18. I’ll Be Clone for Christmas #2
“A month, give or take,” Eps supplied. “But I know most of what the original Zahir knows. Well, not about cooking, apparently. Also it’s pretty dull up here, so I’ve been reading.
Your family keeps everything , Delilah. Really.
” He gestured to a frighteningly tall stack of books beside a pile of quilts that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the Taft administration.
Next to this was a rustic side table—or actually, upon closer inspection, a repurposed steamer trunk—piled high with leather-bound volumes, loose papers, and scrapbooks.
“Have you heard of that reality show, Hoarders ? You should look into it.”
A fluffy white cat with mismatched eyes—one blue, one green—was currently batting at a low-hanging glass icicle ornament that dangled precariously from a half-decorated artificial tree.
“Snowball, no!” Eps lunged forward with surprising speed, catching the antique ornament before it could shatter. “Show some respect. That’s from 1932.”
“You named them all?” Delilah asked, watching in awe as yet another cat threaded itself between her feet.
“They’re cats, of course I named them—what am I, a monster?
Oh, by the way, I found something you might want back.
” Eps retrieved an object from behind a stack of boxes.
It was the old Christmas star that Papa had insisted on using every year, despite the fact that half its lights no longer worked.
“Thought it might be significant. Your father had an entire journal devoted to Christmas traditions. Way too many of them involving this particular star.”
Delilah’s throat tightened unexpectedly.
She’d forgotten about that star; how she and her sisters would fight about which one of them would be lifted onto Papa’s shoulders to place it atop the tree.
How Mama used to complain that the star was ugly and half broken, and how Papa insisted that Christmas stars, like real ones, didn’t need to be perfect to guide you home.
“Keep it safe for me,” she told Eps. “ I don’t know what I’d do with it right now.”
“Your father and Christmas, huh,” Jasper said quietly.
Delilah sighed sadly. “My father and Christmas. You know, he had a different ugly sweater for every day of December? Most of them played music. It was like if a Hallmark movie was a person.”
“Sure, but maybe it was a little bit wonderful too,” Jasper offered. “Just the idea of caring much about something. To share it so enthusiastically with the people you love.”
Delilah blinked rapidly. “Yes, well. That was Papa.” She looked into Jasper’s beautiful worried eyes and wondered if being in the presence of a magical clone was kind of like being alone, and was it close enough to being alone that she could maybe kiss him again.
From downstairs, a voice pierced through the floorboards, growing louder and more insistent with each passing second.
“DELILAH? JASPER? Where the hell are you two?”
Scarlett. And she sounded exactly as frazzled as you’d expect from someone whose mother had just been magically abducted during a holiday feast.
Eps visibly tensed, several nearby cats mirroring his alarm.
“Please don’t tell her I’m here. She’d unmake me in a heartbeat.
To her, I’m just leftover magical energy waiting to be recycled.
But I’m rather attached to existing, you know?
Even if existing means slowly turning into a crazy cat person. ”
“Cat gentleman,” Jasper corrected, which earned him a genuine smile from the clone—the first expression that actually matched the real Zahir’s.
“I SWEAR TO ALL THAT IS HOLY, DELILAH, IF YOU’RE MAKING OUT WITH THE ARCHIVIST WHILE MAMA IS MISSING...”
Delilah felt heat rush to her face. Truly, making out with the archivist had been occupying a distressing percentage of her mental real estate.
“You should go,” Eps said quietly. “Your sister needs you. Just... please. Don’t tell her about me. I’m not ready to go yet.”
And there it was. A dilemma Delilah was absolutely not equipped to handle tonight—does a magical clone have a right to exist?
Does it get to choose? The cats were watching her now, thirteen pairs of eyes somehow asking the same question.
Thirteen pairs of eyes that existed because Eps was slowly but surely erasing himself to create them.
“What do you think? Do we protect them?” she asked Jasper softly.
He glanced from Eps to the cats, then back to her.
“Pretty weird to meet someone who resembles someone I know, but who has no idea who I am,” he said thoughtfully.
