Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Elodie
When Maurice pulls up in front of the house, there’s a glossy silver SUV I don’t recognize outside the garage. As I step out onto the limestone-tiled front walk, apprehension prickles over my skin.
I slip inside to a murmur of conversation carrying from deeper within the house. At the soft thud of the door closing, Aunt Daphne pokes her head into the hall.
She scurries over with a stiff smile pasted on her face. Her hair looks tamer than I’ve ever seen it before, twisted into two tight loops that overlap at the back of her neck, but the nervous twitch of her gaze sets me on edge.
She touches my elbow to nudge me toward the stairs. “Your grandparents are here for dinner. You’d better get out of your uniform and come say hello. Wear something nice.”
As if Other Elodie has anything in her closet I wouldn’t consider “nice.”
My pulse hiccups at her announcement. I want to demand to know why no one warned me I’d be dealing with the extended family today, but from the suppressed panic in Daphne’s tone, it was a surprise to her too.
A robust laugh peals from the direction of the family room. A clammy sensation squeezes around my gut.
I nod my agreement with a jerk of my head and hustle up the stairs to my room.
As I paw through the innumerable offerings in the closet, the tightness spreads up through my chest like a kappa has wrestled me underwater.
I’ve never met my father’s trio of parents before. After his death, when Mom brought me back to the city where he grew up, the grandparents Devine refused to see me.
They erased me from his life as thoroughly as if they’d created their own director’s cut of reality. They threatened Mom that if she ever made another peep about having been involved with Dad, they’d have her arrested and me tossed into the dorms next to Beacon Prep for the rest of my childhood.
She must have had some small bit of leverage, because I suspect they could have banned me from attending Luminary if they’d put in a word with the headmaster—and that they’d have wanted to, to avoid scrutiny if nothing else.
Or maybe they thought my supposedly inferior bloodline would mean I flunked out soon enough anyway.
She didn’t like to talk about them much, for understandable reasons.
How did they treat Other Elodie in this world?
She had Dad here to speak up for her and no mother of questionable origins present to sully their precious image, at least in recent years.
But my double was still the daughter of a lucent with no established family history, no political ties—nothing that would have made her a “suitable” partner for their son.
As proven by the wedding necklace tucked away in the bottom of the jewelry drawers.
The thought of that one piece of my mother makes me pause. Resolve sprouts up through the chill of my discomfort, steady and deep-rooted.
Today, they aren’t dealing with the Elodie who cared just as much about appearances.
The Elodie who kept quiet about all the resentments she poured into her hidden journal, who’d have played the role of devoted granddaughter just like she conspired with her vapid friends and climbed the academy’s ranks.
I don’t owe them anything. Why should I pretend I do?
What are they going to do to me that’s any worse than what’s already happened?
I told Daphne I’d search for her niece’s murderer, not that I’d play nice with everyone in my double’s life.
The decision smooths the jitters from my nerves. I sort through Other Elodie’s clothes until I find a dress that seems suitable: crimson but in a modest enough style, with a shallow V-neck and a flared skirt that falls to my knees.
I shimmy into that and then retrieve Mom’s necklace from its hiding place.
As I fasten the clasp at the nape of my neck, a ribbon of grief wraps around my heart. I swallow thickly.
I never wore this piece in my own reality. It felt like something sacred, an artifact meant to be honored rather than a fashion statement.
But the statement I intend to make today has nothing to do with fashion.
Even with my limited fashion knowledge, I can tell the necklace is too fancy for the dress and not quite the right shape. Part of the gold filigree with its tiny rubies and pearls falls under the neckline.
It doesn’t look out of place enough to be outright jarring, though. And if I pick a more elaborate dress, that’ll be even odder for a family meal.
I drag a breath deep into my lungs. My curiosity is itching at me to consult my doppelganger’s secret tablet, to see if my observations at Beacon will untangle any of her notes, but I won’t be able to concentrate right now with the earliest villains of my existence waiting downstairs.
Girding myself, I head down.
I slow as I come up on the family room, taking in each voice and then peeking into the room to get my first glimpse of the three people who ruined my real life.
My grandfather must have been the one I heard laugh earlier.
