Could she have gotten wrapped up in some other kind of criminal activity? If it was anything related to the lucent mafias, Salvatore would probably have hinted at it, but there’s plenty of smaller scale magical misdoings. Petty theft, minor extortion rackets…
What would be the point, though? It’s not like Other Elodie needed money.
Another possibility: she struck up an illicit relationship she knew her friends and family wouldn’t approve of. Someone from the wrong side of the tracks? Or someone powerful but off-limits… and she decided to stalk them and their associates?
So many possibilities that could have led to her murder.
It’s possible no one knows the truth but the dead woman who was lying mangled in Aunt Daphne’s workroom four nights ago.
I flick at the screen to look at the main list of Notes files. There’s only one other, with a preview that’s written in actual words but no less confusing to see than the first.
How can I keep smiling along when I know everything around me is a bunch of garbage? All I’ve done?—
Staring, I tap through to the full note.
How can I keep smiling along when I know everything around me is a bunch of garbage? All I’ve done is listen to my family and be the Devine heir they want me to be. We have so much and I’ve never lifted a finger for any of it.
Mom would have hated this. I hate that I can hardly remember her anymore. Her face, her voice…
Why did Dad let them take all the pictures of her out of the house? It’s HIS fucking house. Our house.
Would it really do any good to burn it all down, though? Where would I go? What would I do?
This is how you play the game. This is how you get ahead. When you’ve got enough of a lead, you can start doing your own thing without anyone tripping you up.
Unless we don’t even know who’s in front of us. What shit they’re doing.
Am I even making sense? I can’t tell anymore. I know my lines and I say them and it’s way too easy.
I want to do something different. I want to be someone different. There’s got to be more than this cage.
I’m trying to open my eyes, but sometimes what I think I see scares me.
There are several more rambling confessional screeds like that, not dated but separated from each other by a few dashes.No specifics, just venting about her family, the superficialities of her friends, how much she hates feeling alone, how much she craves something different. Laced through it all is a thread of paranoia about the wrongdoings of unknown figures.
I finish reading in a daze and then start over again in case I missed something. I never saw any hint of this angst in my double’s more public record of her life.
Clearly Aunt Daphne and her friends didn’t have a clue. Dad hasn’t seemed especially concerned about his daughter’s mental state.
Was Other Elodie really bottling all this up, or was this more like a rich-girl tantrum, pouting that she didn’t get that trip to Fiji or both of the new pairs of shoes she wanted and posing her pain as something deep and meaningful? Or could these rants have been purposefully faked as some kind of justification ifanyone found out what she was doing with the photographs and on those dates?
Maybe she wrote that stuff when she was drunk or high—or both—and her head wasn’t on straight.
I don’t know what I believe is most likely… but it’s hard to dismiss her distress completely. Bits and pieces of it resonate with my own frustrations more than I like.
She still thought about Mom, still noticed how unfairly the Devines treated her. She could see enough to question the life she had, however much she meant the complaints she wrote down.
I lean back, clutching the tablet to my chest. Should I show this to Daphne, see if she can make any sense of it?
Every muscle in my body balks after the way she reacted to my tentative question earlier. I doubt there’s much chance Daphne would recognize the records of activities her niece obviously kept very hidden… and I don’t think she’s ready to accept just how far Other Elodie might have tumbled.
She might get upset and take the tablet away. Delete the evidence she doesn’t like. This is a woman who hauled me across universes to play detective in my own murder—I can’t count on her to be rational.
No, I’ll wait until I have a definite story with undeniable proof.
Because there was clearly more to this Elodie Devine than the snobby socialite she presented herself as to the world. She was a hell of a lot more messed up than she let anyone realize.
If I can piece together these clues, I’d bet El Dorado they’ll lead to the person who killed her.
