“How did Theo bring you here?” Paul says, voice low. “And why?”
I lift my chin. “Theo rebuilt the Firebird prototypes on his own. You didn’t think he could, did you?”
“The prototypes. Of course,” he whispers, and it’s almost like he’s glad to hear it. “But . . . but why did he bring you along? Do you not see how dangerous this is?”
“That doesn’t matter. If you thought you could kill my father and get away with it, you’re—”
“What?” His face pales so suddenly that I think for a moment he might pass out. “What—you said—Henry’s dead? He’s dead?”
The astonishment and pain I see are very real. Some people are good enough actors to feign shock, but shy, uncertain Paul Markov has never had that kind of game. There’s no way he could fake this kind of horror, or the tears I can see welling in his eyes.
It hits me then, a blow more stupefying than sharp: Paul didn’t kill my father.
“Oh, God.” Paul wipes hastily at his eyes; he’s trying so hard to stay focused. “How can Henry be dead?”
All those moments that have tormented me over the past few days—Paul smiling at his birthday cake, listening to Rachmaninoff, standing in the doorway of my bedroom. Those were real. Paul is real.
But then what the hell is going on? If Paul didn’t kill Dad, who did?
“Wait. You thought I killed him?” Paul says it with none of the anger I’d feel in his place. He’s just completely confused, like he has no idea how I could ever believe anything so weird. “Marguerite, what happened?”
“His car went into the river. Someone had tampered with Dad’s brakes.” My voice sounds small, not like my own.
“You have to believe me. I didn’t hurt Henry. I would never do that.”
“It really looked like it had to be you.” And as soon as I realize that, I realize something even worse. “I think someone framed you.”
Paul swears under his breath. “Why on earth did Theo bring you along?”
“Why do you keep acting like it’s all up to Theo? I chose to come. I have to find out who did this to Dad.”
Then it hits me—this wave of anger. I thought I knew who to blame for Dad’s death, before; I thought I knew who to hate. Now I don’t. For the past few days, my hate has been the only thing keeping me going. I feel naked, unarmed.
The train curves through the tunnel, and the floor beneath us rocks back and forth. All the ads flicker slightly. Paul’s face is half in shadow like the album cover of Rubber Soul.
“I’ll find out who hurt Henry.” Paul takes one step toward me. “I swear that to you.”
“If it’s not all up to Theo, then it’s not all up to you either! Okay, so, you didn’t kill Dad or trash the data. Then who did? Why did you run?”
He startles me again. “I didn’t kill Henry, but I did destroy the data at the lab.”
“What? Why?”
Paul puts his hands on my shoulders. I flinch. I can’t help it. He jerks away, as though he thinks he might have injured me. “Tell Theo I’m sorry. When I saw him earlier, I thought—I blamed him for something he didn’t do. I realize now he was only trying to do something for Henry—” His voice breaks again. Our shared grief pierces us at the same moment, an electrical shock of feeling traveling from him into me, or from me into him. “But tell Theo that he has to take you back home, now. The sooner the better. It’s the most important thing he could possibly do.”
“No. You have to explain.”
He says only: “Go home. I’ll fix this.”
Then the train rocks on its track hard enough that I stagger. In the second before I can catch my balance, Paul clutches his Firebird in his hand, and—
It’s hard to describe exactly what happens next. Although nothing moves, it feels vaguely as if a breeze has stirred the air around us, changing something indefinable about the way Paul looks. He lifts his head, as though startled, and he brings one hand to his torn lip and winces. When he sees the blood on his fingers, he doesn’t seem to remember how it got there.
Then I realize the Firebird is no longer around his neck. There were no crackling lights, no unearthly sounds, nothing like that; one instant the Firebird was there, and now it’s not.
Paul is gone. He’s leaped ahead, into yet another dimension.
Which means the guy standing in front of me now is . . . still Paul Markov, but the Paul who belongs in this world.
