Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK.

The Show Goes On

35: Phantom Bells

Sitting by the tall library windows, Shinichi gazed out at the night sky. There were no clouds to obscure the stars tonight, and they sparkled in the darkness like sugar crystals. The moon hung in their midst, round and white and distant. His gaze lingered on its pale face. Something about it sent a pang through his chest and whispered to the nagging feeling that now lurked constantly in the back of his mind, insisting that there was something not quite right.

He didn't understand it, this feeling of wrongness… It always struck him at the strangest times—like when he walked into the police station to be greeted by Megure-keibu, Takagi-keiji and all the other members of Division One whom he'd come to know so well and when he stepped into his own front hall upon returning to the manor in the evenings to see everything exactly as it should be.

That was the oddest part, he supposed. It was always the things that were the most familiar that didn't seem right.

Like Kaito.

But there was nothing wrong with Kaito, he told himself. The magician had been every bit his mischievous, cheerful, insane self since he'd gotten back from his trip.

"Shin-chan? Is something wrong?"

Shinichi opened his eyes to see Kaito's reflection in the glass. The magician was standing behind him, face somber as he regarded Shinichi with concern.

"You haven't been yourself lately," the magician said when Shinichi didn't immediately respond. Sliding onto the window's wide sill behind Shinichi, he wrapped his arms around the detective's waist and pulled him back gently until Shinichi was leaning comfortably against his chest. Then he rested his chin on top of Shinichi's head, and they both gazed out into the night. "Talk to me."

Shinichi closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. "I…don't really know what to say."

"Tell me what's been bothering you."

"I wish I knew."

Kaito quirked an eyebrow at his reflection. "Well that's a strange thing to say. Unless you mean to tell me that you've been worrying about nothing, which frankly doesn't seem like a very productive use of your time."

Shinichi let out a snort of laughter, but his mirth died away quickly.

"It's something that's missing," he said, the words soft and almost inaudible even to himself. "Something is definitely missing, but everything seems to be here. So I don't know why I feel this way. Do you? Feel anything?"

Kaito was silent for so long that Shinichi felt himself beginning to tense in anticipation of bad news. Then again, he was beginning to think that any answer was better than this nagging confusion.

Then Kaito's arms tightened around him. "It doesn't matter," the magician said quietly, his soft words ruffling the hair on top of Shinichi's head. "Everything will be all right. For now, just relax."

"But—"

"Hush." Catching Shinichi's chin with one hand, Kaito gently but firmly turned the detective's head towards him as he leaned forward to brush a feather light kiss across Shinichi's lips. "I told you, everything will be all right."

X

Their own faces were looking back at them from every direction. A million Heijis rode atop a million hens whose dark feathers were like splotches of ink against the blinding, silver white of this many-faceted space. Around them, a million Kaitos stood with black bat wings half unfurled as he studied this sudden transformation of their surroundings from storm-ridden chaos to kaleidoscopic funhouse. The path too had fractured and multiplied, zigzagging wildly away in every conceivable direction. Just looking at it all was enough to make a person's head spin.

"It's like a hall of mirrors," Heiji said, rubbing at his eyes as though he could physically wipe away the mess. Naturally, it didn't help. He grimaced. "Damn, I'm getting dizzy just sitting here lookin' at it."

"Where's Miss Kazuha?"

"Huh?" The scarecrow squinted into the light, turning his head this way and that as he searched their silent audience of reflected faces. Alarm spiked in his chest when he realized that he could not see Kazuha's pale figure anywhere. Was it simply the bright light in this world of mirrors obscuring their view? Kazuha was visible these days only as an intangible shape made of light. Here, with everything so bright, it was logical that the ghost girl would be difficult to pick out. Right? That was only logical. The logic did not make the panic rising inside his chest diminish in the least.

"Kazuha?" he called out, leaning forward and trying to see through the kaleidoscope of faces and chickens and roads with sheer force of will. "Kazuha!"

"What?" the girl's voice called back. It sounded closer than Heiji had expected, so he stopped and looked around. Still nothing. "Kazuha, where are you?"

"I'm right here." Her voice was growing impatient. "I'm behind your right shoulder."

Immediately, Heiji turned to look behind his right shoulder. Nothing.

