Page 3 of The Evil Twin
Tennyson put a bunch of pack members on research duty too, though I wasn’t sure how thorough they’d be, especially ones from other packs. They just weren’t as invested as we were.
“You can’t spend all your time on research,” he said to me. “You need to study. You’re still my lab partner and I won’t have you dragging me down with you.”
He said it from a place of love, I knew, but I also knew that he meant it as well.
So, between research and school, the days flew by. I was too busy and exhausted to think about anything else.
Which was why I was so shocked when the news came of the attack.
The scale of the attack wasn’t so big, not compared to some other attacks my father had committed, but the pure brutality of it made my stomach turn. It was on a werewolf family. A young werewolf family. I had to leave the room halfway through the report to be sick.
When I came back into the room, Tennyson was still on the Zoom call discussing it. I didn’t want to hear anything else about it, but I had to know. It was my father doing these things; the least I could do was hear about it.
“He’s getting closer,” Tennyson said, barely noticing as I sat down.
I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“You still haven’t told her?” asked one of the guys on the screen. Steven, I thought, some relation or other of Hannah's.
“Told me what?”
Tennyson shot me a look, then ended the Zoom call. I took a deep breath. This was going to be bad.
Tennyson turned to me, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
“Let me guess,” I said. “My father has been committing these attacks this whole time, and you’ve kept it from me.”
From the way his shoulders slumped, I knew it was true. I took another deep breath. I didn’t want to be angry with him, especially not because of anything associated with my father.
“There just hasn’t been a good time to tell you,” he said.
“Right,” I said. Deep breath. Remain calm. “How long has this been going on?”
We’d only just gotten back from the other world, and I’d been “swooning around astral traveling or whatever” for a while before that, so I could kind of understand it if it had only been happening for a month or so. I’d still be annoyed, but I’d get it.
“Since summer,” he said, not meeting my eyes.
I took another deep breath. It didn’t help. Sometimes, no amount of breathing in the world can fix things.
“Right,” I said. I stood up and gathered my things.
“Lucy,” he said, reaching for my hand.
I shook him off.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” I said, struggling to keep my voice neutral. “So, I’m just going to go back to my room and think about things until I’m less mad at you. If I stay here and talk about this with you right now, I’ll say things I regret, and we’ve got enough problems at the moment without us being on the outs.”
I glanced around to make sure I had everything.
“I didn’t do it to hurt you,” he said.
“I know. You did it to protect me. But if you can’t see why that’s just as bad, then that’s a whole other problem. Let me know if Althea’s condition changes, but apart from that, it might be good for us to have a little space.”
It was hard, being cut off from Tennyson. Even harder than being cut off from my powers, but I knew it was the best thing for us both. There was too much else happening, too much else to give our mental energy to.
So, I threw myself into study, and when I wasn’t studying, I was researching the lodestone. It took me around a week to catch up with my classes, just enough so I wasn’t completely lost, but the lodestone was another matter entirely. The only thing I found was that while I read through ancient text after ancient text, I sorted out my thoughts about Tennyson in the back of my head. It took me a few more days than that to get up the courage to go talk to him.
He sat alone by Althea’s bedside. She looked exactly the same as the last time we’d been there. Maybe a little thinner, but no closer to waking up. He glanced up when I entered the room and gave me a tentative smile that made my insides all fluttery.
