Page 34 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

Feifei giggled. “I never realised you were looking out for me. I’m so sorry to have put you in such an awkward position.”

His expression turned serious. “My heart is full to know you’re well.” Letting her fingers slip through his, he said, “But I won’t be able to meet you again.”

She held tight to his hands. “Why? We only just found each other.”

“I’m due to be married. Though my future wife knows you are the one in my heart, I cannot act on my feelings. It would dishonour her.”

In the rush of discovery, she’d forgotten about the tavern girl. But if Xingzhou had meant Feifei was the one in his heart, then—

“Wait. Who’s the singer at the tavern? You visit her almost every night. Drunk.”

“How—?” he started to ask, but then he shook his head, as if to say, unimportant. “I’m only pretending so the tavern owner doesn’t get suspicious. The singer is my sister, and I’m teaching her martial arts. She in turn teaches the other girls at the tavern. That way they can handle any scumbag who gives them trouble.”

Only then did Feifei remember she still wore her mask. Untying it, she let it fall from her face.

His eyes widened. “You,” he breathed.

“Yes, me.” She leaned forward and softly pressed her lips to his. “Hello, husband.”

DOUBLE TROUBLE

By

KELLEY ARMSTRONG

My name is Marielle, and I hunt monsters. I do not usually introduce myself that way – it leads to very awkward pauses in the conversation, followed by jokes about mothers-in-law and such. Worse, those jokes are often a little too close to the truth, at least if your mother-in-law is an evil queen or callous landowner responsible for the deaths of hundreds.

I grew up reading every monster tale I could find, and I decided I would make it my life’s work to rid the world of these terrible beasts, only to discover that while monsters exist, they are usually the scapegoats for even more monstrous humans. So that is my calling. I track down stories of monsters and stop the humans behind them.

Every now and then, though, an actual monster is responsible. They are not much different from humans in that regard – while most are just trying to live in peace, some are driven by darker desires.

And so that has led me here, to a tiny house that smells of fresh bread and lavender boughs and the bowel-evacuating stench of the newly dead. The thatched cottage is barely two hundred square feet, a single room with a tick mattress and one chair by the fireplace. A table laid with bread and vegetables and water suggests soup was being prepared. But the fire is out, and the paring knife is embedded in the throat of the young woman who stares up with empty eyes.

Her hands are missing. Both of them, severed at the wrists, and I know if I were to ask around, her neighbors would tell me she had such lovely hands. She’s plain-featured and half-starved, but I know she had beautiful hands. That’s why her killer took them.

I bend and close the young woman’s eyes. Then I crouch there and grieve for her. I never met her in life, and yet I see her all around me, in the care she took with this hovel of a home. She’s about my age – twenty-one – and alone in the world, like me, and desperate for a place to call her own, which is not me, but I’ve felt the pull of that life some days, when the one I’ve chosen threatens to swallow me whole.

The creature who killed her is one of the rarest of humanoid monsters: a doppelgänger. I’ve been tracking it for weeks now, following the trail of dead women with missing body parts and the stories that go with them, of witnesses who spotted everything from an old man to a little girl to a giant wolf to a house cat.

A doppelgänger has the ability to change forms. Not just an ability, but a necessity, as they do not truly have their own. I have never seen one in its natural state, but I am told it looks human, except for skin and hair and features that change color constantly. Unable to live among people like that, it must assume the form of someone – or something – else.

As for why this one is collecting body parts, my childhood reading on doppelgängers suggested they can permanently assume human form with the help of a witch and a reconstructed body. Why not just use a whole body? Because magic never likes to make things easy. It requires commitment, such as killing a dozen people for body parts. And this particular doppelgänger is making sure their new body is exactly right – lovely feet, shapely legs and now, pretty hands.

I touch the young woman’s neck. Her skin has cooled, but I can still detect warmth, and the hearth fire seems not to have been out for long. I’m catching up to my prey. Just not fast enough.

I search the cottage for clues, but after a few weeks of chasing this monster, I have to admit I’m unlikely to find any thing that will lead me to it. A hair or a boot print is useless when the creature changes form for every kill. Instead, I’ve used past kills to map its route.

It is careful not to strike the same town twice, but it is moving in a predictable pattern. I know where it will go next. I just need to figure out who it will choose there.

The young woman tells me I am on the right track so far – the doppelgänger favors dark-haired and light-brown-skinned women between sixteen and twenty-five. The witch will turn the body into a whole person, but the age and coloring must roughly match, and the doppelgänger has chosen the most common attributes to make its job easier.

If I leave tonight, I can beat the doppelgänger to the next town. I’m thinking through my plan as I slip out the window. I need to identify young women living alone who—

“Watch out!” a male voice says… just as my boot touches down on the tines of a pitchfork. The handle flies up, but a hand catches it before it smacks into me.

A young man stands there. He is perhaps my age, with a compact, wiry build, dark hair tumbling into his eyes and a smile that makes me momentarily forget what I am doing.

It is a very brief lapse, though, before I realize he just saw me climbing out a window.