by Jody Morse
“But if we don’t tell her we know, then that means—”
“We need to fake it.” Draia nodded. “We need to make Ember believe that we really think she’s Ambur. At least until we figure out what to do about this whole ordeal.” She paused. “Maybe we should just go to Headmaster Crane.”
I frowned. “You know we can’t trust the Headmaster.”
“You’re right. We can’t trust him at all. I don’t know what I was even thinking.” Draia let out a frustrated sigh. “We saw him talking to Ember at the end of last year. I wonder if they were conspiring this whole plan together, even back then.”
“But that doesn’t even make sense. Why would Headmaster Crane want Ember to take over Ambur’s body?” I asked.
“Easy,” Kaden spoke up then. “To spy on you.”
“That’s a really extreme way to spy on someone, don’t you think?”
“No, it’s actually a freaking brilliant way to spy on someone, if you ask me,” he replied. “Ember should have done it sneakier, since we’re now all suspecting something. But if we weren’t already suspicious, she probably could have pulled this whole thing off without anyone even noticing. She could have slipped seamlessly into your dorm room—and your life—and gotten all of the dirt and reported it back to Headmaster Crane without you even giving it a second though.”
“He’s got a good point,” Draia said with a nod. “It makes a whole lot of sense. In fact, Ember is pretty much the perfect narc. I’m convinced that she’s pretty heartless and soulless to begin with. So, she gets away with her magic by using Ambur’s good reputation, and at the same time, Headmaster Crane gets all the dirt.”
“Well, that’s where he went wrong. He thought he was going to get all the dirt. Now he’s not getting anything,” I said, folding my arms across his chest. It actually infuriated me that he had gone to these lengths when he could have just as easily have planted a surveillance camera in my room or something. Not that I actually wanted him to spy on me, but it would have been a whole lot less cruel than having Ember take over Ambur’s body. This really felt like something out of a movie. It was like we were in the paranormal version of Freaky Friday or something.
“Oh, no, girl. We’re going to give him dirt. Fake dirt.” Draia grinned wickedly. “If he thinks he’s going to get the real deal, he’s out of his damn mind. I hate Ember. Like I always say, that girl was sent straight from hell. I’m not about to spill the beans to her, but I would be willing to spill the fake beans.”
“Fake beans?” I eyed her curiously.
“We make up stories to tell Ember—things that aren’t true, but that we want to get back to Headmaster Crane.” Draia pause, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “We can tell him there’s going to be a student riot on Mischief Night. If he does anything to try to prevent this fake riot, then we know we’re right. This whole thing was something he conspired with Ember.”
“This is pretty freaking genius,” Kaden commented.
“Yeah, I really like this idea. Let’s do it.” I paused for a moment. “Are you sure we’re even going to have any interaction with Ember? She may have taken over Ambur’s body, but that doesn’t mean she wants to take over Ambur’s life, too.”
“Oh, she does. She totally wants Ambur’s life.” Draia nodded. “She’s going to try to convince us she’s Ambur. She’s going to try to act like everything is normal. I’m already able to see that in my vision.”
“Great. We get to share our dorm room with a total stranger.” And not just any stranger, but one who was completely out of her mind.
“It’s not going to be fun,” Draia agreed. “You also can’t trust the bitch for even a second. Don’t turn your back on her, and I won’t either. But we will figure out a solution. We’ll get our Ambur back.”
“I hope so. I miss her so much already.”
“Me, too.” Draia paused. “But here’s the thing. I maybe shouldn’t tell you this because I don’t want to scare you, but…”
I glanced over at her sharply. “No, tell me.”
“Based on everything I’m seeing and feeling right now, I can see that we’re going to be stuck with Ember for a long time. But there’s more than that.” There was a strange look in her eyes. It took me a moment to realize it was fear; Draia was afraid. “I’m also seeing that we won’t actually reconnect with Ambur for a long time.”
A knot tightened in my stomach. I really didn’t like the sounds of that.
