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“Secret, I’m fine.” His eyes were still brown, none of the jet-black of vampire frenzy leaking into his irises. For the time being he was still more man than monster.
“Don’t push it,” I warned. “If it gets bad, tell me. Rebecca will make me issue your warrant personally if you kill this girl.”
He snorted. “Then you’ll have killed all her children.”
A familiar female voice said, “But isn’t that what children are for? Lambs for the slaughter.”
Holden stared at me. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
The voice had unmistakably been mine, though. In the disconnected way I could recognize my voice on an answering machine or video, I knew what I sounded like, and the voice was mine even if the words weren’t.
The door we’d come in through shut with a click, and suddenly we weren’t alone in the room. My back was to the entrance, so Holden saw the new arrival first. His eyes grew wide, and he hugged Lucy
close to his chest, stepping away from me. I looked over my shoulder to see what had him so spooked, and my blood ran cold.
I used to joke that Brigit and I could have been twins, but I’d never again be able to make the same statement without a terror flashback to this moment.
Less than four feet from where I stood was a young woman who looked exactly like me, from the leather pants and jacket to Desmond’s Yankees shirt. Her hair was the same curly blonde, her eyes the same shade of brown, only hers were edged with a fine red ring. The woman didn’t just look like me.
She was me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Hello,” my doppelganger said with a smile.
“What the fuck?” I replied.
Lucy chose that inopportune moment to regain consciousness. She took one look at the two of me, and her renewed screaming reached an ear-splitting volume. Holden held her close, tucking her head into his shoulder, and whispered something I couldn’t hear. After a moment the screaming stopped, and she went limp again. The whole time Holden didn’t take his eyes off me.
Both of me.
“That’s mine.” Alterna-me pointed to Lucy.
“Like hell.” Holden stepped back until he hit the cupboard. His eyes were getting darker, and I saw a flash of fang when he curled his lip at Bad Secret. It was hard to see someone I cared for look at me like that, even if I knew it wasn’t really me.
“What. The. Fuck,” I said again.
If ever there was a question of which was the real Secret, it would only be a matter of time before my blue-streak sailor’s mouth would give me away as the real deal.
“What’s the matter, Secret? Don’t you like it?” Bad Secret gave a small curtsy and arched her brow at me. “I thought the leather-on-leather look was a little Terminatrix for my taste, but that was your call, not mine.” She certainly had my sass mouth down pat. That was disconcerting. When I didn’t rise to her bait she snarled at me, the ring of red growing until there was no white left in her eyes at all.
“Creepy,” I whispered. It was as if I was staring into a mirror after a really bad night out. Like one where the devil himself kicked me in the face and tried to slip me a roofie. That’s how bad a night would have to be for me to look like Bad Secret.
“Give me the girl,” she snarled.
“No,” Holden and I said simultaneously.
“Give her to me or I will destroy everything you love.” This was no idle threat. Something in the way Bad Secret spoke gave me such a chill I wanted to crawl into the open cupboard we’d retrieved Lucy from. “Yes,” she said, seeming to sense my apprehension. “Look at me. I can walk into your house. I can walk right up to that handsome boyfriend of yours… Desmond, was it? He will look at me and smile, and I will rip his heart out through his mouth.” She smiled. “I will turn your little white cat inside out.” When I shuddered visibly, she looked at Holden. “And don’t think I’ll forget about him.”
Holden snarled.
“It’s okay, vampire, I might make it fun for you first. You could play with the body like she won’t let you.” Bad Secret ran her hands provocatively over the front of her body, fingernails dragging over her nipples as she licked her lips at Holden. It might have been titillating if not for the glowing red eyes and the fact she was Scary. As. Fuck.
How did she know everything about me?
Bad Secret turned her attention back to me. “Or maybe I’ll just kill you and take over your life. Play your role for a while. Wouldn’t that be fun? The vampire Tribunal? The wolf king’s pack.” I trembled. She knew it all. All my secrets. My whole life. “Like a fun supernatural soap opera. Just think of what I could do.”
