The Looking Glass
Author: Jessica Arnold
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Synopsis: Find the diary, break the curse, step through The Looking Glass!
Fifteen-year-old Alice Montgomery wakes up in the lobby of the
B&B where she has been vacationing with her family to a startling
discovery: no one can see or hear her. The cheap desk lights have been replaced
with gas lamps and the linoleum floor with hardwood and rich Oriental
carpeting. Someone has replaced the artwork with eerie paintings of Elizabeth
Blackwell, the insane actress and rumored witch who killed herself at the hotel
in the 1880s. Alice watches from behind the looking glass where she is haunted
by Elizabeth Blackwell. Trapped in the 19th-century version of the hotel, Alice
must figure out a way to break Elizabeth’s curse—with the help of Elizabeth's
old diary and Tony, the son of a ghost hunter who is investigating the haunted
B&B— before she becomes the inn's next victim.
SNEAK PEEK
The father,
sitting on the bed by his son, rocked back on his hands. “You’ve wanted to come
with me on an investigation since you were just a little boy. Aren’t you
excited that Madeline’s finally let you tag along? She’s always so worried
about you, thinks I’m going to corrupt you or something. But you’ll see. And
she’ll see too. We’ll have a wonderful time.”
Whatever the boy
was feeling, it was far from excitement. He smiled anyway, and Alice could tell
that it was forced. She’d used that same smile on her parents plenty of times.
“Yeah. It’s really going to be something.”
Alice snorted at
the boy’s pained expression. Stop playing the martyr. As if it were such a
terrible burden to have your dad thrilled to spend time with you. Alice could
hardly have a decent conversation with her distracted father, who regularly
multitasked his relationships to death.
“That’s my boy!
You bet it is.”
Tony smiled
again, though this one was no more genuine than the last.
“So. Where do we
start?” His father fumbled through his notes. He finally stopped on a page
toward the front of the notebook. “Ah yes, here we are. We start with Elizabeth
Blackwell.”
“The actress.”
“Yes, the
actress. She was fabulous, according to the newspapers I’ve looked at. Quite
famous, in fact; she was on the road to stardom before she died. She stayed in
the attic room for many years, then suddenly went mad. The attic burned down in
the fire, though—never got rebuilt. It’s unfortunate too. I would have killed
to look around up there.”
Attic? Alice
hadn’t seen an attic.
Tony crossed his
legs on the bed and leaned back, giving his father his undivided attention for
the first time. “She went crazy?”
“Lies,” said the
girl, sitting up straighter now. Alice, figuring this broke the silence war,
tried to call the girl over. But the girl didn’t react—not even with a glance.
She was focused completely on Tony and his dad, though they seemed unaware of
her. George was nodding.
“Oh yes—she lost
it. No one knows how it happened, but they say that before she died she started
fooling with things she shouldn’t have. Her sister, Lillian, died years ago,
but I got my hands on an interview someone did with her just before she passed
away. Lillian inherited the boardinghouse after Elizabeth and Mr. Blackwell
died. She said some pretty interesting things.”
“And you’ve been researching the story all
this time, hoping someone would get hurt,” the boy said, frowning.
“Well, I
wouldn’t say hoping necessarily. I was just waiting, on the lookout, you know?”
Yeah, like a
vulture after carrion, Alice thought.
Tony didn’t look
entirely pleased with this answer either, but he let it go. “So she went nuts?”
he prompted.
“Yes. Anyway,
Lillian said that whenever she went up to see Elizabeth, she was reading
strange old books, chanting things.”
“Magic,” said
the girl, pacing the elaborate rug. “Why?”
“That,” said the
man, “is the mystery. Sometimes I think that Lillian knew more than she
admitted to, but who’s to say? If we can isolate Elizabeth’s spirit, we may be
able to get the answer straight from her. ”
“How did she die
anyway?”
“Suicide—nasty
business. She almost burned the house down. They found her drowned in the pond
with a knife through her heart and the attic in flames above her. Her father …
well, they found him dead too. Burned to death tied to a bedpost in the attic.”
Tony grimaced
and Alice gulped. She looked at the lump in the bed where she’d hidden the
bloodstained diary. Elizabeth had held that diary, written in it. Alice felt
suddenly very close to her and it sent a horrified sort of thrill through her.
When she looked up, the girl was looking at her. Finally.
“We are all of
us alike,” whispered the girl. She turned around before Alice could respond.
“I know you can
hear me!” said Alice, so forcefully that specks of spit dotted the mirror. But
once again the girl walked away from her. Alice threw both of her fists against
the glass.
“And no one
knows what happened?” Tony asked.
His father shook
his head. “No one ever figured it out. The police investigated for a while, but
found no one with motive. The sister was less than cooperative. And the real
story was never told.”
They sat in
silence on the bed for a moment, Tony looking somber, his dad eager. Then
George jumped to his feet and reached for the nearest plastic tub.
“You ready to
start setting up?” Tony nodded; George opened one of the tubs and started
pulling out some strange-looking contraptions. Alice had never seen anything
like them. Tony was screwing rods together while his father ran microphones
around the room and tried to get a tiny video camera mounted on the dresser. He
turned on a funny-looking flashlight and tiny pricks of light littered the wall
across from him.
“This will help
us check for disturbances in the air—any spirits walking by,” the father explained.
As he did, the girl exaggeratedly tiptoed up behind him, laughing like a
maniac. She waved her arms and made as if to poke him in the back of the head.
Her finger never actually touched him; it stopped an inch from his hair. No
one’s crazy daughter—not even the hotel manager’s—would have gotten away with
that unnoticed. They couldn’t see her; Alice was sure that, like her, the girl
was visible to no one else. Stepping away from the mirror, Alice sat down on
the bed.
All those girls in comas, she thought to herself, and all of them
died a week later. Had the other women been trapped in this house as well? Had
they slept in this bed—read this same diary? And what about her? Would she die
too? Would she somehow float out of this phantom house and into … somewhere
else? Would it hurt? Alice had no idea and she found herself watching Tony and
his father with something like hope.
Maybe they’d be
able to free her—if she couldn’t find her own way out. She stepped up to the
mirror and caught the girl’s eye. The girl stopped turning the lamp on the
nightstand on and off and stared straight back.
“Tell me how to
get out,” begged Alice, holding onto some silly, fragile dream that the girl
would open her mouth and answers would come pouring out. But the girl did not
answer. She looked at the mirror for a moment longer, then turned on the heel
of her jet-black shoe and marched to the door. Yanking it open, she walked out
and disappeared into the hallway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Arnold
writes YA, codes ebooks, and is currently a graduate student in publishing at
Emerson College in Boston. She spends most of her time in class or work or
slogging through the homework swamp. If she has a spare moment, she’s always up
for a round of Boggle. Given the opportunity, Jessica will pontificate at
length on the virtues of the serial comma, when and where to use an en dash,
and why the semicolon is the best punctuation mark pretty much ever.
Where to Find the Author
GIVEAWAY!
*Winner will be
drawn MAY 9, 2014**
**Four (4) winners will receive an ebook
copy of The Looking Glass by Jessica Arnold (INT)**
**One (1) winner will receive an ebook
copy of The Looking Glass by Jessica Arnold AND a $10 Amazon Gift Card or
B&N Gift Card – Winner’s Choice (INT)**
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