“I’ll make the coffee. You just concentrate on sobering up,” I replied, stepping into the house while Nic led me into a medium-sized kitchen. I’d only been in here a handful of times over the years. The place wasn’t messy, per se, but it did look like it needed some dusting. Nic’s parents worked long hours, so there probably wasn’t a lot of time for cleaning.
There wasn’t a coffee machine in the kitchen, or a cafetiere, which I found odd since he’d offered to make coffee. Nic’s family must’ve been the kind of people who drank instant. I shuddered at the thought and turned on the kettle to make tea instead.
Nic made his best attempt to sit on one of the stools by the counter. I laughed when he almost fell on his backside. Finally, he righted himself.
“You’re an adorable drunk,” I said, and he shot me a lop-sided grin. Then he seemed to study me closer and frowned.
“There’s something different about you,” he said, and I cursed his perceptiveness even when drunk. Nic was the last person I wanted to tell about what happened between Peter and me.
“There is?” I asked, feigning obliviousness as I placed a tea bag in each cup.
Nic looked like he was about to say something when the kettle started whistling. I grabbed it and poured water into the mugs. I handed one to Nic just as my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, surprised to see Angela’s name on the screen. “I have to take this,” I said to Nic. “Drink some of your tea. It might help with the hangover you’re sure to suffer in the morning.”
He nodded, picking up the mug and taking a sip as I went into the living room to answer Angela’s call.
“Hey,” I said, hoping everything was okay with her.
“Darya, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure if you’d be asleep by now,” she replied, her tone urgent.
“Nope. Wide awake. What do you need?” I figured it was important since she called me in the middle of the night.
“Well, you know how I told you about the blank spaces in my memory after the attack? It’s been eating away at me, so I decided to try a spell to recover them.”
Now she had my full attention. “Did it work?”
“Yes,” she breathed shakily. “I’m still freaking out. I can’t believe it.”
“Tell me everything,” I urged.
“It all started the night of the storm. I was on my way to the bathroom during my last class of the day when I bumped into Nic,” she said, and I stilled. What did Nic have to do with this? “I don’t think he expected anyone to be around because he looked surprised to see me. Something seemed off about his appearance, and that was when I realised he was using a glamour to disguise himself.”
I cast my mind back, remembering the day in question. Nic had seemed unusually queasy during class when he excused himself to go to the bathroom. I glanced over my shoulder, keeping my voice low as I went on high alert. “Disguise himself how?”
“He had horns,” Angela whispered, fear in her voice. “But here’s the weirdest part, the boy we’ve been thinking is Nic Baumann all this time isn’t Nic at all. He’s been using a glamour to make everyone believe he was Nic. Think about it, Darya, and I mean think hard. Nic has red hair and brown eyes. The boy we’ve all been seeing at school is blonde and blue-eyed.”
What Angela said made my head hurt, but something about it rang true. I focused hard on my memories of Nic, and my brain was fuzzy, but the harder I focused, the more my memories became clearer. Angela was right. This person who claimed to be Nic Baumann, the boy who was sitting in the next room drinking tea, wasn’t Nic at all. He was an imposter!
“When he realised I could see through his glamour, he got a scary look on his face. I turned and made a run for it. Stupidly, instead of going towards Principal Wolf’s office, I headed straight for the woods, but that’s when the other guy appeared, the one I identified in the line-up. He bit me, and that’s where my recollection ends.”
My hand started to shake as I held the phone to my ear. “Angela, I need you to listen very carefully. Call my parents and tell them they need to come to the house next door to Grace’s. Then call Sergeant Davis at the Guard and tell him everything you just told me.”
“Wait,” Angela said, panicking. “Are you at his house right now?”
“Yes, but he’s in the other room and—”
The door opened, and Nic, or whoever the hell he was, poked his head in. “Darya? Is everything okay?”
I hung up on Angela and tried to act normal. “Yes, everything’s fine. Let’s go back into the kitchen and finish our tea.”