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 surehow 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.
Ifhecatches 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 nottoofar 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.
Theycouldhave been hers.
