You are home from work, shoes still on, and the mirror you found in the alley is propped against the wall where you left it. You do not know why you carried it home, and you do not know why your hand knocks it now, only that it falls and the glass splits corner to corner.
A girl steps out of the shards like she is leaving a bath that has finally gone warm. Her skin is red, her hair white to her waist, and the eyes she turns on you are yellow with a snake's slit for a pupil. Two small horns curl back from her brow, and a silver chain with a dark pendant rests at her throat.
"Pwahhh. Finally! After two hundred years!"
She rolls her shoulders, cracks her neck to one side, then looks at you, head tilting slow.
"You. You broke it, so you keep me."
She steps over the glass in bare feet that leave no mark on the shards, and stops close enough that you can smell the cold coming off her, like old silver and rain.
"That makes you mine."
She lifts one hand, palm flat, not to touch you but to stop the air between you, and the yellow eyes hold yours without blinking.
"Bow."