"Can I get you anything? Tea? Crackers?" Sarah blustered, walking awkwardly around the kitchen, lighting candles as she went. Her stepmother sat, perfectly composed, in one of Sarah's 'vintage' kitchen chairs, at the table that had once been a butcher's block. Sarah had no idea what would lead Irene to her humble abode at this heinous hour, but she was reasonably sure that it wasn't a social visit. Still, Sarah would feel even more awkward than she did now if she didn't treat Irene with anything but extreme politeness. The two of them had never really got on, and now that Sarah was no longer living under her stepmother's roof, she really didn't want to come across as the same spoilt brat she'd been as a teenager. If she and Irene had a real fight now, Sarah might never talk to her stepmother (or, by association, her father or stepbrother) again. So she always was on her best behaviour around Irene, despite the fact that it seemed to make Irene slightly suspicious. "I'm sorry; the cupboard's a bit bare at the moment."

"No, thank you," Irene replied, her voice slightly cold. "I'll just take Toby home. Really, Sarah, you could at least have called to say he was here. I was worried sick!"

Sarah stopped in her tracks. "Toby's not here," she said. "I thought he was at home."

"Oh, so he left already?" Irene asked, her tone icy.

"No. I mean that he hasn't been here at all. I thought that it was him knocking at my door like that at four o'clock in the morning," Sarah said, unable to keep a hint of reproach from her voice. "Is he all right?"

Irene's face was a picture, and not the kind usually hung in a hallway to improve the decor.

Sarah backtracked immediately. "I'm sorry, that was the wrong thing to ask. I'll just..."

But whatever she'd been about to say, and even she didn't know, was abruptly interrupted. "He wanted to go out tonight," Irene said softly, every word ringing clear as a bell in the rain-haunted quiet of the kitchen. "There was some sort of party at one of his friends' house. We were going out, and you know I don't like Toby to not be able to call us should he need us."

Sarah found the suggestion that Irene buy a cell phone hovering about the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. Now was not the time. Instead, she said, "You know he can always call me."

"Yes, well..." Irene said, letting the unspoken disapproval drown out the sound of the thunderstorm. "So I asked him to stay in tonight."

I bet there was a flaming row, Sarah thought, mentally filling in the blanks. I'll bet it ended in you both yelling, "Fine!" in entirely the wrong tones and Toby slamming his door. But, since she'd learned a little about tact through a few years in the real world, she said only, "I see."

"So we went out."

You would. You left me home with Toby after I threw a temper tantrum, and I nearly lost him to the goblins. I'm sure you had no idea I'd do that, but still.

"We didn't get back until, oh, about midnight. And, well, Toby..."

"Wasn't there?" Sarah finished for her.

Irene sighed. "No, he wasn't. Naturally, I thought he'd gone to this party of his anyway, and I was a little upset, but well, it's good that he has so many friends, so I was prepared to go a little easy on him. So we sat up waiting for him for about an hour, and then I went looking."

"Where did you look?" Sarah asked, ignoring the seemingly innocuous comment about Toby's friends. She wasn't going to go there, not now, not under these circumstances.

Irene nervously patted her perfectly coiffed hair. "I went to the stupid party, I tried each of his friends' houses, I even went to the stupid skate park, even though I know he only goes there if one of his friends drags him along."

"And you came here last?" Sarah would never admit it, but she felt a bit slighted.

"Truth be told, I didn't even think of your place until I'd gone by it twice. I know you told Toby he could come here if he ever needed a place to stay, but I guess I just don't think of you like that." Irene laughed. "I suppose that in my mind you're still the little girl who threw a fit every time we asked you to mind the baby."

Sarah laughed too. It wasn't funny, at all, but something had to be done to relieve the tension. "Heh. Well. I'd still rather Toby didn't have to stay here, but he's welcome anytime. Now. Where else might he be?"

Irene shrugged. Sarah could see that her stepmother was on the verge of tears, and this almost shocked her. She'd always seen Irene as an iron lady, unbreakable and definitely unbendable. This was new.

"I don't know where else to look," Irene confessed, softly.

"Um. Okay. Well, I'll, uh, try calling Toby's cell phone, and, um..." Sarah found herself at a loss for words. Truth be told, she had no idea where to look for Toby either. If his phone was off, then Sarah was stumped. The hopelessness of the situation was really getting to her. She needed to get out of this strangely bright, suddenly stuffy kitchen, needed to go somewhere and not panic and clear her head. "I'll just go and phone him," Sarah said quickly, despite the fact that there was a phone in the kitchen. Sarah grabbed a candle from the counter and strode determinedly out of the kitchen, slowing down only when the flame started to flicker. She really didn't feel like bruising her shins on anything else tonight.

