THIRTY

The old man wasn’t happy to have guests. The moment the minivan rolled into his garage, he threw an antsy scan around the neighborhood, then closed the power gate. Zack had barely stepped out of the driver’s door when a gnarled and stubby finger poked his chest.

“You the leader?”

The cartoonist stammered. He’d never considered the title before and he didn’t enjoy wearing it now. “I’m Zack.”

“I don’t want to know your name. I just want to know if you’re the man to talk to.”

In his recent portal delivery, among all the notes and handcuffs, Peter included directions to a house in Quinwood, West Virginia, seventeen miles east of the highway ambush site.

His name’s Xander. He’ll be expecting you. He won’t be pleasant but he’ll hide you. He has no love for Deps.

He stood just a thumb taller than Mia, with a scrubbed pink face and the flawless gray bouffant of a news anchor. Despite the early hour, he wore a sharp blue blazer ensemble with a red silk ascot and matching pocket square. Zack figured the man stood out like neon in this rustic little town, a Truman Capote in a sea of John Waynes. Not that the Silvers were any less conspicuous. Four of them were dressed like burglars while two sported the blue prisoner jumpsuits of DP-9.

Xander covered his mouth at the sight of David’s gory hand, which had already bled through its dressing and now dripped a crimson puddle.

“Oh, Lord no. He didn’t tell me you’d have injured people bleeding all over my rugs.”

Amanda narrowed her eyes at him. “Peter didn’t know. If you have towels—”

“Take what you want,” he said, his palms raised in high dither. “I was never here. You’re merely robbers who broke in while I was visiting my sister.”

The hair-dryer whirr of an aerocar motor turned all heads to the door. Theo peered through the glass.

“Get away from the window!” Xander yelled.

“A taxi just pulled into your driveway.”

“It’s mine. I was hoping to be gone before you showed up.”

He thrust a set of keys in Zack’s hand, then gestured at his small red sedan.

“You have three days before I report it missing. If you’re still driving it by then, it’s your problem.”

“I understand. Look, we have money. We’ll pay for whatever we—”

Xander cut him off with a scoffing hiss. “You people never change. You think you can buy your way out of any fix.”

Zack blinked at him in dark wonder. He thinks we’re Gothams.

“Listen, if you talk to Peter—”

“I won’t,” Xander insisted.

“—tell him the Deps are watching him.”

He snorted a chuckle. “The Deps are all fools to a man. If they’re watching Peter, it’s only because he’s letting them.”

The cab honked. Xander lugged his suitcase to the door, then turned around one last time.

“Don’t bleed on my rugs. Don’t abuse my cat. Don’t be here when I get back. And when you talk to Peter, you tell him, ‘No more favors.’ My debt’s officially paid.”

He sneered at Amanda’s thick metal collar, a remote-triggered gas dispenser that the Deps typically used on lunatics twice her size.

“They finally admit you exist now. At long last, the Bureau believes.”

He left them in the garage, all grim and exhausted in the wake of their messy battle. Mia didn’t care that she was standing around in her flimsy undershirt, or that she still tasted the blood of the Dep she bit. All her dark thoughts revolved around David. The poor boy had screamed all throughout the van ride as Amanda disinfected his wounds. Now he’d become dark-eyed and listless, a living corpse.

It killed Hannah to see him like this. David had been their strongest wall, their toughest spine. Now the universe had broken him as thoroughly as Hannah broke the back of that federal agent.

She wrapped her arms around Theo, burying her face in his chest. He rubbed her shoulder and looked to the minivan.

“Zack, if that thing has an antitheft tracker—”

“It does. I’ll rust it.” He scanned the group, his nervous eyes lingering on David. “You guys should get some rest.”

Mia held Amanda’s arm. “You want me to find a towel?”

Through the garage-door glass, Amanda watched Xander depart. The Deps may have been fools to a man, but she knew they had one smart woman. A second encounter with Melissa seemed all but inevitable. Next time she wouldn’t bother with sleeping gas.

Amanda rubbed her brow with a bloody hand, too tired to even cry.

“No. Screw the rugs.”

—

The house was as posh and immaculate as its owner. The living room teemed with modernist sculptures, abstract paintings, and bizarrely shaped furniture that seemed more ornamental than functional.

Mia reclined in a lounger, stroking the neck of a fat black cat while she replayed the events of the morning. She could only imagine how her dad and brothers would have reacted to seeing their sweet little treasure on the highway, growling threats at federal agents as she cuffed their wrists. She might have seized the mantle of Meanest Farisi if she hadn’t screwed up so badly.

