The Magic Mirror (The Evermores Chronicles Book 7), page 1
THE MAGIC MIRROR
THE EVERMORES CHRONICLES™ BOOK 7
MARTHA CARR
MICHAEL ANDERLE
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2022 LMBPN Publishing
Cover by Fantasy Book Design
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
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LMBPN Publishing
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Version 1.00, May 2022
ebook ISBN: 979-8-88541-445-6
Print ISBN: 979-8-88541-446-3
The Oriceran Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright © 2017-22 by Martha Carr and LMBPN Publishing.
THE MAGIC MIRROR TEAM
Thanks to our JIT Readers
Diane L. Smith
Zacc Pelter
Dorothy Lloyd
Dave Hicks
Editor
SkyFyre Editing Team
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
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Author Notes - Martha Carr
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Books By Michael Anderle
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CHAPTER ONE
A rat ran out from behind a pile of crates. It was a foot long, with glowing claws and teeth made from metal. It screeched and tore at one of the boxes piled up on the warehouse floor, all of which had Mana Wave Industries printed on them.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Fran Berryman raised her hands and fired a bolt of sonic magic at the rat, flinging it back. “Get your dirty claws off my company’s products.”
The rat found its feet, hissed, bared its teeth, then charged at Fran, jaws wide. Its eyes glowed a terrifying red, and the claws left scratches on the concrete floor as it ran.
Fran narrowed the focus of her magic to a finer point and switched to light instead of sound. A bright beam shot from the tip of her finger, burning the side of the rat’s head. The creature squealed and ran away.
More giant rats emerged from the walls, all of them mutated by magic. Some had spikes on their tails or scales along their backs. Others had warped muscles or unexpected spines. One stalked toward Fran with acid dripping from its lips that hissed and bubbled as it hit the floor.
There was a brief blur as something dark leaped out of the shadows. A black and gray cat hit the rat from the side with his claws thrashing. He sank his teeth into its neck and twisted. The rat went limp.
“Well done, Smokey,” Fran said.
“These things taste disgusting.” The cat shifter spat out a mouthful of dirty fur and rubbed his tongue against the back of his paw. “Urgh!”
“You could turn into a dwarf and fight them that way,” Fran pointed out.
“Oh, because two legs are better than four?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’m joking, Fran.” Smokey grinned. “I know you’re one of the good ones. I’m still not giving in to the expectations of the man.”
He swished his tail and ran off, chasing another rat.
A Willen appeared around the corner with her rat-like tail raised behind her. She peered down her long nose at the device she was holding. It looked like a leaf blower, but with a set of glowing crystals on one side and a tube running to her backpack.
“Is it working, Singar?” Fran looked at the device.
“I’m about to find out.” Singar raised the device and pointed it at an approaching rat. “This isn’t what I made it for, but finding new uses is half the fun of inventing, right?”
She pulled the trigger. There was a noise like mud running down a drain and a tingle of magic in the air. The rat was sucked off its feet and down the device's nozzle. A series of bumps and squeals followed and a thud, then there was movement in the backpack as sharp claws tried to tear through.
“I reinforced it with a new magical thread from one of the gnome cooperatives.” Singar patted the backpack. “It’ll take more than a set of claws to get through that.”
Another giant rat leaped off one of the shelves and landed on Singar’s head. She cursed and tried to knock it off, but it skittered across her shoulders, tearing at the flannel of her shirt and keeping out of reach.
“I’ve got it.” Fran grabbed the rat with both hands. It flailed with its claws, leaving nasty red scratches down her forearms. “Ow!”
She flung the rat away, and it landed on its back next to a pile of crates. It was turning over when Fran took a swift stride, using the magic her father had taught her, and closed the space between them in an instant. As the rat rolled over, she brought her foot down.
“One more down,” she said. “How many left?”
“Too many.” Bart Trumbling, the company’s gnome chief financial officer, clambered through a gap between two shelves. His white hair was waving around his head, and his suit was disheveled. “Four of them cornered me. I had to make a quick getaway through the containment units.”
He yelped and stumbled forward as one of the rats leaped onto his back. Singar raised her device, and Bart’s jacket rippled as if tugged by a storm wind.
“Not me!” he shouted. “I don’t want to end up in a bag full of rats.”