The train pulls into its next stop. I grab one of the poles to steady myself; Paul does the same, but clumsily, like he hardly understands what’s happening. Then I realize he doesn’t. He’s standing here on this train without any memory of how we got here, or even who I am.
“What’s going on?” says Paul/not Paul.
“I—” How am I supposed to explain this? “Let’s get off the train, all right?”
Although Paul looks understandably wary, he follows me out, through the station, and onto the street.
We’re in an entirely different section of London now, or so it seems; this part looks more like the city I remember, with more old buildings, no hoverships in the sky. It’s started to rain again. We duck under a storefront awning, and by now Paul looks less confused, more unnerved. “Where am I?”
“London.”
“Yes, of course,” he says, and the way his eyes narrow when he’s unsure and irritated is so familiar that it’s difficult for me to believe this isn’t my Paul. “I came in this morning for the tech conference. To hear Wyatt Conley. I’d been planning it for weeks—but I could swear I remember getting off the train. Then it all goes . . . blank.”
He was coming to the tech conference anyway. Of course he was. Why wouldn’t a physicist be interested in one of the innovators of the age? “Do you not remember anything of the past, I don’t know—two days?”
“I remember . . . some things,” Paul says. His expressions, the way he moves—it’s all slightly different from our Paul, the one I know, the one who just ran away from here. How strange it is to be able to tell the difference in how he tilts his head. “But who are you? Who punched me?”
I did that. Theo and I did that to you, and you’re a stranger who never hurt either of us. “There was a fight. It’s over. Nothing bad happened.”
“But—” He stares down at his broad hands, realizing his knuckles are bruised. His lost expression is suddenly so like Paul’s that it makes me suck in a sharp breath.
I find myself wishing I could explain.
So I say, as gently as I can manage, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Just—go home. It’s all right. You won’t see me again.”
Although he clearly wants more answers, Paul must want to get the hell away from the crazy stranger even more. He backs away, out from under the awning, until raindrops patter against his long coat and his disheveled hair. Then he turns and walks into the London crowd, lost again in an instant.
Only then do I realize my ring has been vibrating for a while now. I hit it, hoping to get Theo. When his face appears before me in three-dimensional light, I’m hopeful—but then I realize it’s a message.
“Marguerite, I hope to God you’re okay.” His face is stark—afraid for me. Theo continues, “Paul jumped out of this dimension a few seconds ago. I’m guessing you already know that. We have to go after him. Don’t worry—I set your Firebird to follow him wherever he leaps, exactly like mine. I feel . . . beyond strange, going on ahead of you, but I know you’d tell me not to let Paul get away, no matter what. Justice for Henry, that’s what matters most.”
I nod, as though his message could see me. But it’s only a hologram talking into the void.
Theo smiles, tense and nervous. “We’ll meet in the universe next door, all right, Meg?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Next door.”
Although I take my Firebird in hand, I don’t set it for the next jump right away. First I look out at the grimier London in front of me, the one with technological marvels pinned to or floating in front of
every person, and each one of them too distracted and careworn to notice. I try to imagine how this Marguerite will feel when she comes to alone in a few seconds, wondering why her heart is pounding.
It seems that she won’t remember much. But—I don’t need the reminders the way Theo does, the way Paul appeared to. The experience of traveling is different for me than it is for them. So maybe this Marguerite’s experience will be different too. Possibly she’ll retain some fragment of this, an image or a sensation that belonged to me and now is shared between us both.
So I flood my mind with thoughts of my parents, the ones she lost so long ago. I think of them laughing while I painted the rainbow table. Of Mom holding me on her shoulders at the natural history museum so that I could look right up into the skull of a triceratops. Of Dad taking me around town on his bike when I was still little enough for the kiddie seat—one of my earliest memories—him laughing with me as we swooped downhill together.
I hope this Marguerite can remember them a little. That it will make some dent in the terrible grief that has walled her into this life . . . and maybe give her enough hope to break free.
Then I begin manipulating my Firebird, turn the final gear, and think, Oh, God, what’s next? What’s next?
