Read Online Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan - Free Book Online Page A

building that reflected light but gave off very little of its own, like a discreetly expensive gemstone. It was easy to see amid the smaller buildings of SoHo as I walked from the subway station. I texted Penelope that I was out with Ethan and did not know when I would be home. My rings gave off the same muted light as the screen of my phone.
    I didn’t know what name the Strykers had registered Carwyn under, but when I asked for the associate Mark Stryker had checked in that day, they sent me up to the penthouse suite.
    One of Mark Stryker’s men was waiting outside the door. I didn’t recognize the face, but after two years I knew how to recognize the demeanor. He must have been briefed, because he didn’t interfere with me, so I didn’t acknowledge him. I just went to the door and tapped on it.
    “One minute,” Carwyn said, voice muffled, and I wondered what he was hiding before he could open the door.
    Once the door was open, it was clear that he hadn’t been hiding anything. He’d just been finding pants.
    The collar and the fabric of the doppelganger’s hood attached to the collar had to be waterproof, I realized, because doppelgangers wore them even in the shower. Droplets hung from the leather and metal around his neck, turning it briefly into a choker with pendant jewels—until Carwyn, hood down and head half enveloped in a fluffy towel, vigorously resumed drying his hair and all the droplets fell.
    “Oh, you again,” he said. “Honestly, I’m disappointed. I hoped it was room service.”
    He took to scrunching up his hair with the towel one-handed so he could gesture, in a vague unenthusiastic manner, for me to come in. I walked in slowly. The floor was black wood, polished to shine like jet, and on all the walls were cubist paintings in gray and red. The light fixtures were metallic, shaped like boxes and spaceships. The light in one had run out, so I wandered over to it and tapped the shiny red dome with two fingers, rings clicking against the metal, and the light blinked back on.
    When I looked up, Carwyn was watching me, but that lasted only an instant before he was drying his hair again. It was both less and more strange, seeing the replica of Ethan’s body instead of Ethan’s face. A body was more anonymous, not as easily recognizable, but Carwyn’s was marked by the events of a life different from Ethan’s. Carwyn was thinner, with the leanness of someone used to less and worse food, muscles less impressive but possibly more functional. He had a long scar up his abdomen, a nipple piercing, and none of the tan or the dusting of freckles from Ethan’s days basking in the sun. It was reassuring to have dissimilarities to catalog, having it made clear they were different bodies rather than mirror images.
    It was strange because I was the only one who knew Ethan’s body, the intimate details of it, well enough to know what was different about this one.
    “I’m sorry for what they did,” I said.
    Carwyn finished drying his hair and walked over, closer to me, to drop his towel in a damp heap on the bed. He retreated to a chair standing against the opposite wall, its carved wood painted black, and retrieved his shirt.
    “What are you sorry for?”
    “I’m sorry they took your pass and sent you away.”
    Carwyn snorted. “I know, right? I was so looking forward to playing a game of charades with good old Uncle Mark. I’m not their family. I didn’t expect anything better than this.”
    “They owed you better than this,” I said. “They already owed you support. You saved Ethan. They owed you thanks, and not shipping you off as if you were someone engaged in a business dispute with the company.”
    “So, what?” Carwyn asked. “You’re here to thank me?”
    “I already thanked you,” I pointed out.
    “You’re here to express your appreciation by proposing a kinky doppelganger ménage à trois? In which case, I’m going to have to turn you down. I’m sad to say it, but Ethan