Tell the Wind and Fire (7 page)

One goes into the shadow of death, but two come back: the real person, and the other, a creature made in the person’s image, but out of darkness.

People are frightened by the idea of them, of something that looks human and is all darkness. Doppelgangers used to be slaughtered with less of a penalty than you received for killing a family pet, until thirteen years ago, when Charles Stryker, Ethan’s father, changed the laws. Officially doppelgangers were human now, and it was murder to kill them. Still, we all know of doppelgangers murdered as soon as they were created, found in the Hudson River with their telltale faces destroyed, or beaten to death by people who hated them for their hoods alone.

The law says doppelgangers must wear hoods to hide their stolen faces, hoods fastened with collars that only someone with Light magic rings can take off. Nobody would ever change that law. Real people needed to be protected from the soulless.

My mother and father never believed any of it. They supported doppelganger rights, thought they should be able to vote and be allowed to live with faces open to the light.

Even in the Dark cities, doppelgangers were a little apart from us. There are very few doppelganger children; I never saw one. I saw their hooded figures on the street, ordered coffees from them, smiled reflexively at them in the grocery store and never knew whether under the shadow of their hood they were smiling back.

I was secretly afraid of them, though I would never have told my parents that. But at least I had seen a doppelganger before. Up until that day, I would have sworn that Ethan never had, not up close.

He was a golden boy in every sense of the word, untouched by darkness or suffering. I would have sworn that was true, and I would have been wrong.

There. That’s it. That’s everything I knew, back then. That is the world we lived in, with bright cities and dark twins.

That brings us up to that moment on the train, with the boy I loved and the stranger who had saved him.

Now you know everything, except the story of what happened next to all of us: Ethan of the Light city, Carwyn of the Dark, and me, who was born with a foot in each.

This is the tale of who I was able to save.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Strykers did not actually live in Stryker Tower, because it was a place of business, and it would be difficult to sleep in a building that lit up everything within a three-block radius bright as day. They lived in a different building, this one on the south side of Central Park, with a carved stone entryway that reminded me of a museum’s and a doorman who had scared me at first. I’d seen that doorman escort out people whose names Ethan’s cousin Jim had decided were no longer on the approved list.

This was such a bright place, a center for glittering luxury. Death and doppelgangers and darkness were all things that I had thought I’d left behind long ago.

Ethan had put me on the list and would never have taken my name off. I had run through this echoing marble hall as if I belonged here a hundred times, hand in hand with Ethan, in from the park wearing a bikini top and shorts, bundled up in a winter coat and laden with presents.

Everybody here thought of me as belonging to the Light, as if growing up in the Dark had not affected me, as if the shine of my rings had made me immune to my surroundings. But I knew who I had been in the Dark, and remembered those I loved in the darkness. I remembered it all even more vividly that day, when I had been so close to someone from the Dark like me. I felt out of place passing the doorman, as if he might stop me, read the darkness on my face, and have me thrown out into the street. I glanced up and saw my own golden head in the mirror-like surface of the ceiling as I went through to the elevator.

When I knocked on the door, Charles Stryker answered it: Ethan’s father. Normally, it was the housekeeper or Ethan himself. Ethan’s dad must have been in a state of some distress to actually open his own door.

Charles Stryker and his brother were alike, but Charles was older than Mark and he looked like the sketch before the oil painting: Charles’s features a little more uncertain, blurred, the line of nose and jaw less decided and his eyes smaller, hairline humbly receding, while Mark’s would never retreat.

I liked Ethan’s dad more than his uncle, but I had never liked either of them much.

“Lucie,” said Charles, who did like me, and he took hold of my wrists, his rings cool against my pulse points. He pressed a kiss as cold as the rings onto my cheek. “Very nice to see you, as always, especially after . . .”

Charles often abandoned sentences.

“Ethan will be so pleased.”

“You know it,” said Ethan, behind his father.

He clasped Charles’s shoulder—he was always the one showing his dad affection rather than the other way around, and Charles always seemed puzzled but pleased by it—and his dad smiled at him, a smile weak as lousy tea, before he slipped away.

