AT FIRST I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEAD WITH MY sister not to shoot me? I find myself raising my hands in surrender, like I’ve seen on TV.
Josie and Theo simultaneously groan as they lower their weapons. “It was you down there?” Josie’s rifle remains in one hand, pointed at the ground but obviously still ready for action. She’s wearing khaki jodhpurs and a white linen shirt not quite as frilly as my own. Her hair hangs in a long braid that nearly reaches her elbows. “We thought we had a tomb raider on our hands.”
Can’t quite see myself as Lara Croft. I’d have a lot of trouble filling out her tank top. “Sorry, guys. Didn’t mean to raise a false alarm.”
“You could’ve gotten hurt.” Theo sets his rifle down. He seems less comfortable with his weapon than Josie is. “What were you doing?”
“I got mixed up. Confused. That’s all.” I brush more sand from my skirt. By now the grit has burrowed into my boots, my blouse, even my huge, old-timey underwear. The physical irritation only aggravates my inner misery. “Can I apologize tomorrow? Right now I need to lie down.” Which is code for I need to be alone so I can try to leap into the next universe.
Josie, obviously, does not know this code. “You can do your drawings in the daytime, Marguerite. When it’s safe, and you have someone with you.”
She looks more annoyed than concerned, although that’s pretty much how Josie is. Don’t get me wrong. My sister can be sympathetic and caring when people need her. But she expects you to watch your own butt. Carrying that rifle—well, for her, it looks natural.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It won’t happen again.”
Will it? Will Wicked ever backtrack and make a second attempt on a Marguerite’s life?
Yes. Of course she will.
It finally hits me then: It’s not enough to chase after Wicked, fixing everything she’s broken. I have to protect the other Marguerites, every single one that could be in danger from Wicked’s schemes. Not only to mess with Triad’s plan for destroying the universes—though that would be reason enough—but also because this is my responsibility, the most sacred one I can imagine.
My travels have endangered many Marguerites. Affected some of their lives forever. But Wicked is attempting a mass murder of countless Marguerites, and it’s my job to save them.
I have to follow Wicked into her traps. Face danger after danger. Complete rescue after rescue. Failure means the deaths of billions.
“Come on.” Theo steps closer. He’s dressed more rakishly than any of the others I’ve seen in this dimension so far, with a brightly colored cloth tied at his neck and a wristwatch glittering so much in the moonlight that it betrays the diamonds set in the hands. He helps me up the final rungs of the ladder. “Go gently, Josephine. Can’t you see Marguerite’s shaken up? She’s pale as a ghost.”
Josie sighs. “I know. I’m sorry, Marguerite. Are you certain you’re all right?”
“I just need to lie down. I promise.”
“You want to walk her to her tent, Theo?” Even in the darkness, I can see the glint in Josie’s eyes as she points toward the tent that must be mine. Maybe she thinks something’s going on. Oh, please, not this world too—
Yet Theo doesn’t leap at the suggestion, only looks awkward. That means we’re not an item here either. Thank God. “I’m all right.” I start walking, not waiting for any escort. “See you tomorrow.”
“Only if you promise not to go crazy again,” Josie calls after me. Her tone is different now, though. She’s only teasing me.
Never have I felt less like joking around—but I have a role to play. So I glance over my shoulder and stick out my tongue. “Crazy, huh? Then how come I just discovered a mummy?”
Both Josie and Theo are instantly galvanized, dropping to their knees to call down into the passageway where Dad and Paul are hard at work. Me, I’m grateful for the chance to be alone.
The splendor of the Egyptian night is almost overpowering. A shudder ripples through me as I look once again at the Pyramids on the horizon. Their majesty blinds me to everything else at first, in the most comforting way. Sometimes, a truly beautiful painting or sculpture calms my spirit when nothing else can. Artwork can lift us up like that if we let it. The stark nightscape around me has the purity of art.
But as I walk on, slowly I begin to take in more details of our encampment. We have at least nine tents set up around here, plus a central fire over which a cooking grate has been set. The tents aren’t the small nylon pop-up types I remember from the few times Josie convinced me to go camping with her; these are enormous, each of them the size of a large room, and they’re sewn of thick white fabric that sways slightly in the night breezes. In the darker distance beyond the tents lie several woolly shapes that I suddenly realize are sleeping camels.
