Page 22 of The Evil Twin

Althea’s eyes widened, and she tried to sit up again.

“Just relax,” I said. “Take it easy on yourself.”

“I can’t,” she choked out. “What I saw…” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I think what I saw, it’s what happens if the Other-you stays here. If you don’t do the ritual.” She drew in a shaky breath, then went on, her words tumbling over each other. “The feedback… it causes a crack in the world, like a broken mirror. Your father… or her father? No, your father, he uses her as a bridge between the two worlds. All of the power, from both the worlds… he absorbs it. He’s not human… he becomes something… something else. Everyone… Everything is gone. Everything is dark, and there’s this smell, a terrible, terrible smell, like when your hair straightener is too hot and burns your hair, only a million times worse. It’s not hair, it’s energy, people’s energy. Like their souls but not their souls, their souls are all lost in the darkness. They’re empty, everything is empty except for him.”

What she was describing sounded so horrific that it was hard to fathom. I couldn’t imagine a world like that existing, not really. Still, I couldn’t help but shoot Sam an “I told you so” glare. Except Sam wasn’t there. I didn’t remember him leaving, but I’d been so worried about Althea, it could have been at any time. I glanced at Tennyson to see if he’d noticed, and he gave me a small nod, followed by a shrug. He was right. Sam’s whole thing wasn’t exactly a priority just then. He could wait, at least until Althea was settled.

“I’m okay now,” she said, struggling to sit up.

We helped her into a chair, then Tennyson turned out the lights, as they were too bright for her headache.

“When you feel up to it, I want you to write down every little detail that you remember,” Tennyson said. “We had no time with the last attack, but as we’ve not all slid away into an abyss just yet, we have a chance to prepare. I’ll go find Nikolai and see if he has any of the notes.”

I nodded. “I’ll write down everything I can remember from the notes, and I’ll look through the ashes to see if I can salvage anything.”

There wasn’t much left in the fireplace, a word here and there, but nothing helpful. I still had the photos on my phone that I’d taken of the book, and the beginning of the translation I’d made that first night, but we’d done so much work since then.

I couldn’t believe how stupid Sam had been, how reckless. I was still so angry with him. I kept playing back what he’d said to me on repeat in my head. How everything had been my fault. How everything I did made things worse. How I was so selfish. Did he really think those things? Deep down, sometimes I thought them about myself, but I hoped nobody else did. Did Sam blame me for all the things that had happened to him? All the torture, all the experiments? Had he been holding all that inside for all this time, just letting it fester?

“Stop beating yourself up,” Althea said, from where she was furiously writing on a piece of scrap paper. “He said some mean stuff, you said some mean stuff too. You were both angry, it happens.”

I sighed and moved back to the table with the few scraps I’d found in the ashes.

“I know, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.”

She shrugged. “And neither were you. It was a real jerk move he pulled, trashing our research. At any rate, if my vision comes true, you won’t need to worry about any of it.”

“That’s a cheery thought,” I said.

I was reading back through what Althea had written about her vision when Tennyson came back, followed by not only Nikolai but also Hannah, Harper, and Sam. I was surprised Sam came back so quickly. Whenever we’d fought as kids, real proper fights, he’d hide away from me for a day or two, then come back as if nothing had happened. This wasn’t like that.

“Read this,” Tennyson said, handing Althea’s notes about her vision to him. “This is what will happen if we don’t go ahead with this soul-merging ritual. I don’t like it either, but if this is the alternative, I don’t see what else we can do.”

I cleared my throat. He was talking as if it was something he and Sam were sticking their necks out for, but I was the one doing all the heavy lifting. None of them had to merge with their Other-selves to avert the end of the world.

“Of course, the final decision is Lucy’s,” he added.

“Both Lucy’s, actually,” said Nikolai. “The original ritual states that it needs to be consensual on both sides.”

I spun to face him. “Original ritual? You found your uncle?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I found a colleague of my uncle. He’s a little more reliable than my uncle, honestly, though a lot scarier.”

“What did you have to give him in exchange for the ritual?” I asked, remembering my original agreement with Vucari. People around Nikolai’s family always needed something in exchange.

“Not much,” he said with a shrug. “Something to do with your firstborn, but nothing serious. I mean, if the world ends, there won’t be any-born, I figured it’s a reasonable deal.”

“You’re letting my firstborn be eaten by vampires, and you figure it’s reasonable?” I asked him.

He waved me off. “He’s super old. By the time you and Tennyson get anywhere near making babies, he’ll be in the ground. And he’s not a vampire, or a cannibal, or anything else that eats babies… probably.”

“So, you have the ritual,” Tennyson asked. “You’re sure it’s right?”

Nikolai pulled up the notes app on his phone and handed it to Althea. “There were a few differences from what we had, but most of it is the same.”

Althea nodded, scrolling through. “Yes, this clears a few things up, actually. There were a few places where the translation seemed strange, but this is better. Much better.”

Nikolai nodded. “He said it was originally a Romanian ritual, back, way back before it was Romania, before it was even Moldavia, which was, I dunno, ages ago? Then the Romans took over, and I guess some old Roman guy translated the ritual. Who knows, it might’ve been translated a few times. Anyway, the old guys said that most of the details are just for show, the main thing is that you both stay on different sides of the mirror. No matter what. It has to be consensual, and you have to stay on different sides of the mirror. No looking directly at each other.”

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