I manage a smile as the locket settles into my palm. “Yes, milady.”
Maybe “milady” is laying it on a bit thick, but I don’t care. I’m swimming in the relief of knowing this Romola is the one who belongs in this dimension, and having the Firebird once again around my neck. It’s one small victory to set against the devastation of losing Paul.
Pope Martha dismisses me, saying, “Back to Trastevere with you, girl. And tell those lunatic parents of yours that I expect to review their planetary charts shortly.”
“Thank you, Your Holiness.” This time I bow deeply, and with sincerity, because I really don’t want to spend any more time around a touchy pope. Yet I take my time walking out, traversing the nave at a leisurely pace. I’d be a fool to waste a single moment I can spend looking at the wonder of the Sistine Chapel, midcreation.
When I step outside, into the late-afternoon light and the bustle of Rome’s streets, I’m able to clear my head and think.
That wasn’t an attempt to kill me. Yeah, the pope was unhappy, but it was Mistress Annunziata she was really angry with. Besides, I don’t think she’d have had either of us executed. Michelangelo acted like a total brat with Pope Julius II for years, and I think the worst punishment he ever faced was a delay in payment.
So why did Wicked bring me here?
Maybe her trip to the Romeverse was accidental. Theo once told me some universes are “mathematically similar” to others, meaning that if your calculations were the smallest bit off, you might wind up in a completely different dimension. Wicked could’ve come here, realized she was in the wrong place, and hung around just to keep me trapped on the space station she’d scheduled for destruction. When she couldn’t think of an effective way to kill off this Marguerite, she decided to use this universe as a holding cell rather than a potential murder weapon.
That makes perfect sense, I say to the Paul in my mind, as if he were here to work through this with me. In fact, that’s got to be the most likely explanation. The next universe is the one I should probably be worried about.
Still, as long as I’m in the Romeverse, I have to stay on guard.
My breakup with Paul should hurt more than it does. Right now it’s as if I’m in shock—numb to the pain. They say people who have an arm or leg amputated often feel it for months or even years afterward, the nerve endings still sending signals about itches and sensations that are no longer real. A phantom limb, that’s what they call it. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling now, this sense that Paul can’t really have broken up with me, that he’s still by my side.
He is, in the most important ways, I remind myself, squaring my shoulders. He’s working with you to save the other Marguerites and protect the multiverse. So concentrate on what matters.
Although I’ve never visited the Vatican back home, I know from movies and TV that it’s this gloriously old-fashioned palace and cathedral, usually surrounded by flocks of tourists. St. Peter’s is, if anything, even more imposing here, where no other buildings seem to be even three stories high. Its enormous dome soars above the various earthen-colored brick buildings clustered nearby. The city keeps no respectful distance. Instead the dirt roads around the Vatican are crowded with groups of rosary-clutching pilgrims, vendors selling fruit or bread from mule carts, or intently chatting monks in their cassocks. My last journey to the Romeverse was brief and frantic, taking place entirely at night. Looking at the scene in the late-afternoon light gives me the chance to truly experience something very like our own Middle Ages.
It doesn’t take away the fear and urgency I feel. Doesn’t mend my broken heart. But I can’t let Conley and Triad turn the Firebird into nothing more than a weapon. The chance to see other worlds is a gift—priceless and irreplaceable. Even now, I have to hold on to my sense of wonder at the knowledge that I’m standing in a whole new world.
I walk into the crowd for a bit, mostly just to take in the sights and smells. The smells dominate. This is ye olden days, in which they had no deodorant. Also, nobody has the job of cleaning up after the mules. Even the stink is kind of interesting, though. It makes me appreciate home.
I need to find my home here in the Romeverse. That’s not someplace I reached on my first trip, and it’s not like I know my way around the city. Nor were medieval people big on road signs. When a nun walks near me on the road, her wimple almost comically broad-winged, I stop her. “Excuse me, Sister, but I’m lost.”
Like every other word I’ve uttered in the Romeverse, I say this in either early Italian or late-stage Latin. The language skills we learn as babies are more deeply ingrained in the memory than almost anything else, meaning dimensional travelers automatically speak whatever languages their hosts do.
The nun smiles beatifically at me. “Can I help you, my child? Where do you need to go?”
I want to say, To the Castel Sant’Angelo. That’s where Paul is—Father Paul, in this dimension, a priest who should not love me but so desperately does. I want to feel Paul’s love for me again.
But if it doesn’t come from my Paul—the one I love most of all—it’s not enough for me. Not anymore.
“To Trastevere,” I say instead, hoping I remember how Pope Martha pronounced that. “Do you know where the inventors live?”
Finding Trastevere turns out to be easy enough. The neighborhood isn’t very far from the Vatican, nestled below the hills and right by the bank of the Tiber. Most of the city lies on the other side, including the majority of the crumbling monuments of the Roman Empire. The houses here are humble, made of whitewashed brick or stucco in various shades of earthy orange, pink, and gold.
As for finding the inventors—the nun had no idea, but it turns out I didn’t need any extra help. Atop one of the taller buildings, I see a copper dome approximately the size of a MINI Cooper, with a wide slit in the middle. From that opening projects what has to be this dimension’s very first telescope.
Yeah, I’m home.
“Hello?” I call as I come through the door. “Is anyone here?”
“We’re up here, darling!” My mother’s voice comes from above, no doubt from the observatory/attic. In one corner of the room is the wooden ladder that leads up and down. The room itself looks like one Vermeer might have painted, with its simple wooden furniture, its wide fireplace, and only a couple of images on the wall for decoration—sketches of mine, showing my family in robes and caps.