ROMOLA SWINGS THE FIREBIRD BACK AND FORTH LIKE A hypnotist’s pocket watch, taunting me. “I’m in so few useful dimensions, and Mr. Conley so rarely lets me undertake anything important. I think that’s about to change, don’t you?”
Billions of people are about to die, and this idiot is psyched about her promotion. Even my own survival hardly matters compared to that, but I’m ready to fight for all our lives. I ball my fists together and steel myself to take a blow to the head, a stab from a knife, anything. “Last chance, Romola. Give me back my Firebird.”
“Last chance,” she echoes. “And you just lost it.”
Romola drops the staff. I see her hand reaching for her own Firebird to leap away, and I launch myself at her—
—and land on bare ground as she swiftly dodges me.
I scramble up from the ground and look around desperately, sure I could see Romola even amid the gathering chaos—there! Her yellow velvet gown, bright in the darkness, reveals her in the crowd gathered just below. I dash downhill, ignoring the cuts bleeding on my face and arms, desperate to reach her. Amid the throng, I lose sight of her, glimpse her again, lose sight once more. But finally I catch sight of yellow velvet, focus on it, and start to gain. Once I’m within arm’s reach, I grab her by her shoulders, wheel Romola around, and snarl, “Give. It. Back.”
“What do you want of me?” Her smirk is gone, replaced by pure, honest terror. My stomach clenches as I see that she’s not carrying a Firebird in her hand or wearing one around her neck. This is the version of Romola who belongs here, in this universe. The one whose counterpart just betrayed her. “What is it you think I have done? I promise you—the strange portents in the sky, they are not my doing—”
“I know.” I back away, half in a trance. “I know.”
Romola just ditched this dimension, carrying both her Firebird and mine.
Meaning I’m stranded here at the end of the world, without any chance for escape.
I flop onto my knees, too stunned even to scream.
They needed a perfect traveler to destroy a universe, I think in a daze. They got one.
And now I’m going to die as far away from home as anyone has ever been.
There is truly, literally, nothing I can do. Without my Firebird, I’m powerless. I am trapped in a dying world.
Paul—my Paul—could still save me. He’s the only one who can. But in order to do that, he would have to have already tested his plan to protect a dimension against destruction, made it happen in three different universes, and managed to have traveled here in the nick of time. How many hours does the Romeverse have left?
Wait. No. My heart sinks as I realize Paul couldn’t save me. He would arrive in this dimension with only one Firebird—his own. I know him well enough to be certain he would try to put that around my neck, let me be the one to survive while he died. I also know that I would never let that happen.
For me there is absolutely no way out.
Someone cries out in horror. A few other people faint. I follow their panic-stricken gazes, looking up toward the Castel Sant’Angelo.
It’s . . . melting.
Literally, melting. The stone bricks glow with heat, then soften, then begin to sag and drip down over the others. A castle is turning into a volcano before our eyes. And as far as I know, Father Paul is still inside.
“Paul!” I shriek. “You have to get out of there! Paul!”
Crowds of priests and guards are escaping; my eyes can just make out the silhouettes of a few people dashing from a faraway exit. But for the rest, it’s already too late. As the lava begins seeping downhill toward us, radiating blistering heat in a wave ahead, the entire Castel Sant’Angelo collapses in on itself.
My scream feels as if it’s torn from me. As if nothing could be left inside my skin now that I can’t reach him again.
Now the lava is a wave, flowing faster, downhill toward us. Everyone around me picks up and runs. After one more moment, I do too. Tears blur my vision, but it doesn’t matter what I see. It doesn’t matter where I run. Even if Father Paul wasn’t killed in the collapse, we could never get to each other now. The thought of him, so tender, so kind, dying in that molten hell because of me—I would have died in his place rather than let that happen. It doesn’t matter if Romola and Triad tricked me—I should’ve known better. Been smarter, been braver.
He might have escaped the castle, I think. Yet that’s even worse. If Father Paul is still alive, then he has to die along with this world. Already I know that death will be horrible.
I ought to drop to the ground and let the lava burn me to death. I deserve to know how the people in that castle felt as they died, being charred to the bone. My death is inevitable now anyway. Only my Paul could’ve saved me, and whatever slim chance I had of that was lost with the Castel Sant’Angelo. At least if I let the lava claim me, the terror would be over.
Yet I keep running. Even though my brain knows it’s hopeless, some unstoppable part of my heart keeps demanding live, live, live.
The fleeing people in front of me suddenly stop short, sending me thudding into someone’s back. He shoves me back harshly, which I don’t understand until another person does the same thing a few feet away, and this time the person hit from behind falls—into the enormous crevasse that I now see just in front of us. It’s still opening wider as it swallows the woman whole. Her scream echoes a long, long way down.
“Satan’s furnace is revealed to us!” one man cries. “The final judgment is at hand!”
Most everyone scatters, running right or left, the only two directions that remain for us. Stupefied by terror and guilt, I stagger to the very rim of the crevasse and stare down into it. It’s depthless, an almost infinite black abyss gaping wide like the jaws of a monster. The distant fiery glow beneath must be the planet’s core.
