Chapter 6
Six
Elodie
“Oh my god, this place makes the best mochas ever.” Mia cradles her coffee cup between her petite hands like it’s made of delicate crystal. “I wish I could just live here.”
Cadance looks around the interior of the café—fancy by my usual standards with granite countertops, stainless steel equipment polished to a shine, and chairs padded with genuine leather around the cherrywood tables—and wrinkles her nose with Poodle-esque disdain.
“Where would you fit your shoe collection? Anyway, you’d smell like coffee all the time. ”
Stella laughs as she tucks a stray strand of auburn hair back into her braid. “Maybe we should just relocate the shop onto our street so we can send the butler out for a cup whenever we want one.”
Does her family seriously have a butler? I don’t think Dad does. But then, my grandparents Devine probably do.
I push my mouth into a smile and echo her laugh. “I’d go for that. Seems like Mia could keep them in business all on her own.”
My cheeks are starting to ache from all the smiles I’ve been faking. A deeper ache has condensed in my chest, winding through my lungs.
I carried out plenty of covert missions in my old life… but I spent most of that time alone, out of sight. If I needed to con or cajole someone into getting access, it was a brief conversation. I haven’t had practice at this kind of extended play-acting.
It hasn’t even been a whole day yet, and I’m already finding the lies exhausting.
Or maybe it’s just that these people are exhausting. I’m about ready to off Other Elodie’s BFFs. Maybe not directly, but if I could lead them to a convenient kelpie-infested bog or drop them in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, I’d seriously consider it.
I inhale the coffee-scented air—which I happen to enjoy, thank you very much—and let the rich aroma and the tinkling of classical music wash away some of my discomfort. I still have a mission to see through if I want to get out of this nightmare.
And if I’m also keeping one eye on my best escape route out the back hall to my right, can anyone blame me?
“We should hang out here more often,” I say, taking a stab in the dark. “How many better things are there to do after we’re out of class?”
Please, fill me in on all the incredibly exciting activities Other Elodie was getting up to.
Madison gives a terrier-style huff and a shake of her platinum bob. “You should tell us. You’re the one who kept ditching us last month.”
“That’s right,” Mia puts in with a burst of hyper Yorkie energy. “I know you have that recital coming up, but how many violin lessons can a person need? You lost the top spot in the ranks!”
Stella waves off their criticism. “Oh, Elle will leap back over Byron in no time. She always does.”
I ignore the nickname that grates even more than Aunt Daphne’s “Ellie.” So Other Elodie was ranked number one in our year last month? And it sounds like she was going back and forth over that spot with Byron somewhat regularly.
I hope I don’t need to perform this violin recital before Daphne sends me home. I haven’t been taking any lessons.
Cadance kicks me under the table, supposedly playful but hard enough to leave a brief sting in my shin. “You’ve been distracted even when you’re with us, Elle. Please tell me there’s something more going on than music tutoring. Maybe your violin teacher is super hot?” She arches her eyebrows.
I scoff at the idea. “There’s no point in doing something if you can’t do it well. But hey, we had a good time on Friday, didn’t we?”
I have no idea what if anything Other Elodie did with her friends on the day she died. She hadn’t texted with them since that morning, asking the twins to grab coffees for everyone to take to class. Apparently Madison and Mia are the gofers of the group, which only adds to their terrier vibe.
These girls have to know something about where she might have been going that night and why, don’t they?
Cadance winds one of her honey-blond ringlets around her finger. “I guess. You didn’t stick around for long before you and Stella had to run to the special practicum session.”
A special session—the professors run those for the top-ranked students once a month, offering hands-on experience out in the community in our assumed core magical type. Stella’s currently ranked five in our year, so it makes sense she’d have been there.
Byron would have been too. Maybe Salvatore as well, for the sake of not offending him or his brutal relatives, even though it’s generally assumed his glim will take a different form from ours.
Not that it seems likely Other Elodie would have spilled any of her extracurricular plans to the two of them. But they might have seen something.
Stella rolls her shoulders. “It wasn’t a bad session, but they get kind of repetitive after a while, you know?” She cocks her head to one side, studying me. “Where did you head off to afterward? I thought you were getting picked up, but I saw you walking in the opposite direction.”
Don’t I wish I had the answer to that question.
I make a breezy gesture with my hand. It’s hard to make up a story when I don’t even know where the practicum was, but I think they’re usually within the lucent neighborhoods. “Oh, my dad wanted me to grab something from a friend of his who lives nearby. I got picked up there.”
Stella considers me for a moment longer, those Irish Setter eyes gone pensive. Did my explanation sound off?
Before she can question me further, a couple of younger Luminary students push into the café, still in their uniforms.
Cadance’s eyes narrow at the totems hanging from their school bags: clear crystal spheres with a flare of yellow dye inside them. “Wonderful. The radiators are descending on this place.”
