by Claudia Gray
The door at the top of the stairs swings open. The same strange cocktail of emotions swirls within me—fear, hope, the peculiar happiness of knowing that at least something is happening—
—when I see Paul returning to me, and hope eclipses all the rest.
“Here,” he says. He’s holding a white Styrofoam container and a can of ginger ale. “You must be hungry again.”
“I am. What time is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’d just like to know.” My voice shakes, but I swallow hard and continue. “Being in this room for so long—it’s weird, not knowing anything that’s happening outside.”
Paul hesitates. His gray eyes are almost unreadable, but I can see that he doesn’t like realizing how scared I am. When he answers me, his words are simple and precise. “It’s early afternoon. Cloudy. We had rain earlier, but it stopped.”
Who knew it could feel like such a relief just to hear what the sky looks like? “Thanks.”
“Your lunch is late. I’ll make sure dinner gets here faster, if you’re still . . . with us.”
Does that mean “still with us” as in “not yet free,” or as in “alive”? I’m about 99 percent sure he means the former. In this situation, though, 99 percent is not enough.
Paul pulls back the Styrofoam lid to reveal lasagna and garlic bread. The smell of tomato sauce, cheese, and garlic almost makes me reel; I’m that hungry.
But I also remember the night Paul and I made lasagna together in my family’s kitchen. We listened to Rachmaninoff, and our shoulders brushed against each other, and we laughed every time we screwed something up, which happened constantly. That was the first night I recognized that my feelings for Paul had begun to change. Sometimes I think of it as the first night of “us.”
“Any chance of taking these off?” I offer my bound wrists to Paul. “If I try to eat Italian food with my hands tied, I’m going to get it all over myself. Or do you need a chance to laugh at me?”
Paul would never laugh at someone for a thing like that. He’d be offended by the very suggestion, which is what I’m counting on.
But he doesn’t cut through the zip ties. Instead, he says, “I’ll help you.”
As he takes the white plastic fork from its plastic sleeve, I say, “You mean you’re going to feed me?”
“It’s like you said. Otherwise, you’d make a mess.” He hands me the thin paper napkin. “The ties have to stay on.”
He starts to sit on the edge of my cot, then pulls back. No doubt he thinks I’ll feel threatened if he comes close to me too quickly—which I would, under normal circumstances. Actually, as he finally settles next to me, I feel comforted.
This hesitation means he’s thinking of me. Trying to make this easier.
And even though I can’t make my move yet, it helps me to know he’s this close to the Firebirds.
Paul carefully gets a forkful of lasagna, lets the first droplets of sauce fall, then brings it to my mouth. I feel weirdly self-conscious about taking the initial bite. After that, though, I don’t care. The first taste of tomato sauce against my tongue makes me salivate so quickly my mouth almost hurts. I can handle the garlic bread myself, so I sop that in the sauce and eat some before he offers me the next bite. I could swear I’ve never eaten anything this good before in my life.
“You were hungrier than I thought,” Paul says.
I must be wolfing this stuff down like a stray dog. Forcing myself to chew slower, I dab at my mouth with the flimsy paper napkin. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. The fault was mine.”
Paul feels guilty. Maybe I can use that. “Does this establishment offer showers? A bath?” He’d take off the zip ties to let me bathe, surely. “Between the crazy eating and the crazy hair, I bet I look like the Tasmanian Devil.”
“You’ve looked better.”
Ouch. I glare at him. “How would you know?”
“I would assume.”
Once again I remind myself that Paul’s rudeness is always a kind of honesty. Since last night, I’ve been thrown in the back of a van, terrified, imprisoned, and duct-taped. Plus I’m sleep-deprived. I hope I’ve looked better than I must right now.
“Why did it take so long for the food?” I ask. “You only get your ransom money if I’m returned safe and sound, right? Starved to death definitely wouldn’t count as ‘safe.’”
“It takes weeks for a human being to die of starvation. Thirst kills faster, within days.” Another thing that’s the same in this dimension? The way Paul’s face looks when he realizes he’s just said something amazingly tactless one second too late to take it back. “Nobody’s going to deny you food or water. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Did you get some dinner too? I’d bet anything you love lasagna.”
He hesitates. “Everyone loves lasagna.”
“But you really love it.” I say this as innocently as I can, between bites. “I bet you’ve even learned to make lasagna yourself.”
He isn’t fazed—at least, visibly. “You like to pretend that you know me very well.”
“I have instincts about people.”
“Unlikely. What most people call instinct in people is really the interpretation of small subconscious cues.”
“Maybe I picked up on some of those.”
“There are no subconscious cues that could tell you I enjoy lasagna.”
I laugh out loud. Paul does that thing where he realizes something he’s said in seriousness is funny—his expression clouds, and he tries to smile, but it never quite works. Moments like that make him feel vulnerable. So I quickly say, “It’s like you said. Everybody loves lasagna. That’s all.”
“That’s not all.”
“What else could it be?” He offers me one more bite, and I take it, the conversation flowing smoothly around my meal.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I don’t believe in instincts.”
“What about psychic powers?”
