Oh, God. Dread weighs me down. How am I going to look the grand duchess in the face as I apologize for getting her pregnant?
“You will proceed,” the grand duchess finishes, with a nod in my direction.
“Okay. Well. First of all, thanks for coming—”
“I was kidnapped!” Oceanverse cuts in, though she immediately looks abashed when the grand duchess fixes her in an imperious stare.
“Sweetheart, we’re merely borrowing you for a time.” Dad smiles at Oceanverse encouragingly; he was the one who made the trip to her dimension. Between him, Mom, and Theo, at least one of us was near the Marguerite in each world—even the Russiaverse, where the Parisian chemist Theodore Beck was already visiting his friend in her new Danish home. We only had the two Firebirds to work with at first, which meant we could only undertake one trip at a time. Since then, though, both the Triadverse and the Cambridgeverse have contributed one each. They’ve needed reminders, but we can pass one Firebird around for that.
I continue. “However you got here, I’m glad you came. Because if we’re going to stop the Home Office—the dimension that’s trying to destroy so many of the others—we all have to work together. I realize some of you were already making a head start on that,” I interject, nodding toward the three for whom this is true: Triadverse, Cambridgeverse, and Warverse. “But we need to be united, completely.”
Mafiaverse folds her arms across her chest. “You mean, we should just forgive you.”
I feel sick. “You don’t have to forgive me. Ever. Just understand that right now, this moment, I’m doing my absolute best to keep every one of us safe.”
“It’s not so bad, what you did,” Cambridgeverse says, surprising me. When she takes in my expression, she shrugs. “I mean, I wish you hadn’t gone over to Paul’s place, but he wasn’t exactly your Paul, and I remember how we used to be—you know, it’s awkward, but I get it.”
“Not so bad? Tell that to Theo,” Mafiaverse retorts.
“I’m right here,” Theo says, “and even though I’m not the one who has to live with the consequences, I am the one who took the bullets. So believe me when I say what happened to, well, to us that night wasn’t Marguerite’s fault. At the beginning she had no idea the Russian mob could be involved. She couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen. Me, I’m the one who knew she’d been kidnapped and walked right into a bad situation anyway. If what happened to your Theo is anyone’s fault besides the guy who fired the gun? It’s mine.”
Oceanverse still looks livid. “So who wrecked the submarine?”
“That would actually be yet another version of me, who’s now dead,” Theo says. “So if you were hoping to file a lawsuit, you’re out of luck.”
Triadverse leans backward, putting her hands to her temples. “My head hurts.”
This would be a prime moment for the grand duchess to bring up what I did to her, but she doesn’t. Maybe it’s beneath royal dignity to speak of such things in public. She looks at me and says only, “If the interruptions have finally ceased, please continue.”
“Right. So, first of all, we have to make sure we strengthen all of your universes so that they can’t be destroyed, ever. That process requires one Firebird”—I hold up my locket, even though the others are all familiar with the device by now—“and one stabilizer, which isn’t hard to build in a technologically advanced dimension. Those of you who are already in communication with other universes have started working on that. Mafiaverse, you guys have the know-how. You just have to execute the plan. For the rest of you with different technologies, we have to figure out alternative solutions.”
“Where are we even supposed to start with that?” Oceanverse says. “I don’t have that kind of knowledge, and in my universe, my parents don’t either.”
“But my parents do.” I think fast. “One of them needs to go to your universe. Preferably Dad—my version of Dad, I mean—he stayed there for a month after he was kidnapped, and he still remembers some of it. That would give him a head start with the technology.”
“I can head back and tell him.” Theo shakes his head with a wry smile. “High time Henry did some dimensional traveling of his own, don’t you think?”
“Definitely.” Mom and Dad have left the journeying to us—to me, mostly, because of the talent Wyatt Conley gave me. But they ought to experience some of this, both the chaos of it and the wonder.
“And my own world?” At the sound of the grand duchess’s voice, everyone focuses on her again. She sits with her hands in her lap, and somehow she looks both older and more beautiful than the rest of us. People always say, oh, beauty comes from within, and I always thought they were being glib. But now I see that energy radiating from the grand duchess, intangible but undeniable, as she continues. “It appears our mechanical advancement is significantly behind yours.”
Theo shrugs, like, no big deal. “All we need are the right metals and the knowledge, Your, uh, Highness? Was that it?”
“Your Imperial Highness,” I whisper.
“Right, that’s it. Yes. Your Imperial Highness. Since it turns out you and I are friends there, and I’m in your neighborhood anyway, we can work together on it. You commandeer the materials, and I’ll get the job done.” Theo sort of salutes her, then pulls his hand back, obviously feeling ridiculous. Warverse giggles.
Oceanverse raises her hand, reminding me she’s one of the only Marguerites who attended something resembling a real school. “So, some other version of Dad is going to just take over my dad without any warning?”
“Ask his permission,” I say. “Tell your dad everything. If he doesn’t want my dad to stay, then he won’t. I promise. It’s your dimension, so it’s your choice.”
“Okay.” Then she adds sheepishly, “I guess since the alternative is getting our dimension blown up, Dad’s probably going to say yes.”
“Probably,” I agree. Though I predict that later on my father will bitch at length about the inhuman suffering of being forced to return to a dimension without the Beatles.
“What about here?” Victoire says. “Will your Theo stay, or will another version of Mom come to our universe, or what? And who’s going to get the evil phantom out of me?”