In the Russiaverse, we rushed it and then some.
That night when they discovered the risk of splintering, Dad returned to the great room just when Paul came in from the deck. As he took my hand, Paul said to my parents, “Do you want to run the numbers again?”
Mom and Dad exchanged a look before she said, “We’ve got enough for tonight. We’ll run it through at the lab tomorrow morning and take it from there.” She raised one eyebrow. “In other words, yes, you two have some free time.”
This was less of a treat than they seemed to think. Making out in my room isn’t as much fun when I have to wonder if my parents can hear, or worse, if they’re cheering us on. I used to be considerate and listen to my music on headphones. These days, I turn the speakers up to eleven.
Paul stood there awkwardly; he still hasn’t figured out how to navigate the path between “respect for his mentors” and “desire for their daughter.” So I did the talking. “Okay, we’ll just—”
That’s when we heard a thump on the deck.
“Theo?” I let go of Paul to walk toward the sliding door, but Dad got there first. He pulled it open, startled, and swore as he rushed outside. I hurried after him, then stopped short, frozen in horror.
Theo lay sprawled out on the deck. His laptop rested where it had fallen a few feet away, and the light from the screen illuminated Theo’s face—the blankness in his eyes, the slackness of his mouth.
Oh God. Is he dead? He looks dead—
Theo’s body shuddered, then convulsed. His limbs tensed as they started shaking so hard they hammered against the deck. I gasped. “Oh, my God. He’s having a seizure.”
“Call 911,” Paul said, just behind me, and I heard Mom’s footsteps pounding as she ran for her cell phone.
“What do we do?” Dad said as we both kneeled by Theo’s side. “Do we put something in his mouth so he won’t swallow his tongue?”
“No! Definitely don’t do that.” I’d heard that was a bad idea with seizure patients, but I didn’t know what else to do. “Just—be here with him.” Could Theo hear us? I had no idea. I only knew that my blood seemed to flush hot and run cold, back and forth, over and over again. My hands were shaking. As frightened as I was, I knew Theo had to have been so much more scared than me. So I whispered, “It’s all right. We’re going to get you to the hospital, okay? We’ve got you, Theo.”
Dad muttered, “Has he ever mentioned—any illness, any other episodes—”
“No.” Paul looked grim.
Could he be sick? Please just let him be sick. But we all knew Theo didn’t have epilepsy. We knew what was to blame.
Nightthief. The drug Wyatt Conley’s spy had pumped into Theo’s body over and over again, for months—the stuff he had told me still gave him the shakes—it had done more damage than we knew. Theo hadn’t been getting better; he’d been getting worse.
Conley had told us he didn’t like relying on Nightthief for his dimensional travelers; we knew the drug could be harmful. But that night was the very first time I realized just how serious this might be.
The first time I realized Theo might die.
And the night Paul decided to do whatever it took to save him.
4
THE WIND BLOWS THROUGH THE GLASSLESS WINDOW OF the Castel Sant’Angelo, ruffling the veil I wear over my curly hair. “You knew Paul would have to come to the Triadverse,” I say to Conley. “To look for a cure, for Theo.”
“I can give you that, too. You can save them both.” He chuckles softly. “You’ll be rescuing Theo from the effects of his Triadverse self’s journey to your dimension—and rescuing Paul from the consequences of his journey into mine.”
“You deliberately . . . splintered Paul?”
Conley just grins wider. “Guilty as charged.”
Now I know why the reminder didn’t work. It could only have awakened Paul’s soul if—if his entire soul were within this world’s version.
But Wyatt Conley has torn Paul’s soul apart.
Nothing I could scream at Conley would be foul enough. There are no curses to carry the obscenity and fury in my heart.
Instead, I throw myself at him.
Our bodies collide as I slam him against the wall, knocking the breath out of Conley in a surprised huff. We both topple to the side, but I’m able to catch myself. He lands flat on the stone, red robes a puddle around him. I wish they were blood.
A terrible calm comes over me. Maybe this is what people feel like before they commit murder. “You killed Paul.”
“Not kill,” Conley pants. He’s still fighting to breathe normally. “I splintered him. Not the same thing at all.”
“You tore his soul into pieces! You broke him apart!”
Conley’s grin isn’t as cocky when he’s sprawled on the floor. “But you can put him back together again.”
What does he mean? Then I look down again at the Firebird, at that reading I’ve never seen before.
“Reminders can serve another function, it turns out,” Conley says. “They can reawaken someone’s soul or capture an individual splinter. You thought you’d lost Paul, but you’ve already rescued him—part of him, that is.”
A splinter of my Paul’s soul hangs on this chain, in a locket I hold in my hand.
I lean over Conley to grip his robes in one fist. “Tell me where you hid the other splinters of Paul’s soul.”
“If you want that information,” Conley says, “You’ll have to earn it.”
Five nights ago, at the hospital, my parents were able to stay with Theo, while Paul and I were stuck in the ER waiting area. If I ran a hospital, I would try to make a space like that feel comforting. Instead, the room seemed like it was designed to punish us: stark fluorescent light, uncomfortable chairs, a pile of dog-eared magazines at least a year old, and a television blaring in the corner with some obnoxious TV judge yelling at people stupid enough to go on the show.
Paul and I held hands, but we were too freaked out to comfort each other. We just hung on.
I whispered, “Theo never said anything about still feeling bad. He admitted he still craved Nightthief, but nothing like this.”
“He hasn’t confided in me much lately.” Paul stared down at his beat-up gray tennis shoes; he even has to buy his footwear secondhand. “I believed his silence was about you. About us. It never occurred to me to think he might be more worried about something else.”
All the awkwardness of the past three months—all the odd silences, the times Theo didn’t come around when we expected him—why did I assume that was all about my relationship with Paul? Because I thought Theo was jealous, or at least hurt, I never looked deeper. I didn’t ask the questions I should’ve asked. All the while, Theo suffered alone.
Paul murmured, “I should have known.”
“He hasn’t been around enough for us to see it.” True. But it was amazing how little that helped.
“The signs were there. I failed to put them together.” He slumped forward in his chair, shoulders hunched, like he’d just picked up something heavy. “I noticed that he hasn’t been driving as much. That he went out less. I thought—after what happened, I thought Theo simply wanted time to pull himself together. But I should’ve known he’d never skip spring break.”