Dad muttered, “Has he ever mentioned—any illness, any other episodes—”
“No.” Paul looked grim.
Could he be sick? Please just let him be sick. But we all knew Theo didn’t have epilepsy. We knew what was to blame.
Nightthief. The drug Wyatt Conley’s spy had pumped into Theo’s body over and over again, for months—the stuff he had told me still gave him the shakes—it had done more damage than we knew. Theo hadn’t been getting better; he’d been getting worse.
Conley had told us he didn’t like relying on Nightthief for his dimensional travelers; we knew the drug could be harmful. But that night was the very first time I realized just how serious this might be.
The first time I realized Theo might die.
And the night Paul decided to do whatever it took to save him.
4
THE WIND BLOWS THROUGH THE GLASSLESS WINDOW OF the Castel Sant’Angelo, ruffling the veil I wear over my curly hair. “You knew Paul would have to come to the Triadverse,” I say to Conley. “To look for a cure, for Theo.”
“I can give you that, too. You can save them both.” He chuckles softly. “You’ll be rescuing Theo from the effects of his Triadverse self’s journey to your dimension—and rescuing Paul from the consequences of his journey into mine.”
“You deliberately . . . splintered Paul?”
Conley just grins wider. “Guilty as charged.”
Now I know why the reminder didn’t work. It could only have awakened Paul’s soul if—if his entire soul were within this world’s version.
But Wyatt Conley has torn Paul’s soul apart.
Nothing I could scream at Conley would be foul enough. There are no curses to carry the obscenity and fury in my heart.
Instead, I throw myself at him.
Our bodies collide as I slam him against the wall, knocking the breath out of Conley in a surprised huff. We both topple to the side, but I’m able to catch myself. He lands flat on the stone, red robes a puddle around him. I wish they were blood.
A terrible calm comes over me. Maybe this is what people feel like before they commit murder. “You killed Paul.”
“Not kill,” Conley pants. He’s still fighting to breathe normally. “I splintered him. Not the same thing at all.”
“You tore his soul into pieces! You broke him apart!”
Conley’s grin isn’t as cocky when he’s sprawled on the floor. “But you can put him back together again.”
What does he mean? Then I look down again at the Firebird, at that reading I’ve never seen before.
“Reminders can serve another function, it turns out,” Conley says. “They can reawaken someone’s soul or capture an individual splinter. You thought you’d lost Paul, but you’ve already rescued him—part of him, that is.”
A splinter of my Paul’s soul hangs on this chain, in a locket I hold in my hand.
I lean over Conley to grip his robes in one fist. “Tell me where you hid the other splinters of Paul’s soul.”
“If you want that information,” Conley says, “You’ll have to earn it.”
Five nights ago, at the hospital, my parents were able to stay with Theo, while Paul and I were stuck in the ER waiting area. If I ran a hospital, I would try to make a space like that feel comforting. Instead, the room seemed like it was designed to punish us: stark fluorescent light, uncomfortable chairs, a pile of dog-eared magazines at least a year old, and a television blaring in the corner with some obnoxious TV judge yelling at people stupid enough to go on the show.
Paul and I held hands, but we were too freaked out to comfort each other. We just hung on.
I whispered, “Theo never said anything about still feeling bad. He admitted he still craved Nightthief, but nothing like this.”
“He hasn’t confided in me much lately.” Paul stared down at his beat-up gray tennis shoes; he even has to buy his footwear secondhand. “I believed his silence was about you. About us. It never occurred to me to think he might be more worried about something else.”
All the awkwardness of the past three months—all the odd silences, the times Theo didn’t come around when we expected him—why did I assume that was all about my relationship with Paul? Because I thought Theo was jealous, or at least hurt, I never looked deeper. I didn’t ask the questions I should’ve asked. All the while, Theo suffered alone.
Paul murmured, “I should have known.”
“He hasn’t been around enough for us to see it.” True. But it was amazing how little that helped.
“The signs were there. I failed to put them together.” He slumped forward in his chair, shoulders hunched, like he’d just picked up something heavy. “I noticed that he hasn’t been driving as much. That he went out less. I thought—after what happened, I thought Theo simply wanted time to pull himself together. But I should’ve known he’d never skip spring break.”
With that, Paul buried his head in his hands, and I leaned against his shoulder. I don’t know whether I was trying to give him strength, or take some from him. Either way, it didn’t work.
My parents didn’t emerge until nearly one in the morning. The light washed them out, highlighting every wrinkle and gray hair, but that’s not why they seemed to have aged ten years in three hours. Fear had hollowed them out.
My voice cracked as I said, “How is he?”
“Not good.” Dad sank into a chair across from us. “Theo’s in no immediate danger, but his vital signs, his blood work—the doctors have no idea what to make of it.”
Mom started counting off points on her fingers as she paced between the rows of chairs. “He’s anemic. His lungs show signs of damage, as if he’d been suffering from untreated tuberculosis for years, which of course he hasn’t. And the muscles in his feet and lower legs—the degeneration made one physician suggest Theo might have early-stage distal muscular dystrophy.”
