Chapter 41 #6
Daphne steps closer to me but halts when I flinch. “I should have handled this better. It’s the first time— I’ve never stretched my magic anywhere near this far before. I wasn’t even sure it would work. Elodie, this isn’t the world you’re used to.”
Yeah, I’m still going with insane.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand.
Her tone turns almost breathless. “Did you know there are all kinds of parallel realities unfurling alongside our own? An infinite number, multiplying with every decision, every branch in a path—”
I finally manage to shift forward onto my feet without teetering. The briefest flick of my gaze shows me a door a few paces beyond the cabinet. “I don’t want a physics lecture. Just let me go.”
Daphne gives me a smile that seems impossibly sad. “I can’t, not until you understand. This isn’t your original reality. I reached through the strands, found you, and pulled you here.”
Not just insane. Batshit insane.
Sure, in my research into every oddity humanity has dreamed up, I’ve come across theories about alternate universes. That doesn’t mean I think it’s remotely possible a person could jump from one to another. We’re not in a Spider-Man movie.
My muscles coil, ready to spring. “Last chance. Get out of my way.”
My supposed aunt moves to the right. My gaze trails after her automatically, confirming the door that’s my likely way out—and snags on the mutilated form on the other table.
A fresh surge of nausea freezes me in place.
Somehow, Daphne’s face gets even sadder. “You saw before. Your mind had trouble accepting it. I needed her here to help me find you.”
Her. A twisted leg, a length of split flesh with fragments of bone poking through. Hips caved in on one side. Chest a mass of bloody shreds of fabric and gleams of splintered ribs.
The meaty odor congeals in my nose. Clenching my jaw so hard it aches, I force myself to look all the way to her face.
My face.
Whatever happened to this woman, it barely damaged her head. Blood flecks her cheeks, and more is matted into a patch of her dark brown hair, but she’s still perfectly recognizable.
Her vacant eyes, dark green muddied by an inner ring of brown, match the ones I see in the mirror every day. The slope of her nose, the curve of her cheekbones, the slightly knobby chin… She’s a perfect replica.
No, not exactly perfect. Through the blare of bewildered horror, my attention catches on the ashy highlights streaked artfully through this woman’s hair—a style I’ve never attempted. A plum shade of lipstick I’ve never worn darkens her narrow lips.
Me, but not quite. A little different.
Like I might have been in some other reality that branched off in a different direction…
Daphne starts talking again. “It happened just a few hours ago. She was out—I don’t know what she was doing. She called me, said she thought someone was following her, that she was nervous. She asked me to come pick her up.”
Her voice falters. She drags in a shaky breath before she continues. “When I got to the corner she told me she’d be waiting on, I found her on the sidewalk like this. Hit by a car. It must have been on purpose. She was gone. There was nothing I could do. Nothing except… this. You.”
Daphne’s gaze flicks back to me with a bizarre sort of hope, as if she thinks I might have some idea what to do next after her explanation.
I’m still not discounting the “batshit insane” conclusion. I don’t want to believe any of this.
But… if she’s insane, and I’m seeing another version of myself lying dead and mangled on a table, have I gone batshit too?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Because no matter how far away she stole me from or by what magic, it doesn’t change that she did.
Anger surges up in my chest, searing hot.
It spills onto my tongue. “What am I supposed to do about it? This has nothing to do with me. You’re telling me you yanked me from my world, my home, my— You have to send me back!
My matches will be freaking out—I was right there with them—you didn’t hurt them, did you? ”
Daphne stares at me. “Your matches,” she says faintly. “You already sparked with them?”
How can she not—
My head snaps around. There were so many more horrific aspects to take in, I didn’t pay attention to the other Elodie’s hands before. But there they lie, limp at the end of disjointed arms.
Covered in delicate leather gloves, more crimson than dove-gray now.
I wrench my gaze to my own hand, whipping the right one off the table as if I’ve burned it. My breath stalls in my throat.
An unmarred palm meets my eyes. I can’t pick out any trace of my bond mark.
My tongue stumbles in my mouth. “No. No.”
Most of the color has drained from Daphne’s peach-toned face. “I—I’m sorry. I had no idea. It must be—because your bonds didn’t happen in this reality—your body adjusted—”
“I don’t fucking care,” I cut in. “Get me back to them. Send me where I belong!”
Byron’s kiss on the back of my hand. Salvatore’s emphatic hug. Cole’s caress over my hair.
My heart thuds hard enough to crack my own ribs.
Just moments ago, I had them. They were my world. You can’t break a match once it’s been sparked.
Unless, apparently, your psychotic aunt tears you across alternate dimensions for some dimwit reason.
Said aunt is shaking her head. “I can’t send you back. Not—not right away. It took so much power—I needed help, and it’ll take time before my own magic recovers enough.”
I fix her with the fiercest glare I have in me. “As soon as it has, you reverse this. Why did you even do it? I can’t fix her!”
Daphne pauses. She glances at the other Elodie again, the niece I guess she watched grow up, the one she called “Ellie.” That awful sorrow grips her features again.
She pulls her attention back to me. “You can’t fix her, but I think you can fix something.”
