Chapter 13
Thirteen
Elodie
Ipeer across the street at the first building in Other Elodie’s secret photos that I’ve been able to identify, thanks to reverse image search and the fraction of a sign visible at one angle. At first glance, it seems likely to give me more questions than answers.
It’s hard to imagine Other Elodie caught alive or dead at this dingy strip mall. It sits almost perfectly at the border where the increasingly scattered lucent presence—as poorer and poorer families take whatever homes they can get—gives way to purely drab neighborhoods.
Not that the drab residents can tell the difference.
They wander blithely in and out of the diner with its MS Paint menu plastered to the window, the discount shoe shop, the off-off-brand clothing store that looks like it’d time-traveled from the eighties, and the laundromat that might make clothes dirtier rather than cleaner.
Not one shoots a glance toward the magical drug deals happening around the corner.
To be fair, it takes me about a half hour to pick up on the drug dealing myself. The guy standing by the corner of the laundromat at the end of the strip taps at his phone and periodically gazes around the parking lot as if he’s waiting for a friend. Nothing so strange about that.
What is strange is that when I meandered along the strip to take a closer look at the offerings, I picked up on a tickle of concentrated ephemera around him.
He’s wrapped in some kind of spell.
It doesn’t affect me, because he doesn’t want to repel fellow lucents who might be his customers.
But I notice that whenever any of the drab pedestrians amble close to him, they veer away across the parking lot rather than making it all the way to the corner.
No one parks their car around that side of the strip.
Subtle, but obvious if you know what magic looks like.
I can’t say I have any direct experience with the drug trade, magical or otherwise, but the dealer isn’t subtle about his actual business since he must assume no lucents other than his customers are likely to be hanging around here.
While I watch him in surreptitious peeks over my own phone, a couple of people approach, hand over a ball of cash in exchange for a white plastic box that fits in their palm, and immediately walk away.
The second customer I follow at a discreet distance. Once she’s a few blocks away, she pops something from the box into her mouth. A dreamy smile spreads across her face.
I return to the strip mall with an unsettled squirm of my gut, but nothing about the place seems to fit with the notes I copied over from the secret tablet to Other Elodie’s phone.
None of the business names match the possible initials, and none of the phrases in her personal shorthand seem to relate to them either.
I have no idea why my doppelganger took an interest in this place. From things my Salvatore told me, I know there are posher venues for the lucent upper class to satisfy their… habits.
Did she come all the way out here because she was afraid of getting caught otherwise? Snap pics as some kind of insurance?
Or maybe, if she stepped up to dealing too, she was scoping out competition?
The dealer hasn’t spared me more than a fleeting glance. I don’t think he recognizes me.
So either she was really sneaky about any drug-related activities here, or his presence could simply be a coincidence and she was interested in something else about this spot that I can’t identify.
After watching a while longer, I turn and walk toward home. It’s quite a hike from here, but I’m too restless to call for a ride just yet. Maybe the exercise will jumpstart something in my brain.
As I pass the low-rise apartments and dingy office buildings, the names on the street signs start to tug at my memory.
In my reality, Asher and Cole’s house wasn’t far from here.
My steps slow with conflicted reluctance.
I’m supposed to be avoiding the men who’d have been Other Elodie’s matches. Being around them only rattles me when I need to stay focused.
But maybe in this one case, I’ll be able to concentrate better if I can see more of the life Asher is still living. The life my Asher never got, because I killed him.
A reminder of how much better off he’s been here, without this version of me.
Swallowing hard, I take one turn and then another, weaving through the streets.
There’s the sidewalk café where we sometimes grabbed a coffee and croissant when we were feeling extravagant. There’s the shabby Victorian converted into a temple for the Holy Radiance worshippers, with the saccharine scent of the radiators’ incense wafting from behind the gold-sheened curtains.
As I get closer to my destination, I reach out to the ephemera collected in the pavement beneath my feet, the rusting wrought-iron fences, the straggly trees shading the even stragglier lawns, and the flowers blooming in patchy gardens.
My work with Uncle Nik gave me a lot of practice with certain kinds of illusionary spells that I never told Byron or my other matches about.
I shape the energy I’ve drawn toward me into a sort of veil around my body. The next time I pass someone, their gaze slides right through me.
It’s a mix of camouflage and misdirection, blending me into my surroundings and diverting attention simultaneously. I’ve slipped past armed guards and protective details with this particular technique.
As I cross the street to Asher’s block, a whiff of a more delicate fragrance reaches my nose. My pulse hiccups.
I look at an all-too-familiar Sakura tree, its boughs dangling pink buds that are just starting to unfurl into pale flowers. A spot of beauty amid a lot of dreariness.
I think that’s why Asher always stopped me here when we’d walk together.
He halts and runs his hand through his hair, turning the fawn-brown waves even more rumpled. His usual warm smile goes slightly crooked. “Well, I’d better get home.”
I smile back at him to show I’m not offended. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
We’ve done this dance so often. I don’t know why it’s bothering Asher more than usual today.
His mouth twists tighter. Instead of the usual goodbye, he blurts out, “I will invite you over sometime. Soon. It’s not that I wouldn’t want you at my house.”
He’s been over at my and Mom’s apartment dozens of times. Just this weekend she told him how nice it was having him around. Maybe that’s what’s gotten to him.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, meaning it. “I know your brother isn’t all that keen on me, and it’s kind of weird when he’s my professor—it’s no big deal.”
