Excerpt: Regnum Angelorum

Gavin had nothing against school. He liked to learn new things and children his age were kind of funny to watch. However, very often, it seemed that school did not like him.
His classroom was a small corner room, with windows on two sides. Each window was blocked with delicate wrought ironwork to keep the special children in his classes from climbing out when the weather was warm. A chalkboard hung at the front of the room near a row of bookshelves. Near the hallway side sat the listening center, as well as a quiet chair, and a heavy, carved mirror that was bolted into the wall.
He was currently embattled with the teacher, Mr. Blackburn, over his hands. He had been forcibly put in the chair while his classmates went to outside, because he simply could not stop flapping away the tenacious little critters that plagued him with anxiety. Despite his best efforts, the critters hovered relentlessly, which caused him to keep fluttering his hands in order to shoo them away. The hand motion drove Mr. Blackburn crazy, and he now sat across his desk saying "Quiet hands," in a firm yet perturbed tone every other minute.
Gavin, a little willful now, sang out, "Shoo fly don't bother me."
"Gavin Malachi Drakon, stop. It's time to read."
He looked down at the pages in front of him. Words appeared in a layered, confusing fashion in such a way he could barely make sense of them. Half of the words were written in longhand, which was even more troubling for him to read, especially when the whispering in his ears started.
"Solomon the wise had a cat," he began.
Mr. Blackburn looked at him quizzically, dark brown brows heavy over his eyes. He cleared his throat, and Gavin knew he had picked the wrong words. "That's very creative, but let's try to read what is on the page."
He looked at the page again and squinted, trying to make the inappropriate words disappear. He just didn't understand why his classmates saw one set of words and he saw five, six, and even more on some of the books. A critter landed on one sentence, fuzzy and white. He tried to avoid shooing it, as this would only aggravate Mr. Blackburn. Besides, the critter was doing him the favor of covering up some of the annoying extra words.
He tried again. "Solomon was a very wise king?"
"Very good, Gavin. Keep reading."
"He knew how to act as a judge for all his people."
"Excellent, very fluent. Now turn the page and--" He was interrupted by a heavy knock on the door. "Sit tight, Gavin, and read quietly to yourself. I'll be back in a minute." His teacher stood and walked the door to open it.
"Oh hello! Its good to see you." He paused, and the child could hear a muffled voice on the other end. "No, no, its just Gavin in here now. He'll be fine if we take a minute. Let me shut the door."
Gavin didn't particularly plan to kept reading the cryptic book while his teacher talked to whoever was outside of the door. In fact, he didn't plan on staying in the quiet chair. Too many critters had collected on the desk to eyeball him, which in turn made him fidgety and uncomfortable. He could ignore many phantoms that he saw, but critters were not among them.
He walked around the desk a couple of times. Eying the collecting mass of fuzz, fluff, eyes and antennae that gathered there watching him. Long shadows pooled under them that seemed to move. The room dimmed. He took a step and the world seemed to rock--almost as though he were stepping on two different floors at one. He thought her heard the critters laugh. A few more flittered in from oblivion to land on his shoulders.
"No, no, get away." He smacked his shoulders to be rid of them, backing quickly away from the desk and toward the mirror. He leaned against it, feeling the cool of it against his shirt. The critters buzzed through the air and he turned away from them, whining.
The mirror was in front of him. He couldn't see them in the mirror, that he could count on. In fact, Gavin couldn't see anything in the mirror but a big black void. The giant, wood embellished reflector meant nothing to him, even though he knew his classmates stood in front of it, staring. He stood in front of it for the black nothing that it allowed him to visit. No critters, no shadows, ghosts, or angels-just empty.
But he got a sick feeling as the room got darker. Something in the mirror seemed at once to move. Having never seen anything in a mirror, he froze in trembling. Something more horrible than critters hid in that mirror, and although Amanda had told him half a dozen times that mirrors were simply objects, he knew all at once that there was a whole world on the other side of the mirror, maybe every mirror.
Like slow motion he began to step away when he saw it: her hand. Pale, with pink trim nails and doll-like fingers, it faded from the dark. Gavin grabbed the mirror's edge. Could it be? The face of his twin came forward from the darkness, heavy near-white bangs almost hiding melancholy green eyes. He reached with his hands for hers and the pressed the glass together. She leaned in closer to the mirror's surfaced, face becoming clearer and more lifelike for a second. Voiceless, her pink lips mouthed "Help."
Gavin seemed to sink at the phrase. "Celeste," he murmured.
She placed her other hand on the mirror wall between them, mouthing more, "Only you can help him, help me."
"How do I help you--who's him?" he whispered.
Celeste's face changed. Her eyes grew panicked and her visage seemed to face. A shadow loomed behind her, dark and elegant. The hint of a face appeared, pallid annd framed with rivers of black hair. Lips the color of blood smiled in a way that did not reach her twilight violet eyes.
"Azrael lives," the shadow woman breathed. Cold, long nailed hands grabbed Celeste and withdrew her into the shadows.
"No, Celeste," Gavin screamed, pounding at the mirror with both hands, trying to reach the other world he saw. The woman slipped further and further away with Celeste, as he beat the mirror. The glass cracked and his fingers wept with blood as he through himself at the fading smile and laugh of the shadow that had stole his twin. He threw himself into the glass, crying, screaming.
Arms wrapped around his waste, pulling him and he kicked and screamed more, the shadow's laughter echoing in his ears. He could almost hear words behind it.
"Gavin! Gavin!" It was his name. The boy fell limp and let go of the shadow in the mirror, listening to the sound of his name. "Gavin." He took a shuddered breath and looked at the person who pulled him from the mirror, saved him from the shadow's trick, and doomed his twin. He saw the icy blue eyes of his father.
"Daddy?"
"Good God, Gavin." James, Gavin's father, pulled him in tight. Mr. Blackburn watched helpless and embarassed as the parent cradled his sliced and bleeding son. James peered down at him where he stood. "Don't just stand there, get the first aid supplies. Gauze, disinfectant, medical tape. You left him alone, so make yourself useful."
Mr. Blackburn scurried away and the man carried his son toward the window, where he had more light. He glanced out the door, and seemed no one there, willed the door to shut. With the light touch of his hands, he dissolved the glass from Gavin's wounds and willed them to clot before the boy fainted from loss of blood. Gavin felt a tingling in his wounds and the pain ebbed. He hiccuped a little, and risked looking at his father. Worry filled his eyes such as Gavin had seen only once ... the day he realized he couldn't fix Celeste.
"What did you see in that mirror, Gavin?"
"She took her, Dad, she took her away."
"Take a deep breath."
He sucked in air, it was cold and sharp. "The shadow in the mirror took Celeste."
James shook his head. He opened his mouth to explain Celeste's death again, when Gavin spoke again.
"She took her ghost away in the mirror."
He watched confusion spread across his father's face. It mixed with the worry until he was certain that he didn't believe what Gavin was telling him actually happened, or if it was just the fantasy of a broken, mourning mind.
"I can say this much, I'm getting you a personal tutor. I've had enough of this school."
"Don't be mad."
"I'm not angry at you." He touched his forehead to Gavin's.
"Did the mirror cut me?"
"It cut you pretty bad."
The boy looked at the tears on his hand, the black stains of blood where he had dripped blood across the floor. He then looked back to his father's sad, confused eyes. "I'm sorry, Daddy."
James kissed Gavin's forehead. "It's okay, Gavin. It'll be okay."