A Million Worlds with You (Firebird #3)

After that—well, I’ll figure it out as it comes. Maybe I’ll just walk back to the ticket counters and buy a seat on the next flight back to the United States. Hope I can afford it.

Airports all pretty much look alike. As I stroll along with the other deplaning passengers, my bottle-green messenger bag slung over one arm, I keep my head down. I don’t want Paul to see me . . . but I want to see Paul, so I can’t help glancing up to scan the crowds waiting just outside the security zone.

Within moments, I see a familiar face—then another—and I freeze.

Paul hasn’t come to meet me.

Instead, Theo and Wyatt Conley stand just behind the barricade. Theo’s wearing sunglasses that hide the expression in his eyes, but Conley’s smiling, grinning even, lifting one hand to wave to me.

In the other hand, Conley holds a sign that reads WELCOME BACK.

I stop short. Another passenger bumps into me from behind, then mutters something in Spanish that probably means idiot while other people swerve around me. My hands tighten around the strap of my messenger bag. One thought in my mind swells until it presses out all the others: Triad found Paul.

“Hello there, Marguerite,” Conley says, like he’s an old friend I’ve come to visit. “Glad you finally got here. We have places to go and so much to talk about. But first of all, I’m afraid I need to ask you for some ID.”

My breaths feel like they aren’t drawing in enough air. Dizziness makes me sway. But I stand my ground and stare at Conley as I ask, “Are you high?”

“Just answer this,” Conley says. “What color was the Beatles’ submarine?”

It feels like a trick, a trap. My first impulse is to begin screaming that Conley and Theo are terrorists, that they should be shot down immediately. But I know by now that it’s rarely that easy to get out of Wyatt Conley’s games. For now I have to play along. So I remember the moment I convinced a mob to throw him, shrieking, into hell. Then I smile with all the warmth of that memory and give the correct answer: “Purple.”

“And that’s our perfect traveler, come back at last.” Conley gestures me to join them on the other side of the barricades. Theo has turned his head, because apparently his sunglasses aren’t enough of a shield.

Merely being close to this Theo horrifies me on every level. I can bear it only because being close to Conley is somehow even worse. My hatred for Wyatt Conley can eclipse everything else, even my murderer.

I keep playing it cool. “I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who knows the answer to that question,” I say as I come around, though I keep several paces’ distance between us. “The Beatles aren’t exactly obscure.”

“No, they aren’t,” Conley answers. “However, creativity can bend in different ways. Only in your dimension did the Beatles sing about a purple submarine. There are a couple of ‘Big Green Submarines’ out there in the multiverse, but usually it’s yellow.”

“Yellow Submarine”? Weird. Not nearly as fun. I remember my dad holding my hands and dancing with me in front of the cartoon when I was very tiny, barely a toddler. We’d sing about the purple submarine together. Suddenly I wish I were back there—just a little kid, laughing with my parents, loved and safe and sure nothing in the world would ever be any scarier than the Green Meanies.

Oblivious to my reaction, Conley continues, “It’s interesting, isn’t it, how many things we think of as universal are actually unique to one very specific point in space and time?”

“Yeah, it’s fascinating.” I don’t have any patience left for Conley’s grandiose speculations. “Why did you bring me here?”

To my surprise, Theo answers. “We needed to find out if you were still alive.”

“No thanks to you guys.” I put my hand on my Firebird and raise one eyebrow. “I guess I’ll be going.”

I won’t be. I wouldn’t ditch Triadverse’s Marguerite in this situation. I’ve let down too many of my other selves already. But I also intend to put up with exactly no more crap from Wyatt Conley.

“Stick around,” Conley says warmly. He flips the sign over for Theo to take, then tucks his hands in the pockets of his designer jeans. Between his deliberately casual demeanor and his long, freckle-dusted face, he’d blend in at college with Theo and Paul—a grad student, seemingly as lazy-casual as the others, but subtly more sophisticated, with the faint sheen of confidence and wealth. No doubt Conley thinks he comes across as nonthreatening, and his act might work on people who don’t know him. “We need to talk, don’t you think, Marguerite? You know more now. You’ve seen more. And I think you might almost be ready to hear me out.”

Not even. “You’re putting some other Marguerite in danger right now. This very second! You can’t tell me what great friends we ought to be while you’re killing another me one universe away.”

He holds up his hands as if in surrender. “As a show of good faith, I sent your Home Office counterpart to a ‘neutral’ universe—one that isn’t slated for destruction, one without Firebird technology, totally off the grid. These are peace talks, all right? And that makes this a cease-fire. Maybe we can even turn it into an armistice.”

“I have only your word for that,” I say. Would Wicked really follow his orders?

“That’s right,” Conley agrees. “You can’t test what I’ve just told you. So you have two choices. You can trust me, or you can leave here as ignorant as you came and try to pick up your counterpart’s trail. I don’t think you’ll find it very easy. Do you?”

I have her trail already, thanks to the tracking information I got from the Warverse. But Conley can’t know that. If he finds out the Warverse wasn’t sabotaged but is instead leading a counter-conspiracy of several alternate dimensions, we’ll lose whatever advantage we’d managed to gain. So, for now, I just have to deal.

“Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll stay and hear you out on one condition. Tell me what you’ve done to Paul.”

Conley’s smile broadens. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Bull. You’ve hunted him to Ecuador—”

“We’d done that within the first two days,” Theo cuts in. He’s staring at his red Chucks, one of which he keeps sliding back and forth across the tile floor. “But nobody’s hurt him, Meg. I promise you that.”