Night: Celia and the Sister Duo (Sister Cinco)_Days of Blood and Roses: A Magical Girl Thriller

> [Jacques]

> All the world's a stage,

> And all the men and women merely players; . . .

> —William Shakespeare,

> As You Like It,

> Act II: Scene 7

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When the ceiling lights of the hallway flickered and blinked out, casting everything in darkness for an instant before coming back on again, Rancaster and the ‘bambina’ appeared amidst a gray haze emanating from Rancaster’s feet. While the ‘bambina’ still held her gun in her hand, Rancaster had her gun-hand held up towards the ceiling by her wrist and had his other arm around her waist, keeping her still in the hallway. Because of Katherine and Madison’s efforts, the hallways of endless doors had endless rows of empty mirror casings along the paneling of the walls, and the floor beneath their feet was now bestrewn with tiny mirror shards. After Kendra had interrupted her gun-toting game of cat and mouse with Nico in the hallways of Katherine’s mansion, and especially after Mara had pinned her to the wall with her psychokinesis and would have stabbed her if Kendra hadn’t intervened, the ‘bambina’ was breathing hard, and her temples were slick with sweat.

“That’s quite a close call, bambina,” Rancaster said, taking away Auna’s weapon and dissipating it in his hand but still keeping hold of her wrist. “If it weren’t for that meddlesome Kendra, Mara would’ve killed you, so don’t act on your own until your debut, got it?”

“Yes, Father,” she said.

Only then did he let go of her wrist and led the way along the hallway, bidding her to follow after him, which she did. With Rancaster controlling all the mirror shards in the house, it only took a few minutes for him to locate a side hall on the second floor leading to an inclined hallway into the lower first floor along the outer perimeter of a ballroom, where the bottom of the incline merged into the top landing of a double grand staircase that led towards the foyer below on the ground floor. They passed by more mirrorless casings along the recessed paneling of the walls and yet more tiny mirror shards along the mahogany steps and into part of the parquet flooring at the base of the stairs.

"Watch your step, bambina," Rancaster said, leading the ‘bambina’ downstairs past M. C. Escher lithographs and mezzotints, then stopped at the base of the stairs. “My my, this Katherine Hearn has quite an eye for detail, I'll give her that, and she loves reading books, too, it looks like," he added and pointed towards the entrance leading towards the library, then looked back at the ‘bambina’ still breathing hard from running around the hallways and nearly getting skewered against a wall. “Tell you what. Why not take a little break and enjoy the wonders of this place for a bit? That library seems inviting enough for a start. Care to have a looksie?"

Now the ‘bambina’ had regained her breath, so she said, "Thank you, Father," and she ventured into the library lined on all of the walls with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stocked with books.

Rancaster sighed and said, "Listen, Auna. Despite what you think of me, you need not be so formal when it's just you and me. Try to lighten up, even for a little while."

Auna turned and looked at Rancaster, managing the slightest hint of a smile, and walked into the library.

While inside, she scanned the first few rows of books on the shelves, running her fingers across the spines of several volumes of philosophical and political tracts, anthologies and collections and omnibuses, and used paperbacks and hardcovers of modern and contemporary genre fiction and old classics, till she came across an author she admired:

> Lewis Carroll.

She smiled and picked it off the shelf, and her heart fluttered when she noticed it was a three-volume compilation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark, all three titles emblazoned on the cover in faded gold leaf. Several characters from the first two titles flashed through her mind, from Alice and the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts to the Red Queen and the White Queen and Humpty Dumpty and others. Then her mind drifted to L. Frank Baum’s Oz books that she hadn’t read yet, though she still remembered the old technicolor adaptation of the first book in that series. When she was younger, she used to think the Oz books were ripoffs of the two Alice books, but her opinion had softened since then. How was she to judge a series of books when she hasn’t read them yet?

Turning from those thoughts, she took off the jacket draping her shoulders and threw it over a chair next to the cafe table, then went to the salon sofa and parted the book open to a random page. It happened to fall on the last page of Through the Looking-Glass, so she read the ending with a poem:

> “A boat, beneath a sunny sky,

> Lingering onward dreamily

> In an evening of July—

> “Children three that nestle near,

> Eager eye and willing ear,

> Pleased a simple tale to hear—“

And in her mind, she imagined her younger child self in a gondola floating down the Canale Veneziano into Arcadia Park, where the hubbub of the Woodley district’s downtown area lingered in the air like faraway dreams. Her child self had longer hair in this dream, and she wore a sky-blue Sunday dress and skimmer hat atop her head, and carried an open umbrella shielding her from the afternoon sun of mid-July.

She continued reading:

> “Long has paled that sunny sky:

> Echoes fade and memories die:

> Autumn frosts have slain July.

> “Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

> Alice moving under skies

> Never seen by waking eyes.”

And in her mind, flitting on the edge of dreams, she saw herself through the eyes of her current teen self in a white Sunday dress sitting with her younger ten-year-old self, telling her younger self something reassuring but not hearing her own words. She kept assuring her younger self that it was okay, that she need not fear anything, that she was safe. Still, her younger self frowned and looked down, as though nothing she said could convince her otherwise.

She looked into the face of her younger self and saw anguish there, in her brows and in her eyes and in the grimace of her cheeks, and her heart yearned to comfort her however she could. So she kneeled down and kissed those eyes that were squinting back tears, and she hugged her and let her cry onto her bare shoulder, rubbing soothing circles on her back and saying that it’ll get better. Maybe not today or tomorrow or the day after that, but it will get better. Someday. Just as the sun declines into sunset on tired wings, she told her, so too will it rise again at dawn on wings of hope.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she continued to read:

> “Children yet, the tale to hear,

> Eager eye and willing ear,

> Lovingly shall nestle near.

> “In a Wonderland they lie,

> Dreaming as the days go by,

> Dreaming as the summers die:”

And in her mind, as shadows lengthened through the park in civil twilight, she got up and sat beside her, so her drowsy younger self could rest her head over her thighs. She took off her hat, letting it tumble to her feet, and felt her strands of hair tickle her inner thighs, the weight of her head like a bowling ball. In this way, she took up the umbrella lying to the side of the gondola and pitched it against the growing blaze of sunset, bleeding through the fabric in a soft golden glow. And as the sun declined over the horizon of the faraway mountains, turning into orange hues and then to shades of red, she let go of the umbrella.