She chewed her pen in somber thought, then scribbled into her journal.

The time may come when you need to put handcuffs on people. When you do, make them tight. I didn’t, and David got shot because of it.

Now that she was freed from the fear of paradox, she could send any messages she wanted through her past portals. It brought her a modicum of comfort to think she could create a branching timeline where that agent never broke free and seized Rebel’s gun. The note would make all the difference in the world to a parallel David. She only hoped this one could forgive her.

He slouched at the kitchen table, processing his wound with bleary misery. The bullet had reduced his ring and middle fingers to stubs, turning his right hand into a crude, misshapen trident. The sight of his infirmity, his obscenity, forced his rage into a single vengeful beam. It didn’t point at Mia.

“I warned you,” he told Amanda, through a hoarse and jagged rasp. “I warned you what would happen if you took Theo to that health fair. Do you believe me now?”

The widow sat at his side, bandaging his hand in grim intensity. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry. Just like you were sorry when you ignored Mia’s warning and confronted those policemen. Just like you were sorry when you nearly killed Hannah and Zack with your tempis.”

Amanda hid her torment behind a face of stone. She knew from experience that not all patients were brave in the face of their pain. Some were downright cruel.

“If you would just take an epallay—”

He slapped the patch from her hand. “I do not want that chemical filth in my body. I’d sooner wear leeches.”

Mia shut her eyes in a tortured wince. She could hear David’s every word from the living room and anxiously waited for her due share of the rancor.

“You’re a stupid woman, Amanda. As stupid as you are sanctimonious. The fact that you even lecture other—”

The violent slam of a car hood cut him off. Zack treaded in from the garage and threw David a baleful glare on the way to the sink. The boy’s deep blue eyes narrowed to slits.

“You have something to say to me?”

The cartoonist scrubbed his greasy hands under the faucet. “He was bald and black.”

“Excuse me?”

“The agent who shot you. He was a bald, black man. I’m only telling you this because you seem to have him confused with Amanda.”

She raised a palm at Zack. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not all right. I know he’s hurt right now—”

“Hurt right now?” David stood up and brandished his hand. “Do you think this is a temporary condition, Zack? Do you expect to heal me like you so brilliantly healed that animal? At least Amanda’s fearsome in her incompetence. You were just a joke out there. The way you took Melissa’s side against me—”

“You were acting like a psychopath!”

“I did what had to be done!”

“All you did was prove their worst fears about us! Even I was scared of you!”

“Even you,” David mocked. “You’re scared of everything. You’re the most cowardly man I’ve ever known.”

Amanda shot to her feet. “Okay, stop it! Stop. This isn’t the time for this.” She looked to David. “Please sit down and let me finish.”

“No! I’ve had it with both of you!”

“David . . .”

“You don’t ever listen to me! None of you listen! I’m fighting to keep you all alive but you just . . . you . . .”

David sucked a sharp breath as hot knives of fire shot up his arm. All his life, he’d been a stranger to pain. He’d never broken a bone, never pulled a muscle, never suffered a burn or laceration . . . at least not that he could remember. And now here he was, suffering an agony that was medieval in its cruelty. It was powerful enough to shatter every mask and pretense, every chiseled image of the person he fought to be.

As David fell to his knees and cried, Zack winced in self-reproach. He blew a heavy breath. “Listen—”

“No,” David sniffed. “I’m done listening to you. I’m done protecting you. You can both go die for all I care.”

Mia’s heart skipped a beat as David hurried through the living room. He was halfway up the stairs when he heard her high voice, barely a whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

He stopped mid-flight to look at her. From the new lines of grief on his beautiful face, Mia guessed he was done being vicious. She expected her rebuke now to be one of gloomy disappointment. I gave you one task, Mia. One. You couldn’t even do that.

Instead, he continued upstairs without a word.

Mia vented a heavy breath and continued to pet the purring feline in her lap. Her grandmother always told her that black cats were good luck for good people. Mia didn’t even think she needed it. While her friends all suffered fractures and gunshots, concussions and amputations, she had yet to get a single scratch. The one bullet that was fired at her had missed her head by millimeters.

She peered down at the cat, her tortured mind bargaining with the forces of fate. Give me the next one, she implored them. Whatever bad thing happens, you leave them alone. You give it to me.

—

Hannah spooned Theo on the futon, listening to his gentle snores while she stared at the wall in restless discomfort. The musty little office reeked of old age and iodine, and her wrists still throbbed from shoving that agent. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his body skid across the highway in slow motion, scraping bloody patches with each impact.