“Is Ambur actually in Ember’s body?” I asked.
Draia nodded. “Yes, that much I do know. This was definitely a full body swap. Ember’s soul is in Ambur’s body, and Ambur’s soul is in Ember’s body.”
“But if that’s the case, then why wouldn’t Ambur, as Ember, come to see us?” All of the worst-case possible scenarios began to flow through my mind. “Is Ambur… okay?”
Draia closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she nodded. “She’s going to be okay, yes.” She paused for a moment and then added, “I think.”
I wasn’t going to lie. Every part of me wanted to be hopeful about this. I wanted to believe that Ambur was going to be okay and that we were going to see her again.
But the truth?
The truth was that I didn’t feel hopeful about this at all. Not even a little bit.
***
Draia and I were back inside our dorm room later that day. I was pretending to study, and she was pretending to watch Outlander. But both of us were really just waiting. We were waiting for Ember to come back to our dorm room. And that put both of us on edge.
Did Ember even know where our dorm room was? She had never been here before, to my knowledge.
But right before it was time to head to the Dining Hall for dinner, I heard the sound of the doorknob twisting.
A moment later, Ambur stood back on the other side. She shot me a smile as she entered the room.
“Well, I’m glad that’s over with,” she commented as she entered the room.
“What’s over with?” Draia questioned, glancing over at her.
“I just gave Ember a piece of my soul.” Ambur’s lips twisted into a smile—a smile that I knew did not belong to her. I’d definitely never seen her smile that way before in my life. “I’m so happy for her. Now she can be good, and we can be the sisters we were born to be. It will be great. We have so much lost time to make up for.”
“So, where is Ember now? You should invite her to our dorm room. She could spend the night,” I suggested, hoping that maybe this would help give us the details on where the real Ambur had gone. We needed to find her, and any hint or clue Ember gave us could potentially lead us in the right direction.
“Oh. Ambur actually had to go away.” Ember waved a hand—Ambur’s hand—at me.
Draia and I exchanged an uncomfortable glance.
Was this the reason we wouldn’t see Ambur for a long time? Because Ember had sent the real Ember somewhere? Or, what if, she was doing something even worse and keeping her prisoner somewhere? The thought made me feel sick to my stomach.
“Where did Ember go, Ambur?” Draia asked her.
“Oh. She just went on a little trip.”
“But it’s the middle of the semester. She can’t not go to her classes, or she’ll get suspended or expelled,” I pointed out. Not that it mattered to our Ambur. If anyone ended up getting suspended or expelled, it would be the real Ember—and that definitely wouldn’t have been the worst thing.
“Oh, no worries about that. Ambur already cleared it with Headmaster Crane. He said it’s cool with him. She’ll be back soon, and then the four of us can be besties. It will be great. We’ll have all sorts of sleepovers and girl nights. Speaking of which, don’t we have a girls’ night planned for next Saturday night?” Ember asked us.
How did Ember even know that? Had Ambur mentioned it before they’d made the switch? Or had she been stalking us and listening in on our conversations more than any of us had ever realized?
“Yeah
. It’s going to be a lot of fun. But we have a long week to get through first,” Draia said. “In fact, Saturday feels forever away. Who knows what this week will even bring? Things can change in a second.”
I shot Draia a sharp glance. Was she trying to get Ember to catch onto the fact that we knew? Because that definitely wasn’t a part of the plan.
“Oh, come on. We always have girl nights and fun sleepovers and all sorts of things girls and their friends do. In fact, we have the best friendship ever. We’re like sisters. You know the girls’ night is going to happen because we do it all the time. We’re going to have even more girls’ nights now. Everything is going to get better now.”
“I’m sure we’ll still have the girls’ night,” Draia agreed, even though I knew that both of us were thinking of ways to get out of it.
