About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgments

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About the Author Books by Claudia Gray Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

MY HAND SHAKES AS I BRACE MYSELF AGAINST THE BRICK wall. Rain falls cold and sharp against my skin, from a sky I’ve never seen before. It’s hard to catch my breath, to get any sense of where I am. All I know is that the Firebird worked. It hangs around my neck, still glowing with the heat of the journey.

There’s no time. I don’t know whether I have minutes, or seconds, or even less. Desperately I tug at these unfamiliar clothes—the short dress and

shiny jacket I wear have no pockets, but there’s a small bag dangling from my shoulder. When I fish inside, I can’t find a pen, but there’s a lipstick. Fingers trembling, I unscrew it and scrawl on a tattered poster on the wall of the alley. This is the message I must pass on, the one goal I have to remember after everything else I am is gone.

KILL PAUL MARKOV. Then I can only wait to die.

Die isn’t the right word. This body will continue to breathe. The heart will continue to beat. But I won’t be the Marguerite Caine living in it anymore.

Instead, this body will return to its rightful owner, the Marguerite who actually belongs in this dimension. The

dimension I leaped into, using the Firebird. Her memories will take over again, any second, any moment, and while I know I’ll awaken again in time, it’s terrifying to think about... passing out. Getting lost. Being trapped inside her. Whatever it is that happens to people traveling from another dimension.

It hits me then. The Firebird really works. Travel between alternate dimensions is possible. I just proved it. Within my grief and fear, one small ember of pride glows, and it feels like the only heat or hope in the world. Mom’s theories are true. My parents’ work is vindicated. If only Dad could

have known.

Theo. He’s not here. It was unrealistic of me to hope he would be, but I hoped anyway.

Please let Theo be all right, I think. It would be a prayer if I still believed in anything, but my faith in God died last night too.

I lean against the brick wall, hands spread like a suspect’s on a police car right before the cuffs go on. My heart hammers in my chest. Nobody has ever done this before—which means nobody knows what’s about to happen to me. What if the Firebird can’t bring me back to my own dimension?

What if this is how I die?

This time yesterday, my dad

probably asked himself that same question.

I close my eyes tightly, and the cold rain on my face mingles with hot tears. Although I try not to picture how Dad died, the images force their way into my mind over and over: his car filling with water; brownish river lapping over the windshield; Dad probably dazed from the wreck but scrambling to get the door open, and failing. Gasping for the last inches of air in the car, thinking of me and Mom and Josie—

He must have been so scared. Dizziness tilts the ground beneath

my feet, weakens my limbs. This is it.

I’m going under.

So I force my eyes open to stare at the message again. That’s the first thing I want the other Marguerite to see. I want that message to stay with her, no matter what. If she sees that, if she keeps running over those words in her mind, that will awaken me within her as surely as the Firebird could. My hate is stronger than the dimensions, stronger than memory, stronger than time. My hate is now the truest part of who I am.

The dizziness builds, and the world turns fuzzy and gray, blackening the words KILL PAUL MARKOV —

—and then my vision clears. The word KILL sharpens back into focus.

Confused, I step back from the

brick wall. I feel wide awake. More so than before, actually.

And as I stand there, staring down at my high heels in a puddle, I realize that I’m not going anywhere.

Finally, as I begin to trust my luck, I step farther into the alley. The rain beats down harder on my face as I look up into the storm-drenched sky. A hovercraft looms low over the city like yet another thundercloud. Apparently it’s there to fly holographic billboards across the city skyline. Astonished, I gaze at the hovercraft as it soars through this strange new dimension, 3D advertisements flickering through their motions in the sky around it: Nokia.

BMW. Coca-Cola.

This is so like my world, and yet not my world at all.

Is Theo as overwhelmed by the journey as I am? He must be. His grief is nearly as deep as mine, even though Dad was only his adviser; more than that, this is what Theo and my parents worked for these past few years. Has he kept his memory as well? If so, we’ll be in control throughout the trip, our minds piloting the selves born in this alternate dimension. That means Mom was wrong about one thing—which is kind of staggering, given that every other theory she’s ever had has just been proved true. But I’m grateful for it, at least for the moment before my gratitude

disintegrates in the hot blaze of anger. Nothing can stop me now. If Theo

made it too and he can find me—and I want so desperately for him to find me— then we’ll be able to do this. We can get to Paul. We can take back the Firebird prototype he stole. And we can take our revenge for what he did to my father.

I don’t know if I’m the kind of person who can kill a man in cold blood. But I’m going to find out.

2

I’M NOT A PHYSICIST LIKE MOM. NOT EVEN A GRAD STUDENT in physics like Paul and Theo. I’m the homeschooled daughter of two scientists who gave me a lot of leeway to direct my own education. As the only right-brained member of the family, I wound up pursuing my passion for painting a whole lot more than I ever studied higher-level science. In the fall, I’m headed to the Rhode Island School of Design, where I’m going to major in art restoration. So if you want to mix oil

paints, stretch a canvas, or discuss Kandinsky, I’m your girl. The science underlying cross-dimensional travel? No such luck. But here’s what I know:

The universe is in fact a multiverse. Countless quantum realities exist, all layered within one another; we’ll call these dimensions, for short.