She then ran her hand through the hair of her younger self, wiping the bangs from her forehead and letting her sleep on her lap. And like her younger self, she too felt drowsy, she too felt like she needed a nap, so she reclined herself against the cushioned seat and closed her eyes.

Now in the realm of dreams, she read the last verse:

> “Ever drifting down the stream—

> Lingering in the golden gleam—

> Life, what is it but a dream?”

And in her dream, she felt lethargic throughout her body, her limbs heavy and her strength weak. Just as sunlight sunk below the horizon, she opened her eyes and noticed that her younger self had changed into the young woman she had become, clad in her Shad-Row uniform, her mirror image coming to life. This doppelgänger roused from her lap and propped herself up over her reclining self, while Auna struggled to move but to no avail.

Her mirror image had roving predatory eyes, the eyes of a she-wolf, wearing her own face and her own clothes but was not her. Those eyes lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. And in those eyes, her doppelgänger carried a cesspool inside of bodily sensations that only wanted more, more of Auna’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul.

A slasher's smile stretched across her doppelgänger’s face, her mirror self lifting the hems of her Sunday dress up her thighs and past her waist. She pulled down her panties past her knees, even as Auna clamped her thighs together, revealing only the top part of her pubic hairs.

She then straddled her lap and looked down on her face, wiping the bangs from her forehead slicked over with sweat, staring into her crying eyes and peering at her soul and smiling at the things she saw there. Then, cupping her hands on her cheeks, she kissed her eyes and then her lips and said,

> “This is who you are, my love,

> And who you’re meant to be.

> Wear your thousand fickle masks:

> They can’t hide you from me!”

And in the lunatic seconds before awakening back into consciousness, Auna endured intrusive kisses from her mirror self, who placed them on her mouth and down her jaw and on her throat, which turned into hickeys further down over the skin of her collar bone and the center of her chest. Then she reached behind her neck and loosened the knotted bow that kept her summer dress on, and pulled it down to reveal her breasts. Her evil self fondled them in both hands and squeezed them and thumbed at her nipples till they were erect and sensitive, then went to work leaving more hickeys further and further down, down to the area below her stomach and further still, where her thighs stopped straining and parted in defeat and exposed her to defilement.

At this point, Auna was a hot and heady mess, sweating and breathing hard against the strain, just waiting in an ecstasy of anticipation and horror, waiting for the inevitable moment when it would happen to her.

And when it happened, she endured with eyes squeezed shut, balling her hands into fists against the force keeping her down and gritting her teeth and holding her breath against stronger doses of pain and pleasure surging through her core, arching her back against sensations she dared not imagine in waking life, and losing her mind in a rush of endorphins that took her down the rabbit hole of unconscious sleep and back across the conscious threshold of waking up.

She gasped, taking in gobs of air as if coming up from a deep dive, and found herself sprawled over the salon sofa. Her head rested on a pillow over an arm rest, with her left arm over the edge of the sofa and her fingers over the book lying parted with its pages down on the parquet flooring. Her other hand was in her panties, and she pulled out and wiped the residue over her shirt and clipped on the fastener of her skirt.

“Was it fun?” a voice said.

And she sat up in a panic, blushing at the sight of Aaron Rancaster sitting at the cafe table and watching her.

She said, “How long were you there?”

“Long enough to see the whole show,” he said, getting up from the chair and approaching her while eyeing her on the sofa. “My goodness, darling, I never thought you’d be the type of girl that would enjoy pain.”

“You’re wrong, I don’t!” she yelled, turning away from his gaze and sitting erect with her hands balled into fists at her sides, clamping her thighs together and crossing her ankles and refusing to give him an inch of shame.

“And getting off on a children’s book, too,” he said. ”I never thought that was a thing, but to each her own.”

“I’m not that kind of girl!”

“Oh, but it seemed that way to me,” he said. “When you were little, did your father pinch you as a punishment? Or did you do it to yourself as a reward?”

Auna bit down on her lower lip but kept silent, mentally cursing the accuracy of Rancaster’s deductions. She missed her father dearly, but that didn’t erase the things he did to her, nor did it ease the need to keep doing it to herself in order to erase what she did to him.

“No matter,” he said, bending down to pick up the book Auna had dropped in her delirium, and placed it back on the cafe table. “Back to business, bambina. Whenever you’re ready, meet me at the top of the stairs.”

He left her alone, but Auna refused to face him till his footsteps receded past the library’s entrance and up the double grand staircase.

Only then did she allow tears for herself. So she cried, leaning over her knees and burying her face in her hands to muffle out the sniffling and hitching of deep unsteady breathing. She cried and cried, letting the tears cleanse the shame away, till she was an empty vessel of her shame-faced self building back up a mask of indifference to the memory of that godless night of pain and terror.

Standing up from the sofa, she dried her face with her sleeve, then took her jacket off the chair and slung it over her shoulders like a cloak of armor over her heart. She steeled her nerves and hardened her heart in order to follow orders and to kill, leaving the remnants of her humanity on the sofa. Like it or not, this was who she was and who she was meant to be and what she was meant to do.

Yet before leaving, Auna Wenger paused at the cafe table and looked at Carroll’s book and felt a tugging at her heart like seeing a photo of a long-lost friend, for her childhood vanished when her father started touching her when she was ten.

With that in mind, she said, “C’est la vie,” (Such is life) and walked out of the library.

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After reconciling, Celia and Katherine told Madison about Nico's harrowing experience at the hands of Aaron Rancaster, from her abduction along with her sister Mara from their house to their participation in Russian roulette and their subsequent confrontation with Rancaster and that gun-toting 'bambina' girl in the old square. When they finished, Madison was pale in the face and wide-eyed, looking from her sisters to Nico and then to Mara, still sound asleep on the bed, then back to Nico.

For a time, a gaping Madison was at a loss for words, then said, "Oh my God, Nico. I . . . I honestly have no idea what to say to that."

"That's okay," she said.

"No, it's not okay!” Madison said. “That fucker is gonna pay for what he did, I swear to—"

"Maddy, that's enough!" Katherine yelled.

Madison looked at Katherine, saying, "Then what do you suggest we do, huh? We can't just sit back and do nothing!"