This earns me a stare as withering as the one I’d get from my scientist Paul back home. I decide to mess with his rational head, for once; besides, after hours tied up and freaking out, I need to remind myself how much I know. What power I still possess.
So I say, “For instance, my instincts—or powers, you decide—they’re telling me you wanted to follow a very different path in life. Something that wasn’t illegal. Something more than this, bigger and more meaningful. Personally, I think you would’ve been a good . . . scientist.”
If the situation were less terrible, the look on his face would be hilarious. He puts down the Styrofoam container and stands up. “How could you guess that I wanted—?” His words stop as he catches himself.
How would I have guessed that? “The way you always seem to be analyzing things. You’re smart. I can tell.”
Paul paces in front of me, his footsteps loud in this small, dark cell. “Someone else has told you about me. There’s no other way you could know that.”
“Who knew that, besides you? Nobody, I bet. You don’t open up to many people.” Which means any people.
He takes a step backward to consider me from a different angle. “What else do your ‘instincts’ tell you about me?”
I remember the things I shouted after the last dimension’s Paul. They were too intimate, too exact. This time, my answer will be simple. It will be honest. But it will still be some of what I love about him.
After all, a splinter of my Paul is within this man, even now.
“You like facts. You want to be objective. So sometimes people assume you’re cold, but you’re not. Not at all. I think you feel more deeply than most people ever do; you just don’t know how to show it. You always feel—out of step. You’re not like the people around you, and they know it as well as you do. And you think it’s because something’s wrong with you, so you retreat deeper into the background. That just means people don’t get to know the real you.”
Paul takes one step backward. I think he doesn�
��t know whether to be moved or frightened.
“You’re lonely,” I say, more softly. “You’ve been lonely so long I think you’ve forgotten there’s any other way to be.”
He breathes in deeply. By now the way he looks at me reminds me more of my own Paul—that mixture of uncertainty and awe I remember from our first days together.
Is that part of his soul shining through? Will he save me after all?
I lean forward, willing him to understand it’s okay for us to be close. “You want a family. Not your own—a real family, made up of people who take care of each other. And when people are scared of you, because you’re so big, it kills you a little inside. Because you can be so gentle. So kind.”
“You don’t know me,” Paul says, as if by pronouncing the words he can make them true.
“I wish you could learn how to show more people the real you. If you could, nobody would ever be scared of you again.” Nobody could help but love you, I want to add. But that’s a step too far.
After a moment, he laughs, a hard, strange sound. “You learned all this already?”
“First impressions can tell you a lot.” I smile. “So, what do you see when you look at me?”
I’m not expecting much of an answer—but I get one.
“You’re insecure,” Paul says flatly. “So you exaggerate your knowledge or emotions to draw attention you think you won’t get otherwise. You have genuine talents, however. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be willing to put yourself forward. Why they’re not enough for you, I don’t know. You’re sophisticated for your age in some ways, naive in others, which makes me think you went to one of the experimental schools—a Waldorf school, maybe—or you could have been educated at home by intelligent people. You come across as a normal young girl, but when angered, I suspect you’re dangerous. I say that even though I’m the one with the gun.”
His little joke gets lost in all the rest. I’m too astonished, too hurt, by this bald accuracy. Naive? Insecure? Is that what my Paul thinks too?
The last part is the only one I can bring myself to talk about. “Dangerous?”
“You’re calm under pressure. Calmer than you should be.” Paul’s gaze rakes over me, as though his perception alone could scour me raw. “Maybe you did reach out to me by accident. But now you taunt me with this life I can never have—that’s either courage or madness. I don’t know which. All I know is that you’re not an ordinary girl. You’ve seen things others haven’t. Done things others couldn’t.”
I feel like I’m going to cry, but I won’t. Not in front of him, not now.
He sees my weakness, but doesn’t spare me the last: “You think your specialness makes you invulnerable. It doesn’t.”
With that Paul walks upstairs. His only goodbye is the door slamming shut.
18
DESPITE MY EXHAUSTION, I LIE AWAKE FOR WHAT SEEMS TO be a long time.
Paul thinks I’m pathetic. Ridiculous. Naive, and proud, and a hundred other things I never wanted to be.
Maybe that seems like a stupid thing to worry about, compared to the fact that I’m being held captive by armed mobsters. But I was relying on my knowledge of Paul to protect me here, and now it feels like that shield is gone.
He saw more in me after one day than I saw in him after months of his practically living at our house. Of course I already knew Paul was perceptive. One of the reasons I fell for my Paul was because he saw through all my defenses. Somehow he saw the real me, and he loved what he saw.
This Paul looks at me and sees weakness. Immaturity. Even danger.
Okay, I did set out to kill you once, but I had a good reason. Doubt he wants to hear that.
Whatever he’s seen, he doesn’t like it.
Maybe it was that splinter of my Paul inside him that knew so much. But that would be even worse. Does my Paul think all those things too? He can’t. Otherwise he couldn’t love me.