Each dimension represents one set of possibilities. Essentially, everything that can happen does happen. There’s a dimension where the Nazis won World War II. A dimension where the Chinese colonized America long before Columbus ever sailed over. And a dimension where Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are still married. Even a dimension just like my own, identical in

every way, except on one day in fourth grade, that Marguerite chose to wear a blue shirt while I chose to wear a green one. Every possibility, every time fate flips a coin, splits the dimensions yet again, creating yet more layers of reality. It goes on and on forever, to infinity.

These dimensions aren’t off in faraway outer space. They’re literally all around us, even within us, but because they exist in another reality, we can’t perceive them.

Early in her career, my mom, Dr. Sophia Kovalenka, hypothesized that we should be able not only to detect those dimensions but also to observe them— even interact with them. Everyone

laughed. She wrote paper after paper, expanded her theory year after year, and nobody would listen.

Then one day, just when it looked like she was going to get permanently written off as a crackpot, she managed to publish one more paper pointing out parallels between wave theory and her work on dimensional resonance. Possibly only one scientist on earth took that paper seriously—Dr. Henry Caine, an English oceanographer. And physicist. And mathematician. And, obviously, overachiever. When he saw the paper, he was able to grasp potential that nobody else had ever seen before in the theory. This was lucky for Mom, because once they became research

partners, her work really started to go somewhere.

This was even luckier for Josie and me, because Dr. Henry Caine would become our dad.

Fast-forward twenty-four years. Their work had reached the point where it was starting to attract notice even outside scientific circles. The experiments in which they’d shown evidence of alternate dimensions had been replicated by other scientists at Stanford and Harvard; nobody was laughing at them anymore. They were ready to try traveling between dimensions—or, at least, to fashion a device that could make it possible.

Mom’s theory is that it would be very, very difficult for physical objects to move between dimensions, but energy should be able to move fairly easily. She also says consciousness is a form of energy. This led to all kinds of crazy speculation—but mostly Mom and Dad remained focused on building a device that would turn dimensional travel into more than a dream. Something that would allow people to journey to another dimension at will, and, even trickier, to come back again the same way.

This was daring. Even dangerous. The devices have to be made out of specific materials that move much more

easily than other forms of matter; they have to anchor the consciousness of the traveler, which is apparently very difficult; and about a million other technical considerations I’d have to get umpteen physics degrees to even understand. Long story short: the devices are really hard to make. Which is why my parents went through several prototypes before even considering a test.

So when they finally had one that seemed like it would work, only a couple of weeks ago, we had to celebrate. Mom and Dad, who usually drink nothing stronger than Darjeeling, opened a bottle of champagne. Theo handed me a glass too, and nobody even

cared.

“To the Firebird,” Theo said. The final prototype lay on the table around which we stood, its workings gleaming, intricate layers of metal folded in and atop each other like an insect’s wings. “Named after the legendary Russian creature that sends heroes on amazing quests and adventures”—here Theo nodded at my mother, before continuing —“and of course after my own muscle car, because yes, it’s just that cool.” Theo is a guy who says things like “muscle car” ironically. He says almost everything ironically. But there was real admiration in his eyes as he looked at my parents that night. “Here’s hoping we

have some adventures of our own.”

“To the Firebird,” Paul said. He must have been plotting what he was going to do right then, even as he lifted his glass and clinked it against Dad’s.

Basically, after decades of struggle and ridicule, my parents had finally reached the point where they’d gained real respect—and they were on the brink of a breakthrough that would take them far beyond that. Mom would’ve been heralded as one of the leading scientists in all history. Dad would have gotten at least Pierre Curie status. We could maybe even have afforded for me to take a summer art tour in Europe, where I could go to the Hermitage and the Prado and every other

amazing gallery I’d heard of but never seen before. Everything we’d ever dreamed of was on the horizon.

Then their trusted research assistant, Paul Markov, stole the prototype, killed my father, and ran.

He could have gotten away with it, slipping into another dimension beyond the reach of the law: the perfect crime. He vanished from his dorm room without a trace, leaving his door locked from the inside.

(Apparently when people travel between dimensions, their physical forms are “no longer observable,” which is a quantum mechanics thing, and explaining it involves this whole story

about a cat that’s in a box and is simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box, and it gets seriously complicated. Never ask a physicist about that cat.)

Nobody could find Paul; nobody could catch him. But Paul didn’t count on Theo.

Theo came to me earlier this evening as I sat on the rickety old deck in our backyard. The only illumination came from the full moon overhead and the lights Josie had strung on the railing last summer, the ones shaped like tropical fish that glowed aquamarine and orange. I had on one of Dad’s old cardigans over

my ivory lace dress. Even in California, December nights can be cold, and besides—the sweater still smelled like Dad.