“We should also triple date! We have the best boyfriends. Or at least I do, anyway. Gavin is absolutely gorgeous. And he’s such a good guy. I’m so lucky that I finally found a guy like him.” There was this dreamy tone in Ember’s voice. “I’m going to marry him and have beautiful fae babies with him. Maybe we’ll even have twins. I mean, they run in my family. I can just picture what our kids will look like. They’ll have his light brown hair, and my hazel eyes. They’re going to be short, of course, just like both of us are. And they’ll probably wear glasses, but we’ll use our fae magic to give them perfect vision. It will only just add to how perfect they’ll be otherwise.”
Draia and I exchanged a worried glance with one another then. I knew that we were both thinking the same two things:
1). Ember was way more jealous of Ambur’s life than either of us had known. It was clear that she wanted to take over her life on a long-term basis; and
2). We needed to let Gavin know what was going on ASAP.
***
“You are extra affectionate tonight,” Gavin commented as Ember sucked on his neck like a leech, right there in the middle of the Dining Hall. That was not something that Ambur—real Ambur—would have done. It wasn’t that Ambur was against PDA, but usually she just held Gavin’s hand or kissed him on the cheeks. Sometimes, she’d peck him on the lips. But she definitely wouldn’t have been in the process of giving him a hickey right there in the Dining Hall.
Draia and I shot each other an uncomfortable glance. We hadn’t been able to figure out a way to get Gavin alone yet. There was no way Ember was going to let us be alone with him, considering she was stuck to him like a fly on a horse. But he needed to know that the girl whose lips were planted on his neck was not his girlfriend, that this was her evil twin sister.
We had to let him know before she did end up getting pregnant with fae twins. The full moon was right around the corner, and that was when paranormal beings were most fertile and, therefore, most likely to conceive. Not that it mattered. There was always magic. Spells and potions could help even the least fertile paranormal being conceive. And if I had to guess, Ember probably would have been willing to let Gavin knock her up right there in the middle of that Dining Hall.
At that moment, Kaden cleared his throat. “Hey, uh, Gavin? I gotta use the restroom.”
Gavin shot him a confused look. “Okay?” He paused. “Not sure what you want me to say. Don’t hurt yourself on the way there?”
“No, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to join me. For some guy talk.” Kaden turned to Marcus. “You should join us.”
“Uh, alright.” Marcus shrugged.
I realized then that Kaden was going to break the news to him. Perfect. I had been hoping that Draia and I could somehow corner Gavin after dinner was over, but this worked out so much better. Ember couldn’t get suspicious of us, if Kaden was the one who was dropping this bomb.
Gavin looked confused by Kaden’s invitation, but he shrugged. “Alright.” He turned to Ember. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay. I love you, Pookie.”
“Pookie?” Draia mouthed to me.
“I love you, too, babe.”
I shrugged as Kaden and Gavin headed in the direction of the Dining Hall.
As Ember forked some spaghetti into her mouth, she stared after Gavin with a dreamy look in her eyes. “God, I love him.”
Draia glanced over at me, probably thinking the same thing I was. How was she so crazy over him when she didn’t even know him? It seemed like she was infatuated with everything in Ambur’s life and was willing to do whatever it took in order to get it.
We had to stop her.
“So, girls, what do we have planned tonight?” Ember asked.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to sleep,” Draia said with a shrug.
“Water Magic class and then sleep,” I agreed with a nod. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to sleep very much. Just knowing that Ember was going to be sleeping in our room—and that she was evil—made me nervous. What if she tried to kill me or Draia while she was sleeping?
I didn’t think she planned to kill us, considering she seemed to just want to be our best friend, but you could never be too careful when you were dealing with a dark magic user. Thankfully, I was a light sleep, so if she came near my bed, I would probably end up waking up.
At least, I hoped.
“You guys are so boring. We should throw a party,” Ember suggested.
Draia let out a little laugh. “Since when do we ever throw parties, Ambur?”
“This is what I’m saying. We act like a bunch of grandmas going to bed at a reasonable hour on a Monday night. We should be throwing dorm parties and having fun and being wild!” Ember looked so excited by the idea. “I’ll start letting everyone know that we’re throwing a party tonight and that everyone is invited.”
