The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

the exit rhyme! I’m SOOOO sorry! It’s just like the entry rhyme, only backwards.You have to sing the tune backwards too, she had written.
    “Well is all and in me let: shell the break and door the push. Nut the crack and key the turn, shut is shut and out is out,” I sang. But it was no use. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the tune right.
    I sent Anjali another pneum: It’s not working. I suck at music.
    OK. Send up the key. I’ll come down and get you as soon as I can, she wrote back.
    I wrapped the barrette carefully, taped it inside a pneum, and slipped it in the pipe. The vacuum sucked it away with a whoosh like a sigh of relief.
    Anxious and bored, I distracted myself again by strolling around. Something moving behind me caught the corner of my eye. I spun around and froze.
    Whatever it was spun and froze too.
    To my relief, I saw it was just me—my reflection in a large mirror hanging on the picture rack. Did I really look that haggard and grim?
    I made a face at myself. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” I said.
    My own lips moved in the mirror and I heard a voice just like mine answering:
“You have to ask, Eliza Rew?
Then listen up: it isn’t you.”
    I think of myself as a pretty savvy person. I grew up in New York City; I’ve seen a thing or two. I’m not the sort of girl who confuses fairy tales with reality. But as soon as I heard the mirror speak, I knew I wasn’t imagining things—it really was magic. I knew it the way you know which way is up, the way you recognize your mother’s voice, the way you know to pull your hand away from a hot stove before your brain registers the pain. My heart began pounding with excitement—excitement, but not doubt.
    As soon as I had accepted this, other things started dropping into place in my mind. I could almost hear them, a light, sparkling clatter like ice crystals falling in a frozen street. The moving freckles, the ensorcelled door—all magic. My heart beat hard with the thrill of it. The boots too. That must be why Marc had borrowed them, why it was so important that I get them put back. And the smell, that vivid, shifty smell: the smell of magic.
    I stared around me. Everything—everything here must be magic! Boots, books, tables, telescopes—everything must have some special power! And the mirror itself . . . I turned back to it. My reflection was scary, a cold, cruel smirk. That couldn’t really be what I looked like—could it? I might not be the fairest of them all, but at least I was sure I didn’t look evil. Was it making me look like that on purpose?
    “Don’t call me Eliza. My name is Elizabeth,” I snapped through my fear. I had always hated Eliza. That’s what my stepsisters called me to tease, usually in a fake English accent.
    The mirror didn’t answer this time.
    If the mirror really was the one from Snow White’s stepmother, no wonder it was so unpleasant—it had the excuse of belonging to somebody wicked. My skin prickled. But the Grimm stories weren’t all witches and poisoned apples. Some of them described good fairies and friendly magic, like Cinderella’s godmother. Were there any benevolent objects here?
    Now the sense of magic all around me began to feel frightening, oppressive. No wonder Dr. Rust had called the objects here “powerful”!
    I looked around again. On the sliding wall near the opinionated mirror hung several other mirrors and a dozen or so pictures, including one of a ship, one of a dragon, one of a hideous, leering old man, and one so dark and murky that I couldn’t make it out. None of the paintings looked particularly benign, and the dark one was positively threatening.
    Anjali seemed to be taking her sweet time rescuing me. Was there anything here that could help me escape? A flying carpet, maybe? I couldn’t quite believe that I was thinking seriously about a flying carpet. But even if I found one, I was still trapped—not much use in flying a carpet