When Nathaniel woke in the morning, the memories of the night before came crashing back into his head. Warwick’s tobacco had saved him from a night of tossing and turning, but its numbing effect only lasted so long. Now his emotions were all on the surface again. Clarissa loved him. It wasn’t enough. The dichotomy made him want to tear down the walls.
He needed to do whatever was necessary to recover Clarissa’s voice and get her out of here. He couldn’t stand much more of this. Every moment with her here was like having his heart in a vise. He tapped the heel of his palm against his forehead. Think, Nathaniel. Who could wield a dragon curse other than you or the order?
The phone rang, distracting him. He glanced down at the caller. Professor Wallace. A friend. A colleague. He’d been a member of the order at one time, until a bout with cancer moved his heart close to home and he simplified his life.
Nathaniel answered the call, curious why he was phoning at the early hour.
“Nathaniel, I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Peter, you sound distressed. What can I do for you?”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I have some disturbing news. It… it might be nothing, you understand. Just a coincidence. But it was odd, I tell you. So odd.”
“What are we talking about?”
“A few days ago two young women brought me a book. The owner of a gallery in New York and her assistant. The book is in perfect condition, late seventeenth century. Written in a combination of ancient Greek and Latin. It’s about the order, Nathaniel. You are mentioned in its pages.”
“Hmm. I remember we made a few manuals back then, mostly books of medicinal healing for the locals. It’s incredible one survived.”
“There’s more.”
He waited. Judging by the long pause, Wallace was concerned about telling him this part. “What is it, man?”
“The assistant… She… I was taken aback when I saw her.”
“Why?”
“She, um. Do you know that American singer you used to have a relationship with ten years ago, when I was part of the order?”
“Clarissa?”
“Yes… Well… This assistant could have been her twin. It flustered me, her having the book. I thought Clarissa was posing as this person for some nefarious reason, and I’m afraid I consequently treated her quite badly. But then I remembered your Clarissa is blond these days. I just thought it was odd, magically odd, to see a doppelgänger show up at the university with a book connected to you.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Nathaniel felt a chill work through his body.
“Huh?”
“She’s here. Clarissa is here. She lost her power Friday night. It looks like a curse.”
“This woman came to see me Saturday afternoon.”
“Who knows anything about doppelgänger magic? Who can I call in on this?” he asked, his mind racing. Doppelgängers were rare and their magic was innate, metaphysical. He wasn’t sure exactly how Clarissa’s double might be involved in the curse, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that she was interested in dragon magic.
“The only one I can think of is the Cornish pixie queen. Pixie genetics produce a pair of doppelgängers with every one thousand births. I’ve read they have mystical properties. Perhaps she could help you sort out the dynamics.”
Nathaniel rubbed his head. The memory of what Clarissa had told him flooded back into his thoughts. Someone had taken her hair. “What if she’s not a doppelgänger but a skinwalker?”
“Do you have reason to believe someone got hold of her genetic material?”
“Hair.”
“Good heavens, Nathaniel. This is complex magic. Very complex. There’s only one creature in all of England who can help you if that’s the case.”
“Don’t say it.”
“You need to consult an oracle.”
He grabbed his head. He knew a creature that could answer all their questions, but the price of her abilities was higher than he was willing to pay. “Thank you, Peter. I must go now, but I appreciate your letting me know. I’ll be in touch.”
“Absolutely. But Nathaniel?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful. My sixth sense is buzzing on this one. I consulted the cards and pulled the Tower. Something is coming for you. I don’t know what. I don’t know who. I can’t say how the girl or the book ties in. But change is coming. You must beware.”
“I understand, and your warning is fully heeded.”
“Blessed be.”
“To you too.”
Nathaniel frowned as he disconnected the call. This was getting weirder and weirder.
He showered and dressed, then went to the kitchen where Tempest had prepared porridge and bacon. He tried to eat, but his mind spun around what he’d learned.
“Porridge again? What, are special omelets only for dinner?” Clarissa stood at the end of the dining table. She was smiling, but there were dark circles under her eyes.