“Ambur, no. I’m not sure what’s gotten into you today, but we’re not throwing a dorm party. We could into major trouble with Headmaster Crane,” Draia told her. “The last thing we need is to get suspended or put on academic probation or something. We care about getting good grades and making most of our time here at Paranormal Academy. We’re good girls. Remember?”
I realized what Draia was trying to do. She was trying to get Ember to want to conform to what she was saying. If she could encourage Ember to be good, then we wouldn’t have to worry about her throwing any dorm parties and getting all three of us in trouble.
Ember waved her hand. “You guys, Headmaster Crane is, like, really cool. He doesn’t care if we have a dorm party. He would probably tell us to go ahead and do it if we knew about it. I’m not worried about getting into trouble. Live a little. Have fun.”
“Our dorm room isn’t even big enough to have the type of party you want,” I insisted. “It would be a really tight squeeze.”
“Yeah. I don’t need anybody all up on my shit,” Draia agreed with a nod.
Ember rolled her eyes from behind Ambur’s glasses. “How are we even friends? You guys are seriously the biggest party poopers I’ve ever met.”
“Normally, you like to read and watch The Golden Girls before bed,” Draia commented. “I’ve never known you to be such a partier.”
“Wow, I’m, like, really lame, aren’t I?” Ember took a drink of her root beer then and leaned back in her seat. “The guys have been gone for a really long time, haven’t they? Did they drown in the bathroom or something?”
As if on cue, the guys began to walk back towards our table then. Even from across the room, I could see that Gavin’s naturally fair skin had turned a shade of beet red.
When he glanced over at me, I could see it in his eyes. He looked like he was going to be sick.
Poor guy. It was bad enough having to experience this whole ordeal with a friend, but I couldn’t imagine how much worse I would have been taking it if Kaden was the one with the evil twin who had been switched. I was sure that it must have been so much worse going through with someone you loved. He was probably so worried about her. I knew I was.
As he sat back down next to Ember, he looked completely… frozen. He was so shaken up, and I cou
ldn’t blame him. This wasn’t something expected or that ordinarily happened. This whole thing was a freaking mess.
Ember leaned in to kiss him then, and he pushed her away.
She shot him a pouty look. “Everything okay, Boo Boo?”
“I’m just not feeling very well. I think I’m going to go back to my room, actually.” His story seemed believable enough, considering he actually did look like he was going to puke.
“Do you want me to do some fae magic and heal you, Pookie?” Ember asked him.
“No. I just need to sleep this thing off,” Gavin mumbled before grabbing his cafeteria tray and then heading to the garbage. He threw it away and then completely fled out of the room.
Ember watched him as he went and then shot us all a sad look. “My poor baby is so sick. I feel so bad for him. I wish I could just do something to make him better.”
Draia, Kaden, and I all exchanged a look with each other. Was she really going to play the role of a healer fairy now? How could she pretend that she was concerned about Ambur’s boyfriend, who she had stolen?
“We need to get to Water Magic class a little early tonight, remember?” Kaden said in what was an obvious attempt to get us away from Ember a little bit sooner. It was obvious to me, anyway; she didn’t look like she had noticed. But if I had to guess, I was going to say she didn’t have a lot of friends—and definitely not good magic user friends.
“Oh, yeah. That’s right. We gotta practice that thing,” I said with a nod, using my best possible acting skills.
“Oh, and I was supposed to help you with that project in your dorm room,” Draia said, turning to Marcus. She glanced over at Ember. “See you back in our dorm room later, okay?”
Ember looked sort of sad, but she didn’t argue. She just nodded. “See you.”
As we all emptied our trays and then headed out of the Dining Hall, I glanced over at Kaden.
“Gavin clearly didn’t take the news well, I guess.”
Marcus shook his head. “He didn’t take the news well at all.”