"That's not what I meant. Just let me think—"

"Ah, Christ, you and your—"

"Maddy, please be reasonable for once!" Celia yelled. "You're not a one-man army!"

And before Madison could protest, Nico grabbed onto her arm, saying, "You already know what happened to me and my sister. I won't let you make the same mistake we did, okay?"

"Then what do we do?" Madison said.

“I don’t know,” Nico said, unwilling to trust her ideas to a fiery redhead like her, so she went with Katherine for guidance as a safer bet. "This is your dream realm, so you're in charge. What do we do?"

With Madison and Celia and Nico looking on, Katherine remained silent for a time, making Nico wonder what she was thinking. Though she wasn’t sure what Katherine had in mind, Nico guessed that it was one in which they’d limit as much direct contact with Rancaster or that 'bambina' girl as possible, but she saw no way to get around that. Sooner or later, Nico knew, they'd have to confront their foes if they stood any chance of getting out of here with their lives intact.

Then Katherine lowered herself back into her chair, lowering her gaze to the floor beneath their feet and saying, "If I had control of all of my mirrors in this place, I'd go out there with you, but I'm in no condition to fight at all," and she raised her gaze at her companions. "Take care of yourselves out there. Don't take risks if you don't have to."

“We’ll try not to,” Celia said. "What's the plan?"

So Katherine told them her plan for the next several minutes, which amounted to Nico repeating her kissing spell with Celia in order for Celia and Madison to attack their foes in the hallways after Nico pinpointed their location, and then she asked them for their thoughts. Celia and Madison said that it was risky and suggested their own countermeasures for Katherine’s plan to work, and finally Nico added in her own idea with one more backup plan, should all else fail, in which Nico would act as bait in front of Rancaster and the ‘bambina’ girl, so that Celia and Madison can surprise them.

All three Hearn sisters just looked at Nico.

Katherine said, "That's a huge risk."

"Yeah, I know," Nico said.

"Are you sure you wanna do that?" Celia said.

Nico let out a sigh and turned around to see her sister Mara still asleep on the bed, then faced her newfound friends and said, "I'll do anything I can for my sisters, and that includes all of you, not just Mara."

"Then have faith in us," Katherine said.

Nico looked at her elder sister and nodded, hoping against hope that their next run-in with Rancaster and that 'bambina' girl will be worth it. And something in her mind, in the deepest inner recesses of her thoughts, told her that it was.

She turned again and looked at her sister sleeping on the bed, thinking, Is that you, Mara?

As if in response, Mara's presence swept through Nico's astral body and filled her with warmth, like the warmth of their first kiss, sending color to her cheeks. Nico felt her sister's strength and will pouring into her, so that her breathing became labored, her lips became parted, and her heart started drumming in her chest.

"What is it?" Celia said.

But Nico stayed silent, thinking, What are you up to?

And in response, an image flashed in Nico's mind of both sisters playing hide and seek when they were children, and driving her parents crazy for hours on end. Mara was up to her old tricks, and Nico would play along with her sister-in-crime.

Each of the Hearn sisters followed Nico's gaze.

Madison said, "Wait, is it Mara? Is she with us?"

Nico turned with a smile on her face, saying, "Yeah, she's definitely here. It just took her some time to wake up, but she won't be obvious about it."

"What do you mean?" Katherine said.

"Mara and I used to play hide and seek a lot when we were little, and we drove our parents crazy every time. We'll do something similar here," she said, "but we need your permission to mess with this place a little. It's your dream realm, after all."

Katherine looked in Nico's eyes and then looked in Celia’s direction, then said, "Try not to mess with it too much, okay? I don't want a certain someone getting any ideas."

Celia protested, saying, "Hey, I'm not like that!"

"Sure, you're not," Katherine said, ignoring further protests from Celia. "What have you got?"

When Celia calmed down, Nico looked at her fellow conspirators and said, "Okay, here's the plan. First, we let Mara distract them, and trust me—they won't find her in this room. They'll be too busy with Mara messing with them. Once they're distracted, we'll separate them. Celia and Maddy will deal with that 'bambina' girl, and I'll handle Rancaster."

"Wait," Celia said, "are you sure about this?"

"Don't worry,” Nico said. “I'm no longer afraid of him. He's messed with me one too many times, and I'll make sure he'll regret it."

"Wait," Madison said, "does he have a weakness?"

"His memories,” Nico said, remembering the flood of horrors entering her head back at the round Chinese pavilion. “He messed with me with his memories earlier, so I'll just return the favor," and she curled her hands into fists, till her knuckles were white. "I'll mind-fuck him till his brains leak out of his ears, the bastard!"

The three sisters noticed, and Celia said, "Geez, you're more devious than I am."

"I know. He has no idea what's coming to him."

"So that just leaves me with—wait?" Katherine said, glancing at Mara on the bed and starting from her chair, because the bed was empty. "Where's Mara?"

Madison and Celia both started and looked at the bed, then back at Nico, and then back at the bed again.

“What’s going on?” Madison said.

“Did something happen to her?” Celia added.

"Mara's awake. She's just hiding right now, so don't worry," Nico said, looking at her three conspirators. "We know what we're doing. And Celia," she added, turning to the girl in particular, "Mara's already forgiven you, okay? She gets angry, but she doesn't hold grudges for long."

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At the top of the double grand staircase, Rancaster explained to Auna that the three Hearn sisters were not to be underestimated, especially the eldest one, Katherine Hearn. Out of the three, Katherine was the most formidable and decisive, and this very mansion they infiltrated was her domain, making her presence here difficult for even Rancaster himself to sense. So Rancaster warned Auna that under no circumstances was she to engage Katherine in a fight on her own, because he had already got that part figured out already. In addition, he also warned her not to engage Kendra Tellerman again like she did in the hallways just before he had intervened and kept Auna from turning a mere complication into a catastrophe.

Auna fisted her hands into tight knuckle-white fists and said, “She never took me off guard.”

“She didn’t have to when Mara was the one who did it,” he said. “That girl almost skewered you to the wall, for Christ’s sake, and here you are still fuming over it when you should be thanking your lucky stars you got out of it unscathed.” He then put his hand on her shoulder and added, “Selfishness is not a good look for you, bambina. Kendra may be an enemy combatant, but you should thank her for what she did for you. At least she has a modicum of honor left in her, if nothing else.”