“Don’t worry,” Singar said. “I’m working out the aim.”
She shifted the device, turned a dial on its side, and pulled the trigger. The rat on Bart’s bag was snapped away and disappeared into the backpack with a series of squeals and thuds.
There was a crash as the grille fell from a large ventilation duct and more rats streamed out. As they rushed toward her, Fran held out her hand and reached into the world with her magic. It wasn’t always easy to define what counted as a weapon when she was calling for one, but under the circumstances, the shovel that flew into her grip certainly qualified. She used it to knock two rats into the distance, fling another into the path of Singar’s device, and splat a fourth against the floor.
A deep growl erupted from around a corner, and a giant cat emerged. This one was six feet high, with claws like swords and a look in its eye that said it was lunch time. Most of the rats fled in terror, heading back down the vent, but one was more courageous. It scrambled up a set of shelves and jumped, claws bared, straight at the cat’s head.
As the rat hit, the giant cat flickered and disappeared, replaced by an elegant elf in a pantsuit. More by luck than by design, the rat landed on her head, and the elf let out a piercing scream.
“It’s on me it’s on me oh ancestors it’s in my hair!”
She spun, trying to shake the rat out of her long hair while the rat dug in deeper.
“Don’t worry, Elethin.” Fran ran up to her. “I’ve got this.”
She grabbed hold of Elethin’s long blonde hair and felt the rat’s body squirming in it. Focusing her mind, Fran created a concentrated pulse of sound magic between her hands. She couldn’t hear it, the note was so low, but she felt it in her palms. The rat went limp and fell to the floor, stunned.
“Urgh, that is utterly disgusting.” Elethin kicked the rat away with the tip of her high-heeled shoe. “Why in the name of all of existence are we doing this ourselves? Surely we could have called in pest control?”
“I thought it might not look good if people heard that we have magical rats in our warehouse,” Fran said.
“A very good point. You’re finally picking up some of my PR lessons.”
“And I thought it might be a fun thing to do as a team.”
“In that, you were completely wrong.”
“We hardly ever get to do things together anymore. We’re all too busy in meetings or running our departments. I miss the days when it was only the six of us.”
“Then you should have arranged drinks and karaoke, not a magical battle against plague-ridden vermin.”
“
“Besides, there aren’t six of us here. Where has Steelstrike slacked off to?”
Fran looked around. Elethin was right. Gruffbar hadn’t turned up yet.
“I’m sure he’ll be along,” she said. “For now, we need to get to the root of the problem.”
“I know where that is.” Smokey trotted into view. His fur was dusty, and his tail raised. “They’ve got a nest in a cave under the building.”
“Can you lead us there?” Fran asked.
“Not the way I went. You’re all too big.”
“Are there stairs?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Then how do we get down?”
“I’ve got this.” Singar pulled something blocky out of the side of her backpack. “Where is this cave?”
Smokey walked to the middle of the warehouse and tapped the floor. “About here.”
Singar put her blocky package down where Smokey had indicated and stabbed something into the side. “Everybody stand back.”
“Is that a bomb?” Bart asked, alarmed.
“More of a petard, a shaped demolition charge.”
“You’re going to blow up the floor?”
“It’s our building, and Fran’s the company's CEO. If she says it’s okay, it’s okay.”
“But the cost of repairs!”
“What about the cost of having these rats around?”
Bart’s eyes went unfocused for a moment as he did the math. “All right, do it.”
“Fran?”
Fran nodded. Singar tapped her phone. There was a boom, and a crash as a floor section fell in.
“Come on, before they get away!” Fran ran through billowing dust to the hole that Singar had made. “How do we, like, get down?”
“I have a little something.” Bart raised his hands and magic sparkled around his fingertips. All five lifted, then descended into the space below.
As they went, Fran waved. Balls of light appeared in the air around them, illuminating the newly revealed cave. It was half the size of the warehouse, its walls lined with sections of splintered crates and shredded packaging. Rats covered the floor like a filthy, furry carpet. On the far side of the cave was one as tall as Fran, with three heads and a gleam like madness in its eyes.
“That must be the queen,” Fran said. “I’ll deal with her. You guys keep the others off my back.”
