The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (15 page)

There wasn’t a single point where the water dropped off, but instead a cascade of white water gushing over rocks gradually on its way down. The observation point jutted out over the Potomac River, allowing him a great view of the swollen, churning water beneath him.

“You look like you’ve never been here before,” said a voice next to him.

He turned to find a woman holding one of her legs in a stretch pose. She was dressed in spandex and a pink T-shirt that read “Shut up and give me twenty.” The outfit seemed far too cold for this time of year. As Soren watched, she stretched her other leg, holding it behind her.

“Never made it out, no,” Soren said, uncertain why she was talking to him. “Heard it was pretty.”

The woman walked forward and looked out over the water.

“Pretty? Please. That’s a word for pussies,” she said. “Magnificent. Awe-inspiring. Majestic. Those are words to describe this place.”

Soren smirked, wondering if she was hitting on him. He wasn’t normally the kind of person women just started talking to. This spot would have been crowded in the spring, fall, or summer, but on a weekday in winter, he and the woman were the only ones here. Soren looked toward the entrance of the park to see if he could get a glimpse of Friday coming.

When he looked back, the woman was staring at him expectantly. She was in her midtwenties, with jet-black hair that was tied into a ponytail. She was shorter than Soren, but she seemed lithe and athletic, her legs and arms clearly toned. She was somewhat plain looking, but there was something intense in her face that gave her an added presence. She radiated confidence.

“We just going to stand here all day, Soren?” she asked.

All at once Soren felt like a complete idiot. Of course, this woman was Friday. He’d become used to her looking like Sharon, but it wasn’t as if that was her “real” form any more than Soren Chase was his. She’d gotten herself another body.

Soren unintentionally took a step back from her, and the new version of Friday laughed.

“It repulses you even to think about it, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You really do think like an aussenseiter
.”

“Who are you now?”

“Jeanine Sanders,” she said, sticking out her hand. “I’m a fitness instructor at the Gold’s Gym in Reston. If people give me a month, I will turn their fucking lives around. Guaranteed.”

The look she gave him was so fervent, Soren almost felt like taking another step back, but resisted the urge. Instead he reached out and shook her hand.

“Did you kill her?” Soren asked.

Friday rolled her eyes and for a bare second, Soren was reminded of how she’d looked in Sharon’s body.

“Didn’t need to, so I didn’t do it,” she said. “I caught her in the woman’s locker room. She’s probably awake now with a bit of a headache and no memory of what happened. You can call her if you want.”

Soren shook his head. She hadn’t killed the real Sharon, and there was no reason to kill the real Jeanine, either.

“Before we get started, we need to have a chat,” Friday said. “I’m going to help you—but my help isn’t free.”

Soren’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. He’d been waiting for something like this.

“Relax,” Friday said. “It’s not bad. I need you to help me get something from Silas Rakev. He took it a few nights ago.”

“What is it?”

Friday sighed dramatically, and there was a dim echo of the sighs Sharon had given.

“I have no intention of telling you yet,” she said.

He started to object but she raised her hand.

“It’s not something that would hurt Alex or Sara or, indeed, any human being,” she said. “This isn’t a relic that will destroy the world or cause a Spice Girls reunion. It’s just an object I need, mostly so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. And when the time comes—when Alex is safe—you’re going to help me get it.”

“Oh, am I?” he asked.

“That’s the deal, as of right now,” she said. “I’m happy to take my chances getting the item back myself, but the odds of success improve dramatically with you by my side. When the time comes, I need your word. Give it to me, and I’ll help you save Alex. Or I quit now, and you’re on your own.”

Soren paused only a moment before nodding his head.

“You have my word,” he said. “Unless I find out that you’re lying about the item being a threat to people. In that case, all bets are off.”

Friday slightly bowed her head in a formal gesture of acknowledgment.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get the blood pumping!”

She started jogging away and Soren had to rush to follow her. Fortunately, running was one of the things he excelled at, and he easily matched her pace. They ran along a cliffside trail that followed the winding course of the Potomac River about forty feet below them. It proved harder than Soren expected. Both he and Friday were forced to scramble and jump over several rocks.