I think Theo had watched me for a while before he came out there, waiting for me to pull myself together. My cheeks were flushed and tear streaked. I’d blown my nose so many times that it felt raw every time I inhaled. My head throbbed. But for the moment, I’d cried myself out.

Theo sat on the steps beside me, jittery, on edge, one foot bouncing up and down. “Listen,” he said. “I’m about to do something stupid.”

“What?”

His dark eyes met mine, so intent

that I thought, for one crazy moment, despite everything that was going on, he was about to kiss me.

Instead, he held out his hand. In it were the two other versions of the Firebird. “I’m going after Paul.”

“You—” My wavering voice, already strained from crying, broke. I had so many questions that I couldn’t even begin at first. “You still have the old prototypes? I thought you broke them down afterward.”

“That’s what Paul thought too. And—well, technically, always what your parents thought.” He hesitated. Even mentioning Dad, only a day after his death, hurt so terribly—for Theo

nearly as much as for me. “But I kept the parts we didn’t reuse. Tinkered with them, borrowed some equipment from the Triad labs. Used the advances we made on the last Firebird to improve these two. There’s a decent shot one of these will work.”

A decent shot. Theo was about to take an incredible risk because it gave him a “decent shot” at avenging what Paul had done.

As funny as he’d always been, as flirty as we occasionally got, I’d sometimes wondered whether Theo Beck was full of crap underneath his indie band T-shirts and his hipster hat and the 1981 Pontiac he’d fixed up himself. Now I was ashamed to have

ever doubted him.

“When people travel through dimensions,” he said, staring down at the prototypes, “they leave traces. Subatomic—okay, I’m gonna cut to the chase. The point is, I can go after Paul. No matter how often he jumps, how many dimensions he tries to move through, he’ll always leave a trace. And I know how to set these to follow that trace. Paul can run, but he can’t hide.”

The Firebirds glinted in his palm. They looked like odd, asymmetrical bronze lockets—maybe jewelry fashioned in the era of Art Nouveau, when organic shapes were all the rage. One of the metals inside was rare

enough that it could only be mined in a single valley in the whole world, but anyone who didn’t know better would just think they were pretty. Instead the Firebirds were the keys to unlock the universe. No—the universes.

“Can you follow him anywhere?” “Almost anywhere,” Theo

answered, and he gave me a look. “You know the limits, right? You didn’t tune o u t every time we talked about this around the dinner table?”

“I know the limits,” I said, stung. “I meant, within those.”

“Then yeah.”

Living beings can only travel to dimensions where they already exist. A dimension where my parents never met?

That’s a dimension I can never see. A dimension where I’m already dead? Can’t get there from here. Because when a person travels to another dimension, they actually materialize within their other self. Wherever that other version of you might be, whatever they’re doing: that’s where you are.

“What if Paul jumps somewhere you can’t follow?” I asked.

Theo shrugged. “I’ll end up in the next universe over, I guess. But it’s no big. When he jumps again, I’ll have a chance to pick up his trace from there.” His gaze was far away as he turned the Firebirds over in his palm.

To me it sounded like Paul’s best

bet would be to keep jumping, as fast as he could, until he found a universe where none of the rest of us existed. Then he could remain there as long as he liked, without ever getting caught.

But the thing was, Paul wanted something besides destroying my parents. No matter what a creep he’d turned out to be, he wasn’t stupid. So I knew he wouldn’t do this out of sheer cruelty. If he’d just wanted money, he would have sold the device to somebody in his own dimension, not fled into another one.

Whatever he wanted, he couldn’t hide forever. Sooner or later, Paul would have to go after his true, secret goal. When he did, that was when we

could catch him.

We could catch him. Not Theo alone—both of us. Theo held two prototypes in his hand.

The cool breeze ruffled my hair and made the lights flutter back and forth on the deck railing, like the plastic fish were trying to swim away. I said, “What happens if the Firebird doesn’t actually work?”

He scraped his Doc Martens against the old wood of the deck; a bit of it splintered away. “Well, it might not do anything. I might just stand there feeling stupid.”

“That’s the worst-case scenario?” “No, the worst-case scenario

involves me getting blended into so much atomic soup.”

“Theo—”

“Won’t happen,” he said, cocky as ever. “At least, I strongly doubt it.”

My voice was hardly more than a whisper. “But you’d take that risk. For Dad’s sake.”

Our eyes met as Theo said, “For all of you.”

I could hardly breathe.

But he glanced away after only a second, adding, “Like I said, it won’t happen. Probably either of these would work. I mean, I rebuilt them, and as we both know, I’m brilliant.”

“When you guys were talking about testing one of these, you said there

was no way in hell any of you should even consider it.”

“Yeah, well, I exaggerate a lot. You must have realized that by now.” Theo may be full of it, but I give him this: at least he knows he’s full of it. “And besides, that was before I got to work on them. The Firebirds are better now than ever before.”