"Oh," he heard Kazuha gasp. "I guess that was a reflection."

"So it seems to proceed we have to first know which of these images is the real us," Kaito remarked.

"Dude, we're the real us. There's nothing to debate."

"I'm not talking about philosophy, you foolish scarecrow. I mean, we need to use these reflections of ourselves to figure out where the real paths are."

"I think I get it," Kazuha said hesitantly. "I'm pretty sure the Heiji next to me is a reflection because it turned the wrong way to look for me."

"That's a start," Kaito mused. "We should be able to use our hearing to find each other first. There's not much of an echo. Once we're together, we should move as a unit. Miss Kazuha, let's start with you. Try not to go through anything though. If you get relocated, it'll just make this more difficult."

"Right. Heiji? You sounded pretty close when you spoke earlier. I'm going to move a bit then call you again. Let me know if I sound closer or farther away, all right?"

"Got it."

X

"Well hello there Kudo-kun! I knew you'd be by for the new release. They've been flying off the shelves, but I kept one for you." Ducking behind the counter, the owner of the bookstore came back up with a fresh new copy of the very mystery novel had been looking for. He handled the book carefully so that his claws wouldn't puncture the pages. "Shall I ring this up for you? Or did you want to take a look around?"

"Thanks for keeping a copy for me. And I think I'll look around," Shinichi replied, smiling his gratitude for the man's thoughtfulness. "I've had a little more time lately, so I thought I'd pick up a few more books to try."

The shopkeeper bared all the teeth in his long alligator jaws in a manner that Shinichi would have found terrifying if he didn't already know it was a smile. "No problem. Just let me know when you're ready."

Nodding his thanks, Shinichi moved on into the bookstore. The first time he'd seen the bookstore's alligator owner, he'd been a little put off by his intimidating appearance, but the man really was quite kind. Shinichi wondered idly when he had taken over the shop though. He was pretty sure the previous owner had been a portly man with a mustache and no scales to speak of.

Passing by the children's section of the shop, he saw a woman with a bird's head holding two picture books. She turned her head first one way then the other so she could get a good look at the book covers with each eye before she opted for the one with the spotted puppy on the cover. Not far from her, her two little children were clicking their beaks in excitement over the latest Kanmen Yaibird manga. Seeing their excitement made Shinichi smile. He wondered if the Shounan Tantei had seen the issue the chicks were gushing over.

Having intended to go straight to the mystery section, the detective instead found himself wandering past it into the shelves upon shelves of historical texts and classics. His gaze trailed over spines one to two inches wide with names that would attract only hardcore scholars. For some reason, he found himself lingering there. None of the books caught his interest, but something about them felt…nostalgic in a way he couldn't explain.

Reaching out at random, he pulled a black book from the shelf. It was much thinner than its fellows, and, unlike the factual texts all around them, it appeared to be a story. There was a mirror painted on the cover. Before it stood a man with his back to the viewer. The title crawling across the cover in large, looping curls of cursive was "The Silver Glass House".

There was no summary on the back.

Intrigued, Shinichi tucked the book under his arm and picked up another about mythology and lore from around the world. He hefted the weighty thing for a moment, wondering why he had picked it up. But though he already knew a lot of myths and legends, it never hurt to learn more. And maybe a change of literary scenery would help distract him from the constant, nagging wrongness that only seemed to be worsening by the day.

"Oh, you found that old thing?" the shopkeeper asked when Shinichi placed his books on the counter. The alligator had to tilt his head down and sideways to get a better look at the covers. "Thought all of those were sold out years ago."

"Can I buy them?"

The alligator shrugged. "If you really want to. Not much of a story in the Glass House though. Don't know what the author was thinking. But you can always give it a whirl if you're bored."

"Right. I'll do that."

"Just one thing."

"What is it?"

The alligator leaned forward then, and his eyes gleamed oddly in the light. "Don't tell anyone you got it from me, 'kay? That could be trouble."

Shinichi raised an eyebrow at that. "It's not stolen property, is it?"

"No, o, no." The shopkeeper shook his head, his long snout swishing vehemently from side to side. "Tis just a bit of a… Well, I don't like to say to a logical detective like yourself and all, but there used to be a story about how every copy of that book was cursed."

