Chapter 2 #2
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.”