Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Elodie
Ihunch over the table, staring at the photograph. The woman in it is gazing at something off-camera with a warmth to her delicate face that I can feel just looking at her. The soft smile, the gentle cast of her eyes...
And she can’t be older than thirty.
My throat has gone dry. I swallow and then look up at Uncle Nik. “She’s the next target?”
He stares down the blunt jut of his nose at me. “You know you can’t judge based on appearances. That woman wouldn’t spare a moment’s thought before hurting you. She’s giving no consideration to the thousands her actions are going to harm.”
I’ve always taken Nik at his word. But my targets before now have all looked the part in some way—a cruel set to their mouth, a haughty tilt of their chin.
I don’t know why my uncle would lie. It’s hard to imagine he and whoever he works with would go to this much trouble over a target who isn’t a major threat. But for the first time since my earliest assignment, my body balks.
Nik reads my hesitation without my saying another word. He sits down at the table across from me. The stark light overhead casts the angles of his face into a sharper contrast of highlights and shadows.
He speaks ever so gently. “Elodie, you know what’s at stake here. Both for human society and for you personally. We need your glim in our service. If you can’t do this for us, I’ll have to inform your mother and your matches of all the things I’ve kept hidden as a courtesy.”
My throat squeezes shut. Mom, puttering around the house with shaky steps as the disease gripping her body charges along its awful course. My matches, waiting in our apartment to enfold me in tenderness and affection.
Sometimes I think it’d be better if I got caught on one of these missions, gunned down by a bodyguard or falling from one of my high perches to snap my neck.
There’d be no reason for Uncle Nik or his colleagues to reveal anything then. It wouldn’t be leverage anymore.
The people I love could move on with their lives without my betrayals slashed into their souls.
If they knew what my glim really is... If they knew all the carnage I’ve wreaked with it...
My stomach lurches. I tense my shoulders and meet Nik’s eyes. “Give me the rest of the details.”
The subtle smile that used to reassure me creeps across his face. Now it sends a shiver through my nerves. He reaches over to turn the page in the file folder—
And I jerk awake with my hands clutched around the sheets.
The transition from nightmare to reality has become familiar enough that it only takes seconds for my racing pulse to even out.
A twinge of nausea remains in my stomach, but I’m not sure how much that’s because of the dream and how much it’s the increasingly heavy knowledge of the eons I’ve been away from the men I love, who I tried so hard to protect from the worst parts of me.
My matches must be getting more panicked by the day.
I push myself off the bed, throw myself into my exercise routine, and rinse off the sweat in the shower. By the time I emerge, hair damp and skin tingling from the heat of the water, my mind is honed with determination.
I’ve made progress. All I have to do is build on that all the way to the end of this road, wherever the fuck it leads.
Perching on the island in the middle of the walk-in closet, I dig out Other Elodie’s secret tablet and flick through her notes again.
DVB comes up nine times in total in the seven months since she started recording dates.
Based on the timing Josie Moore mentioned, I’m guessing the note in early March was her brother.
There’ve been two more since then, one in late March and another in early April, just days before her murder. Has this “extra training” Beacon Prep is arranging been taking more and more students, or is it just that my double started monitoring the situation more closely?
Do those students have anything in common?
Did she gift all of their families a piece of jewelry or some other valuable? Her rich girl idea of help.
Grimacing, I switch to her journal entries and skim through those. I already know she doesn’t overtly mention Beacon Prep there, and I can’t see anything that appears to even hint at her concerns about the school.
I pause over a few lines that didn’t jump out at me before. Do they really buy into this idea of being elevated? It sounds like so much bullshit to me. But then, these are people who think it’s all good doing business out of the back of a club.
A club—The Eclipse? I hadn’t noticed anything specifically business-y happening there, front or back, but from the paragraph before that note, it sounds like she was referring to her upper-crust lucent peers.
I suck my lower lip under my teeth to worry at it. The thought of going back to The Eclipse makes my chest constrict.
Chances are the management has figured out by now that Chuck has ghosted them. Even on the slim chance they haven’t, Byron was there last Saturday, which might be a regular thing for him.
