By
Sara Bourgeois

Not everything in Coventry is as it appears to be. When you look in the mirror, what is looking back at you?

Kinsley is taking her first crack at a cold case. She wants nothing more than to help Dorian figure out what happened to his father, but she’s got issues of her own.

Big time issues.

Not only is there a dark entity stalking her reflection, but things with Thorn aren’t all sunshine and roses either.

Can she solve the murder and prepare for her upcoming nuptials? Are the people in her life who they appear to be? Or is she about to fall into a killer’s deadly snare?

Kinsley is seeing something behind her in the mirror, or anytime she sees her reflection. It’s strange because the house is warded, and Meri doesn’t see it. She’s also having some pretty crazy mood swings but those could be because of her pregnancy.

She’s been helping Dorian with his investigation of his father’s death and on this particular day they hiked out to an area on the map that was in the file Thorn gave him. They used supplies from her emergency kit, since they didn’t think of it before they left town. That site didn’t give them any information so the next stop was Annika and Gunner. This was the last case Gunner worked on before he and Annika moved out of Coventry. Gunner wasn’t happy but he did talk to them.

When Thorn mentions he needs to replenish the water in the emergency kit, Kinsley goes on the defensive, and things escalate from there. These two really have to work on communication skills, especially when Thorn keeps walking away instead of defusing the situation.

Lilith convinces her to hire Ursula to work the shop with Reggie so she can rest more, and she also has a dress that Kinsley might like for her wedding. It’s when Lilith takes a picture of her that someone finally sees what Kinsley has.

This is a favorite scene.

I put the dress on and Lilith’s face lit up more than I’d ever seen it light up before. “Exquisite,” she said and clapped her hands together.

“I want to see it,” I said. “Do you have a full-length mirror down here, or will we have to go upstairs?”

“How about I take a picture of you in it with your phone?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s a marvelous idea,” I said.

“Stand in front of that window. The light behind you makes you look like an angel,” she said and pointed toward her large front window.

She took the picture and for a split second, I watched her face fall.

“Let me see it,” I asked. “Please.”

“Just a second, let me take another,” Lilith’s voice wavered a little, and it caught me off guard.

“What’s wrong with that one?” I asked. “Did you cover the lens with your finger?”

“Just let me take another,” she said.

“All right,” I agreed and smiled for the picture.

“I’m going to get some candles,” Lilith announced abruptly, and she started to leave the room with my phone.

“Hey, wait. What’s going on?”

“We’ll do the pictures in the dress later, Kinsley. When the light is better. Why don’t you change back into your clothes?”

She was only out of the room for a split second, and when Lilith returned, she had several black candles, baggies of herbs, and a huge container of salt.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.

“Please just change back into your clothes,” she said.

“Can I have some privacy?”

“I’ll turn around, but I’d rather not leave. Where is that cat of yours?”

As she asked, there was a tiny scratching at the front door. Lilith hurried across the room and opened the door to let Meri in.

“What’s going on?” Meri asked as he scrambled into the house. “Something’s not right.”

“She won’t tell me,” I said.

Lilith snapped her fingers, and suddenly I was wearing my clothes again and the dress was back on the rack.

“Fine,” she said. “Here, look for yourself.” Lilith handed me the phone and I looked at the picture. At first, I didn’t realize what was wrong or what had rattled the unflappable Lilith.

“What am I looking at…” I started to ask when I finally saw it.

I flipped to the next photo, and as expected, it was still there. The black reflection in the window. It looked like a black, shadowy figure was right behind me. But there was nothing behind me in the picture, it was only in the reflection.

“There’s no way that anything we want to deal with got through the protection magic in this house,” Lilith stated firmly. “Cat, is it something you can dispatch?”

“I would, but there’s nothing in the house,” Meri said as he sniffed around the edges of the room. “There’s literally nothing here.”

“Then it’s gone,” Lilith breathed a sigh of relief. “We just have to put a stronger protection spell on the house. Maybe the older ones have faded.”

“It’s not, though,” I said and pointed a shaky finger at the window. “Look.”

All eyes in the room on the window, and it was still there. The dark shape of a man just like I’d seen before in my mirror. Just like I’d seen in the woods.

The dark apparition stayed there for a few seconds. It felt like it was staring at me even though I couldn’t see eyes. Then it wavered for a second and disappeared.

“The protection magic on the house didn’t work because it’s technically not in the house,” I said. “It was in the reflection. I saw it before too. In my mirror and in a puddle in the woods. It seems to be following me, but not from this world. It’s like it’s in the mirror.”

“Trying to cross over,” Lilith said. “Demons use mirrors to cross over.”

“I can’t do anything about it until it’s actually here,” Meri said.

“Well, we can do this,” Lilith said and went into the other room. She came back holding a wax crayon.

I watched as Lilith drew a sigil on the window. She told me where the crayons were, and I helped her draw a sigil on every window and mirror in the house.

“I’ll do the same at my house,” I said. “Will this keep it from crossing over until we figure out what it is or what it wants?”

“It should,” Lilith said. “But if it doesn’t, the cat can handle it.”
Bourgeois, Sara. Mirror Magic (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 6). Kindle Locations (729-769). Kindle Edition.

Kinsley talks to her mom and dad about Thorn and feels better afterward and Thorn is better as well.

In the middle of the night Gunner shows up drunk and asks Kinsley for help. He wants her to heal him which she does and then he starts to explain about Cody Black’s case.

There are secrets here that get unraveled as well as the mystery of Cody’s death. The one thing that isn’t solved is what the entity in the mirror is and why it’s following Kinsley. There’s also Thorn’s overprotectiveness that has to be dealt with, he’s definitely getting grumpier.

I’ve already started the next book, I need to have those answers.

5 Contented Purrs for Sara!

Sara Bourgeois

Sara Bourgeois is a Midwesterner through and through. She spends her time writing, reading, herding cats, and standing in her driveway during tornado warnings. (You can’t see them from the basement.)