Duplicity (Spellbound #2)

by Nikki Jefford

  Adrian did nothing to pull it apart. His lips twitched. He stood in place, taking it all in as though watching a show that provided a great deal of entertainment.

  Once Gray was satisfied that she’d bought herself several seconds, she turned and raced toward Raj, bending down for the nazar as she went. She thrust the pendant into his hand, hoping contact with the indestructible thing would work. It did. He regained mobility immediately. Raj pocketed the nazar. Together they jumped and grabbed Lee’s dangling legs, pulling her out of the store with them.

  They stuffed Lee into the backseat, and she rose up as if the roof of the car were a magnet. Gray and Raj jumped in front and took off down the road.

  Gray rolled her eyes. “Well, that went well.”

  “What happened?” Raj asked.

  “I don’t know! He suspected something the moment he walked in and saw Lee.”

  Raj glanced at Lee in the rearview mirror then shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out the nazar. When he handed it to Lee, she fell to the seat cushion with an, “oof,” and then the car swerved as Raj’s shirt burst open.

  Raj cursed and straightened out the vehicle. Lee had fallen sideways and Gray was staring at Raj’s bare chest.

  Lee righted herself and leaned between Raj and Gray. “What happened?”

  “My shirt ripped open,” Raj said.

  Lee looked him over in alarm. “Is everything else on?”

  Raj slammed his hands against the steering wheel after coming to a stop at the light. She’d been so busy staring, Gray hadn’t noticed it changing. Guiltily, she looked forward and made it green.

  “We rushed in there completely unprepared,” Raj said.

  “It was a good plan,” Lee said defensively. “He took us by surprise.”

  “When we were the ones supposed to be taking him by surprise,” Gray chimed in.

  Lee tensed behind her. “How could we have known?”

  They both quieted as the car gained speed. Gray glanced at the speedometer. Raj was seven miles over the speed limit. She cleared her throat. “Now what? He knows we’re onto him. The two of you can’t rely on your powers.” Gray sighed. “It’s all up to me.”

  “No,” Raj said. “It’s not. I’m going home to change and then we’re going to figure this out.”

  Gray meant to look him in the eye instead of zeroing in on his chest. She swallowed. Dragging her eyes away from him, Gray distracted herself by staring at the manicured lawns in the neighborhood they entered.

  “That’s funny,” Raj said as he turned into his driveway. “Mom’s car is here.” His face lit up as his sister opened the front door. “Aahana, what are you doing home?”

  The beautiful fourteen-year-old grinned from ear to ear. “You’ll never guess what Mom got!”

  “Aahana!” a voice yelled from inside.

  Aahana slouched. Her eyes darted sideways and her voice lowered. “Shhh, but come in first.” Once they were inside, the girl noticed Raj holding his shirt together in a fist. She giggled. “Another case of exploding clothes?”

  Raj’s face reddened. “I’ll be right back.” He rushed from the room, only stopping briefly to say, “Whatever we’re supposed to guess, don’t say anything until I get back.”

  “Fine.” Aahana led Gray and Lee into the living room and flopped down on the couch. She looked Gray over. “Who are you?”

  Lee grinned and joined Aahana on the couch. “She’s me—Graylee Perez once more stuck in my twin sister, Charlene’s, body.”

  “Wait. What?” Aahana sat up and stared at Gray. “There are two of you?”

  Lee shrugged. “At the moment.”

  At the moment. What the heck was that supposed to mean? Before Gray could ask, Raj and his mother entered the living room. Raj was now wearing a long-sleeved cotton tee. Mrs. McKenna entered in a long, flowing skirt. She was several skin shades darker than her children, with silky hair pulled back in a low ponytail.

  Speaking of long, gorgeous hair, at Aahana’s insistence, Lee had settled onto the floor in front of her so Aahana could run her fingers through Lee’s hair and begin styling it.

  “Gray, why don’t you take a seat?” Raj said.

  Gray shook her head. “I’m fine standing.”

  “Mom, this is Graylee Perez,” Raj said.