“You look exhausted.” He stood and poured her a cup of tea.
She dropped heavily into the chair across from him. “I don’t suppose you read the Daily Mirror this morning?”
He shook his head slowly, sat back down. He hated the tabloids, and he dreaded hearing what she was about to say.
“Well, I’m the cover story. It seems the general consensus is that I had a nervous breakdown and can no longer perform. People are taking bets whether I cancel my O2 concert. They think I’m going to go full Britney and shave my head.”
“The tabloids exaggerate the truth and invent lies regularly.” He waved a hand dismissively. “You can’t take it personally. We will break this curse, and you will be on that stage as planned.”
She folded her hands on the table and rested her head. “Isn’t this when you tell me I told you so?”
He frowned and sipped his tea. “Why on earth would I do that?”
“Last night you said my fans didn’t really love me, only what I do for them. There was no concern in the comments of the article, Nate. I’m tabloid fodder, and the only thing my fans care about is if I’m going to fulfill my obligation to them as ticket holders. If I were sick, no one would be sending me flowers except maybe Tom, and he’d make his secretary do it.”
Nathaniel lowered his cup to the table. “It gives me no pleasure to be right about that. I wish I were wrong. But you see, as we established last night, I do love you, and it’s easy to tell the difference from this side of the fence.” There was no point in denying it. He was done hiding his feelings for her comfort.
“Nate…”
“Aww, Clarissa, are you suddenly unwilling to pay the price of fame? Should I break out the world’s smallest violin to play you a melancholy song to go with your melancholy circumstances?”
“I think my mood is completely valid given what’s happening,” she snapped. “I’m witnessing the death of a career I’ve worked hard for, all because someone had it out for me for reasons beyond my control. I am nothing without my voice.”
Fury had him out of his chair, his dragon rolling through his body like a freight train. He bound around the table and lifted her to her feet, grabbing her by the chin like a child. “You are everything. Everything. You lost your magic, not your voice. You can still speak, you can still sing, you still participated in that spell last night. You have arms that move and legs that make me weak. And when you smile, I see the woman who found a way to do what she wanted to do when she had far less than you have now. You are everything to me, just as you are and for always. But if you can’t see your own worth, no one else will either.”
He placed a rough kiss on her mouth, then let her go. She dropped back into the chair.
He strode toward the door.
“Wh-where are you going?” she asked after him.
“I have to check on the store. Get some sleep, but be ready by noon. We’re going to try something else, and you’ll need to be rested when we do.”
Well, shit. The kiss had left Clarissa completely boneless in the dining room chair. Meanwhile, Nathaniel strode toward the door unaffected, his suit a physical love letter to the corded muscle beneath it. How was he still walking after that? All she could think about was all that coiled power wrapped around her last night in the woods. He’d feel so good in her bed, like the world’s best electric blanket.
And he loved her. Nathaniel Clarke, the high priest of the Order of the Dragon, had admitted his love for her. After ten years of her abandonment. Even without her magic. Even with dark circles under her eyes, hair that desperately needed the loving attention of a hairdresser, and the fine lines and wrinkles that seemed to have formed the moment she’d turned thirty. He loved her.
The temptation to give in to the feeling, to stay here and play house and let him take care of everything, was almost overwhelming. It was a temptation greater than her physical desire for him, even though that burned bright within her. Nathaniel would keep her safe always. She’d always have enough to eat and a place to sleep.
And that was absolutely terrifying. Everyone she’d ever allowed herself to love had abandoned her. He would too eventually. He’d collect her and then become bored with her, and she’d have nowhere else to go. There wasn’t another family waiting for her or even a foster system to catch her if things turned bad. If she trusted Nathaniel, she’d be walking the high wire with no safety net.
She finished her breakfast and then went straight back to her room, feeling even more exhausted than before. A text from Tom blipped on her screen.
Hope progress is being made. Text me an update when you have a chance.
She turned off the phone, crawled into bed, and curled on her side. Pulling the covers over her head, she allowed herself to slide into an uneasy sleep.
“Clarissa? Clarissa?”
