I should start with my name shouldn't I? It's Grace. Grace Miller.

  And I guess you could say I am a collector of antiques. Old treasures. I loved collecting the past. Even when I was young. And it was a profitable business for the most part. I ran it from my house which served as my shop. I lived alone and had no children so it was easy living for the most part. My pieces kept me company. So much easier than dealing with people. Every antique had a story. The fun part was discovering it.

  But a while back I ran into one piece...that gave me some trouble. It's over and done with now. But the memory of it remains.

  A mirror.

  I should have known something was off the moment I saw it.

  It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the kind where the world feels like it’s being held in suspension. Gray and quiet, like even time has taken a break. I was at an estate sale just outside of Wrenfield, a sleepy little town about forty minutes from mine. The house was Victorian, overgrown, and sagging under the weight of its own history, very much like my own home. Perfect, in other words.

  I almost didn’t see the mirror at first. It was tucked behind a broken armoire in the back parlor, draped in a thick, moth eaten sheet. I don’t know what made me pull the fabric off, but when I did, I gasped.

  It was beautiful. Absolutely exquisite. Oval, about four feet high, with a gilded frame of roses and ivy crawling up its sides like frozen vines. The glass was so clear it almost shimmered, but there was something…off. For the briefest moment, I thought I saw movement in it...like the reflection lagged a heartbeat behind my own. I chalked it up to a trick of the light. Estate sales tend to have that haunted kind of air anyway. So what else was I suppose to do?

  I bought it on the spot.

  I loaded it into the back of my van, the owner practically giving it away. “Family didn’t want it,” he’d said, shrugging like it wasn’t worth the trouble. “Been in the attic since the ‘60s. Weird, right? Anyways...happy to see someone else take it off my hands.”

  I didn’t think much of it at the time. In fact, I was thrilled. Why wouldn't I be? An unmarked Victorian mirror with ornate giltwork? A piece like that could fetch a few grand if restored right. That night, I set it up in the front hall, across from the sitting room where I kept my more delicate items.

  That’s when things started.

  The first thing I noticed was that the mirror didn’t feel... inert. I know that sounds ridiculous. Mirrors are just glass and silver, after all. But there was a presence to it. A kind of gravity. Every time I walked past it, I found myself glancing in. Not checking my appearance, just... looking. Like it was calling to me. At first I thought I was going looney.

  Then came the reflection.

  The first time I truly noticed it, I was carrying a lamp into the sitting room. My arms were full, so I caught only a quick glimpse of myself in the mirror. Except...it wasn’t quite myself. The woman in the glass wore the same clothes, had the same face, the same tired eyes and messy bun...but her expression was wrong.

  She was smiling.

  I wasn’t.

  I froze. Backed up. Looked again.

  Now she looked normal. Me. Just me. Tired and alone, like usual.

  I told myself I imagined it. Shadows. Fatigue. Too much caffeine.

  But then it happened again.

  And again.

  Each time, her expression lingered a little longer. A small smile when I was scowling. A raised eyebrow when I was relaxed. And once...I swear...she winked.

  I started covering the mirror at night.

  But it didn’t help.

  Because then the dreams began.

  Even with the mirror draped in thick cloth, I still dreamt about it.

  Not the mirror itself, really, but what was behind it...shadows pressing against the glass, outlines of something tall and thin, whispering words I couldn’t quite hear. In the dreams, I stood in front of it, watching my reflection move before I did, like it had grown impatient waiting for me to act. Each time I woke, there was the mirror in the hallway, perfectly still, perfectly ordinary…and yet, the air around it always felt colder than the rest of the house.

  Eventually, I stopped covering it.

  I told myself I was being silly. I was a grown woman with a successful business. I’d spent my life dealing with eccentric collectors and superstitious old ladies who swore their tea sets were haunted. I didn’t believe in ghosts. Or curses. Or whatever it was I was trying not to believe in. I honestly did not have time for it. But...

  Maybe part of me was curious. Maybe part of me liked the attention, even if it came from a reflection. I’d lived alone for so long, I forgot what it was like to be seen...really seen. My antiques didn’t talk back. But the mirror? It watched.

  Then, the reflection started speaking.

  Not aloud, not at first. Just mouth movements. Like it was trying to tell me something. I’d mimic the movement in the real world, trying to line up our actions, but it was always just a little off. The timing. The expression.

  Until one morning, I was brushing my hair in front of it, and my reflection didn’t follow.

  She just stood there, arms at her sides, watching me with this pitying, smug little smile. And then she whispered a word. Just one.

  “Why?”

  It wasn’t until later, sitting at my desk, trying to polish up a registry log, that I realized I hadn’t said it aloud. She had. I’d heard it, faint and clear, in the room with me.

