Tanya expected her double to request a meeting in the depths of the woods, or … a cave, or something. That’s why she was surprised when the address she received turned out to be a bustling cafe on Fourth Street.
She stood awkwardly for a few seconds, looking around. The place was packed. The website hadn’t given her a physical description for the agent she was supposed to meet—well, obviously they hadn’t—so she wasn’t quite sure where to look. How was she supposed to recognize them?
“I’m guessing you’re the client?” a voice asked.
Tanya heaved a sigh of relief as she turned around. “Yep, that’s me,” she said. “I assume you’re–?”
Her voice cut off.
The person standing behind Tanya was completely nondescript, except that her face was moving in ways it shouldn’t be able to. The irises of her eyes darkened as Tanya watched, and her hair shortened while rapidly shifting color. She shrunk by several inches, rearranged her nose, did something to her ears, and then smiled at Tanya.
“Hi there,” the stranger said, using Tanya’s own face. “I’m from Changelings, Incorporated. Thanks for showing up early!” She proffered a hand.
Shaking off her initial discomfort, Tanya shook the other girl’s hand. This was what she was paying for, after all. “Should we sit down?” she asked.
The changeling nodded, pulling out a chair near the window. Tanya sat down opposite her.
“I’d suggest you order a drink,” the changeling said conversationally, “but this place overcharges.” She pulled a clipboard out of an overstuffed bag and began rifling through pages of paperwork. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be a minute.”
“What should I call you?” Tanya asked as the papers continued to rustle. “I mean, like… do you have a name or something?”
She meant the gesture as polite, but the changeling just smirked, kicking her heels against the legs of the trendy stainless-steel chair. “Oh, I don’t know about that. After all, I’m meant to be you, aren’t I?”
“Well, yes, but I can’t call you Tanya, can I?” Tanya said, frustrated. “Also, aren’t you supposed to be allergic to that or something?” She gestured at the chair, remembering something vague about fae and iron.
“Don’t worry about me,” the changeling said. She looked amused. “I just pop a Zyrtec every morning.” Tanya blinked. “And you can call me… hmm. How about Anya?”
Tanya replied, “Sounds great. Now can we please get down to business?”
Anya gave a thumbs-up. “Alright,” she said. “Well then. Legal name Tanya Morganstern, age 17, correct?”
Tanya nodded.
“I assume your parents are paying for this?” Anya asked. “Just curious.”
“They don’t know they’re paying for it,” Tanya corrected, “but yeah, that’s right.”
“Great!” Anya gave another thumbs-up. The peppier she got, the creepier it was to watch. Tanya didn’t think she’d ever smiled that much in a single conversation. The people drinking their coffees at the other tables probably thought the two of them were twins.
“So I see you requested our standardized testing services,” Anya mused, scouring what was presumably Tanya’s file. “No fake dating schemes? I’m kidding, I’m kidding. We’ve had to roll that one back a bit. Too much collateral damage.”
“How exactly are you supposed to help me on the test?” Tanya asked. “I mean yes, obviously you’re going to…” she lowered her voice “... you know, take it, but how can you guarantee a score improvement?”
“I see you’ve worked with a lot of tutoring services, haven’t you?” Anya said in response. “Nitpicky. I like you. Can’t you just trust the process?”
Tanya gave a weary sigh. “It’s secret fae magic, isn’t it?”
“Secret fae magic,” Anya confirmed. “Otherwise known as minor time dilation, the littlest bit of mind reading, and me being smarter than you by an order of magnitude.” She shrugged. “No offense.”
Tanya was, in fact, offended, but reminded herself again: This is what I’m paying for. All the studying she could do had been no use, and this was actually cheaper than most of the test-prep companies in town. Suspiciously cheap. She just had to roll with it.
“All right,” she finally said. “I’m going to trust you on this, Anya. Five hundred, was it?”
“Cash only, please, as was the agreement,” Anya replied, smiling pleasantly as Tanya forked over the bills. “Excellent. Excellent. Consider this a deduction from your future salary, if you will. Or even from college merit aid?”
Tanya rolled her eyes. “Two months until the test,” she said. “You’d better not screw this up.”
Anya just saluted.
So it was probably a bad idea to hire a faerie doppelganger to take your exam for you. So what? Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Tanya learned just how desperate a few weeks later, when the state put into place ID requirements for all official examinations. She phoned the company to see if she could get a refund, and resigned herself to start studying… well, yesterday. That is, until Anya showed up at her house.
Someone knocked. Tanya’s parents weren’t home, but she tiptoed to the entryway nonetheless. Her copy waved at her cheerly through the doorbell camera, then struck a pose. There was no clear indication how she’d gotten through the neighborhood gate or past any of the other security cameras, and Anya offered no explanation.
“Oh,” Tanya said. “Um. Good. We needed to talk.”
“May I come in?” Anya asked politely. She was dressed in an identical outfit to the first time they’d met. It was possible that she had a uniform, or not many clothes, but Tanya was starting to doubt whether the outfit was real or not in the first place.
“Sure, why not?” Tanya said with a shrug, shouldering the door open wider. “Maybe take your shoes off. And don’t touch anything.”
Anya glided in, making polite noises of appreciation for the design choices of Tanya’s parents’ interior decorator. Tanya ignored her comments. She practically dragged Anya to the dining room, where they both settled at the table.
