The Brothers Of My Undoing

Kali's Pov I knew something was wrong the moment Ethan stopped talking. We had been in the car for twenty minutes, and he had not finished a single sentence. He would start something, trail off, check his phone, adjust his grip on the wheel, then start again. Ethan always talked. He had an opinion about everything and a story attached to each opinion. Silence from him was never peace. It was static. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Fine." He checked his phone again. "That is the fourth time in two minutes." "I am watching the time." "Why?" "Because I wanted us to arrive when I said we would arrive." He put the phone face down on the console. "It is nothing." It was not, nothing. But I let it go. The city changed around us the further north we drove. Buildings older, streets wider, the kind of neighborhood that did not need to announce itself. The Blackwell address carried weight, it always had. "You have gone quiet," Ethan said. "I thought that was what you wanted." "I did not say that." "You did not have to." I turned to look at him. "Ethan. What is actually going on?" "Nothing is going on." "You have said that twice without looking at me once." He exhaled slowly. "I just want this to go well. My father's opinion matters for the fellowship and I need him to see you the way I see you." "And how do you see me?" He glanced over. "Like someone who belongs in every room she walks into." It was a good answer. The kind Ethan rehearsed before he said it. I knew that about him by now. I also knew it was probably true and the rehearsal did not make it less real. "I will be fine," I said. "I know you will." "Then stop checking your phone." He did not pick it up again. The Blackwell mansion came into view and my stomach did what it always did. Dropped. The gates were the same iron ones I remembered, tall and precise, the kind that were not decorative. They kept things in as much as they kept things out. "Last chance to turn around," I said. "Are you turning around?" he asked. "No." "Then neither am I." The car stopped. A staff member opened my door before I reached for the handle. I stepped out, and the air was different here. "Miss Voss." The woman at the entrance said my name and then paused a fraction of a second too long before stepping aside. I noticed. Inside was the same. That was the thing about this house. It did not change. The floors were the same marble, the walls the same dark paneling, the light falling at the same angles it always had. Seven years and the house looked like it had been waiting without moving. That should have felt familiar. It felt like a warning. "Your room is ready," the woman said. "Thank you," Ethan said to me. I followed him down the hallway. Past the sitting room, the formal dining room, the painting of some nineteenth century Blackwell patriarch who had never once looked friendly. I kept my eyes forward. Then I stopped. Rafe was at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and that look on his face. Half challenge, half something else he would never name. "Little Voss," he said. "Don't," I said. He smiled. Not warmly. "Seven years and that is all you have." "Seven years and you are still doing the wall lean." I kept moving. "Some things never change." He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside me. "You look different," he said. "I am not." "I did not say it was a compliment." "I did not take it as one." He was quiet for a step. "Seven years in Los Angeles." "Yes." "And you came back." "Ethan needed me to." "Right." He stopped walking. I kept going. "Kali." "Rafe." "Are you actually okay being here?" I paused. Did not turn around. "Are you actually asking?" A beat. "Yeah," he said. "I am." I turned. He was standing in the middle of the hallway with his hands in his pockets and looking underneath all the others. The one I had not seen since before everything broke. "I am fine," I said. He nodded once. Like he did not quite believe it but would let it go. Ethan glanced back at us. Something moved behind his eyes. He turned away. Rafe dropped back. I felt him watching until I rounded the corner. My room was exactly as I remembered. Same window seat, same view of the east garden. The bedding had been changed to white. Everything else was identical. Someone had deliberately kept it that way. That unsettled me more than if they had changed it. I set my bag down. Ethan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later. "Dinner is at seven. Dad wants to meet you properly." "He has met me before." "Properly. He has questions about the fellowship." "Okay." He stayed. "Ethan." "Yeah." "You are doing the thing where you are thinking something and deciding not to say it." He pushed off the frame. "Am I that obvious?" "Only to me." "Is that supposed to be comforting?" "It means you do not have to perform for me." I turned to look at him. "Whatever you are worried about. Whatever is happening to you and your father. I am not going to make it worse." He looked at me for a long moment. Something in him settled. "Just be yourself tonight. That is genuinely all I am asking." "That is either very reassuring or very ominous." He smiled. A real one. "Probably both." He stepped back. "Seven o'clock. Do not disappear." "When have I ever disappeared." He did not answer. Which was an answer. I stood in the empty room for a moment after he left. I was in front of a portrait. I did not remember being there before. Large, framed in dark gold. The woman in it was posed with one hand resting on the arm of a chair, her face turned slightly left. Dark hair. Something dark about the whole composition. I stepped closer. My chest went tight. The face in the portrait was mine. Same jaw, same eyes, same exact line of the nose. I stood in front of it and the floor felt slightly wrong beneath me. I looked at the engraved plate at the bottom of the frame. Elise Blackwell. I read it twice. Then I looked back at the face. Why does a stranger look exactly like me? And why does it feel like I have seen her before?