“I’m not a child!” he said once, and I swallowed and said, “Yes, of course,” and went to make him something he would like to eat.
I stroked his hair as he cried, for a long, wrenching half hour, and then he was quieter, listening to the stories I told. I tried to make them sound cheerful—all about Ethan and the holiday we’d had, and not how we had come home. I used the stories as comfort for myself as much as for my father, as if the gold curve of pears and leaves in the sunlight, the curve of Ethan’s mouth under mine as we lay together in the long grass, could be made bright enough to blot away all that had followed.
“I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” Dad said at last, his voice quiet and more even than it had been. He was so calm and reasonable sometimes, and then everything would go wrong. “It should be you causing trouble for me.”
I shuddered, thinking of what would happen to him if the trouble I had caused last night came back to us both. I kept stroking his hair, and the reflected light from my rings trembled against the wall.
“You’re no trouble at all,” I lied.
Eventually Dad went to sleep, exhausted from the outbursts, just before Marie came back from school. She dropped her school bag, with its weird pattern of monstrous half-pony, half-kitten creatures with Light-jeweled eyes, on the floor and danced in.
“You’re so lucky you got to stay home,” she said, grumbling. “I’m so tired. And I’m so hungry.”
“From working so hard, no doubt.”
Marie grinned at me, sly and carefree at once, so I was able to grin back. I got up and went into the kitchen to make us grilled-cheese sandwiches, and when Marie asked how my day had been I said “boring,” so she launched into a long story about her day. She was apparently having a feud with some guy in her class, and it had culminated in a game of kiss-chase, during which he’d grabbed her and she’d bitten him.
“But, like, it wasn’t assault,” Marie explained. “Because it was a protest for feminism, my teacher said, and establishing my autonomy over my body.”
She pronounced the word “autonomy” with extreme care.
“I like your teacher, kid,” I said. I vaguely thought that I should tell her not to bite people, no matter what the provocation, but that would be massively hypocritical coming from the girl who’d established her own right to bodily autonomy by threatening to send shocks through a boy’s collar to every nerve ending he possessed.
Carwyn still shouldn’t have touched me. And this boy shouldn’t have touched Marie. I put a hand on her back, as if I could protect her, when it was already too late.
“I’m never to do it again, because if he’d needed stitches I would be in a world of trouble,” Marie informed me.
“What’s this about trouble?” Penelope asked, coming in early from the hospital for a change and unwinding her scarf, subtly shining with Light embroidery, from around her neck.
Marie and I exchanged a look and chorused “Nothing” in unison as Penelope laughed.
We ate our grilled-cheese sandwiches and watched TV, Marie curled up in the space between my body and Penelope’s, fitting like a coin in a slot. I rested my chin on the top of Marie’s cornrowed hair and envied her this thoughtless security. Having a kid act like a kid was fine; having one of your parents suddenly turn into a child was terrifying.
“Hey,” said Penelope, looking at me, “you all right, Ladybird? Did your dad upset you? Or Ethan? Did Marie upset you? Because you should know that as her mother I have the right to beat her like a gong.”
She reached over and took my hand, her fingers strong and a little callused, skin clear dark brown, rings bright and the metal thin and worn from long and continual use. I wished I had hands as steady and kind as hers. I wished I could tell her everything I had done, but that would just have been laying the burden on her instead of me.
She’d done enough for me already, and she wasn’t my mother. My mother was dead, and I had betrayed her memory.
“Nobody upset me,” I told her. “Nothing’s wrong at all.”
She opened her mouth to argue with me, but just then Jarvis came home. He came home late so often, ever since Ethan had got him the job in Stryker Tower. He walked in the door with his face crumpled like a piece of office paper that had been tossed at the trash can but fallen short.
Penelope’s and Marie’s faces turned to his, and Jarvis’s expression smoothed. Marie scrambled off the sofa and ran to him, and he lifted her up to the ceiling, his Light-enhanced-for-perfect-vision eyes reflecting a golden rim. Marie laughed down at him, knowing for certain that her father would always protect her and always be there, his hold on her steady and strong.