Camels? I can’t help it. I laugh. The thought of my mom riding a camel—or Paul, who’s usually so grave and calm, attempting to balance atop the hump—
But then I imagine him falling, and once again I remember my own terrible plunge in the Londonverse, the one that killed another me. My smile fades. It’s going to be a long time before I feel like laughing again.
My tent turns out to be even more luxurious inside than out. There’s a sort of makeshift floor, atop which we’ve laid what looks like a Turkish carpet. Small wooden folding tables hold my sketchbooks and a flickering lantern. Brightly patterned swaths of fabric hang at the corners and seams of the tent for maximum privacy. A handmade quilt in various shades of dark blue covers my little camp bed. Nearby, an upturned, leather-covered steamer trunk seems to serve as a chest of drawers, and lying atop it are a lace scarf and a pith helmet.
Too bad I didn’t find this universe earlier, when I could’ve enjoyed it, when traveling through the dimensions almost seemed like a game. Now all I can do is try to move on as fast as possible, to save the next Marguerite.
I sit on the camp bed and unbutton the high neck of my blouse. Sand has even found its way into the Firebird, though after I give the locket a good shake, the mechanism seems to be none the worse for wear. Thank God. I don’t think I could handle this thing getting broken in another dimension, because the last time that happened I got stranded for nearly a month.
Not to mention pregnant.
My Firebird remains tethered to Wicked’s, capable of following in her footsteps as soon as she has moved on. So I take a deep breath, hit the controls, and—
—nothing.
Damn it. When I double-check that the Firebird is working properly—and it is—I know what the deal is. Apparently I can’t leap ahead into a universe if Wicked is already in it. Each Marguerite has a maximum capacity of two: one host, one guest. I have to follow in Wicked’s footsteps, so I can’t move forward until she moves on.
And she won’t move on until she’s dreamed up a grisly way for another Marguerite to die.
What nightmare is she concocting this time? My predicament down in the mummy’s tomb could’ve gotten me killed, but by now I feel sure this is far from the worst Wicked can do.
Just wait until I get out of this universe, Wicked. You’re going to pay for this.
But how? It’s not like I can ever catch up to her. One visitor in a body at a time means one Marguerite to a dimension. This chase could go on forever.
“Marguerite? Are you decent?” My mother’s voice is just outside the fabric-draped flap that counts as my tent’s door. She has a stronger French accent than usual.
“If ‘decent’ means ‘not naked,’ then sure, I’m decent.” I tuck the Firebird back into my shirt with a sigh and start buttoning up.
My fingers pause, though, when my mother finally steps through, lantern in hand. Unlike everyone else I’ve seen here, she isn’t dressed in classic aristocrat-adventurer-of-the-Gilded-Age style. Instead, she’s wearing a long, flowing, richly patterned robe and a silk scarf knotted into what looks like a pretty decent turban. Leave it to Mom to finally find her fashion sense in the desert.
“Are you all right, dear?” Mom sits on the edge of my bed. “It’s not like you to go wandering into an active dig.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”
“You were acting so strangely this evening—”
When Wicked was here, something about her behavior concerned my mom. Not enough to make her realize how seriously things had gone wrong, but enough to draw her attention. Which means now she’ll be watching me more closely. That’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s one more factor for me to juggle in this universe.
“I need to sleep. That’s all.”
“A good night’s rest never made any situation worse,” she agrees. Her arm slides around me, a caress that invites me to rest my head on her shoulder. Maybe I should be too old to take so much comfort from being hugged by my mom, but after plunging to my near-death, I’m not ashamed to need a snuggle. Her fingers comb through my few loose curls; she used to do that when I was little, after nightmares, when she was coaxing me back to sleep. “I must say, Mr. Markov hurried down to help you very quickly. I doubt anyone could’ve held him back.”
Mom’s Team Paul in this universe too. “I can’t believe he let Dad go first.”
Mom laughs softly. “It’s not like you to play the coquette, Marguerite. You’ll make up your mind about him soon, won’t you?”
Probably, I think. When I leap out of this world—the Egyptverse, let’s call it—this world’s Marguerite will remember my feelings about Paul. She’ll remember that he’s come through for her in world after world, that we’ve loved each other time and again. But will she also remember the darkness within Paul? The nightmare visions from other worlds that neither of us can forget?
Out loud I say only, “You want me to be sure, don’t you, Mom?”
