Page 12 of The Other World

Tennyson stopped moving and turned to look at her. “You knew this would happen?”

She shrugged. “I knew it was a possibility.”

Tennyson looked as if he was about to strangle her. Nikolai and Althea glanced at each other, clearly unsure what to do. But Hannah knew what she was about.

“Look you… Temu-Stevie Nicks,” she said, her curls bouncing in anger. “You’ve put my best friend in danger without her knowledge or consent, you better figure out a way to fix this or I’ll turn you into a newt! Come on, Lucy, we have stuff to do.”

She grabbed my other arm and her and Tennyson helped me inside. I honestly didn’t need them to, but I did need the reassurance of them being there, and being real.

When I glanced back, Mrs Spencer was gone.

I was scared to fall asleep again. What if I woke up in that place and the other me was there, calling me out for being an imposter? It was never good when you crossed your own double, not inHarry PotterorDoctor Who, or anything else I could think of. Though, both of those were time travel scenarios, which fortunately this was not. I had enough to think about without worrying about accidentally killing my own grandfather. Or purposely killing my own father.

I sat in the Golden common room, in the most uncomfortable chair I could find, in the coldest part of the room, but honestly even that was quite cozy. I leafed through one of the books in the stack that Althea had bought me about wormholes and astral projection, and chugged one of the Monster energy drinks from the crate that Nikolai had brought me.

I don’t want to go back, I told Tennyson, in his head so the others couldn’t hear how afraid I was.

We’ll watch over you, he said.You’ll be fine.

But I couldn’t explain to him how alien it felt there, how everything just felt slightly off. It wasn’t my world, and it knew I didn’t belong there. It wanted me out.

Eventually, I had to sleep. I kept nodding off over the book I was reading and then startling awake.

“Come on,” Tennyson said finally, after I spilled some foul-smelling energy drink on him. “Come sleep in my room. I can wake you if you start to seem distressed.”

I wasn’t sure it worked that way, but I was too tired to object. He nearly had to carry me up the stairs, I was so sluggish. I wondered if the sleep I had here actually counted, since my mind or whatever was still awake. Maybe I’d die from sleep deprivation or something and then none of this would matter. I really hoped not, it seemed like the worst possible way to go. I tried to remember if I’d ever read anything about the effects of sleep deprivation. Hadn’t the CIA done experiments on people in the 70s or something? Or was that just an episode ofThe X-Files?

Before I could even think to ask Tennyson, I was asleep and waking up again in that other world.

The good news was: I felt refreshed, as if I’d had a proper night’s sleep. The bad news was that I was in Other-me’s room and I could hear my voice from just outside the door. Still half-asleep, I did a commando roll backwards off the bed and landedin a heap, then scooted as far as I could get under the bed. I only just made it in time.

Other-me came into the room and flopped down on the bed, which was sturdy enough not to sag too much and squish me into the floor. There was a second flop, which I soon realized was Nikolai, both because he started talking and because in every universe he wears way too much cologne.

“I just don’t see why we need to talk about thisright now,” he said. “We hardly ever get the house to ourselves…”

Oh no. This could be bad. Very bad. Like that scene inParasiteonly like a bazillion times worse on account of it wasNikolaiandOther-me. I frantically tried to think of ways I could distract them without giving myself away.

Luckily, Other-me didn’t seem very interested in getting it on with Nikolai either.

“I know, babe, but listen. This is important.”

Ew. Babe? Nikolai? Ew. Something about her voice sounded wrong and not like me at all. It was deeper, kind of smoother, and almost a little British. Maybe she’d been bingingDownton Abbeyor something. Either that or she was trying to sound fancy. Something about it gave me the ick.

“Daddy wants to do the hunt tonight,” she said.

The way she said “Daddy” was icky too, but I filed that away to be grossed out about later. I didn’t want to miss anything that might be helpful.

“Tonight?” Nikolai sounded alarmed and the bed shifted. “You think he’s onto us?”

She gave a throaty little laugh. “Of course not, silly. Now sit back down, we’ll have to change our plan a bit.”

They moved around on the bed again, then I could hear one of them typing. It was a super clacky keyboard, which made it hard to hear their mumbling. I could make out bits of “no, this would be better” and “uh-huh, but what if…” but nothingconcrete. I needed to know more. What was this hunt? If my father was involved, it had to be something ominous. Even if he was from a whole other dimension, if he was planning a hunt, it wouldn’t be for Easter eggs, it’d be something messed up. And what was their plan? Were they trying to take down his evil empire as well? If they were, maybe we could team up. It would be a relief not to have to hide out the whole time I was here, that was for sure.

For a moment, the typing stopped and Other-me said, “it might actually work in our favor that it’snotthe full moon.”

She resumed typing, which gave me a moment to think. I hadn’t been certain that our doppelgangers would have supernatural powers in this world, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why the full moon would factor into things. But were the supernatural people the ones doing the hunting, or were they the hunted? With my father involved, the latter seemed more likely.

After a while, Nikolai flopped back on the bed, so dramatically that his hand nearly hit me in the face.

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