Clarissa desperately wanted to remain unconscious, but Nathaniel’s commanding voice forced her eyes open. His stern face stared down at her. She yawned and stretched. “Hmm?”
“You’ve overslept. Get ready. We need to leave soon.”
She blinked up at him. He was phenomenally attractive. She’d read somewhere that gray eyes were a mutation between green and blue. His were the color of stormy skies right now, although they became magnificently purple in the throes of magic. With his complexion and dark hair, they were positively stunning.
“Where are we going again?”
He huffed. “To consult with a supernatural being who will know how to break your curse.”
“Who? I thought you said the curse used dragon magic as a catalyst.” She rubbed her eyes with both hands. “Who knows more about dragon magic than you and Warwick?”
He scowled at her. “For once in your life, just do as I ask, Clarissa.”
All softness had bled from his expression, and she climbed out of bed to escape his prickly exterior. “Fine. You don’t have to get snippy with me.”
He glanced toward the ceiling as she unceremoniously undressed and reached for a change of clothes. After last night, she wasn’t going to pretend to be bashful.
“There’s something I need to tell you. I wanted to tell you this morning, but I didn’t get the opportunity,” he said.
“Sounds serious. What’s going on?”
“A friend contacted me early this morning. It seems there is someone in London who looks exactly like you.” Everything about his expression seemed to indicate this was horrible news, although Clarissa didn’t understand why.
“I’m a celebrity, Nate. People try to imitate my appearance all the time. There was a woman in Russia who paid tens of thousands of dollars to have plastic surgery in order to look like me.” She shrugged. “It’s weird, I admit, but not the end of the world.”
He cleared his throat. “Do you remember Peter Wallace?”
“Of course. Is he still teaching history at Oxford?”
Nathaniel nodded. “This woman who looks like you brought him a manuscript… that was written by the order. He said she was your doppelgänger.”
She shook her head. “What? What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t that concerned at first. Even Wallace said it could be a coincidence. But this morning, after I left you, I went to Relics and Runes. I have a new worker named Albert. He doesn’t know what I am. He showed me a picture, a selfie he took with a woman he claimed looked exactly like the famous Clarissa. Now, Albert has no idea you and I were ever an item. He doesn’t know anything about me. He’s new and he’s barely more than a boy. But he found this woman attractive. Asked her out.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and brought up a photo.
“What the fuck?” Clarissa was looking at a picture of herself in the lower level of Relics and Runes, only her hair was its natural shade of black and she didn’t own that dress. “It’s uncanny. It’s like looking into a mirror.”
“I thought so too. But the really unsettling part is that she was buying a book on dragon magic.”
“Hmm?” Clarissa stared at him with total disbelief. What did it mean? This was too weird to be a coincidence.
“A natural doppelgänger is a very rare magical occurrence. Extremely rare among humans. She could be yours. If so, I have no idea why she’s here. Perhaps she’s tapped into my magic or the magic of the order somehow for some nefarious reason we have yet to understand.”
Clarissa stared at the picture of her double. The woman didn’t look evil. If anything, she looked normal, more normal than Clarissa herself. She was definitely younger, now that she inspected the face more closely.
“We know that whoever did this to you took a strand of your hair. Perhaps this isn’t a doppelgänger at all but a skinwalker. The magical possibilities are dark, and this thing seems to be working its way closer to home.”
Dressed now, she ducked into the bathroom and squeezed a blob of toothpaste on her toothbrush. “So what do you think we should do?”
He appeared in the doorway. “I need to know exactly what we are dealing with. We might be able to use Wallace to lure this thing to us, but without knowing what it’s capable of it’s just too dangerous. We could be walking into a trap. We need help. We need more information, someone to tell us what it is and why it might be interested in you.”
Clarissa swished and spat. “Who could know that? We’d need a seer or an oracle.”
Nathaniel nodded. “There’s only one creature in the United Kingdom that sees all and knows all.”
“You can’t mean…” Clarissa knew of only one such creature, and it was a horrible abomination.
Nathaniel confirmed her greatest fear. “Grindylow. Hurry. I want to make it to Lancashire before nightfall.”