“Of course. But you know these Russians. They feel things so deeply.”
I laugh again. “As if you’re not Russian.”
“Of course, but a few generations back. The Saint Petersburg snows have hardly melted on Mr. Markov’s boots.”
So, he’s a native of Russia in this dimension, like his accent suggested. My accent is odd here—not quite English or American, somewhere in between, just like Josie’s was. Probably that’s the result of a life spent traveling back and forth to Egypt and to museums all over the world.
Mom continues. “If the tsar’s own Egyptologist isn’t enough to impress you, what will be?”
She’s only teasing me. But that reminds me of the Russiaverse where my mother was married to the tsar—and where I was the result of a clandestine affair between her and my father, the tsarevich’s tutor. Mom always wanted tons of kids, but pregnancy was dangerous for her, which is why in my universe, she and Dad stopped with me and Josie. In the Russiaverse, she died giving birth to her fourth child. The monstrous Tsar Alexander basically bred her to death.
I hug her tightly. She smells like roses. “I love you, Mom.”
My mother obviously has no idea what inspired this outburst of emotion, but she’s too wise to ask. “I love you too.”
After she leaves, I try once more to leap away, but no such luck. I undress, which takes a while; frilly collars and stockings and lace-up boots aren’t easy to deal with. Again I try to leap; again, nothing. As I slip into the loose, thin nightdress I find in one of the steamer trunk’s drawers, I decide to stay awake as long as I can, attempting to leap away every ten minutes or so. This Marguerite has been saved from being buried alive. Who knows what the next one has to face?
But I’m tired. So tired. Body and soul. No sooner do I pull the quilt over me and rest my head on the pillow than I pass out.
Nightmares chase me all night long. Yet I never dream of the terrible fall in the Londonverse, that last fatal plunge. Instead I’m back down in the tomb with mummified corpses tumbling out of doors and passages, dozens and dozens of them.
And in the dream I somehow know—every one of those dead bodies is mine.
When I wake up in the morning, I try the Firebird again. Still no escape. Apparently Wicked’s having trouble coming up with something deadly this time. I hope, for the next Marguerite’s sake, that she lives in a place so safe, so guarded, that Wicked can’t find anything to do to her.
Although that would mean I’m staying in the Egyptverse for quite a while.
Well, I’ve dealt with worse dimensions.
Starting back in the Renaissance, many painters used a pigment called mummy brown. It had an umber tint to it—a natural, earthy shade that was never dull—and it could be slightly transparent, which made it good for glazes. The color remained popular right up until the middle of the twentieth century, when the Pre-Raphaelites first used it with abandon . . . and then realized the shade got its name because the pigment was made from actual, real, ground-up Egyptian mummies. Apparently a couple of painters actually buried the tubes of paint when they found out the truth. Even that didn’t bother some people, though, and the production of old-fashioned mummy brown only ended when there were no longer cheap mummies.
I think about this story a lot as I look at the various vials and tubes of paint in my art box. Please, let me not make my own paints in this world. Please don’t let me be somebody who would grind up a dead body for a painting. That’s something Wicked would do, not me.
If only I could manage to be useful in this dimension—but I don’t have the scientific know-how to build a stabilizer device. That’s probably going to be even trickier here than at home, since the level of technology is more primitive. I’ve saved this world’s Marguerite, but now I have nothing to do except wait for my next opportunity to move on.
Finally, accepting that I have to deal with my life here, I put on clothing nearly identical to what I wore yesterday, just less sandy. Although I couldn’t recreate the complicated hairstyle this world’s Marguerite wore, I use the lace scarf to tie my hair back in a ponytail. Hopefully that will look appropriate. Beneath my blouse hangs the Firebird, which I’ll keep trying throughout the day. Once I put on the pith helmet, I feel ready for adventure. So I walk outside, prepared to see an archaeological expedition in all its glory.
Instead, I see my parents, Josie, Theo, and Paul all sitting around the still-burning central fire. A metal coffeepot sits atop the grate, and Mom slices bread from a loaf wrapped in what looks like waxed paper. She’s still wearing her robe, and Dad is reading a newspaper in German. Paul’s eyes meet mine only for a moment before he shyly looks away and accepts the bread from Mom.
“Not like you to be late for breakfast,” Theo says, grinning. He’s got another jaunty scarf around his neck now, and his sunglasses are tinted dark green. “Did the mummy keep you awake all night?”