"Cursed?"

"Not in a bad way really," he hastened to assure Shinichi. "It doesn't kill people or give them bad luck or anything. But they say…they say it's alive. The book. They say that people who've had them have heard…sounds coming out of them. Voices and the like. That sort of thing. Not sure how much of it is true, but I thought I ought to tell you just in case you start thinking I sold you a haunted book on purpose. That's not a reputation an honest bookstore needs."

"I wouldn't think that," Shinichi said with all sincerity, now even more intrigued by the book than he had been before. He wondered what Kaito would say. "Well, I'm ready to check out now."

"Right. So just the three?"

"Just the three."

It was as he was leaving that Shinichi paused to wonder at how neatly the alligator shopkeeper had avoided answering Shinichi's original question. The one about why it would be trouble if Shinichi told anyone where he had gotten the Silver Glass House. Surely the real reason couldn't be the story about curses. Alligators should know better.

Shinichi turned around with half a mind to go back and ask for more details, but the bird mother and her chicks had arrived at the front desk and were now engaged in a lively discussion with the alligator about the best parks in which to go swimming.

Not wanting to intrude, Shinichi took his bag of books and headed home, though not before stopping by the coffee shop for a cup of cat-brewed coffee.

X

Navigating the mirrored path wasn't so much difficult as it was tedious. Moving slowly was, however, still preferable to being sent back down the path because they'd miss-stepped and ended up leaving the path. That didn't mean they weren't all chomping at the bit before they were even halfway through the gleaming hall of reflections. Heiji almost wished they were fighting off lightning beasts instead. Patience had never been his strong suit, and being forced to move at this snail's pace in the middle of a race was maddening. If they didn't reach the end soon, he was going to scream.

Just as that thought surfaced in his mind, Kazuha let out a cry.

"Look!"

Her exclamation was unnecessary. All of them saw the sudden break in the kaleidoscope ahead and slightly to their right. There, instead, of dazzling, faceted surfaces, they could see a swath of black sky sprinkled with stars.

"About time!" Heiji yelled out in a sudden rush of jubilation, and he would have spurred the chicken forward like it was horse if not for the fact that Kaito was currently walking on the path just ahead of the bird's feet. The magician had stopped moving.

Leaning over the chicken's side, Heiji called out to him. "Hey, pick up the pace there, would you? We are still in a race."

"Look more closely," Kaito called back. "That's a decoy."

"What?" Leaning over the other way, Heiji squinted at the path and the fragmented faces, chickens, and silver lights around them. That was when he realized that the path didn't turn right ahead of them at all. Instead, it veered sharply to the left, almost doubling back on itself behind yet more intricately arranged, floating mirrors. The real exit then was around that sharp left corner. The slice of sky ahead and to their right was merely a reflection of it—a tantalizing piece of bait meant to lure impatient and weary minds into a mad, exultant dash for failure.

If scarecrows could sweat, Heiji would have broken out into a cold one. That had been close.

"It's lucky you realized that," Kazuha said, echoing Heiji's thoughts. "I almost flew right at it… But at least this still means we're at the exit. I hope the next part of this race is easier to get through. I'm surprised that the fairies haven't caught up to us yet."

"Yet being the key word," Heiji muttered. Still, close call with the giant, reflected exit aside, he could feel his spirits lifting. Kazuha drifted over to float by his shoulder, and identical smiles broke out across their faces as the hen rounded the corner and they saw the real sky.

And there, black against the stars, was the tower towards which they were headed. It was much closer now. In fact, though the translucent track meandered and looped, it appeared to be all that lay between them and the arched opening into the tower's belfry.

"Wow, I'm impressed," a familiar female voice said just before a white bird descended from above like a falling star. It halted just before it hit the path to hover in the air before them. Seated on its back was the fairy girl who had proposed the race. She was smiling at them with pure delight which did not go well at all with the naked rapier she held in her right hand. "You got through the mirror maze way faster than any of the other teams who've tried."

"You were waiting for us?" Heiji demanded, irritated.

"Of course," the girl tittered. "It wouldn't be any fun otherwise."

"What, it's no fun unless you can rub the fact that you were faster in our faces before the finish line?" the scarecrow asked dryly.

