The first rule of the house was simple. Never look in the mirror after midnight.
She had laughed when her grandmother said it. A child's joke, she thought, the sort of warning grown-ups whispered to keep children obedient. But tonight, with the storm outside pressing its cold palms against the glass, the rule did not feel like a joke at all.
The clock in the hallway struck twelve. She heard each note travel through the wooden floors like a heartbeat that was not hers. She stood barefoot at the edge of her room, and the mirror at the end of the corridor began, very softly, to breathe.
She told herself she would not look. She told herself again. And then — because terror is a kind of gravity — she did.
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