She gave up on sleep and sauntered out to the hallway. Through the crack of a bedroom door, she saw Mia snoozing away on Xander’s queen-size bed. The fat black cat sat dejectedly at her side, mewling for his new best friend to give him more love.

The sound of whistling laughter drew Hannah to the stairwell. She crouched down and peered into the living room, where Amanda and Zack stretched side by side on a wide chaise longue. They looked like a cozy married couple in their long T-shirts and underwear. Morning light cracked through the wood blinds, striping their bare legs.

Amanda rolled onto her side and fought an indignant grin as Zack giggled deliriously.

“You just find that hilarious, don’t you?”

She’d just finished explaining how she subdued Owen Nettles in the back of the truck. While the peculiar little agent paced and mumbled, Amanda summoned a burst of tempis from her toes. Owen turned around just in time to see the man-size foot coming at him. Before the whiteness could even touch him, his eyes rolled back and he fainted to the floor.

Amanda had been too stressed at the time to find it funny. Even now her humor was tempered by the fact that she owned only one shoe.

Zack wiped his eyes and moaned. “You should’ve seen us outside the truck. We were so scared of what that guy might do. Melissa made him sound like Joe Kickass.”

“He was not Joe Kickass,” Amanda said. “I’m just glad I didn’t hurt him.”

Disenchanted with Mia, the cat sauntered down the hall and rubbed against Hannah. She caressed his back, praying she wasn’t her sister’s next topic of discussion.

Amanda pursed her lips in a droll pout. “I’m so glad David called me stupid. That’s just what my self-esteem needed today.”

“At least he didn’t call you a coward.”

“Right. I lack a brain. You lack courage. All we need now is a tin man.”

Zack plunged into another fit of punch-drunk giggles, until his humor gradually melted away. He smeared his bleary eyes.

“I shouldn’t have gotten on his case like that. He was probably just blustering out there. It’s not like he hurt any of them.”

No, Hannah thought. I’m the one who left a victim.

“He’s just in pain,” Amanda told him. “He has a long recovery ahead of him. The best thing we can do is be there for him, without judgment. He needs siblings now, not parents.”

Hannah suppressed a jaded laugh. It took an extraordinary lack of self-awareness for Amanda to equate siblings with nonjudgment.

Zack closed his eyes and cracked a boyish grin. Amanda eyed him flippantly. “Still tickled about the tempis?”

“No.”

“Then what, pray tell, are you smiling about, Zachary?”

He folded his hands over his chest, his expression serene and contented. “Just nice to have you back.”

Hannah scowled cynically in the tender silence that followed. Shit. Here we go.

Amanda nestled up against him, resting her hand on his. As their fingers laced together, she suffered an unwelcome flashback to her alley encounter with Esis, the madwoman’s stern and cryptic warning. Do not entwine with the [something something]. Amanda couldn’t salvage the rest from her trauma-scarred memories. She had larger concerns now anyway.

She heaved a jaded sigh across Zack’s chest. “You’re a schmuck.”

He chuckled at her shiksa Yiddish. “Why am I a schmuck?”

“Because you’re being all sweet and I know it won’t last. You always run hot and cold with me.”

“Says the woman who sat on my lap, then threw me off a balcony.”

“You still blame me for that.”

“No. I always blamed Evan.”

“Then why did you get so distant after that?”

Zack considered pinning that on Evan too, but then he’d have to explain the teasing hint about Amanda and Peter, a romantic prophecy that still bothered him to no end.

“I’m too tired to open that box,” he replied. “Let’s just agree I’m a schmuck and move on.”

Hannah watched the cat roll around on the carpet, purring in mindless bliss. For a moment, she thought Amanda and Zack would do the same. Now she wasn’t sure if they’d kiss, fight, or fall asleep on each other. In any case, it was time to leave them alone.

Just as she rose to her feet, Amanda took Zack’s advice and changed the subject.

“I’m worried about Hannah.”

A sharp new panic gripped the actress, freezing her in place. Her inner self waved her on with flapping arms. Go! Leave! You don’t want to hear this!

“She’ll be all right,” Zack assured Amanda.

“You’ve only known her ten weeks. I’ve known her her whole life. I know what trauma does to her.”

“You’re looking down from the big sister perch.”

“I’m not looking down, just back. She has a history, Zack. It’s right there on her wrists.”

A storm of screams brewed in Hannah’s throat. She clenched her fists and vanished into the bathroom. The startled cat bolted down the stairs, past the chaise longue.

