“So, where’s her phone?” Wicked asked. Theo took it from his back pocket, where he’d apparently hidden it from me just in case, punched in the number, and tossed it to her. I felt its screen hard against my hand and wanted to cry. To need to speak so badly but to be unable to say a word . . .
“You’re here,” Conley said in my ear, as I hoped my hatred of this man would at least make Wicked Marguerite nauseated. I’d gladly puke if it meant she had to do it too. “Glad you made it. Obviously we need to get rolling. My thought is, start with Josie.”
“Always Josie,” Wicked said sourly.
Conley went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Tell Dr. Kovalenka and Dr. Caine that much about your home universe, nothing more. They’ll respond to hearing that their older daughter died in a world not so far away. That news will make them . . . sentimental. Once we have their sympathy, we can manage the rest.”
“I doubt it’s going to be that simple.” Wicked walked through the house, familiarizing herself with the layout. “Trust me, once Mom and Dad go after something? They make it happen. And right now, the Mom and Dad of this dimension are going after us.”
“But they don’t have access to our tech, and they don’t know the game plan. We’re a few steps ahead, Marguerite, and we’re going to keep it that way.”
It shouldn’t have jarred me so badly, hearing Conley call her by the name we shared. Yet it did. I didn’t belong to myself anymore.
She said, “Why doesn’t the other you just get started already? He’s a perfect traveler, so he can destroy dimensions and still get out alive.”
Only by destroying the dimensions containing each and every shard of Josie’s soul can the other versions of my parents get her back. They will kill her a thousand times over, unmake trillions of lives so that people were never even born, just to have Josie alive in their own world again. This is the cruelest, most selfish thing I’ve ever imagined—and yet, Wicked is right. Mom and Dad know how to accomplish the impossible.
“It’s risky, okay?” Conley snapped. Obviously he didn’t like the idea of any other version of himself being in danger. Too bad I wasn’t able to tell him that the Home Office had targeted our universe for destruction too, if my parents didn’t take their bait. “Besides, you know as well as I do that I’m not located anywhere near Doctors Kovalenka and Caine in some of the critical universes. So you’re more effective than I am even in the best-case scenario. And obviously we’d need you to slam the doors, if it comes to that.”
Slamming doors? That made no sense to me. But I mentally filed it away, willing myself to recall every detail. Possibly Wicked didn’t realize I remained aware within her, unlike most people dosed with Nightthief, who were basically unconscious within their own minds. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been speaking so freely.
Unless . . . slamming doors . . .
My train of thought derailed when I heard the sound of my parents’ car pulling into the driveway. Wicked said, “Mumsy and Daddums are about to walk in. Let’s wrap this up. What we need you to do is stop Markov. He’s back, and he’s probably headed this way.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Conley replied, so easily it gave me chills. He wouldn’t hesitate to have Paul killed, and he had the money to pay off guys who would do it in an instant. “Besides, the guy’s been splintered. He’s never going to be the same. We can use that.”
Never be the same? Paul? I had just raced through the dimensions to collect all four splinters of Paul’s soul—to put him back together again. When I’d finally managed to do it, however, Paul had been depressed, angry, even fatalistic. I’d already sensed that some of the darkness from the other Pauls had seeped into him, but I’d told myself it was terrible but temporary, like the pain from a broken bone.
Had Paul instead been changed forever?
“Gotta go.” Wicked hung up the phone just in time to run to the front door, where Mom and Dad stood. They looked like themselves again—in their shabby sweaters, Mom with her messy bun and Dad with his rectangle-framed glasses. When their faces lit up with smiles, I wanted to scream. Please, no. It’s not me. You have to know it’s not me!
“Sweetheart, you’re home.” Mom enveloped Wicked in a hug. Unfortunately the thick cardigan I had on kept her from feeling the second Firebird locket dangling beneath the fabric. “Thank God.”
“And Paul?” Dad said, blue eyes wide with concern. “Paul’s all right, isn’t he?”
That took Wicked aback. Her head jerked slightly, like people do when they’re startled. In the Home Office, Paul Markov was my family’s enemy—a courageous rebel trying to stand up to the Triad Corporation’s evil. She had to know that wasn’t always the case, but still, she hadn’t been ready to see proof of how much my parents love him, nearly as if he were the son they never had.
Unfortunately, she covered well. “He’s back, and in one piece—his soul, I mean—but he’s not himself.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a look. “What do you mean?” my father asked. “Did the splintering affect him badly?”
See, that’s the second way a soul can be splintered: someone can do it on purpose, if that someone were a total bastard like Wyatt Conley. What happened to Paul wasn’t a terrible accident—it was an attack. Conley tore Paul’s soul into four pieces and held each part hostage, forcing me to do his dirty work if I wanted any chance to put Paul together again.
“The fragments of Paul’s soul went to some dark places,” Wicked said, voice tremulous. “Worlds where we both saw another side of him. A dangerous side. And I hate to say this, but I think the splintering has changed him. Maybe forever. Like the terrible things all those other Pauls did stained his soul.”
“Oh, no.” Mom’s hand went to her lips. “We’d realized splintering was dangerous, but—surely the damage isn’t permanent.”
Wicked shook my head in dismay. “I don’t know. Mom, Paul . . . he scared me a little.”
How could she say that? She was the scary one. Paul was only injured, and lost. Overcome by despair. Fate brought me and Paul together time and time again—but we had learned that we didn’t always wind up with each other, that sometimes we hurt each other terribly. Our destiny had abandoned us, and Paul took it even harder than I did. Maybe he would have anyway, even without the damage from the splintering—but with it, Paul seemed to have lost all hope.