Chapter 4
Four
Elodie
Monday morning, I crawl out of the addictively soft bed and position myself on the hardwood floor at the edge of the rug. Push-ups, crunches, lunges, squats. Fists pummeling straight out and elbows jabbed backward.
In half an hour, I’ve completed the three sets of my usual workout sequence, and my heart is thumping twice as fast as it should be. I couldn’t push myself hard enough to outpace the anxiety twisting through my chest.
I fold my legs in front of me for the meditation I normally finish with. Settle the mind. Detach myself from the vices of my body. Let my consciousness float like a lotus flower on water, unaffected by the currents beneath.
Fat chance of that today.
I silently repeat the mantra I chose when I first took up these techniques, when I still hoped they might suppress my glim. I have all I need. I have all I need.
After several minutes of steady breaths, my pulse hasn’t stopped hitching. With a grimace, I push myself upright and head to the shower.
Deciding what to wear is easy enough. Luminary Academy has a required uniform for all ages from five to twenty-one.
To keep our minds on our studies, the staff say, but I’d bet it’s mostly to distinguish ourselves from the kids doing their magical education at Beacon Prep next door.
The kids whose families couldn’t afford a yearly set of branded clothing, let alone the Luminary tuition.
Other Elodie’s clothes fit me just fine, though my slimness is through necessity and hers was a fashion choice. I tuck the white polo shirt into the indigo-and-gold plaid skirt, rolling the waist up the way she and her friends always have theirs.
Her smug voice echoes up from the videos I’ve spent all weekend poring over. “Gotta show off those legs if you got ‘em, right, ladies?”
Excuse me while I hurl.
I consider the vest and sweater but decide the indigo blazer with its gold trim will be enough. It’s early April, the worst chill gone from the air.
I dab on the least amount of make-up I feel I can get away with while pretending to be Other Elodie. No one wants to see how I’d botch an attempt at her more elaborate styles.
The sight of my hair, trimmed from mid-back to a few inches below my shoulders and streaked with lighter brown highlights with Aunt Daphne’s help, makes me grimace. But it’s a necessary part of the disguise.
I pause over the drawer filled with neatly stacked pairs of gloves. I haven’t needed to wear them in years, and I’m not looking forward to having my tactile senses muffled.
But unless they’re throwing caution to the wind, every unmatched lucent keeps their hands covered in company until the graduation ball at the end of the last year of school. Our matches spark through skin-to-skin contact.
And that first burst of our glim flaring to life can have horrible consequences if your training hasn’t been thorough enough. Occasionally even if it has. Our innate magic hurtles into being at full force, not caring who’s in the way… even our own matches.
My throat constricts. I grab a white silk pair.
I didn’t mean to spark with my matches so early. In a family like the Devines, Other Elodie would never have considered it.
What would she have made of the mates fate chose for her?
She’s never going to get to find out. She’ll never know anything else.
It’s all on me to put her soul to rest.
Another wave of jitters passes through my nerves. Gritting my teeth, I stuff the gloves into the blazer’s pockets.
It’ll be fine. It’s not as if I haven’t gone into dangerous situations before. I’m a lying liar who lies—this is my forte.
Hell, if I was back in my own reality, I’d have been heading to the exact same place I am now.
Only I’d have been heading to the academy in a faded uniform bought used and not perfectly tailored to my figure, which I wouldn’t have minded because I’d also have had Byron and Salvatore at my side.
How distraught must all three of my matches be right now? What do they think happened to me?
How much longer will it be before I can tumble back into their arms and reassure them I’m okay?
I shove those thoughts aside as I’ve had to a thousand times already and draw my posture straight. When my gaze catches on the mirror, Mom’s murmured remark from so many years ago drifts up.
“Look at you. Hair like the mahogany they fill their houses with, skin like the gold they deck themselves out in. How could you not belong with those fancy folks, Elodie Ishani Devine?”
At home where no one could hear her, she called me by the name she and Dad gave me, the name that was on my birth certificate before my grandparents destroyed it. She never let me forget that I was born a Devine.
It didn’t make a difference to the harpies at school, of course. But this time, I have real gold backing me up. I don’t have to take anyone’s bullshit, if they’d even dare to try it with this Elodie.
Fuck them all.