It wasn’t like I made a decision at any one moment. When Theo came to sit with me on the deck, I felt powerless against the tragedy that had ripped my family in two; by the time I spoke, I’d known exactly what I intended to do for what seemed like a long time. “If you’re that sure, then okay. I’m in.”

“Whoa. Hang on. I never said this was a trip for two.”

I pointed at the Firebird lockets. “Count ’em.”

His fist closed around the Firebirds, and he stared down at his hand like he wished he hadn’t brought them both and given me the idea—but too bad, and too late.

Quietly I said, “You’re not to blame. But you’re also not talking me out of it.”

Theo leaned closer to me, and the smirk was gone. “Marguerite, have you thought about the risks you’d be taking?” “They’re no worse than the risks you’d take. My dad is dead. Mom

deserves some justice. So Paul has to be stopped. I can help you stop him.”

“It’s dangerous. I’m not even talking about the dimension-jumping stuff right now. I mean—we don’t know what kind of worlds we’ll find ourselves in. All we know is that, wherever we end up, Paul Markov is there, and he’s a volatile son of a bitch.”

Paul, volatile. Two days earlier, I would have laughed at that. To me Paul had always seemed as quiet and stolid as the rock cliffs he climbed on weekends.

Now I knew that Paul was a murderer. If he’d do that to my father, he’d do it to Theo or me. None of that mattered anymore.

I said, “I have to do this, Theo. It’s important.”

“It is important. That’s why I’m doing it. Doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Think about it. You can’t jump into any dimensions where you don’t exist. There are probably some dimensions I exist in that you don’t.”

“And vice versa,” he retorted. “Still.” I took Theo’s free hand

then, like I could make him understand how serious I was just by squeezing tightly. “I can follow him to places where you can’t. I extend your reach. I make the chances of finding him a lot better. Don’t argue with me, because you know it’s true.”

Theo breathed out, squeezed my hand back, let it go, and ran his fingers through his spiky hair. He was restless and jumpy as always—but I could tell he was considering it.

When his dark eyes next met mine, he sighed. “If your mother had any idea we were talking about this, she’d skin me alive. I’m not being metaphorical about that. I think she could actually, literally skin me. She gets the wild eyes sometimes. There’s Cossack blood in her; I’d bet anything.”

I hesitated for a moment, thinking of what this meant for my mother. If something went wrong on this trip—if I turned into atomic soup—she would

have lost both me and Dad within the space of two days. There weren’t even words for what that would do to her.

But if Paul got away with it, that would kill her just as surely—and me, too. I wasn’t going to let that happen. “You’re already talking about Mom’s revenge. That means we’re doing this together, doesn’t it?”

“Only if you’re absolutely sure. Please think about this for a second first.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true, but it didn’t matter. I meant it then as much as I mean it now. “I’m in.”

That’s how I got here.

But where is here, exactly? As I walk along the street, crowded despite the late hour, I try to study my surroundings. Wherever I am, it’s not California.

Picasso could have painted this city with its harsh angles, its rigidity, and the way dark lines of steel seem to slash through buildings like knife strokes. I imagine myself as one of the women he painted—face divided in two, asymmetrical and contradictory, one half appearing to smile while the other is silently screaming.

I stop in my tracks. By now I’ve found my way to the river-side, and

across the dark water, illuminated by spotlights, is a building I recognize: St. Paul’s Cathedral.

London. I’m in London.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. Dad is... he was English. He didn’t move to the United States until he and Mom started working together. In this dimension, I guess she came to his university instead, and we all live here in London.

The thought of my father alive again, somewhere nearby, bubbles up inside me until I can hardly think of anything else. I want to run to him right now, right this second, and hug him tight and apologize for every time I ever talked back to him or made fun of his

dorky bow ties.

But this version of my dad won’t be my dad. He’ll be another version. This Marguerite’s father.

I don’t care. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to Dad again, and I’m not wasting it.

Okay. Next step: discover where this version of home is.

The three trips I’ve taken to London to visit Aunt Susannah were all fairly quick; Aunt Susannah’s all about shopping and gossip, and as much as Dad loved his sister, he could take about six days with her, maximum, before he lost it. But I was there long enough to know that London shouldn’t look

anything like this.

Even as I walk along the street by the South Bank of the Thames, I can tell computers were invented a little earlier here, because they’ve advanced further. Several people, despite the drizzling rain, have paused to bring up little glowing squares of light—like computer screens, except they’ve appeared in thin air in front of their users. One woman is talking to a face; that must be a holographic phone call. As I stand there, one of my wide bangle bracelets is shimmering with light. I lift my wrist closer to my face and read the words, written on the inside in small metallic type:

ConTech Personal Security

DEFENDER Model 2.8

Powered by Verizon

I’m not quite sure what that means, but I don’t think this bracelet is just a bracelet.