  But Mrs. McKenna appeared even less interested than her daughter. She nodded quickly then held up a handful of nazars. The blue glass disks with painted eyes dangled from her fingers.

  “Where did you get those?” Raj asked.

  “A friend was able to find these in Seattle. She only came up with a dozen, but we have more on the way.”

  Aahana removed her fingers from Lee’s hair to pull her nazar from under her shirt and show it off.

  “What a relief,” Lee said.

  Mrs. McKenna lowered her arm. “I was just on my way to Gathering to give these to Mr. Holloway. The council members and peer leaders will have first rights to the pendants until we have enough for everybody.”

  Aahana didn’t look up from Lee’s hair, which she’d begun braiding. “I can’t believe you’re just handing them over. We could have made a fortune selling those.”

  “Aahana!”

  “What? It’s true.”

  “Be happy you got one, young lady. Think of the families who still have to wait.”

  But Aahana’s mind was clearly on Lee’s hair as she worked her way down to the ends.

  “Do you mind if I take one for my mom?” Lee asked.

  Naturally, Lee brought it up first, once more looking like the good Gray out of the two.

  After Mrs. McKenna handed Lee and Raj a nazar, she glanced at Gray.

  “It’s okay,” Raj said. “She doesn’t need one.”

  Mrs. McKenna frowned. “Why not?”

  Raj sighed. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “She’s not real,” Aahana said.

  “I’m real!” Gray cried out. Along with her feelings. Nice sister Raj had.

  Lee looked at Raj. “Now that we both have nazars we can go back and take care of Adrian.”

  “A lot of good that did you,” Gray said. “Adrian removed yours in two seconds flat.”

  “Only because I wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Adrian?” Mrs. McKenna said. She turned to Raj. “I don’t want you going anywhere near that man. You either, Lee.”

  Gray held her breath, but Mrs. McKenna didn’t look at her. Everyone seemed to have forgotten she was there.

  Clearly it didn’t matter what happened to Gray. As far as anyone else was concerned, she wasn’t real.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Monday morning, Lee brushed her hair gently in front of the bathroom mirror. She had shimmied into a pair of tight jeans. Why not? She was supermodel thin. The nazar was tucked under a thin sweater. Lee didn’t want to look like she was part of an evil eye cult, though she doubted Raj, Max, and Shay would wear theirs for the world to see, either.

  Ryan and Nolan had not been lucky enough to score a nazar. Not that Ryan would have been at school even with the amulet. After learning of his supposed involvement in the theft of the pendants, Marc Phillips had grounded Ryan. No school. No stepping out of the house. No calling Charlene.

  Being neither a peer leader nor son of a council member, Nolan Knapp had never stood a chance of receiving a nazar. Unlike other Kent families, his parents had elected to take their chances at home rather than camp out at Gathering, though they weren’t such risk takers as to send Nolan to school with faulty powers.

  When Lee came down to the kitchen, Mr. Morehouse was already at the dining room table drinking coffee and leaning into his laptop.

  “Good morning,” Lee called out.

  “Morning, Stace,” Mr. Morehouse said without looking up.

  She helped herself to cereal and rice milk—another one of those small quirks Stacey had developed since coming out of the coma. Mr. Morehouse didn’t talk much in the morning, which was fine with Lee. But this morning, inst
ead of calling out a quick “good-bye” as she made for the door, Mr. Morehouse stood and followed her to the entryway. Lee reached for her book bag and shot him a questioning glance.

  “You are going to school, aren’t you?”

  Lee broke out into a grin despite herself. “How can you even ask? Yes, I’m going to school. I’m going to learn and then I’ll ride the bus home at the end of the day.”

  Mr. Morehouse’s shoulders relaxed. “That’s my girl.”

  School had its attractions, with the added benefit that the duplicate Gray wouldn’t be there.

  Lee ran into Shay first. The two couples had gotten their locker assignments together at the start of senior year. Shay was almost always the first person to school, followed by Lee, Max, and Raj. But this morning, Raj didn’t show up.

  Lee frowned “Where’s Raj?” She looked up and down the hall.