I collide with myself—my other self—and this time I lose my balance entirely. In the split second I’m wobbling in midair, I realize I am descending a staircase. Apparently this is a very, very bad moment to have a cross-dimensional traveler hop into your body, because then you miss a step and—
I manage to get my hands in front of me as I fall, which doesn’t keep me from landing on the stairs hard, but at least lets me brace my roll down the next several steps until I catch myself. A necklace around my neck breaks, and I hear beads rolling in a dozen directions. All around me, people cry out and hurry to my side. Dazed, I lift my head.
The first thing I notice is that these stairs are carpeted in red velvet. Which is a good thing, since they seem to be marble beneath; that would’ve hurt. The second thing I notice is that all the beads clattering and rolling down the steps aren’t beads at all. They’re pearls.
I put one hand to my aching forehead as I look up. My fingers make contact with something in my hair, the band of this heavy thing atop my head. . . .
Is that a tiara?
Finally I see the people crowded around me—one and all in incredibly elegant evening dress: men in unfamiliar military uniforms resplendent with medals and sashes, women in white, floor-length gowns, not unlike the one tangled around my legs.
“Marguerite?” says a kindly man only a few years older than me, one with hair as dark and curly as mine, though his is cut short. From his concern I can see he knows me well, but I’ve never seen him before. Though—something about his face is oddly familiar—
“I’m all right,” I say. I have no idea what else to do, other than reassure them. I put one hand to my chest to steady myself, then gasp as I look down.
The different layers of the Firebird lie scattered in my lap and on the steps around me. Only its clockwork locket shell still hangs around my neck.
It’s broken.
The Firebird is broken, and I have no idea how to fix it.
Oh, shit.
10
“MARGUERITE?” THE BROWN-HAIRED YOUNG MAN KNEELS next to me and takes my hand; we’re both wearing gloves of white leather so thin and soft it’s like a second skin. “Margarita? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Honestly. Only clumsy.” Oh, my God, where am I? What is going on? I thought the last universe was different, but this—is something else altogether.
“You’re worrying like an old woman, Vladimir. Again.” The largest of the men in our group frowns; his voice is deep and resonant, and from the way he speaks, I can tell he’s used to being obeyed without question. His ivory-jacketed uniform bears more medals than anyone else’s. He’s well over six feet tall.
“I’m a babushka, then,” says the young man—Vladimir—as he gives me a reassuring smile. Quickly I gather together all the fragments of the Firebird; a small silk purse dangles from one of my wrists, and I slip the pieces inside.
“Why are you worrying about that trinket?” commands the large man who appears to be in charge of this . . . costume party. Or whatever this is. “The Tarasova pearls are all over the floor, and you simply let them roll away from you.”
“We have them, Your Imperial Highness,” a woman whispers as she and a few others—dressed less grandly than the rest, including me—begin scrambling to collect every last one of the pearls. I lift my hand to my throat and discover that, besides the Firebird and the now torn, dangling string for the pearls, I’m wearing some sort of enormously heavy choker.
His Imperial Highness?
“Papa, if I had such beautiful pearls, I wouldn’t fall and break them,” says a girl a few years younger than me—even though I’ve never seen her before, she too looks familiar.
A bit like Vladimir, and a bit like . . .
“If you had such beautiful pearls, Katya, you would lose them long before the ball.” The tall man doesn’t even look at her as he speaks, and Katya’s head droops. “Marguerite, can you still dance tonight? Or must we make excuses for you?”
“I’m fine, really. Please, let me catch my breath.” Wait, what am I saying? Dance? What kind of dance? Maybe we’re actors, in some sort of performance. That would explain the costumes, right?
But already I know better. The marble steps, the red velvet carpet—they’re only part of the enormous space around us, with forty-foot ceilings and molding gilded in what looks like real gold. This is a palace. And we’re not tourists being led through roped-off lines and warned about flash photography.