Indeed, Auna remembered the two scenes earlier tonight, in which Auna was just about to fire a shot at Nico and send her away for good when that shotgun-toting Kendra had blasted her way into the hallway through one of the mirrors and scared her off, and again in which Auna was about to fire a shot at Nico carried over Kendra’s shoulders when Mara surprised her. Auna felt like kicking herself for getting surprised in both instances and said, “I’ll remember it.”

“Good,” he said.

“What about the Cairns twins?” Auna said.

Rancaster wavered a moment, seeming to weigh the possibilities in his mind against their previous engagements with Nico Cairns at the square in the old Rancaster district last night and in the hallways of Katherine’s dream mansion earlier tonight, let alone Nico’s involvement with Kendra’s meddlesome actions. Finally, he shook his head and said, “There are too many variables with those two, especially with Nico, so no. I won’t risk you killing Mara, nor will I let you tangle with her sister or Kendra. Is that clear?”

“But why?” she asked.

“Too many variables, bambina,” he said. ”Nico’s a sly one herself, and Kendra’s not to be trifled with, either, so let me handle these intruders in addition to Katherine.”

“So if I see the Cairns twins or this Katherine or this Kendra,” Auna said, “I should run?”

“Yes, run away and lead them to me,” Rancaster said.

Auna deflated a bit at his words.

So he added, “Believe me, I have faith in you, Auna. I’ll let you take care of the other two Hearn sisters. How you engage them, it matters not to me, but give Katherine a good show while you’re at it. I know she’s watching from somewhere in this place, so get the upper hand on her sisters, and you might draw Katherine out.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

So Auna paused and gulped, then looked away when she said, “You’ll come to my rescue when I do, right?”

At this, Rancaster cracked a smile, saying, “With guns blazing and sword shimmering, I’ll be that very Prince!”

And with those words, he bowed to her and took her hand and kissed it, sending a hint of color to Auna’s deadpanning face. Then he turned on his heel and walked into a darkening haze enveloping the top landing of the staircase and disappeared before her eyes.

Now it was her turn to prove herself, so Auna put up a brave face and steeled herself for the hell to come, ready to follow his plan to a tee.

So she stalked back down the stairs and entered the library, coming to the cafe table where the Carroll book sat undisturbed. She bit her thumb and drew blood, dripping a drop of it onto the cover, then placed her palm flat over it and imagined the two queens from Through the Looking-Glass, letting her life-blood flow through the ink between the pages, and the air inside the library grew denser and thicker, tinged with the metallic scent of blood and ink from the epicenter of her spell.

She said, “From page 34, enter the Red Queen! From page 91, enter the White Queen!”

And strings of sentences swept out from the pages and across the tabletop and down the stem and feet of the table to the floor, then swirled into two spirals before her, on which the Red Queen and the White Queen materialized.

Both Queens had Auna’s face and short bobbed hair and wore crinoline dresses over their forms, one red and one white, but they wore different expressions and fashions. The Red Queen wore a Lolita look of a pristine red Sunday dress, her bangs trimmed and her hair neat above her shoulders and her face doll-like with small red lips and glassy eyes, but the White Queen had a grungy look of a tattered white Sunday dress with a soiled bodice, her hair unkempt and limp and her makeup a mess over a sweaty complexion and a maniacal stare about her eyes and holding a dildo in her hand. Both were opposite extremes of Auna herself in demeanor and dress, the Red Queen representing the stern and stately extreme of Auna’s calm demeanor and the White Queen representing the outlandish and outré extreme of Auna’s agitated state.

“What do you want this time, Auna?” the White Queen said, still holding a dildo in her left hand. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Manners, Shiromi, geez! And put that thing away!” the Red Queen said, elbowing her counterpart in the ribs. “Sorry about that, your Grace. What are your orders?” And she even curtsied, prim and proper and annoying—

Which irritated the White Queen, who dissipated the dildo from her hand and manifested a knife and pointed it at her red counterpart, saying, “You know what? Maybe instead of Akami, your name should be Goody Two-Shoes Period-Puss!”

The Red Queen’s face lit up, so she manifested a knife of her own, when Auna manifested a revolver in her hand and fired a shot that bit off a chink from the ceiling. Then she pointed it at the White Queen and said, “I created you, and like it or not, you are my subject. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun,” and she cocked the hammer and chambered a round into the barrel of her weapon.

Both queens stopped their tussle and curtsied, though the White Queen did so with a scowl on her face, saying, “What is your bidding, your Grace?”

“Rancaster and I are playing a game of chess with six others.”

“Who are they?” the Red Queen said.

“The three Hearn sisters, the two Cairns twins, and Kendra,” she said.

Both queens traded looks, and the Red Queen asked, “Of those six, who’s their queen?”

“A girl I haven’t seen yet,” Auna said. “Her name is Katherine Hearn. Rancaster said she’s powerful, so he’ll take care of her along with the Cairns twins and Kendra, while the three of us will take care of the younger Hearn sisters, Madison and Celia. I’ve seen both, so you’ll recognize them when you see them, but stay alert. We’re on their home turf, you know.”

Both queens curtsied again and said, “Your word is our command, your Grace,” yet the White Queen added under her breath, “Fuck-face.”

Which got the White Queen glares from her Red counterpart, saying, “Ugh, you’re hopeless.”

But before Auna reacted to their bickering, the Queens turned on their heels and skittered away.

“Don’t worry, your Grace,” the Red Queen said back to Auna. “When this game’s over, I’ll let you play bondage with Shiromi, so you can get back at her.”

But the White Queen had the last word, saying, “And be sure to invite Lord Rancaster over, so we can have a foursome!”

“Ugh, you’re disgusting!” the Red Queen said.

“And you’re Goody Two-Shoes Period-Puss!” the White Queen said, and their tussle of words continued out of Katherine’s library and up one of the staircases of the double grand staircase, where she heard them greeting Rancaster at the top landing with the same mannerisms.

Auna blushed and gritted her teeth, wondering how those two shared anything in common with herself.