Amanda raised her head at the scurrying footsteps. “What was that?”

“Bad luck,” said Zack.

“Great. Like we need more.”

Amanda fixed a tense gaze at the sleeping-gas collar on the coffee table, a grim souvenir of her incarceration. Forty minutes ago, she asked Zack to reverse the lock, a task he’d initially refused out of fear of rifting her. She had to remind him that he was a man of minor miracles, able to rot a swinging banana from twenty feet away, grow keys out of keyholes, and turn old mice into young ones. He’d led an actress and two teenagers into battle with armed federal agents, and won.

Ultimately he’d indulged her, concentrating on her collar with the sweaty apprehension of a bomb defuser. The moment he popped the lock on her very last shackle, Amanda’s regard turned a hot new color and she fought the urge to kiss him. Now as she pressed against him, his heartbeat thumping against her breast, she wished she had her sister’s skill with men. She wished she could find just the right words to express her feelings, her qualms.

Then she considered that Zack was an artist. Maybe he didn’t need words.

Thin white strands of tempis slowly sprouted from her forearm, twisting around their locked hands like ivy. Zack leered with grinning marvel as small white leaves sprouted from the vines.

“Wow. Amanda, that’s beautiful. You ever do that before?”

“No.”

Her ropes wrapped tighter around them, driving the point home. The cartoonist aired a loud, somber breath.

“Guess we have a bit of a problem.”

“Guess we do,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do about it,” said Zack. “I spent four years in a bad entanglement.”

Amanda fixed a heavy stare at her naked ring finger. “Five and a half.”

“With everything going on, I’m not sure I can handle another one. I’m not saying it’s inevitable. Just possible. And after all the drama with Theo and Hannah . . .”

The tempic leaves withered. The vines retracted into Amanda’s skin. Zack checked her grim expression.

“I just pissed you off again, didn’t I?”

She shook her head. “No. I understand your hesitation. It’s smart.”

“Then why do I feel so stupid right now?”

“Because you know.”

“Know what?”

“That we don’t have much longer to live.”

Amanda struggled to her feet. Zack watched her as she moved to the shuttered window.

“You know they’re going to get us sooner or later, Zack. Whether it’s the Deps or Rebel or Esis, it’s just a matter of time. And yet here I am, worrying about being a proper widow. Here you are, worrying about the fights we might have a month from now. There is no month from now, Zack. Not for us. Maybe we should just . . . I don’t know . . .”

Zack joined her at the window and gently turned her around. When she realized he was simply drawing her into a hug, she fell into his arms with maniacal relief. Yes, yes, yes. Hugs were good. Hugs were safe.

“I’m sorry, Zack. I’m all over the place. I don’t know what I’m saying right now.”

He caressed her back. “It’s all right. You had a crappy day by anyone’s standards.”

“Make it better. Say something sweet to me.”

“Can it be about your looks?”

“No.”

“Because you’re very, very pretty.”

“I don’t care,” she said, though she held him tighter anyway. She cared a little.

“All right. Give me a moment to think it over.” He rested his chin on her shoulder, amazed that her hair could smell so good after twenty hours of captivity.

“You remember when we were on the balcony—”

“Oh God, Zack.”

“No, no. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the moments before, when you and I were cracking each other up with silly wordplay. I said I was antaganostic. You called yourself a tempis fugitive.”

She bloomed a wobbly smile. “I remember.”

“Yeah, well, that’s when I started to get nervous, because there aren’t a lot of people who can crack bad puns in Latin, or go joke for joke with me like you did. I knew from the start that you were strong and smart and very, very pretty, but nobody told me you were funny.”

The widow’s lips curled in a wavering smile. Zack pulled back to look at her.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen with us, Amanda. I just know that women like you are jackpots to guys like me. You don’t think short term with jackpots. You don’t screw them on the couch when they’re feeling vulnerable. I’ll wait as long as it takes for us to get our shit together. I don’t want to go the way of Hannah and Theo. We do this right or we don’t do it at all.”

Amanda held him so fiercely, she feared she’d break his ribs all over again. When she first met Zack, she had no idea that he was a rigid perfectionist, an uptight moralist, a minder, a mender. No wonder it felt so good to hug him. They were practically twins.

She ran a gentle hand down his cheek. “I really want to kiss you right now, but I won’t.”

“I wasn’t saying it to—”

“I know. I’m just thinking ahead. Wherever we end up running, whether it’s Brooklyn or Canada or God knows where, the six of us are going to rest and heal. And then once we get our act together, you and I are going to slip away for an evening. I don’t care if it has to be the second room of our criminal hideout, we’re going on a date. Some things have to be done the normal way. Even for people like us.”