They charged in, kicking, clawing, and swinging weapons, attacking the rats with blasts of magic, both theirs and that bound in Singar’s machine. The other four cleared a path and Fran ran through, past the swarm of rats on the floor toward the three-headed queen.
“Sorry,” Fran said. “This is our place now.”
One of the heads lunged down, teeth snapping at Fran. She ducked the blow, jumped over a set of jagged claws, and swung her spade. It hit the rat in the ear, and that head went limp.
Another head snapped at her, catching the edge of her hoodie. Cloth ripped, and the rat came away with a mouth full of bright colors and sequins.
“Hey, I liked that!”
Fran swung her shovel, catching the rat under the chin. There was a crunch of breaking teeth, and that head flopped down too, dropping her tattered hoodie.
“I think it might be beyond repair,” Fran said sadly.
“Thank goodness.” Elethin strode past, kicking rats to the left and right. “It made you look like a children’s entertainer. I’ll take you shopping for something tasteful instead.”
The rat queen turned her last head toward Fran. Even slowed by two slumped heads, she moved quickly and viciously. Her claws scythed through the air, and her teeth snapped like a trap. Fran dodged one attack, blocked another with her weapon, and twisted to avoid a third. She wished she had her skates on. She was a lot faster on them, although they might not be so great amid all the litter the rats had acquired.
The head came around again, and Fran swung the shovel. It hit the rat queen right on the nose. She jerked back, squealing, and Fran followed up. A blow to the right, another to the left, then she spun the shovel under her arm like a martial arts master handling his staff. The rat queen thudded to the ground, out cold.
Fran looked around. The other rats were mostly dealt with, either sucked up in Singar’s backpack or piled up in heaps by the rest of the Mana Wave executive board. Smokey had one last rat hanging between his teeth, which he brought over to drop at Fran’s feet.
“Um, is that for me?” she asked.
“Sorry, force of habit. Sometimes the cat takes over.”
The sound of clapping drew their attention to the hole in the ceiling. A dwarf with a neatly trimmed beard dressed in biker’s leathers stood at the edge. Smoke drifted from the cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Very good,” he said. “Go team.”
“Gruffbar!” Fran exclaimed. “It’s great to see you.”
“And just when the work is all done,” Elethin added. “How convenient.”
Gruffbar shrugged. “I’m a lawyer, not a pied piper. I figured my skills were better deployed elsewhere.”
“Really?” Elethin raised her eyebrows. “Where was that, a coffee shop or a bar?”
“The courthouse. Mana Valley Central, in fact. Someone’s suing us.”
CHAPTER TWO
“You look like you’ve had an exciting day.” Cam smiled at Fran across the counter of the Blazing Bean coffee shop. “Do you want something to revive you?”
“I’d rather head back to my place for dinner,” Fran said. “Is your shift nearly up?”
“Finished ten minutes ago. I was waiting for you to come by.” Cam took off his apron and tossed it to another barista. “Here you go, Jo. The place is all yours for the evening.”
Cam pulled his coat off a hook by the door, took Fran’s hand, and headed out into the street. Spring had arrived in Mana Valley, and the city council had recently had new borders of trees and shrubs planted down one side of the road, so the scents of fresh greenery and unfurling flowers took the edge off the city’s traffic smells.
“It looks nice around here,” Fran said. “Is this Smokey’s work?”
“Not directly, but he did something like it in his district, and now the other councilors are copying him. Seems their voters are getting more vocal since his surprise election success.”
“Expecting their elected representatives to do something? How novel!”
“I know. I also notice that you haven’t told me how you got like this yet.” Cam tugged on a hole in her torn hoodie. “Care to elaborate, or is it a corporate secret?”
“Promise not to tell anyone?”
“Will you make me sign an NDA?”
“I have more positive ways to keep you quiet.”
Cam grinned. “Go on then, tell me. I won’t tell a soul.”
“Would you tell a soulless machine set on world domination?”
“Not even the biggest, most charming robot you can find.”
“All right, then. Our warehouse got infested with mutant rats, and we had to fight them.”
“Didn’t this happen before?”
“You’re thinking of the weird creatures under the factory.”
“Oh yeah, I guess I am. You guys should stop building facilities on ancient gnomish burial grounds.”
“Very funny.”
“Other than that, how was business today?”
“We’re getting sued.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“What for?”