  Shay set a textbook inside her locker with a final thunk. “He’s still miffed about the truth spell we did on the water at Gathering.”

  Raj had given Lee an earful about it the night before, but she’d only been half listening. “I don’t see what choice you had, given the circumstances.”

  “And it worked,” Shay said, lifting her chin a notch. “Holloway says they’ll be able to fix the spell using the information they gathered during interrogation.”

  Max chuckled. When Shay looked at him, he cleared his throat. “Sorry, interrogation sounds so rough and tumble. I like to think of the proceedings as interviews.”

  “And they didn’t tell you anything?” Lee asked. She knew the answer, but she asked anyway.

  Shay bristled slightly at this. “They told us they uncovered pertinent information. It’s better they keep it to themselves at this stage.”

  “Thank goodness for these nazars.” Max pulled his out of his sweater, kissed it, then tucked it back in.

  Shay shut her locker. “Will we see you and Raj at lunch?”

  “I’ll talk to him during Econ,” Lee said. “He has to understand that spell was for the greater good.”

  “Including his sister’s,” Shay added. “I doubt he would have been in such a huff if Graylee hadn’t been there, working him up.”

  Right… Gray. She’d probably used the violation speech on him. If only Lee hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch that evening. Gray needed to back off. These weren’t her friends or boyfriend she was dealing with. “Well, she’s not on the same maturity level as us. If you think about it, Gray is almost a year younger than me.”

  Getting Shay to laugh was rare. Lee smiled when she did so now. It was nice to have someone fully on her side. Sometimes, it felt like her mom and Raj were caught between her—the real Gray—and Gray the duplicate. That’s what Gray was—a dupe.

  What happened when the spell on Charlene expired or was reversed? It couldn’t last forever, and then there’d be only one true Gray.

  Lee had two classes before Economy with Raj. Second semester of senior year was flowing much smoother than the end of junior year or even the first semester of senior. There wasn’t nearly as much head scratching and speculation over Stacey Morehouse’s one eighty from dating jocks to going out with the school’s Indian version of James Dean or befriending the studious (i.e., sober, clean, virtuous, boring) Shay Baxter and Max Curry.

  Lee loved their insulated little group. She’d gone from a girl who crushed after normals and best-friended someone who had no idea she was a witch, to dating a warlock and spending her time exclusively with coven members.

  It was a shame Lee couldn’t attend Gathering, but beyond their circle and her mom, no one knew about her, and she intended to keep it that way.

  “Hey,” Lee said, sliding in beside Raj at the beginning of third period.

  Raj leaned across the aisle and planted a quick kiss on Lee’s cheek. “Sorry I missed you at the lockers this morning.”

  “Shay thinks you’re still mad at her.”

  “And she didn’t even have to read my mind to figure that one out.” Raj rolled his eyes, but grinned just as quickly. He smiled a lot when he looked at Lee. Even when he’d pursued her relentlessly before her death, Raj had never smiled at her the way he did once they started going out. The smile now said she was his and that’s the way he liked it. It sent shivers of pleasure skittering through Lee’s chest.

  Lowering her lashes, Lee pushed her Econ book to the far corner of her desk. “I hope you don’t stay mad at her for too long. We don’t have many more months to hang out together.”

  Raj didn’t answer.

  When Lee met his stare he looked at her peculiarly.

  “What?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing, it’s just you and Gray are the same person, yet you seem so different.”

  “We’re not exactly the same person,” Lee said. Mr. Jones was shuffling papers on his desk. The last bell would ring any moment, and he’d begin roll call. “What I mean is we’ve branched off and are creating separate memories. I have experiences she doesn’t.”

  Like the hundreds of kisses she’d shared with Raj, all their conversations, and her time bonding with his family and friends—making them her own. To Gray, Mr. Morehouse was still Stacey’s dad. To Lee, he had become a guardian, someone she cared about and knew as only a daughter figure living with him day in and day out could come to know.

  “Hey,” Raj said when they’d entered the hallway after class.

