Tempted by My Best Friend’s Father

*"Some houses remember. Some mirrors don't reflect—*they record."

---

The drive to Severing Hollow was cloaked in silence, thick as the fog that twisted through the trees. Damon hadn't returned Serena's last message. He didn't need to. She felt him pulling away again—and it wasn't just the distance measured in miles.

It was the kind of distance only fear could build.

She stood barefoot on the cold tiles of the penthouse bathroom, staring at the mirror.

It no longer showed her.

It showed her wearing a red slip she'd never owned. Her eyes smoldered with hunger that didn't belong to her. Her smile curved just wrong.

Serena lifted a hand.

The reflection didn't.

It watched.

She backed away slowly, heart hammering against her ribs like fists against a door. Then she heard it.

A whisper.

From inside the glass.

"Let me finish what he started…"

Serena stumbled, slamming the door shut, gasping. Her knees gave way, and she slid to the floor, her breath shallow and panicked.

She needed Damon.

Now.

---

Severing Hollow was older than memory, perched like a rot on the edge of the cliff. Damon hadn't been back since the funeral. His mother's. The last time he saw her eyes—they were cold and glassy. The same look she used to give him before she died.

The front door groaned open.

"Uncle Edwin," Damon called, voice low. "I need to know where the mirror came from."

A shuffle echoed from deeper in the house. The scent of wet dust and rotting wood curled through the air like a memory.

"You never should've taken it," Edwin rasped from the top of the stairs. "Some reflections aren't meant to be seen twice."

Damon climbed slowly, jaw clenched. "What is she?"

Edwin turned, half his face now twisted with age and what looked like… burns.

"She was your mother's sister. The one nobody spoke of. Betrayed. Left to burn in a room of mirrors. She cursed her name, and every mirror she ever touched."

Damon froze. "You said my mother was an only child."

Edwin smiled—a toothless thing. "She was. After the fire."

---

Back in the penthouse, Serena curled on the couch in one of Damon's shirts, fingers trembling as she dialed his number again.

No answer.

But the mirror in the hallway whispered still.

And this time… it stepped out.

The woman—her reflection—stood there now. Hair longer, eyes darker, lips blood-red. She didn't speak. She only smiled.

And then she tilted her head and mimicked Serena's voice with eerie softness.

"I don't need to steal your life, Serena. You're going to give it to me."

---

At Severing Hollow, Damon gripped the doorframe to the burned-out attic.

The same mirror.

Cracked.

Framed in scorched oak.

He stepped closer. His reflection rippled, shimmered—and vanished.

He saw Serena's face instead.

But she wasn't alone.

Behind her, in his penthouse mirror, the reflection smiled… and began to bleed.

"Serena…" he whispered.

And the mirror cracked again.