Ling swam backward to the mirror, keeping an eye on her water wall.
“I’ll go in first,” Serafina said. “Then I’ll pull you in after me.” She started to swim through the glass. As she did, a head popped up on the other side, round and bald.
“Darling merl!”
“Rorrim, please, you’ve got to let us in,” Serafina said.
“Actually, I don’t, but that’s beside the point. I have someone here who’s dying to see you.” He touched a finger to his chin. “Or was it that he wants to see you die?”
He stepped aside and Serafina saw another figure in the silver. Her blood turned to ice. It was the man with no eyes. He started toward her, a murderous expression on his face.
Sera was so frightened she could barely form words. “Ling…trouble,” she rasped.
Ling glanced over her shoulder. “Break the mirror!”
Sera knew that if she did that, the man would not be able to crawl out of the glass, because the pieces would be too small for him to fit through. But she also knew that they would never see Thalia again.
Vadus had few rules. The countess who lived inside Sera’s mirror had told her that some vitrina stayed within the bounds of their own mirrors; others wandered through the realm. Some spoke to the living; others refused to. There was, however, one law all were bound by: when a vitrina’s own mirror was broken, her soul was released from the glass.
“I can’t break it, Ling!” Sera cried. “We need Thalia! We need to find out what the other talismans are!”
“None of it matters if we’re dead! Do it, Sera! Now!”
The man with no eyes was closer. In a few seconds, he’d be through the glass. Sera had no choice. She slapped her tail against the mirror violently, smashing it. The pieces rained down on the floor. A hundred empty eye sockets stared at her from a hundred shards, then disappeared.
“Look for another way out of here!” Ling yelled.
The water wall buckled under the force of the Opafago. Ling sang the spell again to strengthen it. As she did, Serafina looked around the room, hoping to find a hole in the ceiling, or a crack in a wall. But there was nothing.
Then she spotted a narrow doorway half hidden behind a pile of rubble. “This way!” she shouted.
Ling followed, never taking her eyes off the cannibals.
There was a room on the other side, much bigger than the one they’d swum out of. It, too, was built of heavy stones and was intact.
Too late, they discovered that it was also a dead end.
Ling cast yet another ap? piatr?, concentrating her magic on the doorway. It was easier to block a smaller space, but the Opafago—slamming themselves against the water wall over and over again—were draining her strength.
“I can’t keep this up much longer,” she said.
Serafina sang a commoveo and used it to push against the walls, but the room was so solidly built, nothing happened.
“I’ll let the water wall down. They’ll all rush in. When they do, catch them in a vortex,” Ling said.
“I can’t! Any vortex big enough to catch them will catch us, too.”
“Getting tired here! We’ve got to do something!”
Serafina swam frantically around the room. She saw that she and Ling were in the baths proper now. There were no windows and the only door was the one they’d swum through. A large sunken square, once a pool, filled most of the room and butted up against its back wall. Sera spotted stone carvings on that wall—six ornate dolphin heads. Water had flowed through pipes to their mouths and into the pool.
“Oh, wow!” she said. “Ling, did you know that the Atlanteans were the first to figure out how to build aqueducts and bury pipes inside walls? I almost forgot that!”
“Are you kidding me? This is no time for a history lesson!” Ling shouted.
But it was.
The pipes would have water in them, given that they were currently under a great deal of it. And that water could be used for a vortex spell. It would cause an explosion. Which might blow a hole in the back wall, allowing them to escape—if everything went right. If everything went wrong, it would bring the entire bathhouse down on their heads.
Sera started to sing.
Water, cut off
From the sea,
Held here captive,
Same as me,
Whirl and spin
And heed my call,
Cause these ancient
Stones to fall!
At first, nothing happened, but then Sera heard water and sediment whirling inside the pipes. She sang the spell again, her voice growing louder. The pipes groaned. The old stones of the bathhouse rumbled. The water was spinning faster and faster, trying to spiral outward like winds in a tornado, but it couldn’t, and the ancient pipes screamed with the strain of containing it.
“Come on, Sera!” Ling yelled.