Page 14 of The Evil Twin
She went on to outline a plan that involved Other-me going to my father, pretending to be me, and spying for us. The rest of us were united in our opinion that this was the worst plan ever.
“I can’t pose as her,” said Other-me. “She doesn’t even have a skincare regime. Look at her pores! Nobody would believe we were the same person.”
Harper snickered.
“We can’t even trust her when we’re watching her. There’s no way we should let her near him.” Sam looked like he’d prefer to murder Other-me than go along with this plan.
“We don’t even know if your visions are real,” said Tennyson.
None of our protests mattered to Althea.
“It’s just how it has to be,” she said.
“Is this psychic thing going to be permanent?” asked Tennyson. “Because I hate it already.”
Althea shrugged and smiled mysteriously, and I could see Tennyson’s point.
She told us the location of my father’s attack, and that Other-me should be waiting there for him when he arrived. She told us exactly what Other-me should say and what she should do.
“And then you’ll know that my visions are real,” she finished. “You just need to trust me.”
She seemed so sure of herself, but there was so much that could go wrong. My father could steal all the power from Other-me. She could steal the power from him. They could team up and cause an apocalypse. We didn’t just need to trust Althea, we needed to trust Other-me and my father as well.
“If she goes and he doesn’t show up, you’ll know I’m delusional,” she added.
“We’ll need people watching her to make sure she goes along with it,” said Tennyson. “And she should wear a wire.”
I shook my head. “He’d find that straight up, and then the whole plan would be blown.”
“Why are you talking as if this is going ahead?” asked Other-me. “It was hard enough to defeat him the first time, I’m not going through all that again. Nuh-uh, no way.”
“You don’t need to defeat him,” said Althea. “Just be yourself. And you will do it, because if you don’t, we’ll send you to another world. Not the world you came from, but one much, much worse.”
Althea stared at Other-me pointedly. I don’t know what Other-me saw in that stare, but whatever it was made her turn pale.
“Fine,” she said with a huff. “But don’t expect any heroics.”
She flounced out of the room, and immediately, I felt a tension lift from my head. I hadn’t even noticed it building, but when it lifted, I realized it had been getting worse since we got back from Wilde Manor. The feedback was getting worse; if I was affected by it even without physical contact, just from being nearby. That was one good thing about this awful plan, at any rate.
“I’ll miss her,” said Harper.
“You could go with her,” I suggested. That would be another headache gone.
With Other-me gone, it was safe to explain what I’d found in the library at Wilde Manor.
“That’s fantastic,” said Althea. “I’ll take a look at your notes. Though I’m surprised the curator let you photograph such an old book.”
“I don’t really know Latin, so my translation is very rough,” I said, dodging her comment. “But it seems like the stone sort of stores different energies and then guides them.”
Hannah seemed quite excited by that theory. “That would be perfect for you!” she said. “Well, you when you have your powers back. The main problem you’ve always faced has been controlling your power, because there’s so much of it. You’re either repressing it or it’s exploding out of you. You could use it kind of like a power bank.”
I wondered if it was the same for Other-me, after suddenly getting all my power. Maybe she was afraid to use it, and that’s why she wanted the lodestone so badly.
“In the ritual that I saw, the stone seemed fully active,” said Althea. “I wish I’d written my vision down; all the details have faded now, like a dream.”
Tennyson gave a little cough, as if to imply he thought it probably was a dream, but Althea ignored him. Either way, we’d know soon enough if she was right about my father attacking where she claimed.
Althea wanted to start on the translation right away, and Tennyson had to go and prepare for my father’s possible attack. I knew I should’ve gone to class, but I’d hardly slept, so I decided to go back to my dorm for a little nap. If I’d stayed at the manor, I’d be missing classes anyway, so if I made it to afternoon class, I was kind of ahead. Kind of.