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The more Katherine thought about it, the more she hated the circumstances of her current predicament, because everyone here had an active role except for Katherine herself. This place was her dream mansion, a little corner of the Phantom Realms in which she created and arranged everything down to the last detail, a labor of love and an exercise of her mental acuity. Now here she was, hiding in a private part of her dream mansion and relying on others to help take it back for her because of a little oversight on her own part. This, and the added humiliation of letting her sisters see her so weak, irked her like an unreachable itch.

“Don’t go yet,” Katherine said, and Celia and Madison and Nico looked at her getting up from the vanity table. “I’m not sending you out there till we know where they are.”

So she went back over to the big wide mirror they had used to get into the room, putting her hand over it, and summoned a slimmer mirror that was connected to her life-line, where it shimmered on contact against her hand beside the wall. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on Rancaster’s presence in her dream realm but the image in the mirror stayed blurry.

“God, damn it,” Katherine said.

“What is it?” Nico said.

“Rancaster,” she said. “His presence is all over the place, so I can’t find his exact location. Nico, I think he’s doing what your sister’s doing, so be careful when you’re out there. I’m not sure why he’s doing this, though.”

“Maybe he’s trying to find Mara,” Nico said.

“Or maybe he’s just trying to throw us off,” Madison added.

“Or maybe it’s a trap,” Celia said.

“Yeah, those might be true,” Katherine said, “but I think he’s trying to find me, too. I’m the creator of this place, and I’m in a weakened state already. If he gets to me when I’m this way, it’s over.” She then paused in thought, rolling possibilities through her mind like balls of yarn and trying to grab at strings of logic, and added under her breath, “Unless I do something, we won’t get out of here.”

Closing her eyes again, she concentrated on Auna’s presence this time, and an image of Auna in the library appeared in the reflection.

“What’s she doing over there?” Celia said.

“Rewind the last half hour and show me,” Katherine said, and the mirror reflection rewound itself like a VHS tape on a videocassette recorder. And immediately, Katherine regretted doing that, and the girls averted their eyes in disgust at Auna playing with herself on the solan sofa.

“God, that girl’s nasty!” Madison said. “Just stop it!”

“Wait,” Celia said. “What’s she masturbating to?”

“We don’t have time for your jokes, damn it!” Madison said.

And before Celia spat her comeback, Katherine said, “Pipe down, you two! I need to concentrate,” and she zoomed in on the book lying on the parquet floor as Auna masturbated and saw the three-volume compilation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark.

“What the fuck’s wrong with this chick?” Madison said. “If she did that in my dream world, I’d roast her ass on the spot!”

“Slut-shaming won’t get us out of here, Maddy,” Celia said.

“Voyeurism won’t either,” Madison said.

“Shut up and let me think, geez!” Katherine said, zooming out of the closeup of the book. “Let me see the rest of it,” she added, and the mirror showed Rancaster confronting Auna about how she spent her downtime (masturbating) before taking up the book and putting it on the cafe table and then walking out and leaving the girl crying. “Show me upstairs about five minutes later,” she added, and the mirror blurred out and refocused on Auna talking with Rancaster at the top of the stairs, who directed her to ‘run away and lead them to me.’ Pausing it there, she looked at Nico and said, “You and Mara are staying with me, got that? Rancaster will have to get through me to get to either of you.”

“That’s risky,” Nico said in a grimace. “If he captures all three of us, it’s over.”

Katherine ignored her observation and said to her mirror, “Show me the rest,” and the mirror showed Auna coming back downstairs into the library entrance (“Show me the library,” she added), where Auna took up the book from the cafe table and placed her hand over it and summoned two doppelgängers. “She knows blood summoning and ink invocation.”

“Are you serious?” Celia said. “She can summon, too?”

“Damn this chick,” Madison said, folding her arms and eyeing Auna in contempt with heat surging through the room in waves. “What the hell can’t she do, huh?”

“Gee, jealous?” Celia said, giving her elder sister a sidelong glance and a knowing smile.

“I’m not jealous!” Madison yelled. “Ugh, I just wanna go out there and burn her ass alive, the bitch!”

Katherine ignored her sisters and kept watching, gaining more information before saying, “A chess match, eh? What else do you have for me?” And through the mirror, when Auna threatened one of her doppelgängers with a gun, Katherine said, “Damn, she also knows transmutation alchemy. This chick’s really interesting,” she added. “Okay, what else?”

As she kept watching, Katherine garnered looks from Celia and Madison and Nico, all three watching her watch another girl with the scrutiny of a stalker. The mere sight of it had Celia and Madison trading whispers with Nico on whether or not their eldest sister had a thing for girls, which Nico answered with a half-hearted “Maybe,” while looking at Katherine. Yet as she looked, Nico puckered her lips at the sight of Katherine staring so intently at someone else in her mirror.

Then Katherine started pacing around the room, completely oblivious to the unwholesome ideas of her peers, while Celia and Madison traded another glance, and Nico sat apart from them on the bed and eyed the pacer.

“What are you thinking?” Nico said.

“Is it sexy?” Celia added.

“Don’t be disgusting,” Katherine said.

“Then tell us what’s on your mind,” Madison added.

So Katherine faced Nico, saying, “If Rancaster’s ultimate goal is to get to your sister, then you and I are just extra pieces in his plan to get to her. In the end, he’ll use both of us to get to your sister, so having you two here is too dangerous, but I know a place where you can hide.”

“Where?” Nico said.

“In my mirror,” she said, nodding to the one against the wall. “It’s not just a doorway or a window into another part of this mansion. It’s an actual place in my soul, and it’s where I got my inspiration for this mansion. This mansion you’re in is a reflection of who I am, a reflection of my soul. Even if Rancaster somehow gets inside there, he’ll have a hell of a time trying to find you or your sister, because he’ll be dealing with me at my strongest.”

“How are you so sure?” Nico said.

At this, Katherine cracked a smile and said, ”My soul is like a drop of water in the sea, and in that drop of water is the sea itself. I’m stronger than you think.”

Her words seemed to strike a chord in Nico, causing her to pause for a moment as if Mara was trying to urge her into action, so she said, “Do you think it’s okay, Mara? Do you think she knows what it’s like?”

Katherine said, “Wait, has Mara—”

“Yeah, she’s been here this whole time. Sorry for not telling you earlier,” Nico said, and she got off the bed and walked in front of Katherine’s mirror and pointed at the reflection. “Look in your mirror, and you’ll see.”

