Page 7 of The Evil Twin

“Are they hypnotized?” I whispered.

“I think they just… like her,” said Tennyson. “There’s no trace of magic here.”

That seemed even worse, somehow.

“What’s our move here?” asked Nikolai. “We can’t exactly chain her up in front of all these people.”

“She’d do it to you,” said Sam.

I was all for it. I could quite happily club her over the head in front of the whole school and drag her away, but I didn’t want to get too close to her. The lump on my head was still quite painful.

“Let me handle this,” said Nikolai. “My other guy used to date her, right? So, she’s not immune to the old Volkov charm.” He smoothed down his eyebrows and started walking toward the table.

“This is not going to go well,” I predicted.

But I was wrong. He slipped into the seat beside her and within seconds, the two of them were laughing like old friends.

“Are we quite sure we brought the right one back?” I asked.

“Quite sure,” said Hannah, popping up beside me where Nikolai had been a moment ago. She’d obviously just finished with her part of the search, and we’d agreed to meet back here.

“You might not want to watch this,” I told her.

“I definitely don’t,” said Tennyson, turning away.

“We can’t just let her go unsupervised,” said Sam. “You don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“My sister has been lying unconscious for weeks. I know perfectly well what she’s capable of,” Tennyson said.

Sam looked abashed but stood his ground.

“Sam and I can eat down here,” said Hannah, pulling him into a seat. “We’ll keep an eye on them. You two go have your lunch.”

She waved us off, which is how I found myself awkwardly sitting across from Tennyson, picking at a plate of sashimi.

“Um,” I said. “Thanks for having my back, back there.”

He shrugged. He wasn’t normally that interested in food, but he seemed transfixed by his neatly-sliced tuna. “Sam was being unfair to you.”

I nodded. Sam had been through a lot and definitely needed help, but I didn’t know how to approach that with him without sounding accusatory, and I couldn’t talk to Tennyson about it in the middle of the dining hall, not when Sam had werewolf hearing. I didn’t even trust my mental connection with Tennyson, not when I knew Other-me could hear his side of the conversation. But when he glanced up at me, I knew he understood me.

“I’ll talk to him,” Tennyson said. “He’ll be fine.”

Warmth flooded through me at his words. Even without our bond, without anything, Tennyson still understood me. He stood by me. That was why it was so difficult to be apart from him.

I started gobbling down my lunch to hide my feelings. It felt disrespectful to the fishes to eat them so quickly. They were high-quality fishes and very tasty, but I was in no headspace to appreciate them properly. Not when Tennyson sat opposite me, being so sweet and understanding.

“I have to go,” I said. “I told Harper I’d sit with Althea because she’s got a math test this afternoon.”

I stood up before he could say anything and fled the dining hall.

I spent the next few days avoiding both Tennyson and Other-me. It was too hard to be around Tennyson and not with Tennyson, and I hoped that time would make that easier. Other-me was harder to stay away from. She popped up everywhere: the dining hall, the dorms, even my classes. I didn’t only want to avoid another bolt of magical feedback from her, I just straight up didn’t like her. And she knew it, that’s why she was always there, rubbing it in my face.

People seemed to think she was my identical twin, which I supposed was logical. But they also had the idea that I’d kept her prisoner and she’d only just escaped from my evil clutches. Which I couldn’t deny. It was technically true, but it had left out some key points. Not that I felt any need to defend myself to the student body. It just irked me that everyone had immediately taken to her when they’d immediately hated me.

Everything about her irked me. She was a very irksome person.

“She’s doing it to annoy you,” Hannah said, as we watched her in English class chatting to Mr Porter. Honestly, I’d have expected better from him.

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