The house chef has left out breakfast for me on the gleaming marble island that’s as big as our entire kitchen back in my apartment. A tingle of collected ephemera tells me the dishes are enchanted so the plate stays warm, the bowl and glass of juice cool.
Such luxury.
I perch on the suede-padded stool and gulp down equal parts of scrambled eggs, blueberry parfait, and guilt. Eating a meal that’s meant for spoiled rich-girl Elodie shouldn’t taste this good.
I even have to give the chef points for nutritional value. Maintaining my carefully balanced diet has only gotten easier since Daphne dragged me here.
The kitchen is well-stocked enough that I don’t think anyone will notice one small paring knife has vanished. I slip it into the pocket of my blazer.
I’m not going out to meet a horde of potential murderers without a little steel on me.
My aunt meets me in the front hall. She’s a lot less wobbly than she was Friday evening, but the sense of frenetic energy hasn’t left her. Her hands never lie still, always flicking and fluttering.
She tucks back a strand of my hair with a jerky movement as if she’s afraid I’ll bite her. “Whether you head straight home or want to spend some time after classes talking to people, you can come and go when you want. The security is keyed to your—Elodie’s—presence.”
Of course it is. I fit into my doppelganger’s physical space in this world as automatically as I unlocked her phone.
Too bad she’s my opposite in every way other than our genetics.
“Just take it easy and keep your eyes open,” Daphne goes on. “If you notice anything that seems at all unusual, text me right away.”
I nod. “And don’t get re-murdered. I know the plan.”
She winces at the comment but then manages to smile. “You’ll do great, Elodie. We’ll make sure this villain doesn’t walk free.”
I hurry out before she decides I should put on a superhero costume instead.
I’d imagine at least one of the cars in the house-sized garage belongs to Other Elodie, but arrival by chauffeur is a much better show of status. Daphne didn’t even ask my preference. A man in a suit is standing by the open passenger door to a sleek Lexus.
At least that makes my trek to school a little less stressful.
It isn’t a long trip. Luminary Academy was founded nearly a hundred and fifty years ago at the southern edge of the city’s most prestigious but still central neighborhood, because the magical elites wanted convenience as well as cachet.
Since then, most of that neighborhood has gradually been taken over by the top lucent families without the drab—ordinary human—citizens having a clue. There’s plenty of ephemera in the old homes and older landscapes to fuel all the illusions needed to hide our community’s unusual activities.
The academy itself—named I think because every headmaster and mistress has loved being able to call the students “our Luminous lucents”—sprawls across multiple imposing stone buildings and what should be four city blocks. My chauffeur drops me off at the edge of the main green.
Scrambling out, I grip the strap of my ridiculously expensive satchel.
From what I’ve seen, the students who make up Luminary Academy’s typical elite crowd meander around the sprawling lawn for a while gathering with their friends before deigning to enter the buildings for class.
I should probably do the same. It’ll be easier to let Other Elodie’s obnoxious partners-in-snobbery find her than for me to find them.
Thankfully, I was able to dig up her locker number and her class schedule. She’s mostly taking the same subjects I was, so I shouldn’t make a fool of myself navigating the actual educational part of my academy appearances.
I stroll across the grass with feigned nonchalance, tossing my hair in the clover-scented breeze. Despite the faint chill thanks to the clouded sky overhead, a bead of sweat trickles down my back.
Various familiar faces pass me, with nods and cautious smiles from people who’d never have bothered to acknowledge the real me.
It’s going to be fine. I have power here. I’m the heir to one of the most established and respected lucent families in the country. I—
My gaze halts on one especially familiar face, and the chatter around me fades into static.
Asher Raith is striding across the field at a steady but relaxed pace, exactly the way I saw him hundreds of times way back when.
The breeze ruffles his fawn-brown hair just like in our memorial photo, though the waves are a little longer and shaggier now.
His jaw has firmed and his shoulders broadened slightly.
But it’s him. It’s him, here, alive—
I roll over, and there he is. My best friend, the boy I’ve loved from almost the moment we met, sprawled on the asphalt just inches away. His arms lie askew by his sides. Blood streams from beneath his jacket to mingle with the puddles of rainwater.
It’s red, so red, and Asher’s skin is so pale I’m not sure he’s got any blood left.
This is what I did.
A sharp laugh behind me snaps me out of the remembered nightmare.