“It is. He hardly knows you, Lo. He shouldn’t make it weird.”
The biggest problem isn’t the professor part, and we both know that.
I try to turn it into a joke. “He’s still holding out for you to make friends with the better quality of classmates you’ve got access to now.”
Asher grimaces at my light tone. “Don’t talk like that. You are absolutely the best quality friend there is.”
I can’t restrain a snort. “But, I mean, you could be rubbing shoulders with the Ridleys or the Hearsts or—”
“Elodie.” Asher grabs my hand and squeezes so tight I’d swear the heat of his fingers seeps right through both our gloves to send a flush over my skin.
I shut up, staring at him. He grasps my other hand as if to hold me in place while he faces me, his expression as intense as I’ve ever seen it. My heart skips a beat.
I’ve never heard his voice so vehement either.
“If it wasn’t for you, I’d have no friends at all at Luminary.
I couldn’t handle being friends with most of them even if they wanted to.
You’re the only person who makes going there bearable—good.
You’re what I look forward to every day I walk out of that house.
If Cole doesn’t get it, it only means he’s an idiot. It’s nothing to do with you.”
I smile at him brighter than before, buoyed by a glow of affection that seems to light up my whole body. “You’re the best part of my day too.”
The creak of a gate drifting in the breeze yanks me back to the present. A lump clogs my throat.
I swipe at my eyes and push myself forward, away from the ghosts no priest can exorcise.
Halfway down the block, I draw to another stop. As I take in the two-story semi-detached in front of me, my pulse thumps harder against my ribs.
I never did venture inside those faded brick walls. I had Asher’s address, and a few times I surreptitiously walked by out of curiosity when I knew they weren’t home, but this is as close as I ever got in my reality.
I won’t be inviting myself over today either. Instead of climbing the steps to the sagging porch, I slink around the side of the house until I catch movement through a window near the back.
A prickle jabs through my palm. I freeze, staring through the pane, feeling like a stalker… which is totally appropriate because that’s absolutely what I’m doing. My awareness of that fact isn’t enough to get me to leave, though.
Asher is just sitting down at a small kitchen table across from Cole—Professor Raith, I remind myself to call him, but it’s even harder to think of him that way outside of the academy. They’re having dinner.
My gaze clings to the boy who was my best friend in another world.
When he tips his head to take a bite from a folded tortilla, his hair drifts forward.
My fingers itch to brush it back from his face.
He smiles at something his brother says—that earnest but slightly anxious smile I remember so well from whenever we were in Divination class.
He defied Cole in plenty of ways, not least of which being his friendship with me, but he never stopped wanting to make his brother proud.
I can’t make out their voices, but Cole frowns in a typically grim way, and Asher rolls his eyes. When Asher turns his attention back to his food, Cole’s expression softens as I’ve only seen it do for his brother—and very occasionally, in the past couple of years, for me.
The comfortable familiarity in their stances, in the way they respond to each other, closes a vise around my heart.
They’ve had dinners like this and conversations like that thousands of times.
Even when their opinions chafe, they know they’ll be there for each other. Just the two of them against the world.
This is what I stole from both of them. This is why my Cole probably shouldn’t ever forgive me.
He doesn’t know just how much it was my fault.
The clamping sensation presses around my lungs until it hurts to breathe. I drag myself away from the window, down the street, around a corner and then another, before I decide it’s safe to drop the illusion and finally summon a ride home.
I walk into Other Elodie’s mansion to the smell of filet mignon and garlic mashed potatoes. Aunt Daphne exclaims in delight. “You’re just in time for dinner. Wouldn’t have wanted yours to get cold.”
Dad is already sitting in the dining room, but he waits to dig in until I’m sitting in front of my plate.
“Having more adventures with the girls?” he asks with amusement. With no idea at all what I’ve actually been doing or what might have brought his real daughter out into the city’s wilds before.
I force myself to laugh and to pretend I belong here at this big, polished table like Asher and Cole did at their much more modest one. “Gotta keep busy. Anything interesting at work today?”
If he’s talking about himself, then I don’t have to keep lying.
“We’re negotiating a new deal that’ll give us better access to some of the most affected international cities if it works out.
I think I’ve gotten the important figures on board.
” Dad pauses and gives me a somber look with a bite of steak poised in mid-air.
“The number of void encounters has increased again this quarter, all across the world. I have colleagues still working on determining why, but—you’ll keep being careful, won’t you? ”
There’s so much concern in his gaze that I want to shrivel under it. I’m not the daughter he’d want to protect.
That girl is already dead.
My voice comes out softer than I mean it to. “Yeah, Dad. Of course.”
Aunt Daphne breaks in with a wave of her fork through the air, as if in a hasty attempt to save me.
“She’s got nothing to worry about with all that Luminary training!
Oh, you have one of the Blossom and Bounty joint parties coming up this weekend, don’t you?
We should go shopping and find the perfect dress after school tomorrow. ”
As if I don’t have a million dresses already packed into my massive closet upstairs. But Dad brightens at the comment as if there’s nothing that’d make him happier than me spending more of his money, and all I can do is smile back like it’s the highlight of my week too.
What is he going to do when he finally finds out how much me and his real daughter have been hiding?