I stepped up to Ethan, arm around his neck, top lip pressed against his bottom lip, in my place, the perfect place. His body was solid against me, the curve of his neck pressed into the inside of my elbow, his breath warm against my cheek. The planes and curves and heat of his body all adding up to sanctuary.

Even when I felt like I didn’t belong in the Light, I knew I belonged here.

“Hey,” I murmured into the corner of his mouth, “where is he?”

Ethan flinched, making a tiny space between us where all the cold could rush in. I drew back, into the dark, silent hall.

“Ethan, where is Carwyn?”

“I did the best I could,” said Ethan. “Uncle Mark was not pleased to meet him. Dad’s in a lot of trouble right now, and I don’t have any say because of the whole being-accused-of-treason thing.”

I could not suppress a shudder. Treason. The weight of the accusation, the knowledge of all it could mean, forced the breath from my lungs. We needed to make a plan to deal with the accusation, to figure out who would make up such a wild and terrible lie, but first we needed to repay the one who had saved him from the accusation.

“Where is he?”

Ethan paused, then took a deep breath and answered. “He’s in a hotel.”

I took another step backwards. “Did you guys have him in the house a whole five minutes before you sent him away, for the second time in his life? Or did you not let him cross the sacred Stryker threshold at all?”

“Look, Lucie, he’s got what he wanted. I made sure that Uncle Mark arranged somewhere nice for him to stay and gave him a lot of money. He can go out on the town now. There’s even a pass sorted out for him—he can stay for a week.”

“Oh, a whole week? That’s so generous of you both. What about the pass he had that meant he could stay for real?”

Ethan looked frustrated. I knew the feeling.

“Uncle Mark would never let him live here. It would only be a matter of time before his face was seen. Besides, he doesn’t want to stay. You heard what he said about crime. All he wanted was an adventure. Well, he’s got one. With Uncle Mark’s money, he can get all the booze and dust and girls he likes. What else did you expect me to do for him? What else do you want from me?”

“Not to leave him alone in a strange city,” I said. “Your dad is responsible for Carwyn, and Carwyn saved your life. That means Carwyn should be looked after!”

“We couldn’t keep him here,” said Ethan. “Jim doesn’t even know he exists. Nobody can know he exists. I’m thinking about my dad here—”

“I’m not,” I interrupted. “I’m thinking about Carwyn. You could have at least gone with him, if he couldn’t stay here.”

I understood that he couldn’t have. Somebody would have been bound to get a photograph sooner or later. Charles Stryker would have been ruined; the whole council would have taken a hit. I understood all the practical concerns, but I understood as Ethan did not—as Ethan could not—what it was to be new and adrift in a sea of light. I understood what it was like to save someone, and pay and pay for it.

“Look, Lucie. Carwyn is a doppelganger. He didn’t want company.”

Ethan stood framed in the doorway of his apartment, limned with gold. A bright tapestry hung on the wall behind him, and he looked tired, annoyed that I kept trying to push darkness into his life. Ethan and I had fought before, but I had never felt this distant from him.

“Did you ask?” I said.

Ethan might not have understood me, but I didn’t want to understand him, either. I did not give him a chance to answer before I spun on my heel and walked away. I left him standing in the doorway to brightness and retraced my steps, past the doorman and his list of chosen ones, under the shining ceiling, and outside, where, even in this city of Light, it was getting dark.

I knew where to go. The Strykers always sent business contacts—not friends, not family—to the same place. The James Hotel, which Jim claimed was named after him though it wasn’t, was a tall glass building that reflected light but gave off very little of its own, like a discreetly expensive gemstone. It was easy to see amid the smaller buildings of SoHo as I walked from the subway station. I texted Penelope that I was out with Ethan and did not know when I would be home. My rings gave off the same muted light as the screen of my phone.

I didn’t know what name the Strykers had registered Carwyn under, but when I asked for the associate Mark Stryker had checked in that day, they sent me up to the penthouse suite.

One of Mark Stryker’s men was waiting outside the door. I didn’t recognize the face, but after two years I knew how to recognize the demeanor. He must have been briefed, because he didn’t interfere with me, so I didn’t acknowledge him. I just went to the door and tapped on it.