Mom and Dad should be here, I think numbly. Then I could really explain plate tectonics. They’d understand if I could show them the planetary core. And then Mom and Dad would be here with me. They must be so scared and I want them here, I want my parents so bad—
“Take heart!” someone shouts. “I have found her, and we can yet be saved!”
I know that voice. It belongs to Wyatt Fucking Conley.
When I wheel around I see him standing there in red robes, a blazing torch in his hand. He’s Cardinal Conley in this world, and I don’t doubt for a minute that it’s only the Romeverse version. No way would any Conley from Triad be stupid enough to come to a collapsing universe.
“This is the girl.” Cardinal Conley points at me with a shaky finger. Soot stains his face and his scarlet robes. Behind him are massed a couple dozen people, a few of them priests but mostly townsfolk, all of them as disheveled and wild-eyed with fear as I must be. Conley’s wavering voice gains strength as he condemns me. “Only two weeks ago she claimed she had been overtaken by an evil spirit! Her sorcerer parents used their spells to convince Her Holiness that she was only ill, but I knew this one had been possessed by a demon!”
I can’t even argue with him. The Romeverse Marguerite must have believed it herself—how else could a medieval person understand my visit from another universe? Certainly no evil demon could’ve visited a worse fate on this world than I have.
“I argued that the demon inside her should be exorcised,” Cardinal Conley says. Sweat has beaded on his skin. There’s nothing of the cocky, power-hungry schemer left in him now. He feels nothing but terror, wants nothing but revenge. “No one listened, and now the demon has brought us hell on earth.”
People shout in agreement. I just stand there at the lip of the crevasse, wondering if he’ll shove me in. If he does, how long will it take me to fall?
Conley steps closer to me, his crazed eyes gleaming. “We still have a chance. If we destroy the demon now—destroy it in its earthly vessel—God may yet spare us!”
Something inside finally snaps me out of my stupor and despair, and I’m pretty sure it’s hate.
I come back to life. Yeah, I’m going to die here. I know this. There’s no way out. But I’ll be damned if the last person I ever see is Wyatt Conley.
“Yes, destroy the demon.” I ball my hands into fists at my side. When I step forward, Cardinal Conley skitters back like a cockroach. “But do you know where the demon really is? Do you think the devil would even bother going after a mere girl to do his evil here on Earth? I’m a painter. Only an apprentice! I don’t have the power Satan wants. You know who does? A cardinal.”
“She lies,” Conley says quickly. “The devil speaks with forked tongue—”
“I was possessed by an evil spirit, but he hasn’t told you the whole story! The cardinal has kept the truth from you!” It feels good to yell at him. “The spirit was cast out, and immediately afterward I revealed absolutely everything. Her Holiness the Pope knew my soul was clean. But someone else was possessed that day. Someone who still can’t remember anything that happened to him for hours. Someone who never presented himself to the pope to be judged!”
Even by torchlight, I can tell Conley’s face has gone stark white. I wasn’t sure how he’d handled the complete amnesia that must have followed the visit of Triadverse Conley—but without his pride and wealth and rank, he’s nothing but a coward. So it wasn’t hard to guess he’d kept his inexplicable lapse a secret. Every line of his expression testifies that my words are true.
The crowd sees it too. They’ve begun to murmur and shuffle in discontent, and their angry glares have shifted from me to Cardinal Conley.
“Am I lying?” I say to him. “If so, prove it. Tell me what we spoke of the last time we met in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Or can’t you remember?”
Conley’s mouth opens, then closes again. He looks like a fish gasping in air.
“He is the demon.” I point to the now-trembling cardinal. “He’s the reason we’re all going to die. He is the murderer of this world!”
The crowd rushes forward, ready to tear him to pieces. Conley dashes from them in blind terror—and tumbles into the pit. Briefly I see a red blur in the blackness, before the febrile glow of the core beneath erases even that slight glimpse of him. Now Conley’s scream is echoing all the way down to hell.
While the torch-wielding mob celebrates, believing they might have saved all of creation, I wander away along the narrow patch of ground that remains passable. By now the earth is trembling underfoot constantly, but nobody pays it any mind. I ignore the gravel skittering around my feet, the sticky blood on my cheek and legs from cuts that will never be tended. They don’t matter. Pretty much nothing matters anymore
If there’s nothing left for me to do but witness how a dimension dies, I want to at least face it bravely.
When I find a large stone in the hillside in an area where no one is lingering, I slump down onto it and turn my face up toward the night sky. The moon has reappeared, but is now four times too large, as if it wanted to devour the horizon. Around it the stars whirl and blaze as they flare in fitful shades of orange and gold. It’s a nightscape Van Gogh might have painted in his final, suicidal frenzy.
The faces of those who defeated me loom in my mind, as if they were gloating—Conley, Romola, the Triadverse version of Theo—but I refuse to let those people dominate my last moments. They have no more place in my mind. No time remains for anyone but those I have loved the most.