The next day, I had to go to school. Nightingale-Evremonde did random checks on rings, sometimes, to see what the last spell you performed was. I used my rings to turn a traffic light red as I was walking to school, then ran across the street before anyone could leap from their car and yell at me.
Ethan and I had different classes on Tuesdays, and even different lunchtimes. It felt awful to be even a tiny bit glad about that.
I was punished for it. I was standing at my locker, staring and trying to figure out which books to take out and trying not to think about what I had done, when a hand ran possessively down the small of my back.
I started and spun around, knocking my elbow—skinned from climbing out the bathroom window at the club—hard into my locker door. Ethan held his hands up in mock surrender.
“Hey, Lucie, it’s just me. I’m not one of those locker muggers who have been plaguing the school.”
I’d been dreading seeing him, and yet unexpectedly it made me feel better. It was a relief to see this particular personality behind this face, to absorb all the bits and pieces that made up the person I loved: Ethan’s gold-touched eyes, the hair curling over the crisp white collar of his school shirt, the way he’d removed his hand fast when I jumped.
I reached out for one of his hands and pulled him back toward me. I was wearing heels, so we were standing at the same level, cheek to cheek. I smelled his clean, sharp aftershave and felt the faint scratch of a spot at his jaw that he’d missed.
“I heard they were locker highwaymen,” I said. “Stand and deliver your lunch money.”
Ethan’s free hand went to my waist, holding on. “Lucie,” he murmured. “I have something to tell you. You’re probably going to be angry, and you have every right to be.” He took a steadying breath. “The doppelganger’s disappeared.”
“I saw him,” I said. “The night before last. I went to see him.”
It wasn’t brave of me to confess that much. There’d been a guard at Carwyn’s door, a receptionist who knew my face, and probably cameras in the hotel.
“I know,” Ethan said. “The guard said you were going to get something to eat. He knew the place was paid for, and that Carwyn had money in his pocket. He expected him to come right back. But he didn’t come back.”
“They weren’t delivering room service,” I said. “I took him out because I thought he should have something to eat, but then I tried a few different restaurants and they wouldn’t let us in.”
Ethan’s voice grew even more serious. “Did he get angry?”
No, I thought about saying. No, he didn’t get angry. I was the one who got angry. I broke the law and took off his collar because I felt bad about people being mean to the doppelganger. I fed him cupcakes and took him dancing with my friends. I basically took darkness made in your image out on a date. Why? I don’t know why, Ethan. I guess because I am a crazy person!
I couldn’t say that.
“Yeah,” I said instead. “He got angry. He ran off.”
He had run off. That much was true.
“I thought he would just go back to the hotel,” I said. I wished he had; that was like thinking he would. “Tell your uncle and your father I didn’t—”
“Don’t, Lucie,” Ethan said, sounding tired, and my heart beat a frantic pattern against my ribs. “I thought you should kn
ow he was gone,” Ethan continued. “I already told Dad and Uncle Mark that you had nothing to do with it.”
“I just meant . . . I didn’t mean to cause them any trouble,” I muttered. “I’m sorry I did.”
“Carwyn can make his own decisions. They’re nothing to do with you.” Ethan sighed, fingers curling around the stiff blue material of my uniform skirt, over my hip. “Maybe it’s for the best that he went,” he said. “When I first heard he was gone, I thought . . . I thought Uncle Mark or Dad might have had something to do with it.”
Ethan meant that his uncle or his father might have ordered Carwyn to be killed.
I repressed a shiver. I knew they were capable of it. But I hadn’t known Ethan believed that too. How could he live with them, if he knew? Ethan must have felt the shiver despite my efforts, because he put his arms around me, smoothing the hair that tumbled down my back, the big, solid muscles he got from the gym wrapped around me. I felt like he could shield me from anything, even though I knew it wasn’t true. I rubbed my cheek lightly against his, catching the corner of his mouth with mine. It was wonderful to feel that way, just the same.