  I should have been terrified.

  Instead, I was…intrigued.

  Something was inside the mirror. I didn’t know how, or why, but it wasn’t malevolent. Not yet. It was curious. And oddly, so was I. So I did what I always did when something puzzled me. I researched. I spent days digging through old auction catalogs and rare collections databases. I found a vague reference to a mirror like mine from a private collection in Morocco, late 1800s, said to be made during the Ottoman period by an artisan known only as “Al-Maqla.”

  The entry mentioned that he was a mystic. A summoner. That his mirrors weren’t meant to reflect...but to contain.

  And then I found the word: Djinn.

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  The kind from stories I heard as a child but never took seriously. Not the wish granting kind. The real kind. The kind made of smokeless fire. The kind that needed a vessel.

  I should have gotten rid of it. I should have smashed it to pieces and burned whatever was left.

  Instead, I did the opposite.

  I stood before the mirror one evening, lights low, incense burning from a gift basket a client had left me. My shop was quiet, the antiques casting long, looming shadows on the walls. I looked into the mirror...not at myself, but at her.

  The other Grace.

  “Are you in there?” I asked.

  She smiled.

  And this time, I smiled back.

  That night, the dreams turned vivid, opulent. I walked through markets filled with golden lamps, silk scarves, and mirrors of every shape and size. And always, a voice followed me. A whisper behind the veil.

  “You brought me home.”

  “I see you, Grace.”

  “Would you like to be seen by the world?”

  The changes were subtle at first.

  One morning I stood before the mirror and thought I looked…refreshed. Not glowing or miraculous or anything absurd, just better. My skin seemed smoother. My eyes brighter. A little less of that hollowness that creeps in over time when you live alone and speak more to old clocks than people.

  I blamed the lighting. Or the herbal tea I’d started drinking. Anything but the mirror.

  But then I caught my reflection winking again. Only this time, I hadn’t winked.

  I didn’t run. I didn’t scream. I smiled.

  It felt like a private joke between me and her, me and the other Grace. The one in the glass. The one who knew I didn’t need people, didn’t want their pitying eyes and awkward conversations. The people who kept asking me why I didn't have any children? Or when was I going to get married? They looked down on me because they did not understand me. I understood the pleasure of solitude, the sweetness of legacy. The doppelganger in the mirror returned my gaze. She watched me polish brass, restore hand painted porcelain, mend the broken past. She admired it. Admired me.

  And then she started speaking.

  It began as murmurs. Like my thoughts, only separate. Louder when I stood in front of the mirror. Quieter when I walked away. She’d say things like...

  “You’ve kept everything perfect. Why not yourself?”

  “They never noticed you before. But now…”

  “Let me help.”

  I never said yes. Not exactly. But I didn’t say no.

  And the favors began.

  I started sleeping better. Eating less. I lost five pounds without trying. One night, after hours cataloging dusty estate trinkets, I looked up and saw a woman in the mirror who didn’t look fifty six years old. She looked forty, maybe even thirty five. Hair fuller. Jawline sharper. Still me, but not me...not exactly.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, her voice breathy, smooth as polished obsidian.

  I should’ve been afraid.

  But I felt... flattered.

  For the first time in years, I caught myself lingering in front of the mirror just to be seen. Just to imagine what others might see. And that’s when the visions began.

  Not dreams but visions. They came when I was alone, eyes closed in the armchair, or washing my hands in the basin near the mirror. Flashes of faces. Strangers looking at me with admiration, fascination. A man’s voice whispering praise. Crowds at antique shows marveling at my pieces—and at me.

  “You are ageless, beloved” the voice said. “They envy you. They envy your power.”

  I started dressing nicer. Just in the house, but still. A silk scarf. Earrings. Lipstick, for the first time in years. I laughed at myself, but it felt good. And every time I looked in the mirror, she was waiting.

  My reflection.

  My friend.

  My other.

  But the favors weren’t free.

  At first, the voice asked for small things. Little tokens. One morning I woke to find a small nick in the wood frame, like something had scratched it from the inside. That day, she asked me to move the mirror upstairs “closer to where you dream,” she said.

  I obeyed. Trifles and trinkets were a small price to pay for such blessings. No blood. No offerings of flesh and gore like in those ridiculous movies.

  Later, she asked for offerings. Objects from myown personal collection. One night she whispered:

  “That locket with the child’s hair. I want it.”

  “Why? That's mine.” I asked.

  “To remember what it is to feel.”

  I placed the locket on the stand in front of the mirror. The next day, it was gone. Not misplaced. Gone.

  So I gave more. It was just a locket.

  Hairbrushes. Handkerchiefs. A cracked music box. A military medal. Always the oldest, most sentimental things. Pieces of other people’s lives, stolen from time and memory...and fed into the mirror.