If he catches me there again, he was very clear that I wouldn’t be getting out unscathed.
No, better to focus on the lead I actually understand.
Josie didn’t sell the necklace because she’s operating with typical teenage idiocy. The package was probably meant for her parents to find.
If I were a lower-class lucent, which I actually am, with a valuable of unknown origin to cautiously hock, where would I go?
Definitely a drab pawn shop, not any establishment associated with the lucent community. Outside of the main lucent neighborhoods too, but probably not too far out, since I wouldn’t want to take all day with the excursion.
That should narrow the options down quite a bit.
A couple of hours later, I’m ducking into the third on my list of possible pawn shops. Even in jeans and a T-shirt, I feel a little self-conscious—given the labels, the simple outfit probably cost a few hundred bucks—but so far no one’s given me any odd looks.
I meander between the shelves of trinkets and supposed antiques before arriving at the jewelry display case. My gaze slides over the contents, taking in an array of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces I can’t imagine Other Elodie ever wearing, just like in the first two shops.
My roving eyes halt with a leap of my pulse. In a prominent position in the top left corner, there’s a pair of diamond earrings more elegant than anything else in the case. I don’t recognize them specifically, but I’ve seen several similar pieces in my doppelganger’s collection.
They could have been hers.
A balding man with buck teeth that give him a rodent-y vibe comes up on the other side of the case. “See anything you like?”
I furrow my forehead, sweeping my gaze over the entire case again. “Do you, like, do some kind of background check on people or something? To make sure they’re not selling you anything stolen?”
The guy must get asked that enough that he chuckles at the question rather than getting offended. “I keep a record of ID in case I need to pursue something. Don’t worry about it; we’re both covered. What can I get you to try on?”
What I’d really like to get my hands on is his records. He isn’t going to hand them over willingly, though.
I had time on the ride over to consider how I’d proceed if I found a piece I wanted to look into. I motion vaguely at the case. “I saw an aquamarine ring the last time I was in here... Like a princess cut in white gold. Did that get sold, or maybe it’s just in the back or something?”
The man frowns. “I don’t remember seeing that. Let me check for you.”
As I hoped, he moves to the laptop computer set up behind the cash register. I wait until he’s definitely logged in, tapping away on the keyboard, and then I focus on the ephemera I can sense embedded all through the building and every abandoned object in it.
With a brief push of magic, a crash sounds from the back room.
The man flinches and spins around. “What—? I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back.”
He dashes through a doorway without looking back.
Not wasting a second, I lean over the counter to yank the laptop around. An inventory app is already open with a partial search entered.
I search for “diamond earrings” instead. Multiple entries come up, but only one isn’t marked as sold.
They came in earlier this month. Just two days after the last entry in Other Elodie’s log.
Jackpot.
I click on the file to bring up more information. There’s a note about the seller’s reason for parting with the earrings and, even better, a photo of his driver’s license.
I snap a pic of it with my phone and hastily return the search to its previous state. I’ve just slid the laptop into its spot beyond the cash register when footsteps come thumping back.
The rodent-y guy emerges a moment later, pasting his professional if smarmy smile into place when he sees me. “Sorry again. Where were we...?”
He finishes the search and shakes his head. “It doesn’t look as if we’ve had any rings with aquamarine and white gold in the past year—definitely nothing still in stock.”
I let my face fall. “Oh. Maybe I saw it somewhere else and got mixed up.”
“If there’s anything else I can interest you in...”
I make an apologetic gesture. “I might be back, though, if I can’t find it!”
“You’ll be more than welcome.”
I step out into the damp spring air and shoot a glower at the overcast sky as if I can intimidate the gathering rain into staying in the clouds a few hours longer. A glance at my phone shows that the next shop I wanted to investigate is a twenty-minute walk away.
Better get moving.
As my sneakers rap out a brisk rhythm on the sidewalk, I consider what I’ve found so far. I can’t be completely sure the earrings were Other Elodie’s—the similar style could be a coincidence.
Maybe I can sneak into Beacon Prep on Monday and take a look at their student records for someone with the same last name as the person who brought them in? Would the office have notes about this extra training too?