I bit my lower lip, hoping the pain would keep back any tears. Paul’s voice sounded thick as he said, “He doesn’t, does he?”
My mother shook her head. “Possible, but doubtful. We all know the most probable cause.”
Nightthief.
“Whatever negative effects the drug had on Theo’s body didn’t end when he stopped taking it,” Mom said. “Apparently the damage had already reached a point of no return.”
Her meaning was obvious, but I didn’t understand. I wouldn’t let myself understand. Something in my brain refused to take in the words. “He’ll get better, though. Right? Now that he’s finally seeing a doctor?”
Dad spoke gently. “At this point, we don’t know. The medical team doesn’t understand his condition, which means they can’t form any meaningful prognosis. But the fact that his condition has continued to worsen this long after his final dose of Nightthief . . . well, that worries me.”
Mom made a small sound in her throat—the sound she makes when she won’t let herself cry out in pain. I’d heard that sound from her only once before, when she opened the door to see a policeman standing there, his hat in his hand. It was like she’d known she was about to be told that my father was dead, but she refused to believe it until the moment she had to.
That night, she believed the worst about Theo.
He might die because Wyatt Conley sent a spy to drug him over and over and over again, for months. Because of Conley’s power play. Because of his grandiose dreams of dominating the multiverse.
I hadn’t thought it was possible to hate Wyatt Conley more than I already did. I was wrong.
I beat myself up about it that whole night.
Why had I acted so stupidly around Theo? He accepted that I’d chosen Paul, and he never once tried to make either of us feel weird about it. If I’d taken Theo at his word, believed him that he was okay with Paul and me being together, maybe we would’ve spent more time with him. Then maybe I would have noticed things going wrong.
The next day, after Josie arrived, I told her as much, but she didn’t buy it.
“Listen, Ma
rguerite.” Josie stood in our kitchen, drinking her third cup of coffee. The caffeine was supposed to make up for the fact that she’d changed her flight to 6:30 a.m. to get home ASAP. “You didn’t know because Theo didn’t want you to know. He hid his symptoms from everyone, and that’s on him.”
“It’s not like Theo to keep that kind of secret,” I protested. Paul? Sure. He locks his feelings and his fears inside, sometimes for too long. But Theo likes to gripe about everything from hockey teams to parking in Berkeley. “If he didn’t feel strange about being around me and Paul, he would’ve said something.”
Josie put down her mug and placed her hands on my shoulders. “I know it’s been easy to lose sight of this lately, what with Triad treating you like the Holy Grail, but not everything is about you, okay?”
That stung. “Then why did Theo stop telling us everything all of a sudden?”
“Honestly? My guess is the symptoms scared him. Probably he was trying to deny anything serious was going on. He couldn’t tell you guys what was happening until he admitted it to himself.”
I weighed what she said, and sensed there was truth to it. No, it wasn’t the whole story. But at least I felt like I could breathe again.
“When can we see Theo?” Josie asked. “Gotta be visiting hours already, right? When do his parents get here from DC?”
“Didn’t Theo tell you? They’re not in DC anymore.” The Becks work for the US Foreign Service, which means they move all around the globe. Most of the time they’re in Washington—learning new languages, doing diplomatic work there—but Theo was born in Chile, went to kindergarten in the Philippines, and attended middle school in Iceland. Sometimes I think that’s why he’s such a hipster; he’s trying to prove he’s mastered American culture, that he’s even better at it than the rest of us. “Two months ago, his parents got transferred to Mongolia. It’s not exactly a quick trip back. They won’t be able to get here for a couple of days.”
“His mom and dad have got to be freaking out.” Josie sighed and rubbed her temples. “Well, we can take care of Theo until they get here. So where’s loverboy?”
“Please stop calling Paul that.”
“Why?” Josie smiled for the first time since we picked her up at the airport. “He’s not your loverboy yet?”
The pacing of my sex life is none of Josie’s business. Although I can tell her pretty much anything, Josie doesn’t understand the need Paul and I have to take it slow. She’s always gone for brief, intense romances herself.
So that morning I said, “You’ll embarrass him. He’s still figuring out how to navigate—this.” I made a vague gesture meant to take in the house, the tangled interrelationships we have, all of it.
“Paul never went out with anyone before, did he?” Josie asked.
I shook my head. He’d confessed that he’d kissed only two girls before me, and one of those was a single-second, closed-lips kiss that hardly even counts. This is what happens when a guy goes to college before he even hits puberty. Paul spent most of the past decade surrounded by girls five to ten years older than him.
That said, Paul got extremely good at kissing very, very fast.
Josie nodded, her expression overly innocent. “And you and Paul—you’re good?”
“Yeah, we are.”
Paul drove me up to Muir Woods once, where we held hands while he explained the origins of the cosmos. I took him into San Francisco to see the Golden Girls Drag Show, which confused him nearly as much as it would’ve puzzled an extraterrestrial visiting Earth for the first time. We ride the bus into Oakland so we can watch movies at the elegant old cinema at Grand Lake, then have coffee and doughnuts at this cool old bakeshop nearby. So we have our special occasions. But in some ways the best part is that Paul and I can just be. Some evenings, I’ll paint for hours while he reads or works with equations, and by now we drift in and out of conversation easily, naturally. We’re good together—better than I would ever have dreamed possible six months ago.