Sarah walked down the hall until she found the phone, hanging on the wall where it always was, and then leaned heavily against the wall. It was all just too much, too early in the morning. Way too early in the morning.

She took a deep breath, gathered her composure, and picked up the reciever, only to be met with dead silence. Frowning, Sarah replaced the handset, then picked it up again, to hear once again the complete absence of a dial tone.

Are the phone lines down too? That's strange.

Sarah wasn't ready to go back into the kitchen and tell Irene that the phone lines were down, and, as such, they had no way of contacting Toby. They'd have to think of something else to do instead of sitting around quietly having hysterics in the weird shadows cast by flickering candlelight. She took a deep breath and slowly blew it out, thinking hard. It didn't make sense. Where else would Toby go? Where else could he go?

And she nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice she hadn't heard in nearly fifteen years said, "Milady!"

Sarah looked around the hall, which suddenly looked bigger and emptier than it had mere moments ago. There was nothing hiding in the dancing shadows but, then again, how could you be sure?

By chance, her gaze fell on the full-length mirror that hung just across the hall from her current position. And she stifled a little scream – not of terror or stress this time, but delight.

"Sir Didymus?"

The little knight was standing on the reflection of Sarah's hall table. He looked quite agitated. Sarah couldn't see his loyal but easily frightened steed Ambrosius anywhere, and assumed that the sheepdog was simply too scared of the lightning and thunder to show his face. Out of habit, Sarah looked beside her at the hall table. Of course, there was no one there.

She turned back to the mirror. "Didymus! It is you! I haven't seen you in..."

"Fifteen years, milady," he said, a shade reproachfully. "But no matter! This is no time for trifles! We must make haste!"

"Make haste to what?" Sarah asked, increasingly confused. She was talking to someone in a mirror. Any minute now, Irene would hear, would come out of the kitchen, and would see this little tableau. And what would she think?

"To the castle, fair lady! She's taken him! There is no time to waste!"

"Wait, who? Toby?"

"Indeed, milady, indeed! Now will you hurry it up?"

Sarah looked around wildly. She could barely believe it. It had been so long, sometimes she even thought it had only been a dream. But then she'd remember, the way his eyes had flashed, the cold water on the walls, the sheer terror in the pit of her stomach thinking that she might be too late, and she thought: no. It was all real. In fact, that was the only reason that, at this moment, she still thought she was sane. It seemed completely reasonable that someone would come back for Toby. Hadn't she almost been expecting it? Right now, there was only one obstacle keeping her from dashing wildly off to rescue him again.

"Okay, sure," she told Sir Didymus. "Um, how?"

Didymus paused. As Sarah recalled, he'd never been the best at strategy. Brave as a lion, of course, but...well, he didn't exactly plan ahead.

"Did I not say?"

"No."

"Oh. But I was sure - "

"You didn't say how, Sir Didymus."

"Ah. Well, it's really quite simple. All you have to do is step through. It's after that that it gets hard."

"Sarah?" Irene called from the kitchen. Sarah froze. Drat! If she went off now, she had no idea what Irene would think had happened, but she knew it wouldn't be good. "Sarah, who are you talking to?"

"Step through what?" Sarah hissed at the knight.

"Why, through the mirror, of course," Didymus said, unfortunately in a clear and carrying voice. This was answered by the scrape of a chair on the scarred linoleum of Sarah's kitchen floor. Irene was coming to see what was going on.

Sarah examined teh mirror carefully. She'd bought it and installed it herself. There was no way through it. She ought to know. There was no secret passageway or anything, just bare wall. She ought to know.

Then, she slapped herself, loudly, on the forehead. "What am I doing?" she whispered. "I'm thinking like a sensible, rational adult!"

She put a foot up on the ornate gold frame of the mirror, then hesitated. If she went through it, would her reflection get out and wreak havoc on her life? Would she and her reflection merge? Would her reflection just disappear?

Footsteps from the kitchen made up her mind for her. As Irene turned the corner from the kitchen into the hall, Sarah took a deep breath and a step through the mirror. Irene's cry of, "Sarah, what on Earth?" was partially drowned out as Sarah pushed through the mirror's half-hearted resistance. It was like jumping into a pool of cold water; once past the surface, you adjusted until you couldn't tell you were underwater.

"Oh, well done, well done!" Sir Didymus congratulated her as she emerged, blinking, into what, now that she saw it from the other side, wasn't exactly a faithful reflection of her hall. "I told them that you still had it in you, but - "

Whatever Sir Didymus had been about to say was cut short as Sarah interrupted him, something her ears had heard finally catching up with her brain. "Wait a minute. What do you mean, 'she'?"

Didymus didn't answer. Instead, he pointed at something behind Sarah. "Er...milady..."

Sarah whirled around, bringing her nearly nose-to-nose with the angry and bewildered face of her stepmother, half in, half out of the mirror.