Tentatively, Cora placed her hand in his. The heat that was radiating from his skin shocked her. It felt feverish. Almost scaldingly so. In contrast, her fingers and palm seemed icy and frigid in comparison.

"You are burning up!" Cora exclaimed. "Are you alright? Do you feel ill?"

Cerberus grinned and tugged on her hand. "I am fine, gatekeeper. My temperature always runs warm. I was forged in hellfire, after all. And your kind tend to be as cold as a corpse."

Cora thought back to when Cerberus had caught her from her fall. "How come I did not notice it before?"

"Now that the charm has been broken, you may find yourself growing more sensitive to your surroundings—as well as other otherworldly beings such as myself. It may feel overwhelming at first, but I am sure you will adjust... in time."

"Oh, dear," Cora mumbled. "I truly do not know what to think of all this."

"Then do not think at all," Cerberus murmured with a smirk. "It does not seem to be your strong suit, anyway."

"How dare you!" Cora huffed and tried to yank her hand away.

Cerberus held on tighter and would not let her go. In a more serious tone of voice, he insisted, "We must stay together until the witchy ones are no longer a threat. They have probably sensed by now what I have done to their charm. Mark my words. They will come for us soon."

Cora grunted and pouted in protest, but she did not remove her hand from his grasp.

Cerberus led her past dozens of doors. Finally, they stopped in front of a very strangely shaped one. Its sides were cut into a pentagon. He opened it. Cora peered inside. There was nothing in the room except mirrors, hundreds of them—round and rectangular and oval and squarish—that hung on the walls. Cora's nerves began to fidget. Her aunts had warned her about mirrors. Yet, Cerberus claimed her aunts weren't trustworthy. She was about to find out which one of them had been lying to her.

Cerberus and Cora entered the room of mirrors. Cora's reflection stared back at her in every direction. She saw a mousy girl with plain, forgettable features. Brown hair, brown eyes.

Then, her reflection began to flicker and shift. An old woman with a wrinkled face and aging gray hair now occupied the glass. Within seconds, she faded away as well and was replaced by an adolescent female with a rosebud mouth and very full breasts.

Cora gasped as her face and form continually changed and morphed into the likeness of strangers. Some were younger than her. Some were much older. Some beautiful, some not. Her face simply wouldn't stop evolving from one to the next.

Cora screamed like a banshee, "What is happening to be me? Who are those people?"

Cerberus squeezed her hand comfortingly and chuckled. "Do not worry, all of those faces belong to you. Or rather, I should say, they are the many forms you can take to convince a departed soul to go with you into the unknown. Gatekeepers often take on the image of a loved one to make the journey less frightening for the recently deceased. You will be able to control it eventually—"

A high pitched whistle cut through Cerberus' voice. The shrill, earsplitting sound grew in intensity until it shattered all the mirrors in the room.

Cora shrieked in terror and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt Cerberus wrap his arms around her to shield her from the shards of glass that were flying around them.

A booming female voice entered the room. "Get your nasty paws off of my niece, you dastardly hound!"

Cerberus released a low and ferocious growl, "I shall eat your heart for a snack, you wicked crone, and drag your corpse to the fiery pits of hell where it belongs!"

Cora's eyes popped wide open with shock. "Aunt Mathilde?"

It was indeed Aunt Mathilde in her younger form. Aunt Amelia was nowhere in sight.

"Hello there, Cora dear," Aunt Mathilde greeted her in sharp tones. "I see you have already broken two out of the three rules we asked you to follow. What a naughty, naughty girl..."

Cora gulped. She didn't know whether she should feel happy to see her aunt—or fear for her life.