  Lee stopped, and he tilted her head gently before giving her the lingering kiss she’d missed first thing that morning.

  Raj was smiling when he pulled back. Lee was sure her eyes were shining. “So, I’ll see you at lunch?”

  Still smiling, he shook his head side to side.

  Lee frowned. Raj gave her another quick kiss as though that would make everything better.

  “Hey,” Lee said as Raj headed down the hall. This was where they split off to fourth period every day after Econ.

  Raj turned.

  “What about tomorrow night?”

  Raj cocked his head to the side. “Tomorrow night?”

  “Valentine’s.”

  Raj broke out into a wide grin. “You’re not bowing out, are you? I made dinner reservations.”

  Lee exhaled and shot Raj a smile before turning for her fourth period class.

  Chapter Eighteen

  How did one extract blood from a crafty and powerful warlock?

  Gray sat at the kitchen table with a spiral notebook in front of her as though she would work out the solution like a math problem. Maybe she’d find inspiration if she wrote it out in essay format.

  Instead, Gray jotted down words. Adrian. Magic Shop. Needle. Blood.

  The question was how to get him unconsciousness so she could draw blood.

  Gray’s pen scratched the paper. Sleeping salts. She tapped her pen on the notebook. “Mom?”

  Her mom sat on the other end of the table with a Scandinavian novel opened beside her laptop. Every so often her fingers stilled as she mumbled something in Norwegian until she was happy enough with her translation to begin pounding the keyboard again.

  “Are there other ways to put people to sleep besides smelling salts?”

  Mom stopped typing. “Why do you want to know?”

  Gray dropped her pen. “You’re not going to like the answer.”

  “Somehow, I didn’t think I would.” Mom sighed. “We’ve both been through a lot. Why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  It felt good to tell her everything—all the way back to what had happened after Mom left to meet her contact the previous year. Well, not quite everything. There was no reason to distress her mother by mentioning the morning she’d woken in Nolan Knapp’s bed. It would only hurt her and Gray wasn’t about to let Nolan do any more damage.

  She also left out the part about Charlene’s extracted soul. If it were to be recovered before Charlene found a host, what would happen to Gray?

  Some of this was no doubt a repeat. Surely, Lee had already clued Mo
m in on the deal with Adrian and the early morning break-ins to steal their coven leaders’ pendants.

  Mom didn’t say a word when she confessed to the break-ins. In fact, she was completely silent throughout the entire outpouring, which only made Gray want to spill her guts more. While she’d fully intended to tell her about Gathering and pretending to be Charlene for Holloway, Gray hadn’t wanted to worry her mother about their visit to see Adrian the day before. But her mom was being so patient and quiet.

  The words spilled from Gray’s lips. “And that is why I need a sleeping spell, so I can take his blood and end the hold he has over Kent.”

  Her mom blinked several times. “I’ll talk to Adrian.”

  Of all the things Gray expected her mom to say, it wasn’t this. “Talk? You can’t talk to Adrian. Adrian doesn’t talk. He bargains.”

  “Then perhaps I can bargain with him.”

  “You have no bargaining chips. Adrian’s getting exactly what he wants at the moment: revenge.”

  “Perhaps if he were able to see reason…”

  “Mom! This is Adrian Hedrick Montez we’re talking about.”

  Mom worried her lower lip. “Well, maybe if someone approached him from a nonthreatening standpoint, he’d hear them out rather than feel the need to go on the defensive.”

  “Defensive! He froze Raj and sent Lee floating to the ceiling like a helium balloon.”

  Mom folded her laptop cover forward and clicked it shut. “That is why I don’t want any of you going near him again. Let someone with more experience handle The Avenger.”

  No way—Gray didn’t like that idea one bit. She was about to say so when there was a knock at the door. Their eyes met. Gray sighed. Mom’s study buddy had come by for another work session, no doubt.

  “I wasn’t expecting Daniel this morning,” Mom said. She disappeared behind the entry wall. “Marc!”

  Gray’s head snapped up from the table. Before Ryan’s dad stepped inside, she turned herself invisible.