Page 66 of Demon of Dreams

“Gotta love family,” Ash said. “Can’t live with ‘em, in my case, and can’t have wings without ‘em, in Felix’s.” He grinned sardonically.

“Jesus,” I said. “That’s awful.”

Felix shrugged. “I never got along with them anyway. It was worth it, in the end.”

“And now he can make love to all the sexy, sexy books in the libraries here,” Ash added. “As for what our powers are…” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Did you know you have ink on your nose?”

I blinked in confusion and tried to stare at my nose. In the background, out of focus, Ash covered his face with his hands. When he dropped them, he said, “Voila!”

I gaped. I was doing a lot of gaping these days, but this might take the cake. I was staring at Ash—which now meant I was staring at an exact replica of my own face.

15

CORY

It wasn’t just a replica of my face, but my entire body. My mouth dropped open as I stared at Ash, who grinned, breaking the mirror-like connection.

This was stranger than looking in a mirror, actually. In reflecting your image, a mirror showed you what appeared to be your right cheek, even though you knew it was your left. But my face on Ash showed me what other people saw when they looked at me.

It was slightly disconcerting. I’d never noticed that one of my eyebrows was higher than the other before. And there was, indeed, ink on my nose. I scrubbed at the spot on my own nose where I saw the ink on Ash’s.

“How did you do that?” I asked, sounding as awed as I felt. “That is still you in there, right? You didn’t like, clone me?”

Ash laughed and stuck his tongue out, and I shivered. The mannerisms were all Ash, but the laugh sounded like my own.

“Still me,” he said. God, he had my voice too. “It’s just glamor. Mimicry and illusion are some of the most common faerie powers.”

“I feel dizzy.” I shook my head from side to side. “This is very strange. Cool, but strange.”

“Don’t like looking at your own face, huh?” Ash said. “No worries. I can change it up a little.”

He ran a hand across his face, and suddenly, I was staring at Felix. A second Felix, that was. The first one was still sitting in my desk chair, but now Ash-as-Felix sat on my bed, grinning.

“Don’t be so childish, Ash,” said Ash-as-Felix in a pompous voice. “Truly, I can’t remember why I put up with your adolescent antics. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dusty library to fuck.”

Real Felix rolled his eyes. “What does that even mean? Am I fucking the whole room? Because there’s a lot of empty space in a library, so I don’t think it would be very—”

“What does that even mean?” Ash-as-Felix repeated, only this time, he made his voice higher pitched and nasal. “Am I fucking the whole room?”

“I donottalk like that,” Felix objected. “You know very well what I sound like.”

“This is so trippy,” I said. “I don’t think I can handle two Felixes any better than I can handle two me’s.”

“Hmm, so no clones of yourself, no extra Felixes—can’t say I blame you there. In that case, how aboutthis?”

Ash wiped a hand over his face a third time, and now I was staring at Noah.

My heart lurched. I knew this wasn’t really Noah. But Ash’s whole body had changed, growing and filling out, until he took up way more space on the bed, and his face was Noah’s to a T. Same brown hair and stubbled jaw, same piercing hazel eyes under dark brows, and that same expression, looking at me like I was the gunk under his shoe.

“Change back,” I said quickly. “Change back, change back.”

Ash-as-Noah cocked his head to the side, then gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I thought you might get a kick out of looking at Noah—heispretty hot. But suit yourself.”

With a final pass of his hand over his face, Ash was himself again, grinning impudently. I heaved a sigh of relief. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like Ash impersonating Noah. It was more that I was afraid I might blurt out something stupid in front of my friends while Ash looked like that.

“That’s incredible,” I said after a moment. “And you can just do that, without spells or anything?”

“The joys of being a changeling.” Ash’s voice was a little sour. “Not sure it makes up for the drawbacks, but at least it’s something.”

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