“I was always afraid he’d come back,” Ethan continued, low and confessional. “I was afraid that Dad would suffer for what he’d done, and I was afraid to . . . to look into a doppelganger’s eyes and see who he was, see if it meant I was doomed, like the stories say. Or if I was doomed for a different reason: that he was made because of me but we sent him away and we deserved whatever he did to us.”
“Ethan,” I said. “Ethan, you were a baby. I do wish you’d told me, but what happened to him was not your fault.”
“When he did come back, I didn’t like him,” said Ethan. “I don’t like that he had my mother for the first few years of my life. I don’t like that he doesn’t even remember her, that he doesn’t care about her or about much of anything. But that doesn’t mean he deserved to be treated like he was. He certainly didn’t deserve to die. If he got away, I’m glad. I wish they could all escape.”
I didn’t know if he meant doppelgangers or all the buried ones in the Dark city. It didn’t matter, since we couldn’t change the world. We were just two kids in our school uniforms, clinging to each other in a corridor full of the noise and bustle of school, trying to pretend the world away.
“I’m glad too,” I whispered. It felt like the first thing I had said to Ethan today that was not a lie.
I turned my face in closer to his, nuzzling, until we were kissing. My arm around his shoulders held him in, close against me. I did not want to let him go.
“And I’m late for class,” Ethan said regretfully. He kissed me again, lightly this time, mouth and then my cheek, and stepped away. “Can you come back to my place after school? I have a special reason for asking.”
“Sure,” I murmured. “And you don’t need a special reason.”
I was late for class too, but I didn’t go immediately. I sat on the sill of the window opposite my locker and fought back the thought of how much I had just lied to Ethan and how massively I had misjudged Carwyn.
I’d believed the fact that he’d waited outside the nightclub’s window meant I could trust him, but that hadn’t been true. He hadn’t wanted me to get caught because if I’d been taken by the guards, I would have been found with the doppelganger’s collar on me. He’d waited for me because he wanted a clean getaway, and once he’d accomplished that, he’d thrown me off a bridge.
He looked like Ethan. I hadn’t confused the two of them, but seeing the familiar, beloved lines of his face, even on someone else, had confused me. I’d been able to be familiar with him, to take chances on him without feeling as if they were the deadly, life-altering risks they were.
Because of that, I’d trusted him, much more than I should have, when I shouldn’t have trusted him at all. He was my best beloved’s shadow self, an image made out of darkness, but worse than that he was a stranger, and I did not know what he was capable of.
I didn’t think that Carwyn was going to run off somewhere, live a blameless life, and stay safe. I thought he was coming back. I knew he held our lives in the palm of his hand.
I knew I should tell somebody. But, like always, I was afraid to tell the truth. I knew it would condemn me.
I didn’t tell Penelope, and I didn’t tell Ethan. I didn’t tell anybody at all.
Above the Strykers’ apartment was a private gym, where all four of the Strykers had sessions with a personal trainer several times a week. I had only been there before to sit on the weight bench and read while Ethan finished up.
I had not expected this to be Ethan’s special reason for asking me over. I had not expected my boyfriend to stand before me, in socked feet on the polished wood floor, with a sword glowing with Light magic in either hand.
“You scared me to death when you jumped onto the platform and leaped at those guys with swords,” Ethan said simply. “I don’t know what might happen in the future. I want to protect you—and I figure the best way to protect you is to teach you to protect yourself.”
It was a sweet idea, but I hated to think of Ethan being scared and doubtful about the future.
“You’re going to teach me?” I asked, keeping my voice light. I reached over and took one of the swords from him. I felt its magic crackling satisfactorily up my arm. “Since when do you know about sword fighting?”
