Dead Ringers (9 page)

“Shit!” Tess hissed. “Hurry!”

Together they bolted along the sidewalk, dodging around a pair of older, wool-coated men. Tess splashed through several more puddles until her feet squelched in her shoes and she knew they would be ruined. Their umbrellas bounced along above them, sparring together, until they ran under the brownstone's awning and came to a huffing stop. Heart pounding, Tess shook off her umbrella and closed it, wet and cold in spite of its protection. Six o'clock had come and gone, perhaps half an hour left before night fell, but with the storm raging it had grown dark already.

Warm lights glowed beyond the frosted glass doors and windows at the front of the building. Stenciled on the glass panels on either side of the revolving doors were the words:

NEPENTHE—A BOUTIQUE HOTEL

Tess glanced at Lili, hesitating, but when Lili nodded they went up the steps together. Theo had seen Tess before, so she nudged Lili ahead of her and they went through the revolving door, which spilled them into the warm golden glow of a lobby full of marble and brass and red velvet, a pristine elegance that belonged so completely to another era that it felt like stepping back in time.

The Nepenthe Hotel took Tess's breath away.

“Do you see him anywhere?” Lili asked.

Tess forced herself to ignore the Victorian elegance of the lobby. Professionals in business suits moved in clusters from the elevator foyer across the marble floor. An elderly couple in earth-tone wools sat in chairs and entertained a boy of nine or ten, their grandson no doubt. A pair of teenage girls made up to look older hurried ahead of several adults, maybe headed out for a night of theater, wanting to be noticed for themselves instead of as part of a family unit.

No sign at all of Not-Nick.
Theo,
she reminded herself.

“Check the bar,” she told Lili, hurrying off toward the entrance to the elevator foyer. If Theo was staying in this hotel and hadn't gone into the bar, he would have headed for his room.

“Text me if you see him,” Lili called back as she strode for the little pub restaurant just off the lobby.

Tess wore a small purse across her chest. She tapped it, feeling the comforting weight of her cell phone inside almost like a talisman, and then she picked up her pace. The elevator foyer was actually a short corridor that led to restrooms and an old-fashioned wooden phone booth. Two similar corridors opened off the foyer, both of them housing elevators. A handful of people waited in the first offshoot but Theo was not among them. Numbers on the wall indicated that these elevators allowed access to the fourth through fourteenth floors. Tess darted around to the second elevator bay, barely aware that she was holding her breath. Her heart crashed around inside her chest as if it were trying to escape. Three men in suits, waiting for an elevator. Two the right height. One could've been Nick, but then he glanced up at the glowing numbers above the elevator to his left and she saw his face.

“Shit.”

The word came out before she could stop it. Two of the three men glanced at her curiously but otherwise they had no reaction to her presence. The numbers on the wall showed that these elevators went to the ballroom and mezzanine levels. Tess exhaled as an elevator opened and the three men stepped on. When the doors slid closed she was alone and she dug out her cell phone.

She texted Lili.
Any sign?

Waiting for a reply, she wandered back into the lobby, scanning the front desk, the concierge station, and the entrance to the bar. She expected Lili to appear any moment and glanced down at her phone, but there had been no reply to her text.

She told herself it was stupid to be afraid. What could Not-Nick do to Lili in a pub full of people? Still, an icy prickle ran up the back of her neck. The wrongness of these impossible twins had been right there on the surface, but the world felt tangible and real and ordinary, and so it had seemed totally natural to poke their noses into this, to try to get answers. Now, though, in that moment when Lili was out of her sight, it occurred to her just how surreal and off-kilter the situation truly was. Her sense of reality felt unbalanced.

A little boy knocked into her and Tess jumped, a little gasp escaping her lips. Flush with embarrassment and fear, her heart galloping hard, she spun to stare at the boy. He held up some kind of spaceship toy and used his mouth to make a sound that must have been its engines firing but sounded more like a wet raspberry. The kid did not run onward, only stared at her as though daring her to issue a reprimand.