What other kinds of advanced technology do they have here? To everybody else in this dimension, all this stuff is beyond routine. Both the hoverships above London and the no-rail monorail snaking along overhead are filled with bored passengers, for whom this is just the end of another dull day.

There’s no place like home, I

think, but the feeble joke falls flat even inside my own head. I look down again at the high heels I wear, so unlike my usual ballet flats. Ruby slippers they’re not.

Then I remind myself that I’ve got the most powerful technology of all—the Firebird—hanging around my neck. I open the locket and look at the device inside.

It’s complicated. Very complicated. The thing reminds me of our universal remote, which has so many keys and buttons and functions that nobody in my household—which contains multiple physicists, including my mother who is supposed to be the next Einstein— none of us can figure out

how to switch from the Playstation to the DVR. But just like with the universal remote, I’ve learned a few functions, the ones that matter most: How to jump into a new dimension. How to jump back from one if I land somewhere immediately dangerous. How to spark a “reminder,” if needed.

(The idea was that people who traveled between dimensions wouldn’t remain fully conscious throughout—that they’d be more or less asleep within the other versions of themselves. So you can use the Firebird to create a reminder, which would leave your consciousness in control for a while longer. Well, so much for theory. As far as I can tell, the

reminders aren’t necessary at all.)

As I look down at the glittering Firebird in my palm, I remind myself that if I learned how to work this thing, I can handle anything this dimension has to throw at me. Re-energized, I start observing the people around me more closely. Watch and learn.

A woman touches a metal tab clipped to her sleeve, and a holographic computer screen appears in front of her. Quickly I run my hands over my own clothes; this silver jacket doesn’t have anything like that on the sleeves, but something similar is pinned to my lapel. I tap it—and jump as a hologram screen appears in front of me. The hologram jumps with me, tethered to the metal tab.

Okay, that’s... pretty cool. Now what? Voice commands, like Siri on my phone? Can something be “touch-screen” if there’s no screen to touch? Experimentally I hold out one hand, and a holographic keyboard appears in front of the screen. So if I pretend to type on it

...

Sure enough, the words I type appear on the screen, in the search window: PAUL MARKOV.

As soon as the eighty zillion results pop up, I feel like a fool. Markov is a fairly common last name in Russia, where Paul’s parents emigrated from when he was four; Paul, which has a Russian form too (Pavel), is also

popular. So thousands and thousands of people have that name.

So I try again, searching for Paul Markov plus physicist. There’s no guarantee Paul would be a physics student here, too, except that I have to start somewhere, and apparently physics is the only human endeavor he remotely understands.

These results look more promising. Most of them focus on the University of Cambridge, so I pull up the one titled “Faculty Profile.” It’s for a professor with another name altogether, but the profile lists his research assistants, and sure enough, there’s Paul Markov’s photo. It’s him.

Cambridge. That’s in England too.

I could get there within a couple of hours

—

Which means he could get here within a couple of hours.

We can track Paul, because the Firebirds allow us to know when a dimensional breach occurs. But that means Paul can also track us.

If this is the right dimension—if this is where Paul fled after cutting my dad’s brakes and stealing the final Firebird—then Paul already knows I’m here.

Maybe he’ll run away, fleeing to the next dimension.

Or maybe he’s already coming after me.

3

I HUG MYSELF AS I WALK THROUGH THE MIST. IT FEELS AS though I’m splintering into a dozen directions at once—grief, then rage, then panic. The last thing I need right now is to lose it. Instead I force my mind to go to the place that always calms and centers me: painting.

If I were going to paint the dimension I see in front of me, I’d load my palette up with burnt umber, opaque black, a spectrum of grays—nothing brighter than that. I’d have to grind

something into the paint with my thumb, some sort of grit or ash, because the grime here goes deeper than surfaces. Even the air feels dirty against my skin. There’s less old stone in this London than I remember, more hard metal. Fewer trees and plants, too. The chill in the air is sharp; this is early December, and yet I’m wearing only a short black dress and a flimsy jacket brighter than tinfoil.

(Yes, it’s definitely December. The devices allow dimensional travel, not time travel. “That’s another Nobel Prize altogether,” Mom once said cheerfully, like she might turn to it whenever she got a spare moment.)

Imagining painting helps a little,

but my freak-out only halts when my ring starts blinking.

Startled, I stare down at the silvery band around my right pinky, which is shimmering in loops. My first thought is that it’s some kind of LED thing, meant for showing off in nightclubs. But if metal tabs on my jacket create holographic computers, what might this do?

So I reach over and tentatively give the ring a tap. The glow swirls out, a miniature spotlight, and a hologram takes shape in the space in front of me. I’m startled for the one instant it takes me to recognize the face painted in the silver-blue shimmer: “Theo!”

“Marguerite!” He grins, relief shining from him as brilliantly as the hologram beams. “It is you, right?”

“It’s me. Oh, my God, you made it. You’re alive. I was so scared.”