“I still can’t wrap my head around it,” Josie admitted as she walked past me to flop down on the sofa. She wore the same fleece pullover and leggings she would for a 5K run. “You couldn’t stand the guy, and now you’re in love with him.”
“That’s not true.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Can’t stand is way too strong. I just thought he was . . . kind of weird. That’s all.”
“Paul is kind of weird,” Josie said. “But in a good way.”
“Then why are you being so strange about my getting together with him?”
Instead of answering right away, Josie sipped her coffee, deep in thought. Finally she said, “Right after you came home with Dad, when you’d first fallen for Paul—you told me you realized you loved him while you were in the Russiaverse.”
I remembered Lieutenant Markov waltzing with me alone in an enormous, ornate room of the Winter Palace, music playing from a phonograph in the corner, his hand warm against the small of my back. “Yeah. I did.”
“Okay.” She hesitated, and I realized she was worried about offending me. Josie usually doesn’t worry about offending anyone. I knew it would be bad. “Are you sure it’s not just that world’s Paul you loved? Because when you told me about it—Marguerite, you fell really deeply for Lieutenant Markov. And even though he’s another version of Paul, they’re not the same guy.”
Obviously she expected me to blow up. But I wasn’t angry. Josie hasn’t traveled to other dimensions yet. That means she can’t grasp what I’ve learned.
“Lieutenant Markov isn’t identical to my Paul Markov,” I said. “I know that. Still, something in them is the same. Something deep—the deepest, most meaningful part of who we are, that’s the part that lives in every universe. In every person we could ever be. I fell in love with that Paul, and my Paul, because I fell in love with what’s the same inside them—their souls, if you want to call them that. Or soul. Singular. One.”
My sister didn’t look convinced. “You really believe that? That you’re in love with every Paul, everywhere?”
“I don’t believe,” I said. “I know.”
When we visited Theo at the hospital that afternoon, everything about his room there was depressing: the plain, cheerless walls; the TV hanging from a black metal adjustable arm, showing a generic action movie from cable; and above all the plastic-framed adjustable bed. Theo had propped himself up, and he grinned when he saw us, but he was still so pale. Yet he sounded cheerful, for our sakes. “About time you two showed up.”
“I brought some things from your apartment,” Paul said.
“Not that you’ll be here very long!” I quickly added. “But you might want your stuff.”
“All the comforts of home, huh?” Theo smiled. God, we were all trying so hard to be upbeat, and failing. “Okay, hit me.”
“First of all,” I said, “that blue hospital gown? Not your best look. So, here.” From the cardboard box I took Theo’s straw hat, the one he bought at the beach last summer.
He let me set it on his head, then reset it at a rakish angle. “I don’t even need a mirror to tell me how much better I look.”
“Smokin’ hot,” I promised.
Paul didn’t bother reassuring him, just plowed on. “I also brought your e-reader, your cell, some headphones, and a pair of argyle socks.”
With a frown, Theo said, “Socks?”
“In case your feet got cold,” Paul replied, like that should be obvious.
Theo sighed. “You’re worrying about my toes getting chilly, little brother? Trust me, we have bigger problems to deal with.”
I think he meant it as a joke, but Paul and I looked at each other with growing dread.
We already knew what we had to do. In the car afterward, we didn’t even discuss other options—just argued over who would get to save Theo. I said, “You know I should be the one to go.”
“No,” Paul said, in that zero-arguments tone that sometimes drives me crazy.
“Th
e version of you in the Triadverse ran off to South America, remember?” We appear in our alternate selves, wherever they happen to be, and we have to deal with whatever situation we leap into. I’ve fallen down staircases, woken up underwater, you name it.
Paul insisted, “I wouldn’t have to be in Triad headquarters to get the information. All I need is a computer, a wireless link, and the ability to get through Triad’s security.”
“You know Conley has to have beefed up his systems since then.”
“That would be the logical move, yes.”
“So you see the problems?”
“I may not be the ideal candidate, but you’re even worse.”
Paul’s bluntness felt like a smack in the face. I’ve learned not to get my feelings hurt too quickly, though. He never means to be hurtful; he just doesn’t know how to phrase things. So I said only, “You want to explain that?”
“At least I have a chance of getting the information while remaining undetected,” Paul pointed out. “You have none.”
I didn’t want him to be right, but he was. My knowledge of computers begins and ends with hit power switch, magic box comes on. Why do I have to be the only right-brained person in the family? Paul is hardly an expert hacker, but he knows a thing or two about getting past firewalls. “When did you get so good with computer security, anyway?”
Paul sighed. “Theo taught me.”
His free hand rested against my leg; I tangled my fingers with his. “He took you under his wing from day one, huh?”
“Not day one. But early on—after I called out an error in one of his equations. At first he was pissed off, but the next afternoon he said he’d rather have me on his side.”