“No.” Somehow I think he’d take some weird satisfaction from my nightmares, so I don’t add anything else. “Sorry if I slept late. I don’t want to miss anything.”
Which is true. As long as I’m stuck here, I might as well take a good look around—and exploring ancient Egyptian tombs will be fascinating as long as no more mummies leap from the walls.
My parents exchange glances before my father says, “You do remember that it’s the Sabbath, don’t you, Marguerite?”
I guess Mom and Dad had to be religious in at least one universe. “Oh. Of course. I forgot.”
“Good thing you’re wearing that pith helmet,” Josie says. She lights a cigarette, which startles me until I remember that probably nobody in this world knows yet that smoking causes cancer. “Because otherwise I’d be worried you’re suffering from sunstroke.”
“Marguerite is only eager to get back to work.” Paul’s thick Russian accent—so like that of Lieutenant Markov—melts my heart. I look over at him just as he hands over a piece of bread on a blue tin plate and a mug of coffee. He fixed my meal before he served himself. I smile at him as warmly as I can manage, and he ducks his head. The moment should be adorable, but instead I find myself thinking of Paul as I left him back home: head bowed, as if the shame and despair he felt—the residual effects of his splintering—were literally weighing him down, making it hard for him to move.
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Dad peers at me over the rims of his spectacles. “You look pale, Marguerite.”
“I’m fine.” I try to brighten up—that way I won’t draw extra attention.
Time to concentrate on what matters most about Paul at this moment: He’s still this world’s Paul, at least eight hours after I jumped into this universe. My Paul remains in the Londonverse. Apparently he feels the need to find the body before he follows me here, but that can take a while. Dredging a river for a corpse is lengthy, tedious work with no guarantee of success.
This is a subject I know way too much about. After they told us my father had died crashing his car into the river, I spent a lot of time researching that, mostly after I knew he was actually alive and okay. Having him back with us didn’t erase the trauma of thinking he was dead. I don’t know why, but it didn’t. For weeks I had nightmares in which I found out I’d gone to the wrong universe, that the father I’d brought back wasn’t mine, whatever my brain could invent to convince me Dad had died after all. Learning more about what might have happened to him if he had gone into the river . . . well, it helped somehow. But now it means my knowledge about what a water-bloated corpse looks like is way, way too vivid.
Please don’t let Paul have to see that, I think. Please.
“If Marguerite doesn’t feel the need to rest, then I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t get something done today,” my mother says. “We need the work crews for excavation, but not for her sketching. In fact, she really should have more time down in the tombs when she can draw uninterrupted.”
“And the sooner you get down there, the better.” Dad lifts his coffee to me, as if in a toast. “We don’t want last night’s little incident to spook you.”
I raise my mug to him and take a drink—and then stifle the shudder that passes through me. Oh, my God, that coffee is strong. Crazy strong. Like, if I drink this whole mug, I might be able to see through time. Apparently, if you wanted to drink coffee before the invention of the filter, you had to mean it.
“She shouldn’t go into the tombs alone again,” Paul suggests. “I’m happy to go with her.”
Theo’s face falls as he sees the opportunity one second too late. Maybe I ought to feel sorry for this world’s Theo, but I figure he can take care of himself. “I’d like that,” I say, and Paul smiles. It feels good to see him smile again.
Twenty minutes later, he leads me into another tomb—down another ladder, this time into a far larger passageway, one where it’s easy to stand up and walk. The lantern in Paul’s hand illuminates a long corridor that seems to stretch into infinity. As he holds it up, its light reveals the hieroglyphics and paintings on the wall. The entire Egyptian pantheon stands before me painted in ochre, cobalt, and gold: Horus with his curved beak, Isis with her arms outstretched like wings, Anubis with his dark jackal head waiting to take the dead to the underworld.
“This is amazing,” I whisper. My fingers reach toward the symbols, but I know better than to touch them.
“Almost intact.” Paul sounds proud. “With the help of your sketches, we’ll be able to translate them. People who died three thousand years ago will speak again.”
I flip open my sketchbook, which I hadn’t yet taken the time to look through. Here, I draw as much as I paint, if not more—sometimes with colored pencils, sometimes with plain—and my work reveals much more meticulous detail than I’ve ever used in my artwork back home.