All eyes turned to Katherine’s mirror.

When Katherine blurred out the reflection of Auna inside the library, all three Hearn sisters saw Nico standing next to Mara in the room, two kindred doppelgängers in the reflection waving their hands with smiles on their faces as if they had been playing a game of hide and seek all along.

The Hearn sisters gasped, then looked back and saw Mara Cairns standing bodily in the room with them.

“Good God, no,” Madison said. “Please don’t tell me I have to deal with two more Celia clones in one building. One Celia’s enough as it is!”

“Hardy har har,” Celia said, then teleported in between the Cairns twins and grabbed both their arms in hers. “When this is over, you two are gonna have so much fun with me and Colbie. I just can’t wait!”

At her words, Nico frowned and averted her eyes, catching Celia’s attention.

“What’s wrong?” she said, till it hit her. “Oh . . . Nico, I’m . . . I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said, then smiled a very Celia-like smile. “I have other ways of playing with those I like.”

Celia’s face lit up, her cheeks flaring at her words, so she said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll find out later tonight,” Nico said, making Celia blush even redder than before, then smiled at Katherine, saying, “Don’t worry, I’m not like that.”

But Mara qualified her statement, saying, “Most of the time,” and she smiled at Katherine.

Katherine stared at the twins, then at Celia, and then at Madison, with all kinds of weird thoughts flooding her head involving her youngest sister and these two shady twins in less than wholesome circumstances in her soul mirror. So she looked at Nico and Mara in their eyes, eyes that seemed to betray no ulterior motives despite their words, and said, “No funny business in my mirror, you two. Otherwise, I’ll know, and you’ll both regret it, trust me.”

Nico chuckled and smiled, saying, “I see. Then I guess Celia was right about you,” and she walked into the shimmering mirror before Katherine got out a word.

So she stopped Mara from entering and said, “What does she mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” Mara said. “I wasn’t awake yet at the time. Maybe ask Celia after this is over.” Then she turned and walked up to Celia, cupping her hands in her own. “Celia, I never had a chance to thank you back at the Rancaster district for what you did for me and Nico, so I’m doing it now,” and she hugged her close like a soul sister, saying, “And I’m soooooo so sorry for stabbing your friend. I was so scared that time, and I’ve put you through so much, and you have no reason to be my friend for what I did, but you did so much for us,” and tears ran down her cheeks that she wiped away.

Celia stood there without saying anything.

When Mara finished hugging Celia, she looked at each of the three Hearn sisters and added, “You three are more beautiful than you know,” and she walked into Katherine’s mirror that shimmered in her wake.

With that, the three Hearn sisters traded looks amongst themselves, and then Madison and Katherine smiled at Celia as though she had passed a rite of passage with flying colors, proving herself their equal, so Katherine had the last word, saying, “You passed.”

“Wait, what?” Celia said.

“I said you passed,” Katherine said.

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No sooner had Auna seen off the Red and White Queens when she felt a headache cleaving through her head like hatchet-strikes from an evil lumberjack. She squatted to the floor, clamping her hands against her temples to ease the pain but to no avail. The hatchet-strikes continued, and her face contorted into a portrait of agony as she tried everything not to scream. And the headache continued, like hammer-blows against an anvil inside her skull, beating to the rhythm of her heartbeats pulsing through the blood vessels in her brain, till she couldn’t take anymore and put her hand in her panties and pleasured herself, but the endorphins only made it worse.

Any more, and she’d go crazy even if ‘crazy’ was a concept completely alien to her psyche. Crazy was not the word she’d use to describe herself, not the quintessence of her personality, but deep in her soul, she feared the girl she had seen in the mirror last night in the old square. And now, squinting through an agony of pulsing hatchet-strikes in her head, she saw her image flash through her mind’s eye again.

The girl bore her likeness but was not Auna herself. Whoever or whatever she was that wore her face, she was not the persona she had in mind to emulate, nor was she someone she was meant to be if Auna could help it, yet the worst thing was this: Auna feared that she couldn’t help it.

She shook off these thoughts and stood up and went towards the cafe table and looked at the Lewis Carroll volume, for she needed answers to her questions, even if they were on the sly. She bit the scabbing away from her thumb and drew blood, dripping another drop of it onto the cover, then placed her palm flat over it and imagined the eponymous object from Through the Looking-Glass, letting her life-blood flow through the ink in the pages, and once again the air inside the library grew dense and thick, tinged with another metallic waft of blood and ink from her spell.

She said, “From page 9, enter the Looking-Glass House!”

Once again, strings of sentences swept out from the pages and across the tabletop and down the stem and feet of the table to the floor, then swirled into a spiral before her, on which the entrance into Looking-Glass House materialized against the reflection of a giant mirror. The mirror itself had the same decorative trim on the edges of its frame, but it sat on the floor and not on the mantle like in the book. And instead of reflecting the inside of a mid-nineteenth century living room, it reflected rows of library bookshelves stuffed from floor to ceiling with books and books and books.

And framed inside that mirror in front of those books was Auna herself, or at least, the reflection seemed like herself, so she leaned towards the reflection and saw her face getting bigger and bigger, as though this second self were copying her movements to the last degree of pantomime. Auna then passed her hand across the reflected face, crossing her own line of sight, and saw a slight change in the expression of those reflected eyes.

And in that split second, she recognized the roving predatory eyes of that she-wolf wearing her own face and her own clothes but was not herself. And those eyes lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. And in those eyes, her doppelgänger carried a cesspool of bodily sensations that only wanted more, more of Auna’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul. Then a slasher's smile stretched across her doppelgänger’s face, and she said, “It only happens when you’re not looking!”

And the words of her imposter filtered through her mind and took her down the rabbit hole of unconscious sleep and back to the conscious sleep of dreams. She found herself again on the sofa, but now she was sitting upright without her legs sprawled open and without her hand in her panties.

She looked and saw Rancaster looking down on her again, as though he had waited for her to wake up instead of touching her directly. She stole a quick glance to where the mirror entrance into Looking-Glass House had stood and saw in its place the Red and White Queens standing rigidly at attention.

“You’re awake?” he said. “Good! Change of plans, bambina.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” she said, looking at the Red and White Queens. “And why are they back here?”