“Hey.” His voice can sound so warm, when he wants it to; for all Theo’s faux arrogance—and his real arrogance—he sees more about people than he lets on. “Don’t waste any more time worrying about me, okay? I always land on the right side. Just like loaded dice.”

Even in the middle of all this, Theo is trying to make me laugh. Instead I feel a sudden lump in my throat. After the past twenty-four hours—a day in

which my father died, my friend betrayed us, and I leaped out of my home dimension into places unknown—I’m running on empty. I say, “If I’d lost you, I don’t think I could have taken it.”

“Hey, hey. I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine. See?”

“You sure are.” I try to make it flirtatious. Maybe it works, maybe not. I kind of suck at flirting. At any rate, the attempt makes me feel steadier.

He becomes businesslike, or at least as businesslike as someone like Theo can get. His dark eyes—strangely transparent through the hologram— search my face. “Okay, so, you recently had a reminder, because you remember me. That or I’m making one hell of a first

impression.”

“No, I didn’t need a reminder. I remembered everything anyway.”

“You said you remembered yourself anyway?” He leans forward intently, temporarily distorting the holographic image. “No periods of confusion?”

“None. Looks like it’s that way for you too. Guess Mom was wrong about dimensional travelers forgetting themselves.”

But Theo shakes his head. “No. I needed—you know, I used a reminder right when I got here.”

“Weird.”

Theo seems slightly freaked by the

fact that I remember things so easily. That works against all Mom’s theories —and, apparently, his own experience —but I guess traveling between dimensions is different for different people. Theories only get refined through experimentation. Mom and Dad taught me that much.

He says only, “Well, about time we caught a lucky break, because we were seriously overdue.”

“Where are you?”

“Boston. Looks like I’m at MIT in this dimension. I’m doing my best not to acknowledge all the Red Sox shirts in this closet.” Theo doesn’t care for sports at all—at least, in our dimension. “I thought I’d gone a long way, but damn,

Meg. You landed all the way in London.”

Theo started calling me Meg a couple of months ago. I’m still not sure whether it’s annoying or cute. But I like how he always smiles when he says it. “How did you track me down so fast? Did you hack my personal information, something like that?”

He raises one eyebrow. “I searched for you online, found your profile, and put through a call request, which the local equivalent of Facebook offers as an option. When I called, you answered. Not exactly rocket science, and I say this as someone who seriously considered rocket science as a career.”

“Oh. Okay.” Well, that’s a relief. Maybe not everything has to be hard. Maybe we can catch the occasional break, and get lucky like we did this time.

Even though our devices are both set to follow in Paul’s footsteps, there are no guarantees. We could be separated at any jump. Not this time, though. This time Theo is with me. I look at his face, hazy in the ring’s glow, and wish he were here by my side already.

“Have you managed to...” Then my voice trails off, because for the first time I’m calm enough to realize I have an English accent now. Just like Dad’s.

Which makes sense, of course,

because I live here. I guess speaking is a kind of muscle memory that lingers even while the other Marguerite’s consciousness is in the passenger seat, so to speak. But it hits me as the weirdest, coolest, funniest thing imaginable.

“Bath,” I say, relishing the short A of my new accent. “Baaaath. Privacy. Aluminium. Laboratory. Tomato. Schhhhhhedule.”

The giggles come over me, and I stop right there, hand against my chest, trying to catch my breath. I know I’m laughing mostly because I refuse to give in and start crying. The grief for my father has nowhere to go and is twisting every other mood I have into knots. And

... tomahhhhto. That’s hilarious.

As I wipe away tears of laughter, Theo says, “You’re kinda shaky right now, huh?”

My voice is all squeaky as I try to hold it in. “I guess.”

“Well, if you were wondering, you sound adorable.”

The silly moment passes as soon as it came, replaced by anger and fright. This must be what the brink of hysteria feels like; I have to hold on. “Theo, Paul’s very close to London. If he knows we’ve come to this dimension, he could be on his way here, now.”

“What? How do you know that?” “You’re not the only one who’s

used a computer before, you know. I tracked Paul down at Cambridge.”

I look through the night at the harsh cityscape across the river, where the jagged dark outlines of skyscrapers dwarf the dome of the cathedral. Paul might be here already. How long would it take him to reach London?

Fiercely I remind myself that if Paul’s chasing me, it saves me the trouble of chasing him. The next time we meet, one of us is going to be sorry, and it won’t be me.

I must look murderous, because Theo says, “We have to remember one thing, okay? There’s a slim chance I calibrated wrong. We could have jumped into the wrong dimension. The

Paul Markov in this dimension might not be our Paul. So we can’t overreact until we know the facts.”

What he’s really saying is, I can’t kill an innocent man. I’m not even sure I can kill the guilty one, though I mean to try. My limited skills with the Firebird mean I can’t tell the difference between our Paul and any other; it’s just one more reason I need Theo with me.

“How fast can you get here?” I

ask.

