Tell the Wind and Fire(25)

I’d thought that I had seen weird stories about my personal relationships already. I’d been used to having no privacy before I even met my famous Stryker boyfriend. There had been brief columns about Ethan and me, photographs of us attending parties, sometimes reports that we had broken up or one of us was cheating with somebody we’d never met. I’d winced at a truly embarrassing picture of me in a blue string bikini on a yacht with Ethan.

That was bad enough. I hadn’t dreamed people thought I was acting a part with Ethan. He was the last true thing I had, the only thing unsullied by all that had happened to me in the Dark.

“You seem to know a lot about what the people involved in the revolution think,” I snapped.

“I’m a very knowledgeable guy,” Carwyn agreed. “They say that doppelgangers can read human hearts and see all the fear and darkness in them. Pale companions of humanity, with their faces pressed up against the windows of the world. Seeing humans’ pain and laughing at it.”

The swing gave a tiny metallic shriek as he swung.

“Okay,” I said. “You could probably also hang around in dive bars and talk to people. Doppelgangers have a lot to gain from a revolution.”

“It’s true a revolution might make the world a better place,” said Carwyn. “But I’m not really the world-saving type. Lots of risk, very uncertain reward—you know what I’m saying? And even if the reward came . . .” He swung and shrugged. “A reward wouldn’t stay a reward, not with me. You don’t know me very well yet, but you’ll see. Everything I touch turns to ash.”

“What?”

I’d been worried that he would look too much like Ethan without the collar, but his hair was still shorter and his mouth crueler. He bowed his head, and his nape looked bizarrely uncovered, with an indentation below his hairline where the collar had been.

“This is how I think doppelgangers work,” said Carwyn. “The doppelganger is created so the other, the first image, can live and prosper. But there has to be a payment. I think that one of us has to suffer. Dark magicians make doppelgangers to be living versions of those dolls people used to stick pins into. We usually die young, instead of them, but we don’t simply die. We come to nothing, with none of our actions meaning anything, and none of our goals ever reached. We are those who might as well have died young: all our lives might have been. All our lives are lived elsewhere, by someone else.”

Carwyn glanced over at me, and a smirk was born on his mouth, dark as ink spilled and spreading.

“Of course, sometimes the doppelganger can get its own back. Sometimes the doppelganger can make his mirror image be the one who suffers.”

Legends say that a doppelganger will cause their original’s death in the end, and try to take their place. There are records of doppelgangers who killed their doubles, their doubles’ families, the magicians who made them, and innocent people. Doppelgangers are lethal. Making a doppelganger is illegal because it is making a weapon that will kill of its own volition.

I had listened to the stories but I had never considered, before this moment, how much a doppelganger might resent their original.

Except Carwyn had not killed Ethan. He had saved him.

“You know,” I said, “you’re right. You do talk an awful lot.”

“Hmm.” Carwyn flicked an eyebrow sardonically. “You were right as well,” he said, and seemed to be chiefly addressing the remnants of his cupcake. “This is much too sweet for me.”

“Someone should have warned you about that,” I said, and ate the last of my own delicious cupcake with deep satisfaction. “Oh, wait. I did.”

Carwyn tossed his cupcake wrapper and fragment toward the nearest trash can. It fell short by several feet, but Carwyn looked indifferent. Apparently doppelgangers were litterbugs, too.

“I talk, but I don’t really listen. Where to next?”

I’d already given that some thought. I didn’t want to go to any of my usual hangouts, because I worried we might be seen and questions might be asked. Carwyn kept talking about having fun in the Light city, and he would not be content with going home and being collared while the night was still young.

There was a place I had gone quite a lot when I was fresh out of the Dark city, and a few times since.

“I might have somewhere in mind.”

The problem was, the place wasn’t exactly legal.



I guided Carwyn through the streets and into Greenwich Village. He wandered along in my wake, looking amiably around as people passed by. At this time of night, it was mostly couples headed to dinner, single people looking for money or fun, and giggling groups headed to clubs. I saw one girl wearing an obviously fake doppelganger’s collar, the material of her hood fraying and the collar plastic. Carwyn didn’t look offended: he smiled the dark, smug smile from the playground and she smiled back, face shadowed but not hidden. Her smile reminded me of the way the midwestern woman from the restaurant had spoken to Carwyn. She stopped smiling when she noticed our linked wrists.