Tell the Wind and Fire(28)

“I know,” Ethan said. “The guard said you were going to get something to eat. He knew the place was paid for, and that Carwyn had money in his pocket. He expected him to come right back. But he didn’t come back.”

“They weren’t delivering room service,” I said. “I took him out because I thought he should have something to eat, but then I tried a few different restaurants and they wouldn’t let us in.”

Ethan’s voice grew even more serious. “Did he get angry?”

No, I thought about saying. No, he didn’t get angry. I was the one who got angry. I broke the law and took off his collar because I felt bad about people being mean to the doppelganger. I fed him cupcakes and took him dancing with my friends. I basically took darkness made in your image out on a date. Why? I don’t know why, Ethan. I guess because I am a crazy person!

I couldn’t say that.

“Yeah,” I said instead. “He got angry. He ran off.”

He had run off. That much was true.

“I thought he would just go back to the hotel,” I said. I wished he had; that was like thinking he would. “Tell your uncle and your father I didn’t—”

“Don’t, Lucie,” Ethan said, sounding tired, and my heart beat a frantic pattern against my ribs. “I thought you should know he was gone,” Ethan continued. “I already told Dad and Uncle Mark that you had nothing to do with it.”

“I just meant . . . I didn’t mean to cause them any trouble,” I muttered. “I’m sorry I did.”

“Carwyn can make his own decisions. They’re nothing to do with you.” Ethan sighed, fingers curling around the stiff blue material of my uniform skirt, over my hip. “Maybe it’s for the best that he went,” he said. “When I first heard he was gone, I thought . . . I thought Uncle Mark or Dad might have had something to do with it.”

Ethan meant that his uncle or his father might have ordered Carwyn to be killed.

I repressed a shiver. I knew they were capable of it. But I hadn’t known Ethan believed that too. How could he live with them, if he knew? Ethan must have felt the shiver despite my efforts, because he put his arms around me, smoothing the hair that tumbled down my back, the big, solid muscles he got from the gym wrapped around me. I felt like he could shield me from anything, even though I knew it wasn’t true. I rubbed my cheek lightly against his, catching the corner of his mouth with mine. It was wonderful to feel that way, just the same.

“I was always afraid he’d come back,” Ethan continued, low and confessional. “I was afraid that Dad would suffer for what he’d done, and I was afraid to . . . to look into a doppelganger’s eyes and see who he was, see if it meant I was doomed, like the stories say. Or if I was doomed for a different reason: that he was made because of me but we sent him away and we deserved whatever he did to us.”

“Ethan,” I said. “Ethan, you were a baby. I do wish you’d told me, but what happened to him was not your fault.”

“When he did come back, I didn’t like him,” said Ethan. “I don’t like that he had my mother for the first few years of my life. I don’t like that he doesn’t even remember her, that he doesn’t care about her or about much of anything. But that doesn’t mean he deserved to be treated like he was. He certainly didn’t deserve to die. If he got away, I’m glad. I wish they could all escape.”

I didn’t know if he meant doppelgangers or all the buried ones in the Dark city. It didn’t matter, since we couldn’t change the world. We were just two kids in our school uniforms, clinging to each other in a corridor full of the noise and bustle of school, trying to pretend the world away.

“I’m glad too,” I whispered. It felt like the first thing I had said to Ethan today that was not a lie.

I turned my face in closer to his, nuzzling, until we were kissing. My arm around his shoulders held him in, close against me. I did not want to let him go.

“And I’m late for class,” Ethan said regretfully. He kissed me again, lightly this time, mouth and then my cheek, and stepped away. “Can you come back to my place after school? I have a special reason for asking.”

“Sure,” I murmured. “And you don’t need a special reason.”

I was late for class too, but I didn’t go immediately. I sat on the sill of the window opposite my locker and fought back the thought of how much I had just lied to Ethan and how massively I had misjudged Carwyn.

I’d believed the fact that he’d waited outside the nightclub’s window meant I could trust him, but that hadn’t been true. He hadn’t wanted me to get caught because if I’d been taken by the guards, I would have been found with the doppelganger’s collar on me. He’d waited for me because he wanted a clean getaway, and once he’d accomplished that, he’d thrown me off a bridge.

He looked like Ethan. I hadn’t confused the two of them, but seeing the familiar, beloved lines of his face, even on someone else, had confused me. I’d been able to be familiar with him, to take chances on him without feeling as if they were the deadly, life-altering risks they were.

Because of that, I’d trusted him, much more than I should have, when I shouldn’t have trusted him at all. He was my best beloved’s shadow self, an image made out of darkness, but worse than that he was a stranger, and I did not know what he was capable of.