“Just what I said: a change of plans,” he said. “I can’t detect either of the Cairns twin’s presence in this house. I can only think that Katherine Hearn had something to do with their disappearance. Plan A is done for, so it’s Plan B from here on out, till we achieve our ends or Katherine and her sisters wake up at dawn, which is,” and he pulled out a pocket watch from his vest pocket, flipped the cover and read the time (4:08 a.m.), “about three hours from now. By the way, bambina,” he added, “do you know the significance of four o’clock a.m.?”

And indeed, Auna remembered that time as clear as a moonlit night, even at the tender age of nine, because that was the hour when she woke up to her father (her real father) moaning in his bedroom, and when she crept to his room to find out what was the matter and peeked beneath his shut bedroom double doors at what he was doing, she found him masturbating. She felt queasy at the memory, felt bile bubbling up and backing up into her throat, so she took a deep breath and stood up, saying, “Wolves are most active at this time.”

“Ah, that’s my bambina!” Rancaster said, petting her head.

Auna blushed in her deadpan way, but she garnered hard looks from the Red and White Queens in sidelong glances. Even though they were formed from Auna’s life-giving blood, she felt that they had a will of their own beyond the confines of her wishes and beyond the parameters set in Through the Looking-Glass, for she had imbued them with such agency in her childhood folly of needing friends she could talk to.

“So I assume,” the man then continued, ”that you know what happens next?”

Indeed, she did, both now and back then when the atrocity occurred. After months of subsequent spy missions on her father, she remembered the night when she was called to see him in his bedroom. With her heart pounding in her chest, she had obeyed his summons that night, a night that involved her father teaching her how to touch herself and later teaching her how to touch him, which escalated to her father pinching her in intimate places to make her touch him whenever she refused, which culminated in her frustrated father coming into her bedroom one night and dragging her into his and doing it to her for the first and only time when she was ten. Thus, with her first taste of carnal knowledge came the truth about wolves and feral men and how to slay them.

She knew it then as she knew it now, saying, “I do.”

“Good,” Rancaster said and smiled. “The stage is set, the time is now, and you are the star of the show,” and he bowed to her and took her hand and kissed it, sending color to Auna’s deadpan face. Then he turned on his heel and walked into a darkening haze enveloping the library and disappeared before her, leaving Auna alone with the Queens.

Taking a moment to breathe, Auna approached the Red and White Queens, both still standing at attention with ashen faces, and said, “What did Rancaster tell you?”

Both Queens traded glances between themselves, till Akami the Red Queen took Auna’s right hand in her own and said, “He told us what you’re going to do.”

“How do you feel about it?” she said.

“Don’t do it, Auna,” Shiromi the Red Queen said, taking Auna’s left hand in her own. “None of this is worth it.”

“Please, reconsider this, your Grace,” Akami added.

“I’m sorry,” Auna said, “but this is something I have to do.”

“But what about Wonderland?” Shiromi said.

“Don’t you want to become Queen of that place?” Akami added.

“I will become Queen of Wonderland, yes,” Auna said, “but as a different person, not as you see me now,” and when Shiromi and Akami began to cry, she kissed each of their eyes. “Please, don’t either of you cry for me. This is not goodbye: this is only ‘see you later,’ okay?”

Akami and Shiromi nodded that they understood, but their tears wouldn’t stop.

So Auna said, “I want you two to do something for me.”

“What is it?” they both said.

“After all this is over, find Mara and Nico,” she said, “and tell them that it’s my fault. Tell them I couldn’t get Rancaster to stop the show last night. Tell them that I’m sorry for what happened to their parents. And tell Mara I’m sorry for what happened to her sister. Can you do this for me?”

Akami and Shiromi cried, but nodded that they would, so as their last act of kindness to the girl who had given them their names, they both hugged Auna in a tight embrace and left long and lingering kisses on her lips, telling her that they loved her and will always love her, no matter what becomes of Auna or who she’ll become in the end.

Satisfied with their answer, Auna gave them her orders with tears in her eyes.

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On entering the mirror into Katherine’s soul, Nico found herself at the edge of a wooded park or an English garden beneath a canopy of large trees overhanging her head in soft shades and waited for Mara’s arrival. When Mara came in through Katherine’s mirror, Nico took Mara by her hand and said, "Stay close to me, okay?" To this, Mara nodded her head, so Nico led the way through the thick foliage, till she spotted a boarded walkway in the woods, and they followed it out of the woods and into daylight.

They then stopped at the entrance of a boardwalk raised above the water margin of a large lake and marveled at the mirrored surface reflecting the heavy clouds above their heads that scattered all shadows into translucent shades around them. The boardwalk hugged the margins of the lake like the edges of a hand mirror against a forest backdrop of big trees and faraway mountains further back in the distance, while water lilies and lily pads hugged the edges of the lake near pillars supporting the boardwalk below their feet.

They then looked across the mirror sheen of the lake and found big and small clusters of lilies and lily pads further out like floating dinner plates of greenery. And in the largest cluster of lilies and lily pads floated the biggest swan either of them had ever seen, about the size of a mid-size SUV. Its long white plumage curved down the folded wings over its back and sides, and it ruffled its feathers when it spotted Nico and Mara looking at it.

“Look at that,” Nico said. “It’s so beautiful!”

“What’s it doing over there?” Mara asked. "And why's it so big?"

“I don’t know.”

The swan gazed back at them, then spread and beat its wings against the air while running atop the surface of the lake, its long neck stretched forward and its eyes locked onto Nico and Mara on the edge of the water margin. Running and running across the water, it beat its wings on larger tufts of air till it raised its legs behind itself and flew towards them like a fighter jet.

So Nico and Mara both cursed and ducked, cowering and shielding their heads with their hands as they hid behind one of the bigger trees leaning over the boardwalk that skirted the lake, when the giant swan swooped up above their heads, rustling the leaves and branches of overhanging trees, and scattered itself into feathery shards of shimmering light.

With both of their hearts thumping in their chests, they emerged from their hiding spot and looked up beyond the leaves and saw no swan above them. So they looked towards the lake but found no sign of the swan anywhere near it.

“Where is it?” Nico said.

“How should I know?” Mara said.

“Looking for someone?” said an unknown voice.

