Theo’s smile is sincere, but somewhat twisted. “I was glad to get the call from the hotel this morning. After last night, I wasn’t sure you’d still be talking to me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be talking to you?” How stupid. We both know why.
He says only, “Might’ve crossed a certain line there. Definitely, I have some apologies to make to Paul.”
“Well, you don’t have to apologize to me. You spoke from the heart, and you have the right to tell the truth about what you feel.” Here in the gardens, beneath the bower of the trees, we are in the heart of Paris and yet somehow all alone, too. I’m grateful for the privacy. “Listen, I need to be completely clear.”
“It’s still Paul,” Theo says. “For you, he’s the one. I know that.”
I try to find the right words. “Last night, it was like it hit me all over again, how much I wanted to be with him. I need to work this out, but with Paul.”
Theo smiles at me, cocksure as ever. Nobody would ever guess that he’d just confessed his love, then unflinchingly put it aside.
“I’m not only in love with Paul because of Lieutenant Markov. That’s not even how it began, really. Just what made me admit it. What I saw in New York scared me, and I still don’t understand it, but it’s like you said. I can’t blame him for something another Paul did, just like I don’t blame you anymore for everything we went through with the other Theo.”
His lips press together tightly before he says, “You’ve promised that before.”
“No, I mean it,” I say, and even though it might be the wrong moment for this, I take his hand. “I doubted you because of things the other Theo did, and I was wrong.”
“The price of forgiveness is steep,” Theo says. “Because when you forgave me—you forgave Paul.”
It wasn’t quite that simple, but it’s close enough. “In some ways, I feel closer to Paul now than ever.” My hand steals over my belly again.
“I should hope so.”
Quietly I say, “You didn’t have to ask whose baby it was, when I told you.”
“Remember how I told you Paul and I had a sex talk?”
Yes, I do. And I so do not want to know any more about that.
My expression must look sour, because Theo misinterprets it. “Listen, if you’re not ready, I could do what you told me to do in the first place. If I head on to the home office with our information, then we’ve fulfilled the terms of Conley’s agreement. He’d have to tell me where Paul is, hand over my potential cure, all of it.”
“Conley wants me there.” I take a deep breath. “I’m ready to move on.”
Theo reaches under the collar of his shirt and withdraws the chain of the spare Firebird, which has been around his neck since New York. I duck my head, and he places it around my neck—a silent, almost solemn transfer of responsibility.
I whisper, “Theo—thanks.”
“For what? Following you around the multiverse? Just part of the service.”
It feels like I have so many things to thank Theo for; I could start listing them and never stop. So I stick to the most important one: “For believing in Paul.”
“Hey, this works for me too, you know. Like I said, if you forgave him for blowing my legs away, you’ve forgiven me for attacking you in a submarine that time.”
Which is true. Finally I can let it all go.
“Happy endings almost all the way around,” Theo says. One of his hands lets go of mine, to reach for his Firebird. “Are we out of here?”
“You go on ahead. I want to see Vladimir one last time.”
Theo shakes his head, probably at my fondness for a brother I didn’t know about before December. “Okay. Just catch up with me PDQ, okay?” He smiles—slow and almost sneaky. “So, we’re headed back to the home office, the Triadverse, the same dimension that sent that other Theo here to spy on you guys.”
“Yeah.”
“He stole my body for months, and now I get the chance to steal his. If I have the chance, that son of a bitch is going to get the ugliest haircut of his life.” I burst out laughing. Theo grins wickedly as he continues, “I’m serious. If anyone in the entire multiverse deserves a reverse Mohawk, he does.”
“Do your worst.”
As I rise to my feet, he takes my hand. For one moment, I remember everything he told me last night, and how much we are to each other in so many worlds I don’t yet know. “Do you really think this Theo might find this Marguerite again?”
“Maybe.”
I find myself hoping he will.
Within half an hour, I’m in the car with Vladimir, leaning my head against his shoulder as we head to the train station. I need to go—I’m ready to go—but it’s hard leaving my brother for good.
“Do you blame me?” I murmur. “For loving Lieutenant Markov?”
“Sometimes our hearts are wilder than we know.”
“But you fell in love with the ideal girl. A Polish princess, no less.”
Vladimir’s grin can be nearly as rakish as Theo’s, sometimes. “I’d love Natalia if she were a chambermaid. When you meet her, you’ll see.”
“Can’t wait. Thanks, by the way. For everything.”
“That’s what family is for.”
Goodbye, Vladimir, I think. In my mind I imagine them all: Peter, Katya, this world’s version of my father. And the baby, too, whose face I’ll never see. Goodbye.
Time to stop looking back. Time to leap forward. Time to rescue Paul.
23
MY HAND CLOSES AROUND THE FIREBIRD, PRESET TO THE coordinates Wyatt Conley gave us for the home office, and—
—I slam into myself, rocking backward into a broad, thinly padded chair. After the initial dizzy rush of traveling through dimensions, I immediately realize three things. One, the way I’m sitting in this chair, arms and legs braced.
My other self was prepared for this. Waiting.
Two, Theo is nowhere to be seen.
Three, I’m in some kind of office or lobby in what must be the top floors of the tallest skyscraper in the world. No, taller than anything in my world—or the Triadverse.
I thought Conley was bringing us back to the home office. Instead, he’s thrown us into a dimension I’ve never seen before.
Where the hell am I?
The room I sit in could be found in any corporate headquarters, if that corporation wanted to come across as chilly and forbidding. Brushed metal tiles shine dully on the walls; the large black chair I’m in, like the rest of the furniture around me, forms sharp dark angles and sits a bit too close to the floor.
But the city stretching out before me looks nothing like any city I’ve ever seen. Nothing like any city in the world I know. This has to be the hundredth story of this building, at least—but outside are dozens of buildings nearly as tall. When I went to the Londonverse, I saw strange, futuristic skyscrapers with spires and angles in every direction. At the time I found it intimidating. Now I look out at structures that all form the same darkly mirrored rectangles across the sky, the small windows giving off only the tiniest pinpricks of light. The buildings are so tall, so tightly pressed together, that I can’t see the ground at all. Brilliantly colored company logos stretch down most of the buildings in letters that must be fifteen stories tall, and yet the black hulks of the high-rises themselves dominate the view. The sliver of sky above it all glows a pale, febrile red—cinnabar, I think, or rose madder. That must be dawn.