There are really gross guys who assume a woman would never go to a man’s room for anything but sex, and wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of someone alone with them behind a locked door. But Paul isn’t one of those guys, in this world or any other. “Whatever you want.”
I look into his eyes, and the hope I see there slashes across me like claws. If only I could keep him from ever learning the truth about tonight.
Paul hesitates before he says, “Is this about, well—revenge?”
“Revenge?” I want my vengeance against Wyatt Conley, but how would Paul know that?
I understand once Paul continues, “Against Private Beck. For leaving you alone in the city.”
“Oh! No, it isn’t.” Will he believe that? Would I? “Maybe that’s why I called you. But it’s not why I had such a good time tonight, or why I want to stay with you longer.”
“I wouldn’t want you to do anything you’d regret.”
Paul, do you have to be such a perfect gentleman right now? “I won’t.”
“It’s just—” He takes a deep breath, weighing the words he’s going to say. “Do you know when I first fell for you?”
I shouldn’t hear this. Only the other Marguerite should hear this, ever. Paul shouldn’t be saying it out loud to someone who’s tricking him. But there’s no way for me to tell him to stop.
He takes my silence as permission to go on. “You remember the warehouse in Miramar we used as the first makeshift lab? Concrete walls and bare rebar. I don’t pay much attention to how places look, but that place depressed me.”
“It would’ve depressed anyone,” I say, because that’s what it sounds like.
Paul smiles. “But there was that one skylight that hadn’t been painted over, remember? With the panes that had been broken and taped so many times?”
I nod, wondering why Paul would fixate on an old window.
“You probably don’t remember, but there was one day—back early on when we were cleaning out the warehouse and getting it ready, you and Josie too—this one day, I saw you staring upward. I asked you what you were looking at, and you said, the light. You told me to watch the pattern of the light.”
Paul’s entire expression has changed as he tells this story. The awkwardness is gone. It’s as if something is dawning inside him.
He continues, “The shafts of light cut across the top of the warehouse just so. You said it was beautiful—that you’d like to try and sketch that someday. And as long as we worked in that warehouse, I never forgot to look up at the light. Sometimes it felt like the one scrap of joy I could still have. And I thought, if Marguerite could find something, even here, that’s beautiful, she could make every day beautiful.”
“That is—completely amazing.”
“I always wondered if you would laugh at me, if I told you that.” Paul’s crooked smile pierces me through.
Leaning closer, I shake my head. “I would never laugh at anything so perfect.”
“Marguerite,” Paul murmurs, his voice reverent, as his fingers brush under my chin, lifting my face to his for a kiss.
His mouth covers mine, strong and warm. All the voices inside me—guilty, afraid, unsure—they all go silent. There’s no room left in my head anymore for anything or anyone but him.
I’ve missed you so much. My hands fist in the lapels of Paul’s uniform jacket. He pulls me into his embrace as our kiss deepens, and I feel the safety and comfort that only comes when I’m in his arms. The silence of the night around us lets me hear the slight catch in his throat, the little sound of pleasure as we wind ourselves around each other. He slides one hand over my shoulder, fingers brushing against my neck. Any moment now, he’ll back me against the nearest building, and I want him to.
But instead he keeps caressing my neck, only that, which is so—chivalrous, and sweet, that it ironically only makes me want him more—
—until his fingers wrap around the chain of a Firebird.
I jerk back as he pulls; the chain snaps, stinging my skin. While I still have one of the Firebirds (which one? His or mine?), the other is in his grasp. Paul steps away from me, half turning to look at the Firebird in his hand. As he does, the expression on his face changes from disbelief to anger.
The Firebirds have that quality of things from another dimension—visible, tangible, but unlikely to be noticed by anyone in their home dimension unless their attention is called to it.
Or if you knew about them already. Like this dimension’s Paul, who works on the Firebird project.
“Give that back,” I say. If I’m going to get home and save my Paul, I need both my Firebirds. “Give it to me!”
“Earlier, I caught a glimpse—” Paul shakes his head. “I thought, it can’t be. If the Doctors Caine had completed a Firebird, they would have told me. Nor would they have given it to you. But now I understand. This Firebird came from another dimension.” When he looks at me again, his eyes are the color of steel. “Like you.”
Busted.
11
“PLEASE.” I HOLD OUT MY HAND FOR THE FIREBIRD. “I NEED that.”
“To get back to the dimension you came from.” I’ve never seen Paul’s face like this. Most people grimace when they’re angry, as if the rage is twisting them up outside as well as inside. Not Paul. He goes still, turns cold. Right now he might as well have been carved of stone.
Paul always values honesty. So I just say it. “Yes. To go home again, and for lots of other reasons too. Don’t leave me stranded here.”
His jaw drops slightly, and I realize that he didn’t expect me to admit where I’m really from. And maybe, within his anger, there’s a hint of the wonder I felt the very first time I traveled with the Firebird. Realizing that it works—that travel between dimensions is actually possible—was one of the most mind-blowing moments of my life. It must be for him too.
Maybe I can use that. I venture, “Everything Mom and Dad thought they could do—everything you believed they were capable of—the Firebirds are all that and more.” He gives me a look; I can’t tell if he’s feeling less hostile or not, but he hasn’t moved. I hope I can take that as a good sign. “People are depending on me. I have to keep going; lives are at stake. Please don’t trap me here.”
“How long have you been in our dimension? Weeks? Months?”
“Only a few days, I swear.” The lone streetlight nearby paints the scene in chiaroscuro—deep shadows, and the stark lines of light that reveal his anger. I wonder what he sees in me. “I was forced to come here.”
Paul’s stare bores through me. I’ve never sounded less convincing.
So I change tactics. “Can we just sit down and talk about this? I’d never want to hurt you, Paul. Never. Back home—in my dimension—you and I got off to a better start, and—”
“How convenient.” The tone of Paul’s voice could lower the temperature by twenty degrees. “That we’re all such good friends.”
“Of course we are. The patterns between the dimensions, the way they bring people together, over and over again—it’s like destiny.” My Paul believed in fate even before we began traveling with the Firebirds. This one doesn’t.