“I don’t have any Light magic, so Uncle Mark wanted to be sure I could always protect myself,” Ethan went on. “He also thought it might be good PR if I joined the Light Guard for a year or so after college. I don’t know. I’m pretty good.”
He sounded shy, and a little proud.
“Are you?” I said, and I forced myself to smile at him.
“Yeah, and I’m willing to teach you everything I know.”
“Lucky me.”
We crossed swords, the blades flickering as they rang together, my blade glowing with a faint flare of Light each time I parried Ethan’s thrust. It was like lightning and thunder, the gleam and then the peal, and it felt good. It felt familiar.
I had made so many mistakes. I had been so stupid. I lay awake nights thinking of all I feared and how I had failed. I could do nothing to fix any of it, but I could do this.
I parried again and sent power from my free hand to make Light burn too strongly in Ethan’s sword. He almost dropped it. I pressed home my advantage and came at him with a flurry of ringing strokes, making him stumble back. He stared at me, awe and Light magic shining on his face, as if I had lit a huge match between us.
“You can fight!” Ethan exclaimed.
“I can win,” I said, and forced Ethan’s sword down.
Ethan did not even look at the sword points touching the floor, did not care that he had been beaten. He looked at me, frowning, and as my frantic heartbeat slowed, I began to realize I had made another mistake. “Why did you never tell me you knew the sword?” he asked.
What could I say? That my aunt the Dark magician had taught me in the little garden outside her house? That I had learned how to stand and move and fight for years, learned how to practice magic against a Dark magician as few Light magicians had the chance to—how to fight anyone, how to cheat, how to win? Was I supposed to tell him that my aunt used to say I could use these skills against a Light guard, and I had never dreamed I would, but years later, on a train platform, Aunt Leila had been proved right? That when I used too much Light magic and it poisoned my blood, my aunt would drain the poison away and drink my blood at her kitchen table, and then we would make cookies?
I’d told Ethan about my mother: that she had existed, that I’d known her, that she’d died. It wasn’t much, but he was the only person in the Light city I had told about her at all.
I had not told Ethan anything about my Aunt Leila. I did not think he would like the sound of her, somehow, any more than she would have liked him. They were impossibly different people, from impossibly different worlds, and it would have made Ethan think differently o
f me.
Besides, Aunt Leila was safe, as safe as a Dark magician in the Dark city could be. I did not want to bring her to the attention of any Strykers, even the one I loved.
“It never came up,” I said unsteadily.
Until the train platform, with Ethan kneeling and a guard drawing his sword. I had known the risk when I flung myself at the guard. I had known what to do. Ethan had just assumed I did not . . . because I had never told him anything else. I didn’t want him to think of me as someone who could deal with these kind of situations, who belonged in that kind of world: Aunt Leila’s world, in the Dark.
“I want you to tell me things, even if they don’t come up,” Ethan said. “Just as long as they’re about you. I only want to know more about you.”
It should have been a strange thing for a boy to say to his girlfriend of two years. I found myself looking away, as if I, not he, had been beaten.
“If you knew me more, you’d like me less.”
“I don’t think so,” Ethan murmured.
I made myself smile, even though I was scared. “Come on—let a girl keep her mystique.”
It was a weak ploy.
Ethan opened his mouth, and I knew it was to argue with me. I stared at him, mutely imploring him not to.
I thought it wouldn’t work, but after a moment he lowered his eyes and put down his sword. “Asking you to spar was a mistake, huh?” he said, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around me. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want this,” I said into his shirt. “I don’t want us to be frightened. I want things to be the way they always are between us. I want everything to be normal.”
Normal for me was keeping secrets. What was one more?
“All right,” Ethan murmured. “Whatever you want.”
There was an amazing sofa in Ethan’s apartment, deep and soft as a cloud, and the color of excellent cream, the kind of sofa that meant price was not an issue and neither was the sofa owners cleaning it themselves. Six people could lie on that sofa like a bed.