All I have left of Paul are memories. I can’t let them go.
And if the Home Office’s influence on us is erased, so is our influence on other dimensions. If we didn’t go to the Russiaverse, the grand duchess would never have had her baby, even though Lieutenant Markov would probably have died in battle no matter what. She would be trapped in that life she hated and forced to marry a stranger, with no child from her great love.
Mafiaverse Theo wouldn’t be shot, and Londonverse would still be alive. But my mother in the Josieverse would still be lost to near-suicidal depression, and the Warverse wouldn’t have leaped forward to the technology it needs to defeat its enemy. The cracks in the multiverse would spread wider and wider, beyond any possible judgment of what is better or worse. No one person could ever understand the full ramifications of this act.
In the end, I find myself thinking of the grand duchess, remembering the way her hand stole across her belly. When I stole her night with Lieutenant Markov, I took something precious away from her. I won’t take her baby, too.
Paul would say the exact same thing if he were here, even knowing the cost would be his own life.
My actions have consequences. Everyone else has had to live with the repercussions of the choices I made—now it’s my turn.
“Don’t do it,” I say. “We have to figure something else out. You can start by getting your daughter under control.”
“No other way offers a guarantee of success.” My mother shrugs. “And there is at least a forty percent probability we will survive.”
Forty percent doesn’t sound like such great odds to me. “Please, you can’t do this. If you won’t think about your own world, think about mine! You’d be rewriting history. It’s like—like destroying yet another dimension, in a way.”
“But it will be over.” My father’s blue eyes, usually so warm, have become remote, and as pale as a pond icing over. “Finally, truly over.”
That’s when I realize Mom and Dad aren’t valiantly sacrificing themselves for the rest of us. They don’t care whether they live or die. Josie’s gone. They’ve lost their purpose. Back when they thought they could do some good by stopping Conley, that sustained them. Now they’d rather die than keep on enduring their grief.
My parents only want to be with Josie again.
Dad quietly says, “You should go home immediately. And—that communication you’ve set up between the dimensions—very clever, by the by, we only picked up on that yesterday, congratulate the other us for us—”
“Henry.” Mom pats his shoulder, her usual hint that he is beginning to run on. Even at this moment of mortal despair, they remain connected.
Dad sighs. “If you could use that system to get a message to our daughter, please, tell her to come home.”
“What happens to her if she’s not here when this universe gets sealed off? Does she die?” I look from Mom to Dad and back again. “Would she be, like, pulled back automatically?”
“She would become . . .” Mom thinks this over. “A spirit without a body. Possibly she would be free to travel from dimension to dimension, but only within other Marguerites. She could never return here. I suspect that would be the same fate she’d face if our universe collapses, though she might prefer being a ghost to simply perishing with the rest of us.”
“But ask her. Please. If you can.” Dad’s voice cracks. “And tell Josie we love her. Right away. Before you don’t remember us any longer.”
Only a few minutes ago, I thought I could finally see my parents in these people. Now they terrify me more than they ever have before.
I think of all the others out there who deserve to be protected. The grand duchess and her baby. Vladimir, the tsarevich of all the Russias. Josie talking to me in the middle of her Scottish rafting holiday, alive with enthusiasm. Valentina with her little stubborn chin. New York’s version of Romola, with her boundless loyalty. Theo in the Warverse, who has already spent so much of his life fighting to stay alive, and who is so helplessly, completely in love.
My father as tutor to the Russian royal family, hiding the secret that one of the children is his. My mother in a world where she’s already lost my father and sister, and where the mere sight of a Firebird gave her the hope to go on.
And Paul. The one who learned sign language as a boy so he could talk to the girl he liked. The one who had been rejected, then betrayed, but who still dashed into a collapsing universe to save me. Lieutenant Markov—who is dead, lost forever, but still remembered in a world where his child will someday be born. My Paul, who may be only a memory but who thought and felt and loved, who deserves to have been.
All our fates hang in the balance. All our histories. And there is nothing I can do but run.
28
THE MOMENT I APPEAR IN MY OWN DIMENSION, I KNOW IT’S already gone wrong.
Normally returning to your own body is smooth and soft, like easing into a warm bath. This feels like doing a belly flop into icewater. Pain echoes through my body, every nerve crackles, and at first neither my thoughts nor my eyes will focus.
When I can see again, my hand is clutching a piece of paper that reads: YOU SNEAKED INTO MY HOUSE, SO I SNEAKED INTO YOURS.
My hand drops the paper without my volition, and I know then that I really am back home—but Wicked got here before me.
Nightthief. She’s already dosed my body with Nightthief. I’m trapped.
As if she can hear my thoughts, Wicked looks up—into the mirror over my bedroom dresser—and smiles in triumph.
“Let me out of here!” Josie screams from the hall closet. She’s beating on the door so hard that it sounds like she’s trying to punch her way through. “Give me back my sister!”
Fresh scratches and bruises ache along my arms and torso. Josie would’ve fought hard, and she’s stronger than I am; Wicked only won because of the element of surprise. But the closet door is thick. For now, Josie’s stuck.
Wicked walks from the bedroom into the great room, hardly even glancing at the door where Josie’s hammering so desperately. The cozy atmosphere has vanished—no, been destroyed. Houseplants have been knocked over, their roots crinkling feebly around the cylindrical mounds of soil on the floor. Books lie scattered around, and the equations have been erased from the chalkboard wall, replaced by obscene drawings and rude commentary on the relative size of Paul’s and Theo’s . . . of Paul and Theo.