Theo gives me that sly grin of his. “Already bought my ticket, Meg. Couldn’t take my pick of flights, traveling last minute—gotta go all the way to Germany and back again, so

thanks, Lufthansa—but I should be there by midnight tomorrow. Fast enough for you?”

He’s already crossed a dimension to help me; now he’s going to cross half the globe, as fast as humanly possible, and the one thing Theo asks is whether he’s doing it all fast enough. I whisper, “Thank you.”

“We’re in this together,” Theo says, like it’s no big deal. “Listen, if I’ve figured these ring-phone things out, and I think I have, you can give me tracker access.”

“What is that?”

“Hold your ring up to the hologram, okay?” I do it. The ring glitters, and in the holographic screen, I

can see his ring light up as well. Theo grins. “Good. Now I can find you any time you’ve got that ring on, or you can find me. Once you figure out the interface, that is. Okay, where are you headed?”

“Home, I guess. Once I figure out where it is.” I laugh. Suddenly Theo looks stricken. Why should he look like that?

“Marguerite—” His voice is very quiet, very serious, not like the usual Theo at all.

Fear flickers stronger within me, and quickly I search for HENRY CAINE AND SOPHIA KOVALENKA. Results pop up instantly: physics papers, a few

faculty photos from when they were younger, and video clips.

Video of the hovership accident from years ago, the one that killed three dozen people, including two promising scientists and their older daughter.

I don’t have Dad back. He’s dead here too. The only difference is that Mom is gone too. And Josie.

My whole family is dead.

I suck in a breath, hard, as if I’d been struck. As though at a great distance, I hear Theo’s voice say, “Marguerite? Are you okay?”

I don’t answer. I can’t.

The holographic screen helpfully starts showing me the video of the wreck, which apparently was a big thing

on the news. Right now it feels like that explosion is happening inside my head, white heat and blinding light and everything I love, everyone who really loved me—Dad and Mom and Josie— burning to cinders.

It happened above San Francisco. The news articles say bits and scraps of the wreckage turned up as far away as Las Vegas, drifting down to earth, sometimes washed down with the rain.

“Marguerite?” The shimmering of the hologram doesn’t hide the concern on Theo’s face. “Your folks—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. When I came to in this dimension, I looked them up first thing— thought they could maybe help us, you

know? I didn’t realize you hadn’t learned what happened to them yet.”

My heart has been crying out for Dad, over and over, since the moment the police called our house. I’d even cherished a small hope of seeing him again here, at least a version of him.

But he’s still gone, still dead, and now Mom and Josie are as lost as he is.

They’re fine! I try to tell myself.

That happened in this dimension, but not yours. When you go back home, Mom and Josie will be there waiting for you—it’s not like here, you didn’t lose everything, not absolutely everything—it’s going to be okay—

But it’s not. Dad is still gone. “Why does anybody want to travel

through dimensions, anyway?” I choke out. My fingernails dig into the flesh of my forearms, which are crossed in front of me like a shield. The physical pain keeps me from crying; no matter what, I refuse to cry. “They haven’t thought enough about what they might find.”

“I’m sorry,” Theo repeats. He looks like he wants to step forward through the hologram to get to me. “I’m so sorry.”

I think, Is this what you wanted, Paul? Did you hate them so much that you ran to a world where they were already dead? So your work would be done for you?

Once again I remember Paul’s

unsmiling face, his gray eyes that seemed to stare through me. I remember the day he watched me painting, his gaze following every stroke my brush made on the canvas. It sickens me now to think that for a little while I almost—

Theo speaks again, his voice firmer this time. “That accident was a long time ago, and a lifetime away. You’ve gotta think of it like that. All right?”

His words break through my melancholy, bring me back to the now. “All right. Yes. It was just a shock. I won’t let it get to me again.”

He does me the courtesy of pretending to believe me. “Until tomorrow, hang in there and stay safe.

And if you see Paul... don’t let him see you.”

The hologram blinks out. Though I stare down at my ring, hoping against hope that he’ll call back, it remains dull metal, silent and dark.

So I go home.

My blinky ring also has a GPS system, and when I ask it to guide me home, it does. I follow its directions without any idea of where I’ll end up.

Turns out home is in a particularly posh building—less garish than most of those around, but no less cold. The elevator is one of those glass ones on the outside, which I think are designed

specifically to terrify the acrophobic. I expect to feel a little comforted when I walk inside, because her apartment must be, in part, my apartment too. But the minute I see it, I think that I’ve never seen any place that looked less like home.

It feels like an art gallery, but one of the ones that only shows weird, pop-kitsch art like rhinestone-studded cow skulls. Or maybe it’s like a hospital where they do plastic surgery on celebrities. Stark white and brushed metal, no soft seats, nothing comfortable or cozy, and so brightly lit you could see a single speck of dust—which I guess is the idea. I stand there, dripping wet from the rain, aware of myself as grubby,

awkward, and misplaced.

Never could I have felt like I belonged here.

