LXXXIII
The moment the bullet hit him, everything inside the funhouse seemed to freeze.
The golden boy sagged against the mirror, blood blooming through his shirt, breath rattling. The cat, his future self, looked at him with a heartbreak so sharp it almost cut the fog.
"Boy… I'm sorry."
He pressed a tiny paw to the dancer's chest, right where the bullet had sunk in. It had missed the heart, but nicked a lung, dangerous, but not immediately fatal. The cat's eyes glowed faintly, and a thin wisp of shadow seeped from his paw, slipping into the wound like smoke sinking into cloth.
The bleeding stopped. The dancer's eyes fluttered.
The cat leaned close. "Pretend to be dead," he whispered.
The dancer nodded once, then went limp, letting his head roll to the side, breath shallow enough to pass for nothing at all.
I walked over, heart pounding, and reached into his pocket. The manila envelope was still there, heavy with the thousand dollars he'd set aside for the Russos. I tossed it across the room.
It skidded to Cane's feet.
"Here," you said. "He's paid it off in full. Life and death as interest."
Cane bent down, picked it up, thumbed through the bills.
He grunted. "Knew the lady was a smart cookie."
Mutt nodded, twirling his watch fob.
"Business is business."
They stepped back, satisfied. They didn't care about the body.
All they cared about was the money.
Cane jerked his head toward the exit.
"Let's go. Twinkle‑toes is about to kick the bucket."
And just like that, the Russo brothers walked away, business done.
Slim Amon stayed.
He stepped toward the dancer's "corpse," adjusting his tie, expression cold and calculating.
"Pity," he said. "You could've made me plenty more money."
I walked to the nearest mirror, one of the few still intact, and placed the key against the glass. It was the same mirror that the dancer had fallen against as he slid down. A streak of blood marred it's clean surface.
It began to glow like a soft candle, then brighter, a pulsing hungry sort of shimmer.
Slim's eyes widened.
"Holy mercy… what is that?"
The fog thickened, and mirrors hummed.
The cat's true form slipped into view, condensing from the fog.
Not the small, trembling feline body,
but the tall, waxy, golden figure he once was in his top hat, silver tipped cane in hand, flickering like a candle flame in a draft, and oozing malevolence.
His outline wavered, unstable, barely holding together outside the cat's vessel, flickering like a candle.
But he had enough strength.
Enough rage to resolve unfinished business.
He grabbed Slim by the collar. Slim screamed.
The hat‑man's waxy yellow eyes glowed with excitement.
"You don't know how many years I've waited to do this."
He dragged Slim toward the mirror.
Slim clawed at the frame, kicking, shouting, begging.
The mirror rippled like water.
Fog curled around Slim's legs.
And on the other side I saw them.
The hounds.
Huge, shadow‑black, with glowing eyes and jaws like broken glass.
The same hounds the dancer had once bet his life on, hounds the hat‑man had shaped from his own regrets.
They waited, eager, and hungry.
The hat‑man shoved Slim through the glass.
Slim vanished with a scream that cut off too quickly.
The hounds surged forward. The mirror snapped shut.
The hat‑man staggered, his form flickering, collapsing back into the small cat body with a gasp.
He looked up at me, trembling.
"Sweetheart… it's done."
The dancer lay still, pretending to be dead. The Russos were gone. Slim was gone.
The dancer's eyes fluttered open, his hand still pressed to the bullet wound as if afraid it would start bleeding again the moment he let go.
"I'm… still alive?"
His voice was small. Disbelieving. Fragile.
The cat—our hat‑man—looked up at him with those tired yellow eyes and whispered, "Yeah, champ. You are."
Then his little body sagged.
His eyes closed.
And he collapsed in your arms like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The strain of pulling his full form out of the cat body, and of dragging Slim into the mirror realm, had drained him completely. The waxy golden figure he'd manifested was gone, snapped back into the tiny feline vessel as the power waned.
Slim's screams were already fading into memory.
The hounds had taken him with a swift, brutal, finality.