Stella shrugs. “Aw, it won’t matter unless they try to turn it into one of their temples.”
We all eye the two teens heading to the order counter. Other than the totems, they look totally normal to me, but it’s not their looks that would set them apart.
The general theory in lucent society is that once upon a time, powerful supernatural beings existed on Earth. The kinds of figures various cultures have called nature spirits or fae or even gods.
We call them radiants. Supposedly they intermingled with humans in a bumping uglies sort of way here and there, gifting humanity with a little of their magic, and we lucents are the result of those encounters somewhere back in our family trees.
The thing is, no one’s encountered a radiant in an awfully long time. The most recent records of them are old and sketchy enough that it’s hard to know how much is true. The consensus has been that they disappeared completely at least a couple hundred years ago for reasons unknown.
For some people, that’s not good enough.
There’s a small but very loud group of lucents who call themselves “the Faithful,” who insist the radiants really were gods and that they simply ascended to a higher plane of existence from which they’re guiding or judging us or possibly both, depending on who you talk to.
The Faithful perform ceremonies and carry totems and so on in the hopes of gaining better guidance and/or avoiding worse judgment.
The rest of us think they’re bonkers. Which is how alternate labels like “radiators” get coined.
These two Faithful don’t do any preaching. They just grab their cups and go. Their gazes slide over us as they pass, possibly recognizing us from campus, but I don’t notice so much as a twitch when they see me.
I haven’t caught a single person having an odd reaction to the fact that Elodie Devine is still alive and well. Either her murderer has nothing to do with Luminary Academy, or they could win a world record for poker face-ing.
The fact that I’ve spent a whole day faking my ass off without making progress deflates what spirits I had left.
I drain the last of my americano and lift my satchel. “I’d better get going. Still have to finish that politics essay.”
Luminary Academy might focus on the magical arts, but the lucent leaders don’t want the next generation going into the world unprepared for more mundane considerations.
“Spoilsport,” Cadance says as the others get up, and I imagine feeding her to a manticore.
The truth is that Other Elodie finished the politics essay before she kicked the bucket, even though it’s not due until Wednesday. I found it on her laptop. I guess it makes sense she did hit the books sometimes if she wanted to keep that number one—or two—rank.
After I get over the weirdness of calling a personal chauffeur to pick me up, I walk through the grand house that still doesn’t feel as if it belongs to me, kick off my shoes, and flop onto the bed just reveling in the fact that I’m alone for the first time since I left the bedroom this morning.
The things I learned from my doppelganger’s friends keep niggling at me, though.
After a few minutes, I regretfully shove myself off the cozy expanse and go looking for any info about this violin recital.
Even if the performance itself isn’t too close, I might need to come up with an imaginary illness that gets me out of lessons.
I can’t find any mention of music tutoring in Other Elodie’s agenda. I can’t even find the violin itself.
Finally, I stumble on the case tucked next to one of the shoe racks in the walk-in closet. When I wipe my finger across the top, it smears the thin layer of dust that’s settled there.
Interesting. Other Elodie hasn’t touched this thing in months. What was she doing when she told her friends she was practicing?
A chime sounds with the opening of the front door downstairs. Aunt Daphne’s voice filters up from the front hall. “Julien! How was the trip?”
My pulse leaps. Dad’s home.
I’m going to see him for the first time in fourteen years.
But I’m not the daughter he’s expecting to see. There’s no fucking way he’d have wanted his daughter to turn out the way I have.
I swallow hard and push to my feet. He doesn’t know who I really am, where I came from, or what I’ve done there.
He won’t know that, just like Dad back in my reality never had to. I’ll make sure of it.
I walk downstairs with a careful smile plastered on my face, telling myself I’m going to be warm but casual. He goes on these business trips all the time, Daphne said. Other Elodie wouldn’t make a big deal of it.
I come around the bend in the staircase, and that older version of the man from my memories gazes up at me. He sets down his briefcase, his green eyes lighting up like sea glass caught in the sun.
That’s my dad. He’s really here.
He smiles just the same as he always did. “Hey, Sunshine. How’s my girl?”
Tears flood my eyes so fast I can’t suppress them. All I can do is hold my smile on my face and hurry down the rest of the steps so I can walk into the arms he’s extended before he notices my weepiness.
Dad’s hug wraps around me. He still wears the same cologne, sharp and cedary, like a smack of the past filling my nose.
Is it awful for me to enjoy this moment while it lasts, even if it’s not really mine?
I tip my head against his shoulder, blinking hard and carefully not squeezing him too tight. By some miracle, I keep my voice steady. “Pretty good. I’m glad you’re home.”
Don’t ever, ever go away again, I want to tell him.
But I’m the one who’ll be going away soon, leaving me parentless again and him with no daughter at all.