“Makes me understand how it must feel for all of you when I...” He trailed off, but Delilah knew what he meant.
“Anyway, it’s your call,” he concluded. “Until recently I thought magic only existed at children’s birthday parties.
I’m definitely not qualified to weigh in on the ethics here. ”
“C’mon, don’t cop out on me. I’m asking for your opinion, so go ahead and have one.”
“Well...” He folded his arms across his chest and tugged at his chin in thought.
“Fundamentally, you’re asking me, does Eps have free will?
The magic of Oak Haven is yours to command, so inasmuch as Eps is simply magic in a different form, then no, he does not.
On the other hand, he clearly has developed his own personality, separate from the Zahir we know, and has begun making his own decisions.
So... maybe? Sorry that’s not a more definitive answer.
This is why I prefer history to philosophy. ”
Despite everything, despite the missing mother and the magician threat and the fact that Jasper Hopkins wouldn’t even remember her name tomorrow, Delilah felt a rush of something dangerously close to adoration for this impossibly precise man who somehow understood that this wasn’t about cats or clones.
It was about choices. And about who gets to make them.
She turned back to Eps. “Your secret’s safe with me for now. For as long as I’m able to keep it.”
Relief washed over the clone’s semi-transparent features. “Thank you.”
“DELILAH MARIE MELROSE!” Scarlett’s voice reached them from downstairs. Her pitch had reached that special timbre that suggested imminent catastrophe; the question was, was Scarlett trying to prevent it or cause it?
“We’re coming! Don’t come up here, you’ll just trip over yet another box of Christmas ornaments,” Delilah called back. “We’ll figure this out, Eps. All of it. Just... maybe stop making cats for a bit? We need you to stay solid enough to, you know, exist.”
Eps’s smile was pure Zahir, full of the stubborn certainty that he knew best. “I make no promises. The Melrose Archive Protection Program continues unabated. Also they’re cuddly and I love them.”
Delilah and Jasper took a few steps down the stairwell when Jasper stopped suddenly. “Hang on,” he told Delilah, and jogged back up. “Mr. Epsilon, one quick question. In all your scrabbling around up here, have you come across anything related to someone named Agnes?”
“Jasper! Would you stop it with the Agnes stuff?” Gods, this man was cute but frustrating . “We need to focus on my mother right now. Agnes died over two hundred years ago; she has absolutely nothing to offer on the magicians question, I promise.”
“I’m sorry...” and he did look quite sorry, which really was adorable. “...but, Delilah, think about it. Agnes is significant in my life and in your life. That can’t just be some kooky coincidence, can it?”
“It’s very romantic,” she assured him. “It’s just not particularly helpful right now.”
Scarlett’s screech again. “DELILAH!”
Jasper sighed. “Right. Okay.” But as he turned to go, Epsilon made a psst noise behind him.
“Hey,” Epsilon whispered. “Hey you, Oak Haven’s answer to Dr Jonathan Crane. I got lots about Agnes. I got Agnes for days up here. At the risk of sounding too conspiratorial, this is all about Agnes.”
Delilah grabbed Jasper by the arm and pulled him down the stairs with her. As they went, she could feel the weight of the day settling on her heart. Her mother, vanished. Her powers, surrendered. Her home, under attack.
And yet.
As they made their way down the narrow staircase, Jasper rested his hand on the small of her back. And when they paused at the landing, his eyes met hers with an intensity that made her forget everything else.
“So,” he said quietly, “you have a clone of your best friend living in your attic and making cats out of himself to protect your father’s Christmas decorations.”
“Just another day in Oak Haven,” she replied, trying for lightness and missing by a mile.
His fingers brushed a strand of hair from her face. “We’ll get your mom back... somehow. I don’t know how yet, but we will.”
“Promise?” The word slipped out before she could stop it, childish and vulnerable.
Instead of answering, Jasper leaned forward and kissed her. Not the desperate, clinging kiss they’d shared upstairs, but something softer. A promise in itself.
“DELILAH! I can hear you guys whispering! Get your butts down here!”