His responding smile was warm enough to melt her. Amanda embraced him again, speaking stern but trembling words over his shoulder.

“Just don’t die on me, Zack. Don’t you dare die on me.”

He pressed her back and let out a glum sigh. “I can only promise to try.”

“Well, if you ever need more incentive, you think about our third date. I’m not Catholic about everything.”

Amanda covered his loud laugh, and then tensely bid him good night. She would have loved to rest with him down here on the couch, but the temptation to do something—

(do not entwine)

—would mess up their wonderful new plan.

She scrambled upstairs in dizzy haste, then conducted a stealthy check on the others. Theo and Mia were visible in their rooms. David and Hannah were tucked away behind closed doors. Amanda stowed her concerns, then climbed into bed with Mia.

As her eyelids fluttered with teeming fatigue, the widow’s mind shot like fireworks into the many branching futures. She pondered all the obstacles between her and a happy life, counting her issues like sheep.

Just as she began to drift off, the dangling wires of her memory connected and Esis breached her thoughts once again.

Do not entwine with the funny artist.

Amanda’s eyes sprang open in hot alarm. She stayed awake and disturbed for hours.

—

At the jagged tail end of his twenty-hour slumber, Theo fell into a dream that by now had become painfully familiar. He existed as a disembodied spirit, a formless being drifting slowly through a silent gray void. A bright white wall stretched endlessly in front of him like a vertical tundra, radiating a bitter coldness that chilled him to the core.

Theo dreaded coming here, but this was his job now. There was something he needed to find on this wall. He was the only one who could do it.

He kept moving without any idea of direction. Up, down, left, right. It all looked the same. It was only when he moved toward the wall that he could make out the infinite beads of light that comprised its surface. Each one was burning agony on his thoughts, like a magnified sunbeam. He kept his distance and never stopped moving. He had so much area to cover. Too much. Whenever he thought about it, an arch panic overtook him. I can’t do it, Peter. The wall’s too big. The string’s too thin. I’ll never find it. I don’t even think it exists.

And yet he kept traveling, searching the wall for the one little strand that meant everything to everyone. The only thing worse than being in this cold and dreary hell was leaving it, since he knew he’d have to face his companions and tell them once again that he failed.

Though they always thanked him for trying and assured him that tomorrow would be a better day, Theo could see the heartbreak behind their expressions. They knew as well as he did that there were only so many tomorrows left. While he flittered and flailed on the other side of the wall, his friends were merely waiting. Waiting for the sky to fall again.

—

He jerked awake on the futon, his chest moist with sweat. He did a double take at the clock when it told him that it was 2:12 in the morning. Theo had slept nearly a full day in this dingy little office. Even his coma didn’t last that long.

He relieved himself in the bathroom, gargled a shot of mouthwash, then lumbered down the stairs. The smell of sizzling bacon made his mouth water. He’d barely had a bite to eat since Nemeth.

The moment Hannah saw him, she dropped her spatula in the frying pan and hugged him.

“Thank God. I was starting to get worried. How you feeling?”

“Like Rip van Winkle.” He saw Zack and Mia at the table. “You’re having breakfast at two A.M.?”

“We did some heavy sleeping ourselves,” Zack said.

The cartoonist seemed awfully chipper for a man on vampire time. Mia, by contrast, looked thoroughly morose. She aimed a dull gaze at her lap through her tangle of bangs.

Hannah pushed him to the table. “Sit. I’m making waffles too.”

Theo studied her carefully as she returned to the stove. He knew her well enough to recognize the “everything’s fine” voice she used when she was bottling her anger at someone. He could practically hear the creak of the crossbow string. Mercifully, the quarrel didn’t seem to be aimed at him.

He took a drowsy gander at the map book in Zack’s hands. “We leaving today?”

“I don’t know. Depends on David.”

“Well, you know what he’ll say.”

“I’m talking about his health, not his preferences. If Amanda says he’s not ready, we’re staying.”

Theo gazed out the window at the lumic lamppost. “She’ll be waiting for us in New York.”

“Who, Melissa?”

“Yeah. She knows exactly who we’re going to see.”

“Peter’s a dozen steps ahead of the Deps,” Zack replied. “He knew just where your truck would be, how many agents were guarding you. I don’t think those people are a problem for him.”

“You think Peter’s an augur too?” Hannah asked.

Zack shook his head. “No. I’m guessing he’s more like Mia. The two of them have some kind of portal juju going on.”

