CHAPTER 1
RUBY
SIX DAYS BEFORE
The old woman arrives at the Ye Olde Falafel Shoppe not with an order, but with a question.
“Are you sisters?”
As usual, Wren is manning the register and flirting her way to much bigger tips than I can get, while I fulfill the orders as they slide through the kitchen window of Grand County Renaissance Festival’s most popular (and only) falafel stand.
“Yes, my lady.” Wren smiles at the woman, her festival-mandated British accent sweet in air equally scented with all things fried, excessive sunscreen, and the stink of more than one horse decked out as a knight’s noble steed.
“How old?” the lady presses, lifting huge sunglasses into her cloud of silver hair. Deep set and large, her dark eyes sweep between us, and it’s like she’s checking our features off on a list—tall, pale, brunette, check, check, check. The lunch rush is over, and the moment I slide an extra vat of hummus to a man dressed as fox Robin Hood—tail and all—and he disappears with a tip of his cap, we’re alone. No customers stack up behind her as she continues to peer at us instead of choosing off the menu printed on a medieval “parchment” hanging behind Wren. “Sixteen? Seventeen? Irish twins?”
“Yes, my lady,” Wren answers again, jabbing a thumb in my direction. She announces in her perfectly posh accent, “Ruby’s older, but don’t let the age gap fool you, I’m the brains of this operation.”
The woman chuckles, her attention lingering on our faces with building excitement. I can’t explain why but my gut tightens.
“Their accents are just like yours. Tepidly British and put on for an occasion,” she says mostly to herself before turning to me and ordering, “Let me hear yours.”
For some reason it feels impossible to tell how old our nosy customer actually is—she could be sixty or pushing a hundred. Either way, I realize I’ve seen her before. I’ve served her before. At least two weeks in a row.
I gesture at the menu, and prod in my fake accent, which is way less impressive than Wren’s, “Is there anything I can get you? You ordered the number two with jalapeños last week, didn’t you?”
Wren mutters “Pushy” under her breath. Yet rather than answer my question or agree with my sister’s assessment, the old woman’s obvious elation only grows—her heart-shaped face expanding and elongating in such a way that it resembles an exclamation point.
“Good.”
She then precedes to plant her elbows on the counter and gesture for us to lean in close.
Wren, happily coasting on her four semesters in high school improv class, does so without hesitation, but I must admit to being a little less enthusiastic. The only reason I’m slinging falafel in a wench outfit is because I need more money for my pitiful college fund, and this is far outside the parameters of what we’re paid to do. Not to mention this is the last weekend of the Ren Fest and we literally have five hours left on the job. Our customer ignores my frown, and greets our combined attention with an eager smile outlined in matte maroon lipstick.
“Girls, my name is Marsyas Blackgate. I’d like to hire each of you to pretend to be my granddaughters at a dinner party at Hegemony Manor—do you know it? It’s just outside of Wood Rose.”
Wren’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. “The Hegemony Manor? Of course we know it! Gothic perfection on the hill, with the turrets and the windows and the Wednesday Addams moodiness. Our mom just loved it.”
My breath hitches at the mention of Mom. She did love that place. There’s no way this woman—Marsyas?—could know that, but something unsettling plops in my gut.
Beyond the old woman’s rounded shoulders is a steady stream of humanity wandering by, gnawing on massive turkey legs, crinkling maps, and brandishing kiddie-sized wooden swords. Not a single Ren Fest guest is looking our way. I drop both my hideous accent and my voice. “You want us to impersonate your granddaughters? May I ask why?”
She blinks as if it’s obvious. “You look just like them.”
“But we aren’t them.”
Marsyas straightens and, with a dignified sniff, draws a photograph from somewhere beneath the voluminous fabric of her black caftan. In it, she beams at the camera, bracketed by two tall, pale brunettes. Their heads are smooshed together, the iconic pyramid of the Louvre in the background.
I have to admit, we do look like them.
“My girls live abroad with their mother. I miss them dearly and though they miss me, they haven’t been back stateside in a decade. I’m invited every year to a special dinner party at Hegemony Manor, and every year the other families expect to see Lavinia and Kaysa. Every year they’re disappointed, and I’m disappointed too.”
Marsyas’s chin wobbles, her dark eyes shine, and suddenly she looks like she might be a thousand years old. If it’s an act, her improv lessons have been far more extensive than Wren’s. “This year, I want to show off my girls.”
Wren immediately claws at my hand, her expression pleading. I know my sister just wants to help, even if it’s some next-level psychological bullshit that this woman is propositioning us to pretend to be her living, breathing granddaughters for a night so that her friends will think that they love her enough to cross the Atlantic.
“I—” I start. That tremor of unease in my gut is now a 5.0 on the Richter scale.
But before I can put that into words enough to pull Wren aside to discuss it, Marsyas lays out twenty one-hundred-dollar bills on the counter.
“I’ll give you each a thousand up front and another thousand after dinner.” Her gaze sweeps between the pair of us, that spark returning. “I’m sure you will find that reasonable.”
My jaw drops.
That is more money than we’ve earned—combined—in our six-weekend run at the Ren Fest.
More than I alone earn in a month at my part-time job as a bookseller at Agatha’s Apothecary & Paperback Emporium.
Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Henning
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