A Million Worlds with You (Firebird #3)

That moment of distraction lets me roll atop Wicked and pin her arms to the floor. “You didn’t think I’d ever catch up,” I mutter as I try to still her wriggling. “You didn’t count on this world, did—aaah!”

Wicked’s teeth sink through my skin as she bites down savagely, but I don’t let go. Mom grabs me in an effort to pull me away from Wicked. “Girls! Girls! What has gotten into you?”

I’m able to shake my mother off, but only for a moment. Nothing will stop her except the truth. “Mom! Listen to me. Did you ever think about studying the multiverse? Parallel realities?”

Wicked’s eyes go wide. Wow, I look weird when I’m surprised.

Mom finally says, “Long ago—in undergraduate—why are you—”

“I’m not from your universe.” I nod down toward the writhing Wicked. “She isn’t either.”

“You’re insane!” Wicked shouts. “She’s gone psycho, Mom. I noticed a long time ago. I just didn’t want to say anything. But now she’s lost it and you have to stop her, Mom, or she’ll kill us both!”

“I’m not going to kill anyone,” I promise. “Mom, go look at the Firebirds. The lockets I threw in the corner. You’ll see what they are!”

Will she? Mom did before, but that was in a universe where she and Dad had worked on that technology for more than a decade. Here, my mother isn’t even a physicist. The Firebird won’t serve as such easy proof.

“They’re going to toss you in a padded cell and never let you out.” Wicked practically spits the words at me. I knew I got flushed when I was angry, but I had no idea my cheeks reddened so much, or the depth of the wrinkle between my eyebrows that comes with my scowl. But the rage inside Wicked practically glows from her, like heat. That fury belongs to her alone. “You’ll be shut in the loony bin without your stupid necklace and you’ll never get out.”

Hopefully I can avoid institutionalization—or, at least, get Wicked locked up with me. Though only at this moment do I realize that I have no idea what to do with Wicked now that I’ve caught her. It’s not like we have a prison for Crimes Against the Multiverse.

“Both of you, get up from there.” Mom has recovered from her astonishment, enough to go Cossack on us both. “Get up!”

I look up at my mother, hoping she’ll see how afraid I am. How real this is. “I can’t let her up, Mom. If I let her up, she might kill both of us, and I am not exaggerating, I mean kill.”

“See?” Wicked whines. Tears glimmer in her eyes—probably only from the pain of having her hair pulled, but she’s using them like a master actress. “She’s psycho. Mom, I’m so scared—”

“Stop this,” Mom repeats. She still hasn’t made a move toward the Firebird lockets, which lie in the corner. Instead she starts backing toward the table, where her cell phone is probably buried among the papers. “I mean it.”

Then we all hear the door, and footsteps thumping toward us. That’s Dad, probably, or Josie. Will one of them believe about the Firebirds? Or will Wicked finally get her chance to turn the others against me?

From where Mom’s standing, she can see into the hallway, and she sighs in relief. “Oh, thank God. Help me with these two.”

“No worries, Sophia,” Theo says as he walks in.

Theo. My mind fills with the horrible image of the last time I saw his face: Triadverse Theo bloodied and dying in the wreckage of his sports car. This Theo, whichever he is, has the same Chucks on his feet, same faux-vintage Beatles T-shirt, same stubble on his chin. When he sees two Marguerites on the ground, his face goes white.

That’s when I see the Firebird chain at his neck. It’s not just any Theo—this one is mine.

He mutters, “What the—”

“We’re clones,” I say. “We’re clones and so we can both be here at once.”

“I followed her here and she’s trying to kill me!” Wicked cries, instantly shifting strategy.

“Do you know what they’re talking about?” Mom says, but nobody answers her.

Theo pauses, closes his eyes like he’s thinking hard, then asks, “What’s the single most embarrassing thing that happened to us in the Warverse?”

Wicked only stares. I say, “Finding ourselves in bed together.”

“Excuse me?” Mom goes pale.

“It’s not how it sounds!” Theo holds up his hands. “Well. Actually, it is how it sounds. But not between me and my Marguerite—or your Theo or your Marguerite, at least as far as I know—”

“They’re both crazy,” Wicked growls, but she knows she’s about to get busted. She thrashes beneath me until I think she’s going to throw me off. That’s when Theo sinks down to sit on her legs, and she groans in defeat.

“Okay,” Theo says, “first of all, Sophia, or Dr. Kovalenka, whatever I call you here, we need to talk about parallel dimensions.”

“I already told her,” I say. “But can you make her believe us? Like, with the math?”

Theo grins at me. “Extremely convincing math, coming up.”

Half an hour later, Wicked is tied to a chair, the dining room table is covered with about fifty brand-new equations, and my mom’s mind is seriously blown.

“This is unbelievable.” She sits at the table staring into an unseen distance. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to shock my mother with science twice in the same day. “My God. Henry will be beside himself.”

“I know how that feels,” I say as I glance at Wicked literally beside me. For her part, Wicked is now ignoring all of us. She points her chin high like a captured soldier willing to give no more information than her rank and serial number.

Not that any of us have gotten around to asking her anything. Instead, I’m watching Theo compare his Firebird with the one from the Warverse. “This is kinda crude, but to have built it under that kind of time pressure? I’m impressed.”

“I’m just grateful,” I say. “Without it, I would have died along with the Romeverse.”

Theo’s dark eyes meet mine for a moment, then he turns back to the Firebird lockets. “If it helps, we think that’s the only dimension Triad has taken down so far.”