  Each gift made me feel lighter. Younger. Like my past had less hold on me. And why not? The past was heavy. The mirror gave me the future. The version of me I deserved. The version of myself I wanted to be.

  And the more I gave, the clearer she became. No longer just a reflection. Now a twin. Almost.

  Because sometimes, her smile didn’t match mine. Her eyes gleamed when mine were dull. And once, I’ll never forget, she turned away from me before I turned.

  As if she was already finished with me.

  Then two days later, it happened.

  It happened during a visit from a buyer. A rare one. A woman named Claire Hargrove, who wanted a set of pre world war one opera glasses from France and insisted on seeing them in person. She was kind. Gentle. Spoke to me with a softness I hadn’t felt in years.

  And I hated her for it.

  Because as she looked around the room, eyes wide with admiration...not for me, but for my collection. I saw my reflection in the mirror, standing behind her… and smiling.

  Then the voice returned, calm and cool like a lover whispering in my ear:

  “She’ll take it all. Say the word… and I’ll take her.”

  I froze.

  I realized then what I’d become.

  I didn’t see a customer.

  I saw a threat.

  That night, alone again, I confronted the mirror.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

  And she...my other self...smiled with those perfect lips and whispered...

  “To be real.”

  It started the moment Claire left.

  The door had barely shut behind her when the house changed. It was subtle at first, quieter than usual, but not the soft, comforting quiet I’d grown used to. This was different. Hushed, like the house itself was holding its breath.

  And the mirror… the mirror hummed.

  Low and deep, like a cello string plucked underwater. It made the fillings in my teeth buzz. It made the floor vibrate beneath my slippers. And I knew, without needing to be told, that he was waking up.

  The djinn.

  That night, I dreamed again but this time, it wasn’t just a dream.

  I stepped through the mirror.

  There was no pain. No shattering glass. Just a ripple, like warm honey parting for me. I was inside before I could question it, standing in a world that looked exactly like mine...only better. Brighter. Warmer. Like someone had turned up the contrast on reality.

  He was waiting for me.

  Tall. Radiant. Skin the color of antique bronze and eyes like black fire. Robes flowing like smoke. A being made not of flesh, but of memory and desire. He called himself Zafir.

  And his voice… oh, his voice.

  It was velvet and flame. He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. Every word he spoke bloomed inside my mind like a flower unfolding.

  “You called to me, Grace. With every glance. Every offering. Every ache in your heart.”

  I wanted to run. But I didn’t. I just listened.

  He showed me wonders. Palaces made of crystal and silver. Galleries filled with treasures no museum on Earth had ever seen...jewels from lost civilizations, manuscripts written by hands long turned to dust. And then he showed me myself.

  Not as I was.

  As I could be.

  Young. Beautiful. Draped in finery. Surrounded by admirers. My hair glossy and long. My skin untouched by time. A queen in her own realm.

  “Stay,” he whispered. “No more loneliness. No more decay. You will be mine, and I will be yours. I will give you love, Grace. Eternal love. You will never be alone again.”

  And God help me...I believed him.

  But something inside me...some final thread of resistance...pulled me back. Just enough to whisper, “This isn’t real. This is just a fantasy.”

  Zafir didn’t rage. He didn’t grow monstrous.

  He smiled.

  “What is real, Grace? Is it the empty bed? The cold house? The visitors who leave and never return? Or is it this...your soul made whole?”

  He reached for my hand.

  “Come to me. Promise yourself to me, and I will gift you more than the world ever has. You will be adored. You will be remembered. And you will never fade.”

  I hesitated.

  I thought of birthdays spent alone. Of laughing into the dark at my own jokes. Of eating breakfast with no one to say good morning to. I thought of how long it had been since someone looked at me...not at my antiques, not at my shop...but at me.

  And I took his hand.

  I whispered, “Yes.”

  That...was a long time ago. So long I had forgotten almost everything of my past life.

  People came looking for me, of course. Neighbors. A few old clients. Claire, maybe. They found the front door locked from the inside. No sign of struggle. Just the faint scent of rose oil in the air…and a mirror, gleaming in the hallway.

  I don’t know where the mirror is now.

  Someone took it, I’m sure. Maybe a dealer who thought it was worth something. Maybe a lonely widow, or a bored student with a taste for oddities.

  But I can feel it.

  I can feel it moving, drifting from hand to hand. Searching. Waiting. Whispering.

  Zafir and I are here, inside. Watching. Patient. We have all the time in the world.

  And someday, when you’re alone...when the silence starts pressing in...maybe you’ll look too long at a mirror that watches back.

  And if you do?

  We’ll be waiting.