Chapter 9 - Why the Mirror Faces the Floor
The hall went quiet again. I could tell by the way the sound changed above me. No shoes on marble. No breathing close to the hatch. Just that low hum the big house made when nobody was moving through it.
Then I heard him move. Slow steps, away from me and back again. He was pacing it off.
"Mia," he said, low. "Come stand here with me."
I heard her bare feet slap lightly on the marble. She'd been by the hatch. Now she moved to where he was.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"In the mirror?" Her voice was small.
"Yeah. Tell me what you see."
A pause. I pictured her looking up at that tall wall mirror. It ran almost floor to ceiling beside the staircase, the kind of thing meant to make the hall look twice as big.
"I see you," she said. "And the stairs. And... the floor back there."
"Back where?"
"Where Mommy is."
My chest tightened. He went silent for a long second. Then his shoes came back fast toward the hatch and stopped.
I heard him breathe out through his nose. "Damn."
"What?" I whispered up through the crack. My throat still hurt from before. "What is it?"
"The mirror," he said, crouching so close his voice dropped right through the wood to me. "It faces the floor. From the stairs, you can see this whole section in the reflection. The hatch. Anyone standing here."
I closed my eyes in the dark. That explained a lot. Why Nathan had picked that spot. Why he'd always known when I tried to push at the panel during the day.
"He watches from up there," I said. "He doesn't have to come down."
"Yeah," he said. "That's exactly it."
He stood again. I listened to him walk to the staircase and up three steps, then stop.
"Tell me if you can see me now," he called down.
A moment. Mia must have nodded, because he said, "Use your words, kiddo."
"I can see your shoes," Mia said. "In the mirror."
"Good. That's our problem. And our way out of it."
He came back down. His knee popped softly as he knelt by the hatch again. The light through the crack narrowed as he leaned over it, blocking it to give us shadow.
"I need to know what you have down there," he said to me. "Size. What you can reach. Everything."
I shifted against the stone. My wrists burned where the rope bit. I tried to think like he needed me to think, not like a scared woman, but like someone drawing a map.
"It's not big," I said. "Maybe as long as a parking spot. Half as wide. Low ceiling. I can stand if I bend my neck."
"What are the walls?"
"Stone on three sides. Rough. Cold." I reached back with my bound hands, feeling. "On the left side, the stones stick out. Like steps. Like places where I can hold."
"Handholds," he said. "Good. Can you get your feet under you if you use them?"
"Yes," I said. "I did before. When I heard Mia."
I heard cloth move. He was leaning closer.
"Okay. When the time comes, I'm not pulling you straight up. That puts us both in the mirror. I'm going to pull at an angle, toward the stair wall. That's the blind spot. Under the mirror's edge."
"How do you know there's a blind spot?" I asked.
"Because I just stood in it," he said. "Three steps up, you lose the corner. If Mia stands by the mirror frame, she'll know exactly where it is."
I heard Mia shuffle. "Me?"
"Yeah, you," he said, and his voice softened. "I need you for the most important job. Can you do a job for your mom?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"You stand where I tell you, where you can see the whole mirror. You watch the stairs in the mirror. Not the real stairs. The mirror stairs. If anybody comes, if you hear a door, you don't yell. You cough. One time. Like this."
He coughed once, dry and short.
Mia tried to copy him and it came out too loud. She coughed again, softer.
"Good," he said. "One cough means someone is coming. Then what do you do?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Then you drop your hand flat on the floor," he said. "Like you were just playing. And I close this just enough to make shadow. Understand?"
I wanted to reach up through that crack and hold her. My girl with a job that was too big for six years old. But her voice steadied.
"One cough," she repeated. "Hand flat."
"And knocks," I said suddenly. The idea came from three days of listening. "We need knocks too."
"What kind of knocks?" he asked.
"Two fast if it's Nathan," I said. "That's how he knocked when he checked on me. Two fast with his knuckles. If you hear two fast from below, don't open. Don't talk. Just go."
Silence above me. Then his knuckles tapped twice lightly on the wood over my head. Tap-tap.
"Like that?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, and tears stung my eyes because he learned so fast. "Like that."
"Okay," he said. "Two knocks from below means Nathan. One cough from Mia means someone on the stairs. We freeze on both."
"Freeze," Mia echoed.
I heard him shift, and for a moment his finger slipped through the crack. Not enough to touch me, just enough to be there.
May you like
"We've got the mirror mapped," he said quietly. "We've got signals. You've got your wall to climb. We're not stuck blind anymore."
Above me, Mia coughed once more, practicing, and this time it was just right. Soft. Invisible, unless you were listening for it.