“One minute,” Carwyn said, voice muffled, and I wondered what he was hiding before he could open the door.

Once the door was open, it was clear that he hadn’t been hiding anything. He’d just been finding pants.

The collar and the fabric of the doppelganger’s hood attached to the collar had to be waterproof, I realized, because doppelgangers wore them even in the shower. Droplets hung from the leather and metal around his neck, turning it briefly into a choker with pendant jewels—until Carwyn, hood down and head half enveloped in a fluffy towel, vigorously resumed drying his hair and all the droplets fell.

“Oh, you again,” he said. “Honestly, I’m disappointed. I hoped it was room service.”

He took to scrunching up his hair with the towel one-handed so he could gesture, in a vague unenthusiastic manner, for me to come in. I walked in slowly. The floor was black wood, polished to shine like jet, and on all the walls were cubist paintings in gray and red. The light fixtures were metallic, shaped like boxes and spaceships. The light in one had run out, so I wandered over to it and tapped the shiny red dome with two fingers, rings clicking against the metal, and the light blinked back on.

When I looked up, Carwyn was watching me, but that lasted only an instant before he was drying his hair again. It was both less and more strange, seeing the replica of Ethan’s body instead of Ethan’s face. A body was more anonymous, not as easily recognizable, but Carwyn’s was marked by the events of a life different from Ethan’s. Carwyn was thinner, with the leanness of someone used to less and worse food, muscles less impressive but possibly more functional. He had a long scar up his abdomen, a nipple piercing, and none of the tan or the dusting of freckles from Ethan’s days basking in the sun. It was reassuring to have dissimilarities to catalog, having it made clear they were different bodies rather than mirror images.

It was strange because I was the only one who knew Ethan’s body, the intimate details of it, well enough to know what was different about this one.

“I’m sorry for what they did,” I said.

Carwyn finished drying his hair and walked over, closer to me, to drop his towel in a damp heap on the bed. He retreated to a chair standing against the opposite wall, its carved wood painted black, and retrieved his shirt.

“What are you sorry for?”

“I’m sorry they took your pass and sent you away.”

Carwyn snorted. “I know, right? I was so looking forward to playing a game of charades with good old Uncle Mark. I’m not their family. I didn’t expect anything better than this.”

“They owed you better than this,” I said. “They already owed you support. You saved Ethan. They owed you thanks, and not shipping you off as if you were someone engaged in a business dispute with the company.”

“So, what?” Carwyn asked. “You’re here to thank me?”

“I already thanked you,” I pointed out.

“You’re here to express your appreciation by proposing a kinky doppelganger ménage à trois? In which case, I’m going to have to turn you down. I’m sad to say it, but Ethan gives me the impression he’d be about as exciting in the sack as an eggplant.”

“You’re wrong, but you’re just going to have to trust me on that, because you’re never finding out firsthand,” I said. “He’s mine and I don’t share. You keep trying to make me angry or, failing that, uncomfortable.”

Carwyn’s eyes widened for a moment; startled, he looked more like Ethan. He walked across the room toward me again, stopping to sit on the bed, and shrugged and lowered his head as if conceding a point. Or, I realized a moment later, as if he was putting on his shoes.

“Doppelganger,” he said. “Created pitiless and soulless to wander the earth tormenting mortals. Sort of my thing.”

“You torment mortals with dumb sexual innuendo?”

“I’m also a teenage boy. You work with what you have.”

I went to another painted-black chair on my side of the room. I removed the small cushion, which was covered in beads for maximum discomfort, and sat on the chair cross-legged.

“You can’t torment me,” I said. “Not unless you try a lot harder than you currently are. You did something good for me instead.”

“Weren’t you listening to Ethan back on the train? I did something self-serving and cynical that only coincidentally benefited you.”

“Weren’t you listening to me back on the train? You did something good for me: I don’t really care what your reasons were. I haven’t had so many good things happen to me that I’m going to quibble, and I don’t care how much you try to insult me. Because I’m not going to listen.”