Page 39 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

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The doppelgänger has been caught, and it was the one I had spoken to. I tell myself that what I feel is disappointment, that I had hoped his story was true. But the apprehension whirling through me feels more like doubt.

What if he was telling the truth? What if he has been sentenced to die for a crime he didn’t commit?

But he was found at the scene. That should be proof enough.

Except that I don’t know why he would return to the scene if he were the killer. He might, though, if he were trying to find the killer.

Or he might if he realized he had left something behind. The young woman had not been dead long when I found her. It is entirely possible that he killed her and then it took some time for him to remove her hands, which let her body cool before I arrived. He could have needed to stash the hands and flee when I arrived. Then, as he waited for me to go, I came out the window, and he made up some story about the killer being his cousin. Afterward, he returned for the hands and was caught.

Yes, that makes sense, and my doubt really is only disappointment.

I eat what little breakfast I can stomach, and then I pack. This hunt is done, and I need to find work that will pay.

Still, I drag my heels as I make my way out of town, taking a path through a field. I’m barely two paces into a stretch of forest when a voice behind me calls, “Did you hear the news?”

I spin, my hand dropping to my concealed knife. Then I blink as the doppelgänger strolls out, grinning broadly.

“They caught her,” he says.

“I thought they’d caught you,” I say.

His steps slow, and he frowns, looking from me to the town. I feel the sting of his confusion, as if he’s asking why I would leave if I thought he had been unfairly arrested.

“They said they captured a young man,” I tell him.

He shrugs as he joins me. “That must have been the guise she had taken. But she is caught, squarely it seems, and so when I spotted you leaving town, I wanted to be sure you knew, in case you were trying to catch up with her.”

“I was not.”

He falls in at my side. “You do not need to apologize.”

I glance over, expecting to see a grin telling me he’s teasing. But while he is smiling, it’s smug.

“You may buy me dinner,” he says. “In recompense for not trusting me.”

Again, I expect this to be a joke. When I see only that smugness, I tell myself I am being foolish, thinking I knew a young man I had barely met, could anticipate how he might say something. But it does make me look closer at him, and when I do, I see something is off about his face. The nose is a little stronger, the chin less sharp.

Again, I chide myself. I saw him once, by moonlight. Yes, I had been right in front of him, staring into his face as I held a knife to his throat, but I don’t know him well enough to pick out such tiny differences.

Yet I would be a fool if I did not wonder. If I did not question.

“You can buy your own dinner,” I mutter. “I might buy you an ale, but that is the extent of it. I am not paid for jobs such as this.”

“Is there not a bounty on my cousin?” The doppelgänger sounds disappointed. “I would expect a bounty.”

“I could hardly collect it, as I did not capture her.”

I hunch my shoulders, as if against a bitter wind, though the air is still here. In the forest. Where we are alone.

I reach into my pocket and take out a coin. “Here, for your ale.”

“You are not going to drink it with me?”

“I doubt we are going to the same place.”

The grin is neither easy nor charming, as his was. This one shows teeth. As the doppelgänger reaches for the coin, I slash with my knife. The doppelgänger moves too fast for the blade to do more than cut open its sleeve and the arm beneath, but as the creature pulls back, it loses the hold on its form.