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I’ve appeared as a teenager whose invisible high school coach spied on me in the locker room. The assistant to a boss who threatened to burn me from the inside out if I kept refusing dates with him. A victim who gave away my car keys because of “some young punk’s mind control,” which isn’t even a known power in our world; it’s something that’s ripped out of science-fiction movies. A child who bullied a boy at school, so his mother blinded me with her blazing light—a power not-so-strikingly similar to Sunstar.
No one will use the word, but it’s all propaganda.
“Again,” Roslyn says from behind the camera. “Sell it to me.”
“The young celestial threatened me if I didn’t give him all the money,” I say as an older bank teller with welling tears brought on by how tired I am. I don’t want to say this last part, but I do. “He told me that the money was going to be donated to the Spell Walkers so they can build better defenses against the enforcers. His eyes were glowing as bright as the lightning in his hands. . . .”
The thing is, if anyone does the bare minimum to fact-check these stories, they won’t be able to come up with anything to support it. But the problem is no one tries anymore. Headlines are read, articles are skimmed, and the reader passes that on to someone else, and they accept it as truth. Then that person tells someone else and it spreads like poison. By the time someone senses something is off and does their own research, it’s too late. The damage has been done.
This is only one of the twenty-four stories I’ve filmed so far to further paint the Spell Walkers as villains. To make sure Sunstar never catches up in the polls. To limit the rights of celestials and increase demands for more enforcers.
The world is worse off because of me and my infinite faces.
Eighteen
The Unchosen One
BRIGHTON
My body feels like it’s on fire.
Since the middle of the night, I’ve been reapplying the cooling gel across my forehead, chest, arms, and even my feet. Then the morning brought insult to injury when I struggled with opening the childproof cap of my painkillers with my left hand. Also, pharmacies really shouldn’t be allowed to call these pills painkillers if they’re not going to kill the pain. I’m covered in sweat and biting back my cries when someone knocks on the door. I’m about to shout at Emil to go away when Ruth calls my name from the hallway.
“Yeah?” I ask, strained.
Ruth enters and her hand goes to her heart. She looks around the room, which is already a mess, and then her eyes glow like multiplying stars. A purple light flashes and her clone appears, matching every lock of hair behind her ear and every wrinkle in her shirt. The clone collects the plates from my half-eaten lunch and my empty glass and leaves. Ruth is gentle as she helps me out of bed so she can replace my drenched sheets. She parts the window’s curtains to let more air in and it’s dark out now. I’ve slept most of this day away.
“Do you want some company?” Ruth asks. “I could use some.”
“Isn’t that what clones are for?”
“It’s hard talking with someone who knows everything about you because they are you. Believe me, I would run my own book club if my clones had their own opinions,” Ruth says with a smile. “You should take your medicine with some food in your stomach.”
“I’ll eat in here.”
“If you really want to, but it would mean a lot to me if you joined me in the living room. Pretty much everyone is out right now, so it’s relaxed,” she says.
I should try and eat some more, especially after everything I’ve been throwing up.
Ruth’s clone returns with ice-cold water. Ruth and her clone exchange tired smiles before the clone fades in a pale purple light. If this had been weeks ago, it would’ve been cool seeing Ruth’s power in action after hearing Wesley talk about it in our Spell Walkers of New York interview, the one that got Ruth a lot of slack from the conservative blogger Silver Star Slayer. But now it makes me extra envious.
We go out toward the living room, where someone is playing piano. It’s a little choppy, but otherwise it’s beautiful and calming. I’m expecting it to be Wesley or another clone, but it’s Prudencia seated on the bench, her hands hovering over the keys, pressing down on them with her power. She loses concentration when I enter, and Esther begins squirming in the bassinet beside her feet. Prudencia’s eyes glow and when she resumes playing Esther settles down.
“Where is everyone?” I ask as I sit on the couch in front of a foldout table since Iris destroyed the real dining table.
“Iris finally fell asleep, and Wesley and Emil are installing surveillance cameras along the road just to be safe,” Ruth says with fear in her voice. She’s risking her home for us.
She prepares a plate for me with mashed potatoes, gravy, steamed broccoli, roasted carrots, corn, and a salad with sunray dressing. Nothing that I can’t eat easily with one hand.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Ruth says as she sits beside me on the couch. “I should’ve asked before, but are you okay with my clones being around? It’s second nature to me, but I want to be more sensitive.”
“No, you keep doing you. I’m actually curious about your powers. . . .” I stop, realizing that this is one of Prudencia’s biggest issues with me. “Forget it. You don’t have to talk about that.”
“I’m happy to. It’s been a journey,” she says, beginning her story.
Ruth comes from a long line of celestials with cloning abilities. Their matriarch, Ruth the First, was born under the Twinned Queen constellation, which only surfaces for two nights every century. She was so powerful that she could clone objects too. Fame turned Ruth the First into a purist and all the other children in her line followed suit. When the Twinned Queen returned eighteen years ago, Ruth’s parents timed their pregnancy so they could have her under the constellation.