His mother rushed up, full of apologies for Tess and stern chidings for the boy in a foreign accent Tess could not place. As the mother led the boy away, Tess glanced past them, through the lobby, past the various enormous planters and the tables and chairs arranged for guests to linger. Past the darkened glass window and door of the gift shop, whose sign read
CLOSED
.

At the very back of the lobby was an entry to a wide hallway of the sort Tess associated with restrooms and staff-only areas, but something didn't jibe with that assumption. The left side of the entryway was blocked by the sort of podium typically manned by hosts and hostesses at restaurants worldwide. In front of that was a freestanding sign, though she couldn't make out the letters on it from this distance.

Another glance at her phone. Still no reply from Lili.

She set off toward the rear of the lobby, walking normally at first but picking up her pace until she knew she must have looked like she was in some sort of race. A group of older women sitting in plush chairs and sipping tea stared at her as she passed, but Tess did not slow down.

Movement in her peripheral vision drew her attention to the right and her step faltered. She halted and turned away, feigning interest in the offerings in the window of the darkened gift shop. Forcing herself to breathe, she counted to three and glanced over at the man now making his way toward the closed-down restaurant at the back of the lobby.

She knew him, but it wasn't Nick. Or Not-Nick.

Aaron Blaustein stood about five feet, nine inches tall. He was in his early fifties, slim, and athletic. He wore stylish glasses and his once-black hair and well-groomed beard were shot through with a great deal of silver. The last time Tess had seen Aaron, the man had been serving as the curator at the New England Historical Museum. He was a brilliant man with a winning smile who had proven himself prickly and easily agitated during their brief acquaintance. The kind of man you defended for a while until you realized at last that he really was as big an asshole as everyone else had been telling you all along. Right now, though, she welcomed the sight of a familiar face. Her thundering heartbeat calmed just a bit.

Tess forced herself not to call out as Aaron walked past the podium and into the shadowed restaurant. She exhaled, drew in another breath, and then set off after him. The sign in front of the podium read:

THE SIDEBOARD

BREAKFAST DAILY 7–10:30

LUNCH NOON TO 2

Why the hell would Aaron Blaustein be at the Nepenthe Hotel? More important, why would he be walking into a restaurant that wouldn't open for business for nearly twelve hours?

Heart fluttering, she glanced at her phone but still had no text from Lili. With a glance over her shoulder, she strode to the podium and peered along the short hall into the darkened restaurant. She moved along that short passage, past restroom doors and up to the entrance of an enormous, high-ceilinged dining area. There were small tables throughout, perfect for breakfast, and a long wood and glass buffet, all of its food stations empty and dark for the night.

Tess pressed herself against the passageway wall, peering around the corner into the larger room. Her breath hitched in her throat. Silently she stared, refusing to believe her own eyes.

Aaron Blaustein stood talking to Not-Nick. In the part of her brain that had been struggling to make sense of the existence of someone who could have been a clone of her ex-husband, the presence of Aaron—someone they both knew—slipping into the hotel's shadows … the coincidence was too much
. Of course
they would be together.

But it wasn't the sight of the two men together that had caused her to catch her breath. Nervously, she glanced at her phone, quickly texting
Where are you?
to Lili. Reality felt soft and spongy beneath her feet. Tilty and blurred. Her heart buzzed with something between wonder and terror.

No, Aaron talking to this Theo guy wasn't the thing that had made her heart skip and her breath freeze in her lungs … it was the thing in the far corner. The restaurant had been decorated in the same Victorian style as the rest of the hotel, the nineteenth-century aesthetic influencing everything from the carpet to the curtains and light fixtures. Anywhere else, the structure in that far corner would have been dramatically out of place, but here it was a mere curiosity.

Twelve feet wide, the strange gazebo-like structure had been erected as an artifact of days gone by. The thing had been painted and dark portraits hung on its outer walls, but inside she knew there would be no paint and no artwork—only mirrors. Mirrors were the entire point of a psychomanteum.