“You’re the only one who hasn’t studied Egyptology,” Paul adds. “Not formally, at least. But you’re the one who might make the greatest discoveries of all.”
That’s when it hits me: My dad wasn’t joking about me being in the “family trade.” Here, I’m an Egyptologist too. This time, I’m not just along for the ride. I work alongside Mom and Dad. I’m part of the team. That’s never happened before.
Wait, no. It’s true for Wicked—she’s as much a part of the Home Office’s plans as anyone. But she shouldn’t get to be the only one, because this feels incredible.
See, my parents have never made me feel bad for not inheriting their science-genius genes the way Josie did. They’ve always encouraged my artwork and never even suggested that my kind of creativity was less important than theirs. Still, they’re the ones who have redefined the laws of physics. I’m the one who has had exactly one gallery show in my life. It’s hard not to feel insignificant when your parents are basically Marie and Pierre Curie. What would I have to create to match the Firebird? The Sistine Chapel, maybe.
But here, my parents need my artwork. I’m part of their discoveries and their triumphs. The knowledge fills a hole in my heart I hadn’t even known was there until this second.
Maybe you’d think being a perfect traveler, a journeyer through the dimensions, would have been as fulfilling. The difference is, that’s something that was done to me. As great a gift as it is, the burden of it is real. And the danger. And the wrong I’ve done. This, though—these sketches of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics—this is pure. Totally my own, born out of the art I love.
Compared to the terrible stuff that’s happening throughout the multiverse right now, this consolation isn’t much. But maybe I need it more. I’m grateful for even this brief wonder, this moment that could almost be called happiness.
I hug my sketchbook to my chest, and Paul laughs softly. “You seem . . . excited to get to work.”
“I am.” For as long as I’m stuck in this universe, I intend to do my best.
Paul hesitates before saying, in his thick Russian accent, “I always wished I could draw and paint as you do.”
“Really?”
He nods, his eyes not quite meeting mine. Sometimes it’s adorable how such a large, strong man can be so shy. “We find so many artifacts of a lost civilization. A broken statue. A buried jar. We see shards and scraps. Mere pieces of what was a glorious whole. When I think about this, I wish I could put it back together again. Not as it was before—that is of course impossible. But enough to see it, truly see it, as it once was. The art you create—that’s as close as we ever come.”
Not as it was before. I remember racing through the dimensions, trying desperately to put the pieces of Paul’s soul back together again. Can he ever be the same? Or will I only see him the way this Paul sees Ancient Egypt—in paintings, in memories, and in dreams?
I refuse to believe that my Paul’s soul is lost. He’s not broken. Not one of the ruins that surrounds us. He can make it.
Then Paul’s eyes widen, and he steps back, grimacing as if in pain. He slumps heavily against the wall as if the paintings weren’t even there.
“Paul!” I go to him, alarmed. “Are you—”
My hand touches his chest, and beneath his shirt I feel the unmistakable outline of his Firebird. It’s my Paul, here at last.
I want to hug him, but he holds out his hands as though for balance. He’s still disoriented. “Where are we?”
“Egypt. This is an ancient tomb, and we’re all exploring it together. As dimensions go, this one is pretty freakin’ awesome, right?” I’m trying to make him smile, because if I can, that means he didn’t have to see the dead body of Londonverse’s Marguerite. But Paul’s face is pale, and his gray eyes tormented, and I know the last thing he saw in that world. “I’m sorry.”
“You could’ve died.” Then his body tenses. His eyes widen. His voice drops to a growl as he says, “Maybe you did.”
“Paul?”
He doesn’t answer—instead he pushes me back so roughly that I nearly hit the opposite wall. Something in his gaze reminds me of the cold-blooded Mafiaverse Paul, who unloaded bullets into Theo without even flinching. “Prove who you are.”
“What?”
“You could be her,” Paul says. His hands grip my shoulders so tightly that I could never wrench myself free. “You could have killed her, and waited here to kill me too. So prove it. Prove that you’re my Marguerite or I promise you—”
Paul doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t have to. He just saw one Marguerite lying dead in front of him. Now he’s willing to kill another with his bare hands.
My Paul would never do that—ever—or he wouldn’t have.
But the splintering has damaged him, left rough edges and paranoia where love used to be. To my horror I realize that I may not even know Paul anymore.
And if he doesn’t know me . . . would he hurt me?
Oh, God. He would.