Page 26 of The Evil Twin

Tennyson sighed and set his teacup back in the saucer. “She didn’t come to the meeting point. We had to go get her.”

His words took a moment to sink in. “You went to my father’s compound? How did you know where it was?”

All sorts of theories were flying around in my brain. Spies? Double agents? But if we had someone on the inside, we’d have known that the bugs were found before Althea had her vision. We’d have known a bunch of stuff.

In the end, it was the guilty look on Tennyson’s face that made me guess the answer.

“She spoke to you, through the bond,” I said. The thought of it was like a gut punch. It was almost worse than if he’d been cheating with her. Our bond was so special, so intimate. The idea that he’d shared that with her – not only shared it but kept it from me, it was worse than anything else I could imagine.

“I don’t know how she did it,” he said, picking his tea back up and staring into the cup. “It was after the third or fourth time I had sent her the address. She said just shut up, already. I knew immediately it wasn’t you; it felt completely different.

“I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I stuck to the plan and continued to send her the address every hour. After a few more times, she said she couldn’t leave the compound to meet us, then sent me some mental images of where she was and a rough map of her location.”

He took a sip of his tea and began to speak again, but I held up my hand.

“I just need a minute,” I said.

I took some deep breaths. This was bigger than just Tennyson and me. Everything between us, that had to take a backseat. I needed to know what had happened so that we could plan our next move. I couldn’t let my feelings get in the way.

“So, you kept sending her the location every hour, was that just for my benefit? So that I wouldn’t clue in that you were communicating with her and mess up your plans?”

Okay, I couldn’t let my feelings get in the way after this.

“Lucy, it wasn’t like that,” Althea said gently.

“You were in on it?” I started to put things together. “That was why you talked me out of going? Because you knew they were secretly talking and had changed the plan to a raid on my father’s compound?”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “It was my idea to keep it from you. Don’t blame Tennyson. I thought it was too dangerous for the two of you to get so close to your father, especially when he had the home ground advantage. I knew that if you knew what we planned, you’d insist on coming. And I know that because he’s your father, you feel that he’s your mess to clean up, but this is bigger than just the two of you, bigger than your family. You have your part to play in this, and it’s too important to risk you on something that someone – anyone – else could do. It was the safest option, and I stand by it.”

“Right,” I said. There was a lot to unpack there, and I wasn’t in the right headspace to do it. We were getting off track. “Sorry, so you were saying, you had the location of the compound.”

Tennyson nodded. “She continued to feed me information, which helped us to get into the compound virtually undetected.”

I raised my eyebrows at the “virtually”.

“We only took a small team, less than we’d planned for the initial meeting point. Just Althea and I and four others. We got in, waited for the guards’ shift to change so we could steal some uniforms, which let us have access to most of the compound. It was all going well until…”

“Until you found her and realized she was using you for her own ends and had no intention of doing what you wanted,” I finished. That was what I would’ve done in her situation. Maybe if I’d known their plan, I could’ve told them that.

“We knew that was a possibility,” said Althea. “You don’t need to look so smug.”

“At any rate, she gave us the slip, and without her to navigate, we soon became lost in the labyrinth of passageways. Her escape tripped the alarm, which led to our discovery.”

“Was anyone hurt?” I asked. “Any of our people, I mean.”

They both shook their heads.

“Everyone is fine. We lost a couple of people for a few hours, but they made it out safely.”

“And Other-me, she got away from my father?”

“We caught up with her not far from the compound. She’d tried to steal one of our vehicles, but she can’t actually drive, so she ran it into a tree. After that, it was easy enough to get her back to the manor.”

“Where she’s under the heaviest guard imaginable,” Tennyson added.

I doubted that meant much. If she wanted to get away, I was sure she could.

“You told her about the ritual?” I directed my question toward Althea. I was angry with them both, but the betrayal from Tennyson felt so much more personal. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to look at him ever again.

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