I imagine his soul within this Paul’s. If they influence each other, it won’t only be my Paul affecting him. Maybe this Paul’s contempt will carry over. Maybe my Paul will begin to think of me as insecure and arrogant. Maybe he’ll never see me the same way.
Even if I can put the three parts of Paul’s soul together again, he might never be the same.
Then I hear something from above—a low, heavy thud. Another. Like thunder, but not—
I jump as I hear loud popping, over and over, super fast. My first thought is of one of those little bundles of fireworks—but I know better. It’s gunfire.
Oh God, oh god ohgodohgod. What’s happening?
Forget what Paul said about the cot. I kick at one of the legs, and it collapses. If I can pry one of the poles free, that would at least be a weapon. Even with my hands tied, I can probably manage that.
The door swings open. The sound of gunfire goes from loud to deafening. I push myself into the corner, like that’s going to do any good. Paul comes downstairs toward me.
“Come on!” he shouts, grabbing my wrist. His grip is too tight, and the raw stripes on my skin beneath the zip tie sting. It doesn’t matter. I follow him, stumbling up the stairs.
I scream over the sound, “What’s happening?”
“You shouldn’t be here!”
Not an answer. But I agree with him.
None of the shooters are visible in the dark concrete corridor, but distant sparks suggest ricochets. The gunfire echoes so that the sound doubles on itself, disorienting me.
Paul pulls me forward, and we turn a corner—another—and now the fight seems farther away. The roar of guns has muted, only slightly, but enough that my ears stop ringing. Paul opens a door to reveal a large closet. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Get in!” he shouts. “You’re safer here.”
“How?”
Paul’s hand fists in my sweater. “My father would kill you rather than let you be taken. Do you understand?”
I wish I didn’t.
Terrified as I am, I try to use this moment. “Please. You have to untie my hands. What if someone else comes for me?” I hold up my bound wrists. “Please.”
He makes his decision in an instant; the butterfly knife seems to appear in his hand by magic. I jump a little, but then hold still so he can cut through the plastic. He does this deftly, in one smooth practiced motion.
All I have to do is grab him, grab the Firebird, and I can get the next sliver of Paul’s soul back again—
But immediately Paul shoves me into the closet so hard I hit the back wall. It’s not cruelty; this is his idea of keeping me safe. “Don’t move until I come back for you. Do you understand? You must not move.” Then he slams the door shut and turns the lock, sealing me in total darkness.
I miss my cell already.
Paul will come back for me. I’ll have another chance. I take deep breaths and try to tell myself things are looking up, between bursts of distant gunfire.
At least Paul brought me to a safer place. Protected me. The man I love is in there after all, just buried deep.
My father would kill you rather than let you be taken, he said. Taken by who? A rival gang? The police?
Impossible to guess what’s going on. I have no way to know until Paul comes back for me. And what if it’s not Paul who opens the door?
I don’t want to be here. Maybe I don’t have to be here.
Even now, I don’t want to escape this place before I’ve had a chance to rescue that splinter of my Paul’s soul. Still, I could contact him again and ask to meet like actual normal human beings—hire a detective to locate him—
I can find another way.
Paul, I love you, but I’m getting myself out of this.
Lying down, back on the floor, I kick up at the doorknob with both feet, hard. The wood starts to splinter; this closet wasn’t meant for anything but brooms. Two more kicks, and the door wobbles open.
I jump to my feet and start running away from the noise. Hopefully the roar of the guns kept anyone from hearing me brea
k out. Even though my knees buckle under me, and I’m breathing so hard the world goes dark and sparkly around the edges, I push myself forward; there are no second chances, not with this.
The corridors bend, bend again, like the walls of a maze. This place is huge, maybe many buildings’ basements connected into one compound. But that’s good. If so, there are many ways out, and I only have to find one.
By the time I almost can’t hear the gun battle behind me, I take another turn and see the most beautiful sight: light filtering in from a grid above. The rusty metal ladder bolted to the wall suggests this is for utility service. Which means that grid comes off.
The ladder is so rusty that it crumbles slightly beneath my hands and feet. When I get to the top, I press both hands against the grid—and it doesn’t move.
The metal presses into my palms, carving cross-hatches into my flesh, but I give it all my strength anyway. Still it won’t budge.
Breathing hard, trembling, I try to think of what to do next. One, go down the ladder and find another exit. Two, go down the ladder, but to search for something to use to pry the grid open.
Just as I’m about to descend, though, a shadow falls over the grid. I look up to see a backlit figure—
—who then crouches down so I can see his face. I shout, “Theo!”
“Marguerite!” He drops to his knees. “Thank God. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I reach through the grid with my fingers, which he takes for just a moment. “What are you doing here?”
“Firebird locator function, remember? I tracked your signal all the way out here to Brighton Beach. Once I was sure you were here—I tried to get to you myself, but I couldn’t—so I phoned in an anonymous tip to the cops about your location.”
Of course! I ought to have thought of that. “You’re incredible.”
“That’s what all the girls say.” His smile has the weariness of relief. Along one cheekbone I see a deep bruise beneath scraped skin, no doubt from when he was thrown to the ground during my kidnapping. “Did they hurt you?”