So I think of Mom humming to her countless houseplants as she waters them from her pressed-tin pitcher. Dad sitting at the rainbow table and drinking Earl Grey tea from his Beatles mug. Josie speeding ahead of me on the waterslide when we were kids, holding up her arms and shrieking with glee as we headed toward the big final splash. Even Theo—my Theo, the real Theo—the day he took me for a ride in his muscle car all along the coast, and we played the Kills at top volume and left the windows down to feel the wind in our hair.
And always Paul, in so many ways, so many worlds. I think of the Egyptverse version with his adventurer clothes and shy courtesy, and the Mafiaverse one, so savage and cold and yet vulnerable too, willing to show a complete stranger his tattoos and his weaknesses just for the chance to be seen. Warverse Paul, who wanted me so much he couldn’t stop caring even after I betrayed him. The guy from the Cambridgeverse who made one stupid mistake he’ll punish himself for his entire life long. And my beloved Lieutenant Markov, waltzing in the Winter Palace, standing in the Easter Room, making love to me in the heart of a snowstorm—
I don’t try to check the tears flowing down my cheeks. I only turn my thoughts to the Paul who was so briefly mine. This big, muscled, wordless guy who hulked around in doorways that hardly seemed to fit him, in his thrift-store clothes and his cheap, ragged haircut. Who made lasagna with me last Thanksgiving eve and laughed as we tried to keep the noodles from curling up. Who knows every concerto by Rachmaninoff but probably wouldn’t recognize Beyoncé if she were standing right in front of his face. Who gave up everything he’d ever earned and risked his life for the chance to protect me. Who watched me paint and told me I knew how to see people as they truly were.
But you were the one I never really saw, I realize. Not until it was too late.
“Marguerite!”
I turn and stare into the darkness. Am I dreaming? No. It’s him. It’s Father Paul, running toward me.
A sob escapes from my throat. He escaped the destruction of the Castel Sant’Angelo, only to die along with the rest of us. Maybe I should have wished for him to have that faster death, the one where he would’ve suffered less fear and despair.
But I’m selfish, and I’m small, and I need Paul more now than I ever have before.
I leap up to run toward him, but the quakes are strengthening. It’s all I can do to cover more than five or six feet at a time before falling down again. From what I can see, Paul’s having trouble too. But we don’t stop. We keep running, crawling, struggling toward each other for nothing more than the chance to die in each other’s arms.
Distant screams rise in the distance as the light overhead glows brighter. I glance upward to see the sky ripping apart as if it were made of cloth, and that cloth were being shredded by claws of fire. It makes no sense, but maybe the laws of physics are beginning to collapse along with everything else. Gravity may let go of us at any moment and send us spiraling into the dying sky.
Just let me get to Paul, I think, or pray. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between those things anymore. If I can only have that, I can face the rest. I have to reach Paul.
As I stagger to my feet again, the quake stills—maybe only for a few moments, but those moments are all I need. I run as fast as I can toward Paul, who’s racing even faster toward me. We collide, embrace, and I’m crying and laughing at the same time, “We made it, we made it, we—”
And then I realize what I’m feeling against my chest: the hard edges of a Firebird. I pull back and gasp as I see Paul isn’t wearing one Firebird—he’s wearing two.
“How did you know?” I whisper, hardly daring to trust my own eyes. “You couldn’t have known—”
“We have to get out of here,” Paul says with his usual gift for understatement. He slings one of the Firebirds from his neck, ready to drape it over mine.
I still can’t believe it. In a daze I say, “You made it here to rescue me. . . .”
My voice trails off as I finally focus on the locket on its chain. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not one of our Firebirds. Now beyond shock, I gape at him in bewilderment.
This isn’t my Paul. Who the hell is it?
“Marguerite, please,” he says.
When he tries to put the Firebird around my neck, I lift my hands to block him. Where is this person trying to take me? What is this about? “If you’re not my Paul—then who are you?”
Paul looks down at me, his gray eyes searching. “Another one who loves you.”
I don’t understand any of this. Can I possibly believe him?
Do I have any choice?
But I do. The last time someone else from the multiverse deceived me, it was Romola, and the result of her trickery was the destruction of an entire reality. I can’t let that happen again, ever, not even if the cost is my life.
The ground trembles beneath us again. Buildings in the far distance begin to disappear and crumble, maybe collapsing into yet another crevasse that leads to the center of the Earth. A low, terrible, vibrating groan emanates from deep below—the death cry of a planet.
“Please,” Paul shouts over the ever-louder roar. “Trust me, Marguerite. Believe me.”
And I do. I believe him.
I duck my head for the Firebird. He drops it around my neck and wraps one arm around me to steady me against the tremors. “Take hold of the Firebird and hit the controls on my mark. Ready?”
“Yes.” Lines of fire have begun to race along the ground in intricate spirals, rising ever higher into an apocalyptic blaze. Smoke and sulfur bellow from the tears in the earth. William Blake couldn’t have imagined this hell.
“Now!” Paul shouts, and I leap away, leaving the end of the world behind.