirrors were a common theme in all of them. So when I looked into that mirror, it was with the dread of a twelve-year-old—never mind I'd seen and fought monsters all my life. A dark room, a haunted mirror, it was enough to make me feel like a knee-knocking kid, who wanted nothing better than to pull the covers over his head.

But in my world that wasn't an option. You might think it, but the second that you acted on it you were dead… or worse. Hell, what was it anyway? A singing mirror? Objectively, how scary was that? Movies and little-kid terrors aside, how did a mirror stack up against all the other things I'd faced in my life? Not very damn high. So I did my best to forget my cold sweat and my slamming heart, and I looked.

The crooning stopped, and once again I was staring at my own image. This time I looked less sheepish and more annoyed. A hard smile touched the corners of my mouth, and even in the gloom my eyes reflected brighter and colder, almost silver. "Alice," I said grimly. "You are really starting to piss me off." I flipped the knife in my grip with every intention of smashing the glass with the hilt. After all, what was seven years' bad luck compared with living with a possessed mirror? At the last moment, however, I stopped, the knife only tapping the surface. It wouldn't do any good. It wasn't just this mirror after all. I couldn't go through life breaking every mirror I saw. In the end I just covered it up with a towel, meticulously tucking the cloth under the edges. There you go, Alice, I thought with a healthy dose of self-derision. Let's see you get past that. Forget brick walls or steel; I had the best protection terry cloth had to offer.

The towel might have actually held Alice back the rest of the night, but it wasn't going to do a thing to stand between me and Niko now. When he got out of the shower, I'd have some serious 'splaining to do. I couldn't say why I was reluctant to tell him. It wasn't as if he'd doubt me. It would just be one more thing in a lifetime parade of creepy-crawlies, even if it gave me an odd feeling of déjà vu. We had so much going on right then, though, and that could've been what was bugging me. We were already swimming in so much crap, we didn't need a few more gallons of it dumped on our heads. And while I knew ignoring it wasn't going to make it go away, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much time dwelling on it either. I had a musical stalker, so what? As long as it only whistled at me, I could deal.

By the time there was a knock at the door, I'd almost decided to try to slide the whole thing under Niko's radar. I wasn't too optimistic about my chances, but I was going to give it a shot. That thought disappeared quickly as I stared, nonplussed, at the door. Who in the hell could that be? Granted the front door was busted and the buzzer pointless, but Niko and I had never told anyone where we lived. The more anonymous you were, the safer you were. Outside of the odd Girl Scout selling cookies or a Jehovah's Witness selling salvation (and I couldn't remember the last time either of those had braved our neighborhood), there shouldn't have been anyone knocking at our door: When I leaned against the wood and peered suspiciously through the peephole, I got an eyeful of waggling fingers waving in a careless hello. "Jesus Christ," I muttered in surprise.