It didn’t.
What the—
I sprang backward from the shiny surface, and the reflection I’d been looking at abruptly disappeared. But not before I saw differences I hadn’t seen up close: like the fact that the curls were gray, not blond, and the face was lined, not youthful, and the eyes were blue, yes.
But they weren’t mine.
So, not a reflection, then. Somebody was on the other side of the wall. Somebody who had been peering in at us curiously. Somebody who might know a lot more about this place than I did.
And there was only one way to reach her.
“Stay here,” I told Rosier shortly.
“What?” He looked from me to the wall I was still staring at. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going outside.”
“I thought you couldn’t shift?”
“I can’t.”
“Then how—” His eyes got wide. “No.”
“I won’t be long.”
“No!”
“I’ll come right back.”
“And if you don’t? I’ll be left in here with a corpse, and we’ll have no chance, no chance—”
“We have no chance now! You said two days maximum until Pritkin’s soul arrives. It’s already been most of one. We have to get out of here—”
“But that Gertie woman is coming to question us!” He grabbed me. “She has to wonder what we’ve been up to. It’s human nature—”
“Unless you’re a Pythia, who’s been trained to be seriously uncurious about the future,” I said, trying to pry his hand off my leg. “Agnes went so far as to stick her fingers in her ears once, so I couldn’t tell her anything, just in case she did something to change it. Gertie isn’t coming, Rosier.”
“She has to!” His previous calm was showing cracks now, like that was what he’d been counting on. That she’d show up and we’d bash her over the head or something. “She has to!”
“She won’t.”
“But there’s no food. Someone has to bring food—”
“Rosier. Let go and step back.”
“—and no toilet! How can you have a prison cell with no bloody toilet?”
“The same way you can have one with no door. We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I said, and stepped through the wall.
I felt my body fall away, unable to follow, but the other part of me had no such trouble. The part that had gone zooming around the drag with Billy Joe. The part that had just stepped out into . . .
I had no freaking idea.
There was a lot of darkness, but not total. Vague outlines of things were visible, here and there, faint and grayish white, like lines on an X-ray. Including a distant horizon, with flashes that looked like lightning.
I looked up, but there were no stars. Down, but the ground beneath my feet was just the same noncolor and vaguely rocky. Behind me—and finally, something looked more or less the same. Only from the other side.
Because I could see through the walls now.