Mia’s expression grew darker. She’d received two new messages from her future self earlier, neither of which offered any practical value. One of them was cruel enough to make her cry. If Peter shared her affliction, she pitied him.

Theo jerked a lazy shrug. “I’m still not sure what to think of the guy, to be perfectly honest. I just hope—”

A sudden stabbing jolt caused him to wince and press his temple. Hannah rushed to his side.

“Theo!”

“I’m all right,” he assured her. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. If your problem’s coming back—”

“It’s just a headache. I’m fine.”

Zack eyed him warily. “Have you had any premonitions since they drugged you?”

“Not a one,” Theo said, hoping that was true. The great white wall still loomed large in his thoughts.

Mia’s stomach gurgled with stress as she recalled the first vague note she’d received from her elder self today.

Don’t get too comfortable. You’re not out of the storm.

—

Amanda sat quietly on the guest bed, tending David’s wound with edgy distraction. Though the widow had steeled herself with five deep breaths before knocking on David’s door, she was pleasantly surprised to find him genial. His pain was just a fraction of yesterday’s. The stumps of his fingers showed no signs of infection. Amanda thanked God for the double mercy. She couldn’t have handled a second attack of scorn. Not in her state.

David studied Amanda warily as she unwrapped a new roll of bandages. “How’s Mia?”

“She’s all right. Worried about you.”

He sighed with lament. “The way I acted, I don’t blame her. I’ve never experienced pain like that before. It was . . . enlightening.”

Amanda eyed him strangely. “Enlightening?”

“Ever since it happened, I’ve been thinking about the people of the past, the way they accepted agony as just another part of their lives. With all our advancements in technology and medicine, I’m wondering if perhaps we lost something as a species. A certain fortitude.”

“No one can accuse you of weakness, David. You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.”

“Well, I appreciate you saying that.” He cracked a dour smirk. “If Nietzsche’s right about the things that don’t kill us, then Zack’s really going to be afraid of me soon.”

Amanda felt a hot stab of anguish at the mention of Zack. She clenched her jaw and kept working.

“He’s not afraid of you,” she uttered.

“Then why did he call me a psychopath?”

“For the same reason you called me stupid, okay? He was upset. If you had stayed in the kitchen ten more seconds, he would have apologized.”

David eyed her with sharp surprise. He’d noticed her tension from the moment she entered the room. Now the woman who’d handled him so calmly yesterday seemed to be coming unglued.

“Amanda, I’m sorry for the way I behaved yesterday. I really am.”

“That’s not why I’m . . .” Her eyes darted back and forth in quandary. “Can I pick your brain about something? In absolute confidence.”

“Of course. What about?”

“Esis.”

His sandy eyebrows rose in intrigue. “Wow. Okay. I mean I’m not sure how much insight I can give you. I only met her once.”

“Well, you’re the only other person I know who’s spoken to her. She . . .”

Amanda fought to explain her conundrum. All throughout her sleepless day, she’d replayed her back-alley encounter with Esis, reconstructing it word by word. By sundown, she’d pieced together the woman’s full warning. Do not entwine with the funny artist. I grow tired of telling you this. You entwine with your own, you won’t be a flower. You’ll just be dirt.

David listened to the story with abject fascination, stroking his chin with the arched brow of a sleuth.

“Wow. That’s . . . huh. At the risk of embarrassing you, it seems fairly obvious who she was referring to, and what she meant by ‘entwine.’”

Amanda nodded brusquely. “Yes. I know that. But how did she even . . . I mean . . .”

“How did she know that you and Zack would become intimate?”

She flinched in discomfort. “We haven’t. Not yet. But she gave me that warning before I even met him.”

“Well, clearly Esis is an augur of some sort. It’s not like we don’t know any.”

“But why would she care who I . . . entwine with?”

The boy gazed ahead in deep rumination. He started and stopped himself twice before speaking.

“She did say something odd to us, me and my father. He was with me when she gave me my bracelet. She just popped into our living room through a glowing white portal in the wall. Now that I think about it, I wonder if it’s the same temporal mechanism that Mia uses for her notes.”

Amanda wound her finger impatiently. “What did she say?”

“She told us the world was ending in minutes, that I was moving on and my father wasn’t. Had the portal not lent her a certain latitude for wild assertions, we might have dismissed her as a lunatic. But my father certainly listened. The whole thing made him rather . . . Well, if you knew him, you’d know how rarely he shows emotion. But at that moment, he was overcome.”

David pressed his knuckles to his lips, his face marred with twitchy grief.