He’s built like a linebacker, tall and broad in his tailored suit.
His square-jawed face is like a sculpture the artist didn’t finish refining, blockish features and harsh edges, topped with mottled white-and-gray hair that has a marble sheen.
He wields his deep voice like a mace, forceful but precise.
Dad never explained his own glim to me in detail before I lost him, but he told me about his parents’. His father’s innate power is knowing which course of action will be the most lucrative. It’s easy to imagine this man making decisions out of cold materialism.
Smiling coyly at his right side is one of my grandmothers, her silver hair curled into a side bun above one slender shoulder. Her laugh is a tinkling sound, but her occasional remarks come out clear and pointed.
She’s something of an artist. Apparently her glim allows her to create sculptures based on other people’s memories—for a high price, naturally.
My second grandmother stands at his left, statuesque but still elegant, her dark eyes glittering as she follows the conversation. I haven’t heard her speak yet, but she raises her wine glass to her thin lips with the air of someone who could say plenty but simply doesn’t think it worth bothering.
Her inherent magic can reveal how to fix any mechanical object, assuming it is fixable.
Dad told me a story of her standing over an appliance repairman dictating his actions…
because of course she wouldn’t consider getting her own hands dirty.
The lucent government’s engineers probably still call on her from time to time.
All three of them exude utter, arrogant confidence, as if they own any space they step into. They probably expect pyramids built in their honor on their deaths.
Imposing Grandma is the first to notice my arrival. She glances toward my dad, who’s standing closest to the doorway, and her gaze catches on me.
The corners of her lips curve ever so slightly upward. “Ah, there’s the girl. Come on in, Elodie. Skulking isn’t a good look. And what have you done with your hair?”
As I step inside, I instinctively tug at a stray strand. I forgot that they hadn’t seen the purple dye yet. “Just trying something new.”
Grandpa snorts. “That’s the younger generation for you. At least it’ll grow out.”
Deciding not to dignify that remark with a response, I come to a stop next to Dad.
He’s the only person in the room who’s never done anything horrible to me—I’m including Aunt Daphne and her inflicting of involuntary cross-dimensional travel in my assessment—and this position will give our guests a clear view of my full “look.”
Since Imposing Grandma was already watching me, her eyes tick first from my hair to my collarbone. But it’s Coy Grandma who makes the first comment. “That’s also an… interesting necklace, dear. I don’t remember seeing you wear it before.”
I force an airy laugh. “I found it buried under a bunch of other things. It seemed like time to give it a turn.”
I think Daphne recognizes the piece or at least suspects its origin. Her smile has gone even stiffer than before. She stares at me as if willing me to notice her concern, but I purposefully don’t look directly at her.
Grandpa Devine is blunter in his disapproval. “Where on earth did you get that bauble? You don’t normally wear anything that gaudy.”
My temper flickers to life. But before I have to say anything, Dad replies in a measured but firm tone. “It was her mother’s.”
I tuck my clenched fingers behind my back, feeling abruptly wobbly. Of course he would recognize it, but I didn’t expect him to comment on it so easily. Not in front of the parents who wish his match and wife never existed.
Maybe my grandparents weren’t quite so hard on Mom in this reality? Maybe they got to know her better, softened a little?
As nice as that dream might be, I’m not surprised when Coy Grandma proves just how much of a dream it is just a moment later. “Better to leave the past in the past, perhaps. You’ve come such a long way since then, Ellie.”
Such a long way from where, in her mind? From being my mother’s daughter as well as her son’s?
I touch the cool metal lying against my clavicle and will down the worst of my anger with my mantra. I have all I need. I have all I need.
These puffed-up assholes don’t get the satisfaction of rattling me.
Through sheer force of will, I recover my smile. “She was a major part of my life too. She deserves to be honored now and then.”
A tendon in Grandpa Devine’s jaw flexes. “Six years with her but twenty altogether as a Devine. Let’s give us most of the credit.”
Six years with her… Other Elodie’s mom died when I was the same age as when Dad died in my reality? Daphne told me it happened a long time ago, but I didn’t realize the timing lined up so closely.
All at once I want to ask when and how exactly she passed, but I’m supposed to already know.