“I called your bosses,” Tanya hissed. “They won’t let me get a refund. I spent five hundred dollars on this.”
Anya looked surprised. “You can’t pull out of the contract that easily.”
“What contract? I didn’t sign anything. There wasn’t even a liability waiver.”
“You shook my hand,” Anya said. “That’s how things work around here. Didn’t you do your research?”
Tanya rubbed a hand on her forehead. “I just want my money back,” she said tiredly. “Is that too much to ask?”
“Oh.” Anya pursed her lips. “Oh, you didn’t realize. Okay.” She cleared her throat. “The contract still stands. I will take the exam on your behalf next month, as previously agreed. It’s a little late to back out now, you know.”
“But—the ID requirement—”
Anya gave a belaboured sigh. “You can just give me your passport or something, you know? I look exactly like you. It’ll be fine.”
Tanya sputtered. “I’m not giving you my passport. That’s ridiculous!”
“Fine, then,” Anya said. “Your driver’s license. I know you’ve got one, and I know your parents drive you anyway. You won’t need it. I can pick it up a few days beforehand.”
“Can’t I just print out a photo or something?”
“Nope,” Anya said. “Look it up. They said no copies, they’ll only take your original card.”
Tanya crossed her arms. “Listen here, fairy princess–”
“—I’m no more a royal than you are, unfortunately,” Anya said.
Tanya took a deep breath. “I don’t want you… I don’t know, running around with my ID card, claiming you’re me and doing whatever you want. That’s a bad idea. That’s a really, really bad idea.”
“Honey,” Anya said, “that’s exactly what you paid me for.”
As promised, Anya swung by the day before the exam to retrieve Tanya’s license. Tanya’s parents were home, so she confined her brief conversation with her doppelganger to the front porch. They exchanged a few tense words, and not for the first time, Tanya wondered if she was making a mistake.
Anya’s face was as serene as ever, though, and she even appeared excited. This is not a human, Tanya reminded herself as she watched the other girl fidget where she stood. This is not my ally. This is a mysterious, potentially malevolent supernatural creature looking to make a profit.
But in the warm fall afternoon, it was hard to fix that thought in her mind. Everything Tanya had always wanted for her future, everything her parents had always wanted, was just within reach. And she didn’t even have to work for it.
The old stories were ridiculous, anyway. Anya clearly didn’t have goat feet. She didn’t offer people enchanted food to trap their souls forever. She hadn’t cursed Tanya in any way, as far as she could tell. And that business with the “true names”? Changelings, Inc. had known Tanya’s full name for months now, and nothing ill had come of it.
“Here you go,” Tanya said, rummaging through her wallet and passing the card to Anya. After hesitating for a second, she added, “Good luck.”
“Don’t need it,” Anya replied, and vanished.
Tanya got a notification on her phone when her scores– well, “her” scores—arrived. She just stared at the computer for a second, fingers frozen on the keyboard. A few points short of perfect. Incredible, honestly.
Downstairs, she heard the noise of her parents arriving home from work. She heard them talk quietly with each other, and then: “Tanya?” her dad called upstairs. She couldn’t wait to tell him.
“Yes,” Tanya said to herself. “Holy– yes, yes, yes.”
“Interesting,” Anya said from behind her.
Tanya jumped.
“I didn’t expect everything to work out that fast, but then again, I’m a first-timer,” Anya continued. “This has honestly been so much fun. So, in a way, I have to thank you.”
“How did you get in my house?” Tanya demanded.
“You didn’t realize?” Anya said, smiling sweetly. “You gave me permission to come in here. No conditions, no limitations, no expiration date. So here I am.”
“Anya—”
“Actually, I go by Tanya now,” Anya said. “It’s basically the same thing. And I’m going to need to take that.” She plucks Tanya’s laptop off the desk. “Can’t have some stranger messing with it, after all.”
“Oh, no,” Tanya said. “This is some kind of name-magic thing, isn’t it?”
“Oh, we don’t use names anymore,” Anya said. “That used to give us power over you, of course. But you can Google anything these days. It dilutes the magic. What we do need—”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic card. Tanya did a double take.
“Identification,” Anya finished, flourishing Tanya’s driver’s license.
“That’s not how that works,” Tanya insisted. “No. No way.”
“Maybe not legally,” Anya said, drawing the word out. “Not at first. But name magic works in interesting ways. By giving me one thing, you gave me access to everything. Your digital accounts. Your money. In the eyes of the magic, I am Tanya now.
She snapped the laptop shut. “You see, the fae run a bit of a different business model these days. Why you thought it was a good idea to pay the famous baby-stealing forest demons to do anything is beyond me, but yeah, we don’t steal babies anymore. Just Social Security numbers.”
Tanya drew back. “You think I’m just going to let you do this?”
“You invited me to,” Anya replied. “You paid me to. Your score? It’s mine. Your acceptance letter? It’s mine. Your family? It’s mine. You handed over your identity just like that–” she snaps her fingers “–and now you don’t even get to be you anymore. Seems like just desserts.”
“Wait,” Tanya said, but the other Tanya, the real Tanya, did not wait.
Tanya Morgenstern walked out of the bedroom. Smiling, clutching her computer, she strode downstairs to greet her parents and share the good news. This was a girl with a future: a girl with determination, and a girl with initiative.
Upstairs, a nameless stranger sank crying to the floor.