“I think you can get the death penalty here if you smoke a joint.” Theo runs his hands through his spiky hair in frustration. “Maybe it’s not that bad for pot, but attacking a police officer—you realize this universe’s Romola will probably be executed for this.”
She shrugs. “Not my problem.”
“You’re still just the errand girl,” I try. “You’re here to pick up your world’s Marguerite. Not to do the job yourself.”
“I took care of you well enough in the Romeverse, didn’t I?” Romola retorts.
Again the molten hell of that universe’s final moments writhes in my mind. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m still alive and well. You can’t say that for Conley or Theo in the Triadverse, can you?”
“We lost a perfect traveler, but we can always make another. You’re not as indispensible as they all seem to think. This room would seem to prove it. Infinite copies, and yet you’re still never enough, Marguerite. Never enough for your parents, never enough for anyone.”
Romola, onto my game, is trying to wound me back. The thing is, it doesn’t work. With all my self-doubt and uncertainty, I’ve never felt like my parents didn’t love me, or that I didn’t deserve to be loved. Only in these past few days, as I’ve realized how that sense of inferiority has gnawed at Wicked—and at Paul—have I fully appreciated how the lack of love can twist someone inside.
If you know you’re loved, deep down know it, something deep and precious inside you will always be safe. If you don’t have that love—or don’t know that you do—then you’re vulnerable. Unshielded. Exposed to all the hardness and horror of the world.
“You don’t understand half as much as you think you do,” I tell Romola.
“And yet I still seem to understand more than you.” With that, Romola leans forward and activates Victoire’s Firebird for a reminder. The jolt isn’t visible; however, the pain it causes Victoire is. She jumps in her seat, twists around—and goes deadly still.
Wicked’s back.
“Good try.” Her smile is as sharp as a shard of a broken mirror. “But, as usual, not good enough.”
Instantly Wicked’s hand goes to her Firebird, as does Romola’s. The lockets seem to vanish, leaving both Victoire and Romola there looking stupefied. Romola takes a couple of steps backward in utter confusion, then gasps in shock at the gun in her own hand. “What’s going on?”
“Romy?” Victoire says. “Are you yourself again?”
Paul steps forward and carefully takes the weapon from Romola’s hand, showing no sign of the homicidal anger that nearly consumed him only seconds ago. “Sit down. We’ll explain later.”
“Who is that?” says Warverse, from the corner where she and the others have huddled. “I’ve never laid eyes on her in my life.”
“Her name is Romola Harrington.” Mafiaverse answers, and I realize she looks paler and sicker than anyone else in the room. “In my universe, she works for Wyatt Conley.”
“Here, too,” says one of the clones who’s already rid of her visitor from another dimension—Elodie, I think. “Conley funds Mum and Dad’s cloning research. Romy’s one of his assistants, so she lives here and handles PR, transfers of funds, that kind of thing.”
“And she’s one of our friends.” Victoire goes to the very confused Romola’s side in a show of solidarity. “She’d never hurt us.”
“Neither would mine,” Mafiaverse says.
“That’s great. You guys got way nicer Romolas than we did. Maybe when you get back to the Mafiaverse, you could ask yours to help out?” Frustration is making me snarky. “I’m sorry. It’s just—as soon as we take care of one threat from the Home Office, another one takes its place. I don’t know what to do.”
“We stick to the plan.” Paul tries to sound logical and confident, like he’s only talking good sense. Yet he won’t meet anyone’s eyes, and he keeps glancing over at the cleaver he very nearly used on Romola. “Protect our own dimensions, continue to work together, move on quickly. This next world is important—”
“I’ll go there,” I say. Up until now, I’ve been following in Wicked’s footsteps. With this step, with Paul resetting my Firebird to strike out in new directions instead of only trailing behind her, maybe I can finally beat her to the punch. “Right away. As long as I keep her out, the dimension will remain safe until you can meet me there.”
Paul opens his mouth to speak, then closes it. He was going to object.
I beat him to it. “I mean, you or whoever can reach me. Whoever is closest in that dimension.”
Because I don’t know anything about this next world. Where I once assumed Paul and I could always find each other, now I know the multiverse has a million different ways of tearing us apart.
“Okay,” I murmured one night in late February as Paul and I snuggled in his dorm room, listening to his beloved Rachmaninoff. The piano notes rippled down around us like raindrops on a windowpane during a storm—cascading, endless. “So you can mathematically prove the existence of fate.”
“I hope so. If not, my chances of successfully defending my thesis are poor.”
“But you can.” I lay on my side, Paul spooned around my back. His hand splayed across my stomach, two of his fingers touching the bare skin exposed between my top and my jeans. “You can actually look into this snarl of equations and read what our destiny is fated to be.”
“No, that’s going too far.” Paul kissed the back of my neck, as if apologizing for having to correct me in any way. “Yes, there are parallels in the equations that suggest parallels in the outcomes. But it’s not as though one number tells me we get married, or another number tells me we never meet. It would take a lifetime of exploration and evaluation to even begin understanding how to interpret those findings.”
“Do your equations explain why there are all these parallels? Why you and Theo work with my parents in so many worlds, or why you and I seem to manage to find each other every time?”
“I could only posit a theory.”
After growing up with my parents and their menagerie of grad students, I was used to their jargon. Smiling to myself, I said, “All right, posit away.”