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 establishedfamily 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.
