I spent the rest of the train ride putting on makeup and brushing my hair. I wasn’t dressed for the media, not in a simple blue dress. It had been so long since I’d had to prepare for a performance, and I was not ready. But I could look better than I did now. I found a compact in my bag and stared into the mirror: pink, sticky eye shadow smudged on, hair shimmering gold. I looked tired from the night. I passed my fingertips under my eyes, letting my rings glow gently, and made the shadows disappear.
I snapped the compact shut and saw Carwyn giving me one of his flat looks, mouth curled in what looked a whole lot like contempt.
“You look beautiful,” Ethan told me, which I didn’t care about, and, “We can do this,” which I did.
The train pulled into Penn Station with a creak and a rattle. I stood up from the bed without letting go of Ethan’s hand, and I reached for Carwyn’s and grabbed hold, pulling him to his feet as well.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this done.”
We went up the elevator into a maelstrom of reporters. One of the guards had told somebody, I thought, or someone had seen what almost happened to Ethan and recognized him. The station was packed.
Carwyn’s hood was up—people did not take kindly to a doppelganger brazenly displaying a stolen face—but all it would take was a guard spilling the secret before he could be bribed into silence, or someone making a lucky guess about who the doppelganger next to us was.
Ethan’s father was on the Light Council. Ethan’s Uncle Mark led it. There had been a Stryker on the council ever since it was formed.
They were the most powerful family in New York. But there were other powerful families, waiting for their chance to take the Strykers down. People were voted onto the council —nominated from only a small pool of the wealthiest and most influential Light magician families, but voted on. If the Strykers were implicated in a crime like creating a doppelganger, their power would be lost. All the protection they could offer Ethan, and me, would be lost.
We were in dangerous waters, the flashing light of every camera a threat. I was prepared to hold on to them both and push my way through, but I wasn’t looking forward to it.
And then Ethan’s uncle stepped out of the crowd.
It was the first time in my life I had ever been glad to see Mark Stryker. Not that he had ever been unpleasant to me. On the contrary, he had always been flawlessly, almost ceremoniously, polite. I knew how people acted when they were being recorded. Mark was like that all the time.
He was like that now, but we were in perfect accord. When he put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, loving and concerned for the space of three camera flashes, I sent him a perfectly distressed and grateful smile.
“My dear girl,” he said in a loud voice, “I’m so relieved you’re both safe.”
His security detail swept unobtrusively after him, dark-clad and official-looking without being official enough to answer for anything they did. We were effectively cut off from the crowd of reporters.
“There’s been some kind of terrible mix-up,” I responded. “I’m so glad you’re here to sort it out.”
Mark Stryker raised his eyebrows, smile fixed in place like a picture on a wall. I’d never thought he looked like Ethan in more than the superficial way all the Strykers resembled each other: they practically had tall, dark, and photogenic trademarked.
Now that I had met Carwyn, I saw that Ethan looked more like his uncle than I would have dreamed. I saw now how different the same features could seem when they were illuminated by a different spirit. Same hawk-like nose, same high cheekbones, same thin mouth with the potential to be pitiless. Same dark eyes, which could look so flat.
Mark’s frightening eyes locked on the sight of my hand linked with Carwyn’s.
I knew that it would only call attention to the fact that he was with us, attention we did not need, creating questions we could not answer. But I was afraid of letting him go. I didn’t want to lose him.
“A doppelganger,” said Mark, with what seemed to be mild surprise and nothing more. The skin on the back of my neck crawled, as if stroked by a hand too cold to be human. “Here illegally?”
Oh God, I thought. He must be, and that meant he could legally be executed if he was caught. And thanks to us, he was well and truly caught.
“You shock me with that implication!” Carwyn said, and showed the inside of his wrist, where the date—September 12—burned with Light magic. A perfectly legal pass, inscribed by a Light magician official.
“But you said—” Ethan began.
“Be fair,” Carwyn told him. “I just expressed my enthusiasm for crime in general. I didn’t say I was committing a crime right that minute. I was given a pass to come and assist another legal Dark magician with the draining of the city’s best and brightest.”