The fairy tilted her head to one side as though puzzled. "Oh, no. That's not the fun part. The fun part is making sure you never reach the bell."

Her words were delivered with such cheer that the warning in them almost went unnoticed. Fortunately, both detectives and phantom thieves were innately suspicious people, and so both Kaito and Hattori reacted just in time as two more fairies—the girl's teammates who had hitherto remained out of sight—suddenly dropped down from above them, rapiers drawn.

Heiji blocked one steel blade with his light saber, watching with mixed irritation and disgust as the fairy behind the blade grinned at him. This was just a game to him, but a game that involved real weapons and real stakes. A rush of anger had Heiji surging forward, saber flashing. Sparks flew as the two blades clashed. The fairy was a skilled swordsman, Heiji would admit that much, but there was no way he was going to allow himself to lose. Shinichi was depending on them.

As though she too knew what was happening, the hen shifted beneath him like a well-trained horse to give him just the leverage he needed to push the fairy back, and Heiji decided that, if they won this race and got out of here intact, he was going to make sure that this particular chicken didn't end up as anyone's entre.

"Kazuha, go ahead!" Kaito ordered.

The ghost girl was already on her way. She was a pale streak of mist soaring down the path, following its every twist and turn as though she were water flowing through a tube. But the fairies weren't about to let her go unhindered.

The white bird with its female rider shot after Kazuha, wings flapping so fast that they were a blur.

At the same time, the last fairy dove at Kaito rapier first. But Kaito was ready, and he sidestepped the blade, seized the man's wrist, and yanked him forward and down. The magician used the motion to drive his knee up into the man's solar plexus. Kaito thought he heard something crack, and the man let out a grunt before going limp. Kaito turned around and tossed him straight back into the maze.

The fairy's pale figure flew straight into a mirror and vanished, likely relocated to some random point deeper inside the maze of reflections.

Kaito didn't bother to wait and see if the fairy would return. He spun on his heels and launched himself after the bird chasing Kazuha. A few powerful strokes of his great bat wings had him right on her tail. Reaching out, he grabbed one of the fairy girl's long, white braids.

She let out an undignified shriek as she was pulled off her ride. She hit the road on her back, but she turned the motion into a roll and came back up with her rapier in hand. Kaito had to admit, she knew what she was doing. But so did he. Their priorities were clear.

He flew off after the white bird chasing Kazuha. If he had been looking, he would have been extremely amused by the fairy girl's flummoxed expression when she realized he wasn't planning to even try fighting her. Then she had thrown herself into the air and was soaring after him.

The first to enter the belfry was Kazuha, but, though she wrapped her arms around the bell, it neither moved nor made a sound. Her arms went right through it, in fact.

Behind her, the bird landed and watched her with its head tilted to one side. Kazuha glanced at it then returned her attention to the bell. After some thought, she tried to blow on the clapper. No luck.

The bird gave a derisive caw and stepped forward.

Kazuha flew to hover between it and the bell, arms stretched out wide.

"Go away!" she cried, hoping to scare it off. "We got here first!"

"But you have to ring it first to win," the bird replied.

Kazuha wondered only for a split second why the bird could talk before deciding that she didn't care. "Well I got here first."

"But you can't ring it."

The bird took another step forward.

Kazuha drifted an inch back. She could sense the large bell's curved, bronze side behind her. It was a cold presence against her ghostly back. It was so close! If only she could touch it. If she could just be solid for just one instant, this race would be over already, and they'd have won. But all she could do was hover here, wishing with all her might that it would move.

She wasn't sure what happened next.

One moment, she was floating by the bell, an insubstantial and ineffective wall between it and the approaching carrier bird. Then suddenly she was somewhere else. Somewhere dark and cold that smelled of age and metal. She couldn't see, but she could feel… And what she felt was heavy.

"What's going on?" she whispered, trying to turn around—trying to see. But there was nothing. Her vision remained a sea of darkness. Instead, she heard a sound.

It was the slow, sonorous toll of a bell.

TBC

A.N: Sorry this took so long. Unfortunately, updates for…everything are going to be irregular for a while, but I am still writing! Anyhow, thanks for reading, and take care. Sleep well, drink lots of water, and remember to wash your hands. See you next time!