As Vladimir helps me to my feet, the tall man says to him, “Margarita has servants to help her, Vladimir. The son of the tsar should be above . . . nursemaiding.”
But Vladimir’s eyes flash with fire, and he lifts his chin. “How can it be above any man’s dignity to help his sister? Shouldn’t the daughter of the tsar be able to expect assistance from anyone, at any moment?”
Sister. My eyes widen in shock as I realize why Vladimir seems so familiar to me. He—and Katya, now that I study her face again—they look a lot like my mom.
Our mom?
No. Absolutely not. They’re the children of the tsar—oh, crap, there are still tsars here? What kind of dimension is this?—okay, this guy is the tsar, and these are his kids, but I can’t be. It’s not possible for anyone other than Dr. Henry Caine to be my dad. Like every other individual ever born, my genetic code is unique, incapable of being re-created. The only way I can be born, in any dimension, is to the father and mother I’ve always known.
Mom? I look around the grandly dressed group, hoping to see her. Whatever version of my mother exists in this dimension, I need her now.
But I don’t see her anywhere.
Okay. I know one thing for sure; I can’t fake my way through this. Right now I need some time alone to figure out what’s going on.
I fall against Vladimir’s shoulder in a swoon that’s only partly feigned. “I’m so dizzy,” I whisper.
“Did you hit your head?” Vladimir cradles me with both arms, his forehead furrowed with worry. He obviously believes he’s my older brother; his gentle concern would be incredibly comforting if I’d known him for more than three minutes. “Father, we must fetch the doctor for her.”
“I didn’t hit my head,” I protest. “But I wasn’t feeling well earlier today. I—I think I ate something that disagreed with me.”
The tsar breathes out in exasperation, seemingly irritated that anything in the world is beyond his control. “You ought to have had the sense to keep to your bed. Return to your rooms. Vladimir and Katya will have to represent the family.”
Secure in her spot behind the tsar’s crooked arm, Katya sticks her tongue out at me. She seems like a total brat.
“Let me go with her,” Vladimir says. I can’t get over how mu
ch he looks like Mom . . . and like me. “I can be back down in minutes.”
“Now you push this too far,” the tsar growls. “Why does she have ladies in waiting? Why does she have a personal guard? They are the appropriate people to see to her. Even you should understand that.”
“I’m all right, Vladimir,” I whisper. I don’t want to start some kind of family argument, and besides, I need to be alone. “Go.”
Vladimir looks reluctant, but he nods and releases me. The hands of my ladies in waiting flutter around me, attempting to support me without actually daring to touch.
The tsar motions to someone else in the group, someone slightly behind me. “You, there. Lieutenant Markov. See her to her room.” Then a firm hand clasps my elbow.
I turn to see Paul standing nearby, just outside the circle around me.
In that first instant, I’m afraid of him. But that fear is swiftly followed by hope, because I see the recognition in his eyes. This is my Paul—he’s here—and I’m not as alone as I thought.
He is crisp in his infantry uniform, a neatly trimmed beard edging the line of his jaw, with high boots and a sword strapped to his side. Yet at the collar I see the glint of a chain; his Firebird is there.
Paul bows his head, then begins escorting me back up the stairs. The rest of the royal party watches me go: Vladimir with concern, Katya with open glee that she gets to go to the ball while I don’t, and the tsar—supposedly my father—with no more than bored contempt.
“Are we doing this right?” I whisper.
“How would I know?” Paul replies in the same hushed tone. “Nobody’s saying anything. Keep going.”
As we reach the landing at the top of the steps, I catch sight of myself in the long, gilded mirrors that line the wall. The diamond choker around my neck is several rows wide, and each jewel glitters, like the rubies in my tiara. My frilly white gown sparkles slightly too, because the thread looks like pure spun silver. Paul might only be a soldier, but his scarlet-jacketed uniform looks as grand as anything I’m wearing. It feels like we’re dressed up for Halloween, or the most over-the-top prom ever.