Page 52 of Against All Odds

“Good.” She clenched her teeth, folding her arms as if she were the petulant child here. “Be angry. It’s better than wanting to die. Better than looking at me like—like I’m your fucking savior or something.” She took a few deep breaths, and when she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “I want to help you, okay, but I cannot do this if you don’t even want to help yourself. I need you to want to get better – not to please me, but because you believe you deserve it.” She paused, her sharp blue eyes locking with mine. “Can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, struggling to speak through the lump that had formed in my throat. “No one has ever made me feel like I deserved it. Even my own parents didn’t.”

Seren clenched her teeth. “And I hate that for you, but wallowing in self-pity won’t help you. You want me to treat you like an adult? Then act like one. No one but you can take responsibility for your own life.”

I stayed silent, allowing her words to sink in. I hated that she was right. Hated that she made it sound so logical. I could believe the words when they came from her mouth, even when I didn’t feel them in my heart – not yet. Maybe not ever. But in that moment, I knew I would try. For her, I would try.

Despite everything, the corner of my mouth quirked upwards. “Really? You’ll treat me like an adult?”

“Prove me wrong first.” She pressed her lips together as if struggling not to smile as well. “Prove to me that you’re as mature as you claim to be by making better choices.”

My stomach flipped funnily at the playful undertone in her voice, and immediately, the world started to distort. I commanded my brain to think about something boring – math, think about math. Not about the thought of her hands on me, because it couldn’t happen, and just thinking about it would end the dream.

“I’ll go talk to my GP,” I whispered, barely audible. But from the subtle change in her eyes, I knew she’d heard me. “I—I want to get better, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not doing it for you.” I swallowed thickly. “Is that okay?”

“It’s a start,” she said after a pause. “Hopefully, one day you’ll do it for yourself.”

The way her voice cracked made my heart flutter so violently, I squeezes my eyes shut so I wouldn’t wake up. I would need to learn to control my emotions in my dreams, so I could spend more time with her. And maybe if I could prove to her that I’d changed – that I was emotionally mature enough for her… maybe we could…

“Raya.” I flinched at Seren’s voice, closer than expected. There was a warning in them that hadn’t been there moments ago.

I opened my eyes, and my heart sank.

There were two of them.

I could’ve sworn they were the same person. Same hoodie, same bewildered look in their misty blue eyes.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath before lifting my head to the darkening clouds in the sky. “I’m really not in the mood for this game right now.”

“Raya, this is not a game.” The Seren on the left spoke, her eyes wide with a fear I had never seen on her face. “You have to wake up right now. Before he finds you.”

I frowned. “But it’s just a—”

“This is not your dream,” her doppelgänger interrupted, earning her a scowl from the first Seren. “You’re in my subconscious now. I pulled you onto it because I panicked when I saw those pills, but it’s not safe. If you die in here...” She swallowed thickly. “You could die for real.”

I looked from one to the other. “What in the—”

“Don’t listen to her.” The first Seren narrowed her eyes at her doppelgänger. “She wants you to choose wrong; she wants you to think she’s the real me. She wants the demon to take your soul.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, the clouds clashed together. The lightning that cracked from them erupted into a devious laugh that made the earth shudder.

“Well, well, well.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Who would’ve thought.” The laughter reverberated between the clouds. I felt it in my chest more than I heard it. “Nearly twenty-two years of being able to sense and communicate with the netherworld, and you never thought to protect yourself before doing something so dangerous? Did you not know you are not connected to your mortal body when your soul enters a dead person’s astral plane?”

I sheltered my eyes with my hand, trying to figure out where the voice came from. “I—I don’t understand,” I stammered. “How—”

“How is irrelevant,” the demon taunted. “The only question that matters is this one: which is the real Seren?”

As his laugh echoed between the thundering clouds, I looked from one Seren to the other. It was impossible to tell the two apart – they shared every trait I’d learned to attribute to her. The narrowed eyes, the sharp features, her clenched fists – they even breathed in the same rhythm.

Guilt stung in my chest. I had spent so many hours painting her. Shouldn’t I be able to differentiate her from her evil clone?

“How?” The word came out as a whisper as my eyes frantically darted between them. “How will I—”

“I will let you know,” the first Seren said, the same moment her clone said: “You will feel it.”