Page 27 of The Evil Twin

“She wasn’t interested,” said Tennyson.

“She laughed in our faces,” Althea added.

“You explained what would happen if we don’t do it?”

“Of course,” said Althea. “But she did make us a counter-offer. Two options, actually. We can give her the lodestone, and she goes back to her own world before our world has a chance to fracture, or you could merge with her, making her the primary consciousness.”

I thought about it for a moment. If she went back to her own world, that would stop Althea’s vision from happening, so our world would be safe. I’d be powerless, and it would be much more difficult to stop my father, but not impossible. Probably.

But then, we’d leave that other world vulnerable to an even more powerful Other-me. The people we’d left behind there didn’t deserve that. Mrs Spencer, everyone else’s counterparts. I thought about how Other-Tennyson had hugged me as I’d been leaving, speaking for the first time just to thank me.

No, I couldn’t do that to them.

The other option was no better. I didn’t want to be stuck as an idea in the back of her mind, or whatever form I’d take after the merge. And putting my own feelings aside, it was still the same problem, but doubled. If I merged with her, she’d have the same power – maybe even more – and access to both worlds.

“You’re not actually thinking about this, are you?” Tennyson asked.

It was so tempting to make a snappish reply. Something about how he should like it if he had both of us in the same body, but I just didn’t have the energy for it. Fighting with Tennyson was too much of a distraction. This type of thing was the reason we’d decided to cool it in the first place.

And deep down, I understood the reasoning behind what he’d done. Deep, deep down. Althea had been right. I’d have acted exactly how she’d said, for those exact reasons. It didn’t hurt any less, the idea of Other-me using the soul bond with Tennyson, but I could see why they’d kept the plan change from me, at the very least.

“I need to at least consider it,” I said. “But I can’t see how her options would be any better than doing nothing.” I glanced at Althea. “What do you think? Do you think either of these options would end any better than your vision?”

She shook her head. “Honestly, it seems like it would probably go the same way, only with her instead of your father.”

I sighed. “You know I need to talk to her.”

“It might be best to do it over Zoom,” said Althea. “We don’t know how badly the feedback will be.”

That made sense. Plus, I wasn’t sure I could stop myself from punching Other-me in the face if I saw her in person.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was no point talking to Other-me unless I could sweeten the pot somehow. She didn’t care if our whole world fell into an abyss, obviously. It was a lot that I was asking of her, not quite death, but not life either. If we knew for sure what would happen to her, that would be one thing, but none of our research had mentioned that in detail, and Nikolai’s uncle’s friend didn’t know either. It seemed like one of those things that people had assumed was common knowledge, so didn’t need to be written down.

For the time being, I decided to let her stew.

“We could torture her,” I suggested, for the thousandth time.

“It needs to be consensual,” Althea replied, for the thousandth time.

“I could just do it for fun.”

They wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. I was stuck at school. I had nothing better to do than study, but I’d lost all enthusiasm for it. I stayed away from Tennyson. Every time I looked at him, I wondered if he was secretly communicating with her. Was she whispering inside his head? I thought about it constantly, even when he wasn’t around, but it was worse if he was.

It felt like a puzzle that I couldn’t solve. I just needed the key, that one thing that would unlock it all and show me exactly what I needed to do to convince Other-me that she should do the ritual. I turned it over and over in my head. What did she want, aside from the lodestone, from power? Even though she was essentially the same person as me, I didn’t really know her at all.

In the end, it was Tennyson who came up with an idea.

I stared at him, open-mouthed, when I opened the door to my dorm to find him standing there, hand raised to knock. He looked paler than ever. His hair was a mess, his clothes disheveled. It was a good look for him, honestly. A really good look. His top few shirt buttons were open to reveal the curve of his collarbones. The skin there looked very smooth.

I cleared my throat and took a step back. He raised an arm, leaning against the door jamb. He’d obviously caught me staring, if his smirk was any indication.

“What are you doing?” I cleared my throat again. My voice sounded husky; I was obviously getting a cold or something.

“I had an idea,” he said.

“Bravo,” I said, then moved to close the door.

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