When the hat‑man's strength ran out, even they dissolved, shadows scattering like dust.
Only the mirror remained, still pulsing with an eerie glow, waiting.
The gate home.
I held the cat close, his fur warm but trembling.
"Well, hat‑man… the little dancer's technically you, right?"
He nodded, barely lifting his head.
"Then he won't become you now, since he lived."
The cat gave a soft, weary laugh.
"Alas, pet… time doesn't work that way."
He blinked slowly, exhaustion pulling at him.
"What we created is an alternate timeline where I never existed. The me that died, who was absorbed into the mirror at my death, wandering the mirror realm as a soul, still exists."
I sighed.
"That's a pity, hat‑cat."
He nuzzled weakly into your arm.
"It's alright. At least I got to kill that bastard Slim. That makes me quite happy."
His little head nodded sleepily, eyes half‑closed.
I pulled him closer, cradling him like something precious.
The dancer sat up slowly, wincing, still pale but alive.
The cat looked at him like a man staring at his own past with all the clarity of hindsight.
"Hey, golden boy," you said softly. "Make better choices. Get yourself to Europe. No more dog tracks if you want to live."
The cat's voice was barely a whisper.
"Take an old dancer's advice."
He lifted his tiny head and met the kid's eyes.
And for a moment, just a moment, the dancer saw himself.
Not the cat, not the ghost, not the hungry shadow.
But the man he would have become.
The man he did become, someone he didn't have to be anymore.
The dancer swallowed hard, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.
"I… I'll try," he whispered.
The cat smiled—small, tired, proud.
"That's all I ever wanted."
The mirror accepted you like an old friend.
I pressed the key to the glass, felt the pulse of the funhouse fade into something deeper, older, the gate, the path home. The cat lay limp in your arms, breathing shallowly, his little body spent from the violence he'd unleashed and the timeline he'd bent. The dancer watched you with wide eyes, still clutching his side, still alive, still changed.
I looked at the cat.
"I'm going in first this time. Don't think of anything, hat‑cat. If you do, no treats."
His whiskers twitched.
"Pet… I'm too tired to think of anything except sleep."
I sighed and let your mind drift to the things that grounded you:
Home. The mansion's long hallways. Great aunt's taxidermy, mounted heads, glass‑eyed foxes and stiff‑posed birds.
The stack of webnovels waiting on your laptop.
And your fairy‑blooded boyfriend, who was absolutely going to pitch a fit when you reappeared covered in dust, blood, and mirror‑realm residue.
The mirror brightened. The fog curled around my ankles.
And I stepped through. The world folded.
The funhouse vanished.
And you landed, softly, quietly, on the creaking floorboards of a familiar dust‑covered library.
The smell hit first: old paper, cedar shelves, the faint tang of mothballs. Sunlight filtered through tall windows, catching dust motes in lazy spirals. A taxidermied owl stared down at you from its perch, forever frozen mid‑glare.
I exhaled. "I'm back."
The cat stirred in your arms, blinking slowly.
"Pet… did we make it?"
I nodded. "We made it."
He looked around the library, ears flicking.
"Your aunt's taste in décor is still… unsettling."
A stuffed fox stared at him with glassy judgment.
He shivered. "Very unsettling."
You set him gently on a velvet armchair, brushing dust from his fur. He curled up, exhausted but alive, the faintest golden shimmer still clinging to him like a memory.
Behind me the mirror gate dimmed, its glow fading until it was nothing more than an ordinary pane of glass surrounded by a carved wooden frame.
The timeline you'd left behind sealed itself.
The dancer lived. The hat-man got to resolve his past.
We'd rewritten his death. Now I was home and I needed coffee.
"Hey hat-cat, do you think the golden boy will make good?" I asked between sips of hazelnut brew on one of the library couches.
"What's done is done pet, it's his choice now. But I'd like to think he'll do well." The hat-man's eyes grew reminiscent of the shining golden boy in costume on the stage, in his element, dancing his heart out.