“I half expected him to plead for his life, so he could continue the work that was so important to him. But to my surprise, his one pressing question to Esis was ‘Will my son be all right?’”

Amanda held his arm. She could understand now how David had become so resilient. The poor boy had practically been raising himself since he was ten.

“Anyway, Esis was sympathetic,” he said. “She assured my father that I’d be in good health and excellent company. I remember her exact words on this. She said, ‘He’ll only be alone for a short while. Then he’ll be joined with his brothers and sisters.’”

The floor of Amanda’s stomach dropped. The room suddenly felt three times smaller.

David shrugged pensively. “I’d always assumed Esis was being figurative. But now—”

“That’s not it,” Amanda stammered. “That’s crazy. I know who I come from.”

“And I know who I come from. I’ve seen the video of my birth. Doesn’t rule out the possibility that our mothers were surrogates.”

“How can you even say that?”

“I’m just exploring the options, Amanda. We know the Pelletiers existed on our world. We know they chose us. We just don’t know when. Maybe they had an active role in our creation, forging us all from the same genetic template. If that doesn’t describe siblings, what does?”

Amanda stood up on watery legs. She leaned against the dresser.

“That’s insane. We can’t all be related. I mean Theo’s . . .”

“Asian. Yes. He might be an exception. Or perhaps their genetic engineering capabilities are more advanced than we realize.”

“But no one warned Hannah about entwining with Theo.” Did they? she suddenly wondered.

David chucked his good hand in a listless shrug. “I don’t know. In any case, if the Pelletiers are indeed augurs, then perhaps they knew that Hannah and Theo were destined to fail as a couple. Maybe they foresaw a more lasting union between you and Zack.”

Her throat closed tighter. “That’s not . . . You’re just guessing all this. None of this is proof.”

“Proof? No. But Esis did warn you about entwining with your own. And there’s one other thing I neglected to mention, something I’ve pondered every day. Maybe it’s why he didn’t ask more questions . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

David sighed. “When Esis appeared in our house, my father already knew her name.”

Amanda closed her eyes, fighting to hold herself together. She thought back to the incident on the Massachusetts Turnpike, seventeen years ago. Her father never uttered the Pelletiers’ names. But then he never asked for them either. Did he already know? Did both her parents know them?

She rushed to David’s side, squeezing his biceps with rigid fingers. “Listen to me. Whether you’re right or wrong about this, we have to keep it to ourselves. You hear me? Until we get absolute proof, we don’t breathe a word of this to the others.”

“If you wish.”

“You especially don’t tell Hannah and Theo. They don’t need this.”

“I said okay, Amanda.”

David watched her cautiously as she cleaned up the bandage debris. “Guess you have strong feelings for him.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough. But Amanda, there’s something you need to consider . . .”

“No.”

“Yes. This needs to be said. Whether you believe we’re all siblings or not, you know for a fact that Esis doesn’t want you entwining with Zack. You know she gets angry about it.”

“What are you saying?”

David studied his bandaged hand with dark and heavy eyes.

“I’m saying that for your sake and his, you might want to start thinking of him as a brother.”

—

At a quarter to three, David joined the others in the kitchen for breakfast. Mia was thrilled to see him swap warm apologies with Zack, and beamed with gushing relief when he squeezed her hand under the table. It scared her how easily David could move her to good and bad places. She wondered if that was a sign of being in love.

The bacon and waffles were nearly all gone by the time Amanda came downstairs. She met Zack’s bright cheer with a nervous half grin, then avoided his gaze for the rest of the meal.

Soon Theo sucked a sharp breath in pain, grinding all conversation to a halt. He glanced around at his worried friends, then sighed with futility.

“Yeah. I think it’s coming back.”

Zack tapped the table in tense resolve. “All right then. That settles that.”

“What settles what?”

“As soon as we’re ready, we’re saying good-bye to the cat and hello to Peter.”

He scanned the faces of the others, lingering an extra second on Amanda. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

Hannah, Theo, and Mia slowly shook their heads, censoring their many leery doubts about Peter. Amanda merely stared at her empty plate, deeply lost in other concerns.

David was the only one who smiled. No one needed to ask him how he felt on the matter.

—

The bathroom mirror was nothing more than a floating lumic projection. It was impervious to fogging, and could reflect at six different viewing angles.

As Mia finished drying herself, her elbow brushed a button on the wall. Suddenly the picture changed to a rear view. Unhappy to be mooning herself, she reverted to the traditional reflection, then squinted curiously at her body. There seemed less of her now than usual. She must have shed at least ten pounds since fleeing Terra Vista.