Friday kept increasing the pace, but he stayed with her. She finally stopped on a rocky outcropping that jutted out over the river below. Soren was out of breath, but the run had been exhilarating. He’d stopped running during the past two months, and now regretted it. He was out of shape. Friday’s face was flushed, but she didn’t seem to be breathing hard.

Friday gave him an appraising look.

“Been a while?” she asked.

Soren bent over, putting his hands on his knees.

“A little,” he said.

“So you think your muscles degrade if you don’t use them?” she asked.

Soren looked up.

“Don’t they?”

“Not for us,” she said. “Let’s get a few basic things down. Aussenseiter have muscles that degrade; we don’t. Their muscles get tired, pulled, or stretched. Ours don’t. That’s because we don’t have muscles, not really. What we have is an imitation of muscles.”

Soren opened his mouth to speak, but Friday held up a finger.

“I’m the teacher, okay? You shut up until I tell you to speak.”

Somewhat to his own surprise, Soren closed his mouth.

“Doppelgängers aren’t made of skin and sinew,” she said. “We’re made of aether, the building blocks of life. All creatures are made of it, really, but we’re one of the few that can manipulate it after it’s formed. Do you understand?”

He didn’t, but Soren nodded slowly.

“This is why we can regrow limbs and repair any damage we take,” she said. “Aether is very hard to destroy, which is why we’re so difficult to kill. We don’t have a brain to target or lungs to pierce. If any part of us survives, we will regrow.”

“Are you saying our natural state is liquid?” Soren asked.

Friday shook her head.

“This isn’t
Deep Space Nine
,” she said. “We aren’t a puddle on the floor, and we can’t become something inanimate. We were made to imitate people, so that’s our natural state. It’s just that our natural state changes.”

“We were ‘made?’ By whom?”

“We’ll get to that,” she said. “It’s not important for the first lesson.”

“And what exactly is the first lesson?”

“You think like an aussenseiter,” she said. “It’s in how you fight, how you speak, your strategies, even how you dress.”

“How I dress?”

Soren looked down at himself. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He looked completely normal.

“Watch and learn,” Friday said.

As he watched her, she held out her arms and her clothes started to change. Her pink T-shirt melted into her skin. Her flesh faded from pale white to a bluish hue, and then solidified itself into a neon green shirt that read, “Get fit or die trying.” Her skin tone returned to normal. If Soren had looked away for a few seconds, it would have appeared like all she did was change shirts.

“Holy shit,” Soren said.

“Your clothes. You don’t need them. I’ve never seen a doppelgänger wearing actual clothes before.”

“I had no idea,” he said.

She frowned at him.

“Use your brain, pinhead,” she said. “How far would doppelgängers have gotten in this world if they were always stealing clothes? How could you take an aussenseiter’s identity if you had to raid their closet first? We’re predators.”

“We eat people?” Soren asked, horrified.

“Not literally, no, but we do hunt them,” she said. “Our camouflage is the people we pretend to be. Clothes are a big part of the role.”

Soren thought back to the other night when he’d woken up in Glen’s car. He’d been naked at first, but by the time the ride was over, his clothes had returned. He’d never given it a second thought. He’d gone home and put them in the laundry hamper, treating them like normal clothes.

“But how can they exist separate from us?” Soren asked.

Friday laughed mockingly.

“They can’t,” she said. “Not for long, at any rate. You can take them off, but they’ll liquefy within a few moments. You can either reabsorb them or wait, and they will evaporate into the air and return to you that way.”

Soren remembered cutting the head off the pretender a couple months ago. The severed head had melted into the table after a few moments, and the body had regrown the head immediately afterward.

“The other night,” Soren said. “I blew myself up.”

Friday looked surprised.

“God, you really took that suicide thing to the limit,” she said.

“But that’s how I survived, isn’t it? You said if any part of us survives, we regrow.”

“It’s better than that,” she replied. “Aether can exist in gas form. It’s a liquid, solid, or gas, depending on the need for it.”

