Page 37 of The Evil Twin

“Still, it can’t hurt,” I said. I could feel that my healing had worked, but I was new to all this. You couldn’t be too safe.

Once the healers had declared Tennyson recovered and expressed their disapproval at the use of unsanctioned healing magic, I curled up on the bed beside Tennyson.

“You’re you,” he said, pulling me closer.

“I’m me,” I agreed. “You’re alive and I’m me.”

And for the moment, that was everything we needed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When we woke, the world was in chaos.

I’d known that Althea and Hannah were being cagey when I’d asked them about the crack in reality. It was bad news. Or, as bad as news could be over a slap-up breakfast banquet like the one laid out in front of us.

“Don’t be mad,” said Althea, pushing a stack of pancakes toward me. “I’d known it was likely to happen once the ritual began, but I thought I’d taken enough precautions to contain the crack.”

“It was your father,” said Nikolai, through a mouthful of toast. “He’s always one step ahead of us. Why did you not inherit his genius?”

I shrugged, piling berries and syrup onto my pancakes. “Other-me did, and now she’s all up here, in the old noggin.” I tapped the side of my head, but my finger was sticky.

“How’s that going, actually?” asked Hannah.

“Seems fine,” I said. “Not sure yet, but don’t change the subject. What did my father do?”

“He must have known that once the Other-you escaped, more cracks would appear. He just waited for it to happen, and once it did, he pounced.”

“Bam!” said Nikolai, slapping his hand down on the table, making us all jump. “Like a jaguar!”

“Someone take that jug of syrup away from him,” Althea said. “He’s had too much sugar.”

I reached for another pancake. But there were waffles too. Could you put a pancake on top of a waffle? Would that be weird? Only one way to find out. There was bacon too. Tennyson handed it to me before I even asked.

“So, my father pounced on the crack… sorry, can we stop calling it a crack?”

“Makes it sound like a butt,” came a voice from under the table.

I knew who it was before I bent to look down there.

“Hamish, what are you doing down there?”

To be fair, Fletcher was there too. They’d swiped a few plates of food and sat cross-legged, feeding their faces and eavesdropping. It was a wonder we hadn’t heard the noise of them chewing.

“What do you expect us to do?” said Fletcher. “You never tell us the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” said Hamish, with a mouthful of chewed sausage. “He’s our dad, too. If he’s doing evil stuff, we gots to know about it.”

“You don’t gots to know anything,” I said. “Where’s Liam? Why isn’t he keeping an eye on you?”

Hamish shrugged and took another bite of sausage.

“Please, Lucy,” said Fletcher. “We were just worried about you.” He gave me his best puppy dog eyes, and it almost suckered me in.

“No, we weren’t,” said Hamish, ruining all Fletcher’s good work. “Lucy’s got superpowers. We just wanted all the juicy details. Amy from the kitchens said you was all covered in blood and crawling around the halls like the girl from The Ring, is that true? Were you covered in blood because you ate someone? When can I start learning magic too?”

I looked at Tennyson helplessly.

“May as well let them stay,” he said. “It’s better they hear the real story instead of these fictions.”

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