Even from her hiding place, Tess could see through the thing's open doorway. The hotel had put a table and chairs inside the psychomanteum so that patrons could enjoy their meals within it. She wondered if there might be a plaque nearby that explained to visitors the nature and history of the structure, that occultists and spiritualists had been using psychomanteums for centuries to attempt to contact the so-called other side. She could still recall the first time she had ever seen one. Nick had called it an apparition box and aside from the paint and artwork, it had been identical to this one.

Not identical. It
was
this one,
she thought.

With Aaron and Nick there … Not-Nick … the idea that it could be some other psychomanteum seemed absurd. Of course it had to be the same one. Except it had been dismantled; Tess had watched it being done.

The cell phone in her hand buzzed and she jerked back, startled.
Shit,
she thought, pressing her back to the wall and not daring to look around the corner. A quick glance told her it had been Lili responding at last.
No sign of him,
she'd texted.
Where are you?

Tess forced herself to be calm. Even if they'd heard her, there was no reason for her to be nervous. There were dozens of people in the lobby. A single scream would bring them running. She could retreat if she felt threatened.

The part she didn't understand was why she felt threatened in the first place. Not-Nick had no reason to hurt her, and Aaron would never think of harming her.

If that's Aaron.

Unable to rein in her fears, frustrated with herself, she steeled herself and looked around the corner.

Both men were staring right at her. The buzz of her phone, or her startled reaction, had halted their conversation. Anger simmered in their expressions and then Not-Nick tapped Aaron's arm and guided him toward the psychomanteum's open door. Aaron stepped inside the mirrored box and out of sight, but Not-Nick paused to glance back at Tess. His eyes gleamed in the darkened restaurant as if they were mirrors themselves.

“Go away, woman,” Not-Nick warned. “This needn't concern you.”

He followed Aaron into the psychomanteum. The fading gray light beyond the curtains provided enough illumination that she could see a little way inside the octagonal structure and she glimpsed shifting reflections in the mirrored panes.

The wrongness of the strange tableau remained, but as she stood staring, listening for any sign of movement within the psychomanteum, Tess grew irritated.
Go away, woman,
he'd said. Whatever might be transpiring here, whoever these people really were, Tess would not be dismissed. Her fear had gotten the better of her, but now anger and curiosity overcame it.

Her phone remained in her hand. She shot Lili a quick reply.
Empty restaurant in the back. U won't believe this.
Just communicating, thinking of Lili joining her, slowed her racing heart. The tinge of sarcasm in her text helped, too. It stiffened her spine, gave her a bit more strength, so that she managed to take a deep breath and approach the apparition box. Quietly, she moved within ten feet of the mirrored booth.

Her phone buzzed
. I'll find you,
Lili had texted.

Tess glanced up, uneasy with the silence emanating from the psychomanteum. Frowning, she shifted her position and craned her neck to get a better look through the doorway. The mirrored interior walls of the booth were silvery blue in the dim light, the color of the ocean on a cloudy morning. But the only things she saw in those reflections were the table and chairs the hotel had put there.

What the hell?

Two steps forward and one to the right, still wary. Not-Nick's words had angered her, but where was he now?
Theo
. She remembered the way the name had sounded when he'd spoken it, like he was trying it on for size.

She moved up to the doorway of the mirrored room, knowing even as she did that she ought to wait for Lili. The lure of the impossible was too strong. She bent and looked under the table, then stood gaping at the otherwise empty booth, at the reflections, wondering how the two men could have just vanished. Had the hotel tricked the thing out as some kind of magician's apparatus? The mirrors might lend themselves to such an effect, but why?

“Hello?” Tess said softly, stepping over the threshold into the psychomanteum.

Each of the walls had a half-dozen mirrored panes and every one of them reflected her face back at her. The cautious eyes, the knitted brow. Tess ran her fingers over the mirrored surfaces, searching for some kind of latch or gap, anything to explain how the men had vanished. Her mind would not accept the reality of what she had just witnessed—not at first. When it began to sink in, she felt queasy, staring around at her many reflections.