“So I can evaporate?” Soren asked.

“If you blew yourself up, you already did,” she said. “Likely some part of you survived the explosion, and you regrew from the largest bit. The rest of you evaporated and drew itself to that part. You regrew without even wanting to.”

“No wonder we’re impossible to kill.”

Friday raised a finger again.

“Not impossible,” she said. “Just difficult. And it’s easier than you think to kill us, but we’ll get to that later.”

“Okay,” Soren said. He looked down at his outfit. “So how do I change clothes?”

“I’ll show you,” Friday said. “Give me your sunglasses.”

Reluctantly, Soren removed them from his face and tossed them to her. She caught them and immediately threw them off the cliff into the river.

“Hey! I just found those this morning!” he said.

“You don’t need them.”

“Well, of course not,” he said. “They’re sunglasses. Nobody
needs
them.”

“That’s not what I meant, dumbass. You can make them yourself. You don’t need to buy a pair.”

“How?” he asked.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “Just think about sunglasses.”

Soren thought about sunglasses for a few moments and opened his eyes. There was nothing there.

“Can you help me a little more than that?”

Friday gave him a disapproving look. “Close your eyes again,” she said. “The less you think about actually doing it, the better. You need to lose yourself in the moment. Stop thinking about it—just get swept up.”

Soren closed his eyes and felt very, very stupid. He wished he hadn’t given her his sunglasses. When he found them this morning, he’d felt better, like he’d found a bit of himself while rooting through the drawer. And now they were gone.

He thought about the pair he bought several years ago. He’d been passing some shop and got them on a whim. Something about the light had been bothering his eyes, and he figured he’d give them a try. He’d sampled several kinds before settling on reflective ones. When people looked at him, they’d see a mirror of themselves. For some reason, the idea had appealed to him. When he put them on, they just felt
right
, as if they belonged there. He sighed. And now his last pair was gone.

He opened his eyes again.

“It’s not working,” he said.

Friday smirked at him.

“You lost yourself in the moment, didn’t you?” she asked.

He was about to ask her what she was talking about when he realized the light was dimmer. He put a hand to his face and pulled off a pair of sunglasses. They weren’t the ones he’d had on before—they were the ones he’d bought years ago, the ones that he’d lost in the car accident months ago.

“That,” he said to Friday in amazement, “is seriously cool.”

“It’s the shit,” Friday agreed. “The only way to accessorize.”

Soren put the glasses back on. He still hated what he was, but at least he’d never have to shop for clothes anymore.

“That’s the warm-up to the first lesson,” she said. “But the main event is still to come. Turn around.”

Soren gave her a dubious look, but did as she asked and looked out at the river. It churned beneath him.

“Why?” he asked. “What am I supposed to see?”

“It’s not what you’re going to see,” she said. “It’s what happens next.”

Friday shoved him hard, sending him flying over the cliff and into the water below.

Ken came running into Sara’s office, holding out a folder.

“I’ve got a lead,” he said.

She grabbed it from him and anxiously opened it, scanning its contents. It was a report on a burglary roughly three years before at the Hillwood Estate and Museum in Northwest DC. The museum featured artifacts that had been collected by a well-known DC socialite, Marjorie Merriweather Post, who’d founded General Foods in the 1930s. Much of it came from Imperial Russia, including furniture, paintings, and Fabergé eggs. But this report concerned only the theft of a single object—a decorative knife, described as several hundred years old.

“Look at the picture,” Ken said.

Sara flipped the page to a photo of the knife and gasped in surprise. There was no doubt that this was the knife in question. It looked exactly like Alex’s drawing, down to the cat’s eye staring at her from the hilt.

“It was once owned by Tsar Nicholas II,” Ken said. “I was searching for any robberies involving a stolen knife and getting nowhere. Then it occurred to me to check museums.”

Sara looked up at him.

“Thank you,” she said.

She wasn’t just thanking him for the lead. He hadn’t left her side since Alex’s kidnapping, and seemed as determined as her to find her son. He put a hand on top of hers.