Both Cairns twins squealed and jumped, then lost their footing on the boardwalk and fell into the lake with a splash, brimming the waters into spreading ripples, while the stranger laughed into gut-busting hysterics and held onto her sides.

When both sisters emerged through the water, they had scowls on their faces and contempt in their eyes.

Nico said, “Hey, what gives? Why did you—?”

Then she stopped.

So Mara looked over and said, “Kathy, is that you?”

Their gazes fell on a Katherine look-alike, but unlike the one with brown front and side bangs and braided twin-tails behind her head, this one simply wore her hair down in long silky strands that would have shimmered under a sunny sky. And on top of that, she had cut-off slacks that revealed a generous amount of leg and a loose blouse tucked into the slacks.

“Well,” this Katherine said, eying Mara with a smile, “I am in a general sense, but . . . I’m not exactly like her. I’m a little different, as you can see.” Then turning to Nico, she said, ”But to answer your first question, I give my apologies. And to your second question, it was a joke: no harm intended, I assure you. Now reach out your hands,” and when they did, she grasped their hands and pulled them up from the water that soaked through their clothes. “You’ll catch a cold in those wet clothes. Follow me to the house, and I'll get you dry ones,” and she led them back over the boarded walkway through the thick foliage of the forest towards a clearing.

Nico and Mara traded questioning looks, noting the different mannerisms between the Katherine they knew and this other Katherine, but they still followed.

“Um,” Mara started, ”should we call you Katherine or Kathy or—?”

“Cooley,” she said. "Call me Cooley."

Nico stayed silent, though, wondering how she could transform into a swan. Or maybe she was a spirit animal or guide of some kind, but she had no way of knowing for certain, till Cooley answered her curiosity.

“Oh, and if you’re wondering about the swan thing,” Cooley said, “just know that swans are my spirit animals, and so they are Katherine’s spirit animals, too.”

“Wait, you can read minds?” Nico said in awe.

“Not really,” she said, turning and giving her a wink, “but I can read emotions fairly well and, sometimes, peer into other people’s hearts.” Then she stopped along the path to the clearing and faced her new-found friends and said, “I know of the plight you’ve both suffered, and your actions and words have moved me as much as they have moved my counterpart in your world. However long you need to stay here, I’ll give you all the time you need.”

Her words were like a tonic, soothing frayed nerves and offering respite, so for the first time in a while, both sisters smiled and said, “Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Cooley said.

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“All right, back to business,” Katherine said, looking at Celia and Madison for a moment, then put her hand to the mirror and concentrated on the locations of Auna’s two doppelgängers, and the mirror showed them in a lonely corner of the maze of hallways. They had joined hands and were now turning counter-clockwise and saying an incantation that Katherine couldn’t hear, but she guessed what it was when she spotted the summoning circle glowing under their feet, saying, “They’re using an invocation spell, but I’ve never seen it done like that, or at least, I don’t think so.” So she searched through the hidden library of her mind for any ideas, then said, “How are they doing it?”

Celia and Madison got a closer look at the spell casting in progress playing on the reflection.

“I don’t see any candles anywhere,” Madison said, “so they’re not doing it through flames, and that rules out a fire elemental, thank God.”

“I know that already,” Katherine said.

“But they look alike, those two,” Celia said.

“Well, duh,” Madison said. “They’re twins, Captain Obvious!”

“Hey, I was just making an observation!” Celia said. “If you—”

“You may be onto something,” Katherine said, beginning to see a pattern in their deliberate use of symmetry in their invocation, as if they were replicating something into existence, but they weren’t using any mirrors. Katherine had made sure that all of the mirrors in her mansion were broken, except for the one she was using, yet she knew there had to be a means to their method of invocation.

“See?” Celia said, looking at Madison and smiling an all-knowing smile. “What did I tell you?”

“Lucky guess for a lucky brat,” Madison said.

Before Celia was about to talk back, Katherine caught on to the deliberate symmetry of their method and said, “I think they’re using doubles.”

“Are you serious?” Celia said.

“But doesn’t that involve a body double as a vessel?” Madison said, looking at the Red and White Queens continuing their counter-clockwise spell while chanting. “Where’s the vessel?”

“Wait a minute,” Celia said, “where’s that ‘bambina’ chick?”

“Do you think she’s the vessel?” Katherine said.

“I think so, yeah,” she said. “Can you find out where she is?”

“I’ll try,” Katherine said and concentrated on the smaller imprint of the gun-toting ‘bambina’ girl’s location, but . . . “I can’t find her. She must be using charms to hide her location from me. Fuck!” And she winced, almost taking her hand off the reflection and cutting off the image, and gritted her teeth against the jolt of pain running through her arm.

“What’s wrong?” her sisters said.

“Fuck, someone’s putting a curse on me!” Katherine said, gritting her teeth and wincing against the pain running through her arm in stabbing pinpricks.

“WHAT?” her sisters said, looking on in horror, as they began to see the effects of the curse in the blurring and warping of the walls surrounding them in Katherine’s boudoir. Something was getting in, digging through the cracks in Katherine’s psychic barrier, little by little, warping its way through an already weakened Katherine.

“You have to go!” she said, grimacing against the million evil pinpricks shooting through her arm as tears squeezed out of her eyes. “I can’t hold out much longer!”

“What’s gonna happen to you?” Celia said.

“We’re not leaving you like this!” Madison added.

“I’ll deal with it. Just do what you have to do. I’m putting all of my trust in you two, so go now,” she said, looking into her sisters’ eyes, but neither of them went. “For God’s sake, don’t worry about me! I’ll be fine. NOW GO!”

So Celia and Madison looked at the Red and White Queens in the mirror, and Celia threw her seal below both of their feet and blinked out of sight.

Katherine then pulled away her hand and collapsed to her knees, doubling over on the floor and nursing her arm tight against her stomach, till the pain subsided enough for her to raise her head and look at the mirror. The mirror’s reflection was now a spider’s web of cracks showing a swirling black mass of energy, reminding her of the death of her grandmother Amelia Hearn and the unwitting role her own mother Lima Hearn had played in it, as well as the man who had orchestrated it like an evil conductor.

Then a voice said in her mind, Checkmate, braid girl.

“Rancaster, you fucker!” she said.

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つづく

Night: Celia and the Sister Duo (Sister Cinco)

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