“Marguerite?” Aunt Susannah steps out from the hallway in a dressing gown as pristinely white as the decor. I guess I was put into the custody of my Aunt Susannah, of all people.

Her hair is loose, ready for bed, but still falls neatly to her shoulders as if it didn’t dare put one wisp astray. She doesn’t seem to be that different in this dimension. As she rubs some expensive cream into her face, she says, “You’re back awfully early tonight.”

It’s after one a.m. What time do I normally come home? “I was tired.”

“Are you feeling well?” I shrug.

Aunt Susannah lets that go. “Best get to bed, then. You don’t want to make yourself ill.”

“Okay. Good night, Aunt Susannah.”

She pauses. Do I not say that to her often? I don’t sense maternal warmth from her; she’s not the maternal type. It’s not that I don’t love her—I do. And she loves me, too. But I’m guessing parenting didn’t come easily to her. Aunt Susannah says simply, “All right. Good night, dear.”

As she pads down the hall to her room, I go to the other door, to the room

that must be mine.

It’s so— blank. Not as fancy as the rest of the apartment, but there’s nothing about this space that makes me feel like it belongs to me. It might as easily be a room in a luxury hotel.

But that, I realize, must be the

point.

The Marguerite who lost her family so young is one who has spent the rest of her life trying not to love anyone or anything that much again.

I haven’t decorated a bulletin board with postcards and prints of images I find inspiring. No easel stands in the corner with my latest canvas; do I paint in this dimension at all? No bookshelves. No books. Although I try to

hope this dimension’s Marguerite has some kind of technologically advanced e-reader in her earrings or something, that’s beginning to seem unlikely. She doesn’t appear to be the bookish type.

The clothes in my closet include a lot of designer labels I recognize, and some I don’t, but I’d wager they’re high-end too. None of them are the kinds of things I’d wear at home—instead they’re all metallic or leather or plastic, anything hard and shiny. Maybe I ought to be enthused that the Caine family money apparently held out a couple of generations longer in this dimension, but all I can think about is how cold this life is.

Now I have to live in it.

My hand closes around the Firebird locket. I could take it off now if I wanted, since I don’t seem to need the reminders. But even the thought of being separated from it terrifies me. Instead I close my eyes and imagine that it could help me fly away to a new place, not this life or my old life, but some newer, shinier reality where everything is okay and nothing can hurt me ever again.

My legs seem to give out, and I flop down on the immaculately made bed. For a long time I lie there, curled in a ball, wishing to be home—my real home—more desperately than I’d known I could ever wish for anything.

4

AS I LIE HERE IN A DIMENSION NOT MY OWN, ON A STARK white bed more forbidding than comforting, I try to paint pictures of home in my mind. I want every face, every corner, every shadow, every beam. I want my reality painted over this one until I can’t see the blinding white any longer.

My home—my real home—is in California.

Our house isn’t on the beach; it’s nestled at the foot of the hills in the

shade of tall trees. It’s always clean but never neat. Books are piled two deep on the shelves that line nearly every room, Mom’s houseplants thrive in every corner and nook, and years ago my parents covered the entire hallway with that chalkboard paint that’s meant for little kids’ rooms but works perfectly well for physics equations.

When I was little, my friends would get so excited when I told them that my parents did most of their scientific work at home, and they’d come in for the first time looking around for bubbling beakers or dynamos or whatever devices sci-fi shows had taught them to expect. What it mostly means is papers piled on every flat

surface. Sure, lately we’ve had a few gadgets, but only a few. Nobody wants to hear that theoretical physics has less to do with shiny lasery stuff and more to do with numbers.

In the center of the great room is our dinner table, an enormous round wooden one Mom and Dad bought for cheap at a Goodwill back when Josie and I were little. They let us paint it in a rainbow of colors, just goop it on with our hands, because they loved hearing us laugh and also because no two human beings on earth ever cared less about how their furniture looked. Josie thought it was funny to smear swirls on with her fingers. For me, though—that was the

first time I noticed how different colors looked when you blended them together, contrasted one next to another. It might have been the moment I fell in love with painting.

“I guess you think painting isn’t as important as physics,” I said to Paul as I sat at my easel, that one day he watched me work.

“Depends on what you mean by important,” he replied.

I could have thrown him out right then. Why didn’t I?

My memories become dreams as I fall asleep without knowing it. All night I see Paul’s face in front of mine, staring

at me, questioning me, planning something I can’t guess. The next morning, when I wake up in this cold, foreign bed, I can’t remember the dreams. I only know that I tried to go after Paul but never could move.

Surprisingly, there’s no disorientation. From the first moment I open my eyes, I know where I am, who I am, and who I’m supposed to be. I remember what Paul did to my father, that I’ll never see Dad again. As I lie there amid the rumpled white sheets, I realize how little I want to move. My grief feels like ropes tying me down.

“Come along, sweetie!” Aunt Susannah calls. “Time to make yourself pretty!”

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