Nadiya looked puzzled. “Uh,” she said, “you look a bit thinner as well.”
“I haven’t been eating,” Carwyn claimed. “I was . . . depressed by how stupid my hair looked.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “Okay, shut up, you big weirdo.”
“Anything for you, pumpkin,” Carwyn drawled.
Nadiya was looking at us very oddly. I cleared my throat. “Time to dance!”
On a dance floor crammed with laughing people, sliding shadows, and beautiful false lightning, Nadiya leaned into me and whispered in my ear, “Are you guys having a fight?”
“No,” I said back, more loudly, watching Carwyn from the corner of my eye. “You know Ethan. Always talking. And then talking some more.”
Nadiya considered this and then shrugged it all off. She leaned up and said something in Carwyn’s ear, too low for me to make out. I glanced at her, worried she was suspicious.
I tried to sound casual. “What did you say?”
Nadiya bit her lip. “I know a guy who’s got dust. You want some?”
“No,” I said.
“Absolutely!” said Carwyn.
“Uh, wow.” Nadiya blinked. “Well, if you want to unlink, Ethan and I could go get the dust and be right back . . . ?”
She sounded hesitant about the entire plan. Carwyn looked very pleased with himself.
“What a great idea,” he said. “Why don’t we do that? Come on, Lucie.” He tugged at the link, our wrists bumping, and looked down at me with glee in his hooded eyes. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”
“Nope!” I said.
Carwyn’s smirk faded slightly. “Ah well. Worth a try, gorgeous.”
Carwyn tugged at the link between us again and, rather than get involved in a wrestling match, we followed Nadiya across the dance floor. She went to one of the farthest corners in the next room, where she had a brief but intense conference with a guy in a leather jacket. He squinted over at us.
“Aren’t you . . . ?” he began.
“Lucie,” I said, confirmation and a clear sign I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Ethan,” said Carwyn. “Kind of a dumb name, isn’t it? I’ve never liked it.”
“Is he drunk?” Nadiya whispered.
I laughed and shrugged at the same time. The laugh came out more like a panicked hiccup.
“Oh, well, Lucie,” said the guy, who I had never seen before in my life. “We’re going to have something to celebrate soon, aren’t we? If everything goes right?”
I wasn’t going to betray weakness or ignorance, especially not in front of strangers and doppelgangers. “I don’t feel like celebrating, and I don’t want any dust.”
“We’ve got so much to celebrate,” Carwyn put in blandly. “Such as our love. Our beautiful, beautiful love.”
The guy reached into his jacket and pulled out a little pouch, which was also leather. He was clearly working a theme.
He put the pouch down on the top of the little table he was sitting at, the tabletop a small circle of metal that shone with a few different metallic shades of color in the dim light. He drew open the zipper of the purse, and the chaotic roar of the club seemed to fade and fall away as the dust came creeping out through the zip and into the air.
Like grains of black sand that could float, the dust rose and spiraled over us. It spread out so far that it appeared pale gray, so anyone watching us would hardly have seen it. It would have seemed to them like an optical illusion, the palest of shadows, like that which comes from a cloud passing over a landscape.
Dust was created by Dark magic. I did not know how. But the word was that dust was particles of darkness made tangible. Shards of the dark ground down to dust.
Dust brought peace with it, like the feeling of dreamless sleep. I was almost tempted.
“Come on, guys, let’s not,” I said instead. “This isn’t like you, Ethan,” I added pointedly.
It wasn’t much like Nadiya, either. I wondered what was going on with her, but I couldn’t ask with a doppelganger attached to my wrist. She let herself be pulled away with little protest, and Carwyn had no choice about the matter. I looked around at the people dancing, the swaying and shimmying in the moving lights, and then at Nadiya and Carwyn, and found myself laughing again.
“Let’s just dance,” I said, and grabbed Nadiya’s hand with my free one so I could tow them both back into the midst of the dancers.
The music hummed and thrummed as we danced. Light sparkled all around us, in my eyes, glancing off my rings and sending beams out on all sides. Shadows wrapped me, sliding around my body and through my hair like black ribbons. Time seemed a little broken up, like the light, coming in flashes between the shadows. Nadiya shimmied down and then up again, purple sparks lighting her dark eyes. An older man with rings like mine on his fingers was tracing bright paths down a woman’s back that flared briefly and then were absorbed into her skin. A boy in a neon brocade vest with nothing underneath was dancing in a shimmering line of Light.