A Million Worlds with You (Firebird #3)

Far more troubling is the sight of Theo, arms belted behind him, bleeding from the corner of his mouth.

“That Nightthief isn’t going to last forever,” he shouts, and from the hoarse timbre of his voice, I can tell he’s been yelling for a while. “You’ve used it up, and soon it’s going to wear off, and then you’re screwed!”

“I don’t need forever. I’m done here.” Wicked lifts her Firebird, leaving mine hanging around my neck. She turns to the same mirror where she braided my hair, triumph gleaming in her eyes. “Next time you take over my body in my dimension when I’m not around? Someone you love dies.”

A jolt—and then I slump against the nearest wall. The aching in my beat-up body sharpens, but I don’t care. I’m alone in my own head again.

“Theo? It’s me now.” I hurry over to the chair and loosen the belt that binds his hands behind his back and to the leg. “Oh, God, what did she do?”

“Thrashed me, basically. For the record, she wouldn’t have been able to do that if I weren’t still recovering.” Theo flexes his shoulders, rubs at the reddish dents the leather carved into his skin as he gets to his feet. “Or if Josie had been here at the time. If Wicked hadn’t gotten the jump on her, Josie could’ve taken her out.”

I hug Theo quickly. “Is there any way to save the Home Office?”

He gives me a double-take. “Whoa. Why are we trying to save the Home Office? And what from?”

“They’re trying to seal themselves off so Wicked can never get out again, but there’s a chance that whole dimension will collapse, and if it does our history gets rewritten, completely. That can’t happen. Besides—if we can save a dimension, we should. Even if it’s the Home Office.” My parents and Wyatt Conley are only three people among billions. That world’s Theo deserves to survive, him and all the other countless people in that world. “I think they’ve already started the process. Can we stop it?”

Theo takes that in for a second, then shakes his head. “If I had a month to work on this, maybe I could figure out exactly how they’re doing that and how to prevent a collapse. But not even I’m genius enough to do it in a few minutes.”

What’s about to happen to all of us? Is the reality I know about to be erased? There’s no way for me to know, no way for me to control anything. “So we’re just . . . stuck here? Waiting to find out if our memories are about to be rewritten?”

Theo groans. “Looks like it.”

“Marguerite, is that you?” Josie calls from the closet, then pounds on the door. “Let me out!” I hurry to free her, which right now feels like the only useful thing I can do.

“What’s that?” My dad pokes his head out of my parents’ bedroom. I realize they’ve just jumped back too.

I open the closet door to see Josie tucked between our winter coats. She has the beginnings of a black eye and a fist cocked just in case I’ve been lying about being the real me. But she relaxes when I let her walk past me into the hallway, where Mom, Dad, and Theo have all gathered.

As I explain the plans to seal off the Home Office in its own bubble and its potential collapse, the physicists in the room become agitated in the way they do when thoughts are flying fast. They know our history could be erased without my having to explain it. Impossible as it is, they’re still trying to figure out how to preserve the Home Office in time. Theo even grabs a piece of chalk to jot down some rough equations, though he pauses a moment to grimace at what Wicked wrote on the wall. “Really?” he mutters as he erases the words with his bare forearm. “C’mon. Give a guy some credit.”

As the math starts to fly, Mom says, “Where’s Paul? He left the Moscowverse to follow you to the Home Office. Did you find each other there?”

Words desert me. How can I bear to tell the others that Paul is dead? I have to—I know this—but it seems as if speaking the words will make them true. As if my silence makes it possible that he might return home to us, safe and sound, like this is all one bad dream.

“Good news,” Theo announces, saving me from having to answer.

Josie pauses from repotting the poor houseplants. “What?”

“If we’re using the tracking technology from the Warverse correctly, and I think we are, Wicked went right back home, as in the Home Office itself. So that mean’s she’s done, right? They’re going to seal off that world—or destroy it—but either way, she’s not coming back. Yes?”

“Yes.” Her parents don’t need me to deliver the message anymore. The Home Office is about to be sealed off forever. No more dimensions are in danger. It’s really all about to be over. My throat tightens with unshed tears, both of relief and the sorrow I can hold back no longer.

“Sweetheart?” Dad steps closer to me, the concern in his blue eyes changing to fear. “Did you say whether you found Paul? Did you see him?”

Theo gets this seasick look on his face. He’s seen the truth in my face. “No,” he whispers. “No, it can’t be—”

Nausea sweeps through me, followed by a rush of dizziness. My shoulder slumps against the wall. My hands brace me to keep me from falling. My mother cries out, thinking that I’m collapsing from grief, and by now the others have realized why I’m grieving—why I can’t say what happened to Paul.

But another horror overtakes me, seizing my muscles, my voice, and my will. Once again I am imprisoned in my own body. And two Firebirds hang around my neck.

Wicked’s back.

“Did you—did you think . . .” She’s having trouble talking. The Nightthief is wearing off. She won’t control me much longer. “That I—would let them—kill me?”

She found out about the bubble. She found out about the chance of destruction. And she escaped here.

“Marguerite?” Josie says. She’s the only one not freaking out about Paul, at least not so much that she can’t tell I’m acting weird. Wicked turns away and covers my face with my hands.

You might live! There’s a chance! But the words won’t come out of my mouth.

Yet it doesn’t matter, because Wicked hears me and answers in a raspy whisper. “I don’t—like—the odds.”

In this strange twilight of the drug, my consciousness can communicate with hers. Surely I’ll get control back any second.