She slipped on her clothes and ran a drying wand over her hair, examining herself with sunny awe. Between the weight loss and David’s forgiveness, her mood was nearly healed from the battering it took earlier, when she received the cruelest message yet from future times.

I hate you. I despise you with every fiber of my being. You’re so hopeless, so clueless, so utterly blind to the things happening right under your nose. The Pelletiers are laughing at you, Mia. Semerjean is laughing.

I’d spoil the joke for you if I could, but it really doesn’t matter. Just take my advice and kill yourself. We should have never come to this world. We should have died in the basement with Nana.

Even now, hours later, Mia reeled from her own venom. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life as the whipping girl for every Future Mia in a black mood. If the girl with two watches was right, then the problem would only get worse.

Mia suddenly heard sharp, angry voices outside the door.

“Okay! All right! I was just asking, Hannah!”

“You’re not asking! You’re blaming!”

Mia put down the heat wand and groaned. God. Not this. Not now.

The sisters stomped through the bedroom, both half-dressed and flailing in jittery rage. While Hannah stuffed unfolded garments into duffel bags, Amanda rummaged through Xander’s closet.

“There’s a difference between being upset and being upset at you,” the widow snapped. “I’m upset because I only own one shoe now!”

“And you’re upset at me because I left your other pair at the lake house!”

“Did I say that? Did you actually hear me use those words?”

“You didn’t have to. It was all in your tone. Do you think we just met?”

Amanda shook her head in trembling pique, throwing shoe after shoe over her shoulder. Of course the old man had the narrow feet of a ballerina. She was destined to go barefoot to Brooklyn.

“You always do this, Hannah. Always.”

“Always do what?”

“Take your bad moods out on me. I know what you’re really upset about.”

“Oh do you now?”

“You hurt that agent. I get it. I hurt two cops so I know exactly what you’re going through. But do you come to me for help? Of course not. You decide to yell and scream at me, just like you always do!”

“Excuse me. Who’s screaming now?”

Amanda jumped up from the floor. “I am! I’m screaming at you now because I can’t take it anymore! You wear me out!”

Hannah clenched her jaw and looked away, her foot tapping maniacally.

“You think I’m weak. You think I’m so goddamn weak. Have you considered the fact that maybe I’m only weak around you? Maybe you’re the one who—”

The bathroom door flew open. Mia barged into the room, her wet hair throwing droplets in arcs. She snatched a pair of sandals from under the bed and chucked one at the feet of each sister. She waved a quivering finger back and forth between them.

“No more. I’m not sharing a room with either of you ever again. I don’t care if I have to sleep outside in a dumpster. I can’t do this anymore.”

Amanda and Hannah watched her in matching stupor as she stormed back to the bathroom. She spun around at the door, fighting tears.

“You think I wouldn’t kill to have my brothers here? You think Zack wouldn’t kill to have his brother here? You have no idea how lucky you are, and yet all you do is fight. There’s something seriously wrong with both of you.”

“Mia—”

She slammed the door behind her, jostling a picture from the wall.

Dead-faced, silent, Hannah made a slow trek out of the room. Amanda sat down on the bed and calmly gathered the sandals. As she slipped them over her feet, she thought once again about David’s theory and realized that the DNA didn’t matter. The six of them lived and screamed and hurt each other like family. They were all siblings down to the bone.

—

The Silvers rode the final leg of their journey in dismal silence. Xander’s red Cameron Arrow was a skinny little car with two platform rows that were better suited for couples. Zack’s arm brushed Mia every time he turned the steering wheel. She could feel Theo’s body tense up whenever he suffered a new flash of pain. She held his hand, caressing it with worry. Her future self once told her that it was more important to get to New York in a strong state of mind than it was to get there fast. She had no illusions about anyone’s current condition.

David slept soundly in the back, his head flopping in turns between each sister’s shoulder. As Hannah fixed her surly gaze out the window, her dark emotions flew back and forth across the car. She faulted Amanda, then faulted herself. She hated Amanda, then hated herself.

By the time she snapped out of her doleful trance, the Arrow had shot out of a tunnel and into a great urban thoroughfare.

Hannah blinked at the sight of yellow taxis and Jewish delis. “Wait. Are we . . . ? Is this . . . ?”

Zack shined his searchlight gaze around at all the lumic signs and tempic storefronts, these alien embellishments to the city he once knew. Though he was finally back in his native Manhattan, the cartoonist never felt farther from home.

“This is it,” he said, with a nervous exhale. “We’re here.”