“What are you talking about?”
Daphne starts to pace, her hands fluttering at her sides. “I knew—I knew you’d be a different Elodie from mine. But no one else will realize. I’m the only one who knows our Elodie died. You can’t imagine—well, actually, maybe you can.”
She pauses to meet my eyes with a cannier look in hers than I’ve seen before. “Unless your reality was very different from ours, I’d imagine you’re familiar with how the established lucent families compete for status? All the ways we try to one-up each other?”
Ha. I got a first-row seat to how cutthroat the upper crust of magical society can be when I was only six and Dad’s family refused to acknowledge Mom as his bereft wife or me as his daughter.
They burned our names right out of the records and threatened to have her thrown in jail if she dared to keep calling me a Devine.
All because Mom wasn’t from the upper crust herself. Not fit for the circles they ran in. Not good enough for their precious son.
They decided she tainted the blood of their only grandchild so much they’d rather disown me.
Just like Byron’s and Salvatore’s families turned their backs on them when they committed to me as their match.
Daphne doesn’t seem to feel that way about her niece, though. Because Dad is still alive here and was able to stick up for Mom and me? How do my esteemed grandparents fit into my life in this reality?
Too many questions I shouldn’t need to answer.
I scowl at Daphne. “I know you’re all a bunch of jerks. Get to the point.”
She clasps her hands in front of her in a gesture that’s almost pleading.
“You’re the only heir to the Devine estate.
Your sudden death would be… incredibly destabilizing.
Sharks sense blood in the water and come in for the kill, to use a disturbingly apt metaphor.
Things could go very badly for us… for Julien—for your father… ”
“And how does me being here temporarily change any of that?”
A faint smile returns to her face. “It would give me time to figure out how we can brace ourselves for the impact. How to break the news. And it would mean we could get justice, focus the story on how we triumphed in the midst of tragedy. Having you here is our best chance of identifying the murderer. You don’t want him—or her—to get away with it, do you? ”
She gestures to the mangled body of my doppelganger.
I keep my eyes averted. Even seeing the other Elodie’s corpse at the edge of my vision increases my queasiness.
“I guess not,” I say. “But how am I supposed to catch a killer? Do I look like Sherlock Holmes to you?”
One side of Daphne’s smile ticks higher. “No. But I’d imagine the murderer will believe they were successful. Seeing you walking around perfectly well could be enough of a shock for them to slip up and reveal themselves. Or they might make another attempt, and we’ll catch them at it.”
My scowl turns into a grimace. “You want to use me as bait.”
Daphne blinks innocently, as if she really hadn’t thought of it that way. “We’ll make sure you stay safe. We’ll proceed cautiously. Probably it won’t even come to that. All I need is a solid suspicion, and I can take it from there.”
“And then I can go home?”
“Yes.”
I look down at my hands and run my thumb over the spot where my four-pointed bond mark should be. My gut twists. “Why should I do any of this? I could stay right here and wait for you to power up again, without sticking my neck out.”
When I peek at Daphne again, that unexpectedly canny look has come back. She spreads her hands. “I don’t know if I’ll even have a chance to recover and gather the means to repeat the process if the family falls apart. But I suppose it’s up to you.”
Is there an unstated threat in her words? She could claim she’s not ready for weeks, months, even years if she doesn’t feel I’ve made the effort worth her while.
She’s not so different from the monsters who raised her after all.
I inhale and exhale slowly, weighing my options. A heavy ache expands in my chest until it’s hard to breathe at all.
I need to get back to my life, to my matches. They must be so bewildered after I vanished right in front of them.
This woman is my only chance. How stupid would I be not to play along at least a little?
“Are you sure people will buy into the ruse?” I ask. “You’ve already noticed I’ve had a pretty different life. I’m not going to know all the things this reality’s Elodie would know or act exactly the way she would.”
Daphne waves off my concern. “It’s Friday. You can take the weekend to adjust and study. Our Elodie wasn’t shy about her social life. I can talk you through anything you’re unsure about. And how could anyone suspect the truth?”
That’s a fair point. I’m still feeling on the edge of insane myself, and I’ve got my dead double lying right next to me.
I can at least try. If it goes horribly, all the more reason for Daphne to send me home ASAP.
A sudden, awful thought strikes me. Before I can catch myself, the question tumbles out. “Do I have an uncle here too? On my mom’s side?”
Daphne’s eyebrows draw together. “Not that I’m aware of. But we never got to know your extended maternal family. Julien said your mother was on her own.” Her voice softens. “She died here, a long time ago.”
The pang of grief doesn’t hit me as hard as it could have, because I already lost my mom in my reality a little over a year ago.
So things were almost the opposite here. I ended up with a single father rather than a single mother. Dad’s the one who raised me.
And Uncle Nik wouldn’t have had any reason to approach me, would he? Not if I hadn’t sparked with my matches and activated my deepest magic yet.
That one problem won’t be hanging over my head for now.
I must visibly relax, because Daphne stops looking like she’s afraid I’m going to burst into tears. She beckons to me. “Come on, then. I’ll show you your room, and you can get to know the other you.”