I told him that the night before he left me on the beach, when I was still trying to convince him to stay. The words were mostly a compliment, but I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t a niggle of annoyance there. A hidden weapon. A razorblade in the birthday cake. How dare you. You made this hard for me because I would’ve just given up. You made me want to fight.

*   *   *

Me and Yusuf left the wolf pack after dinner for a private room, our arms piled with pillows and blankets because the guys said that the rooms away from the restaurant got chilly at night. I finally shrugged out of Rui’s bloodied shirt—officially mine, now—and the rest of my clothes, and watched the mess of the last day spin down the drain of the shower. Yusuf hopped in after I was toweling off. The mirror fogged as I tried to scrub the blood from my shirt at the sink.

“I never thought I’d miss frozen pizza dinners at the Compound,” he said, his voice echoing in the marble-walled shower.

“I hear that.”

He smelled of fancy bar soap and mouthwash when we slid under the covers of the huge bed in this hotel room that neither of us could ever afford, like some weird honeymoon we didn’t want. The wolf pack had pulled the floor-to-ceiling curtains off, probably to use as blankets. Two mahogany armchairs were tufted in red fabric, with gold fringe hanging off the seat. I could see the Earth hanging in the starry sky through the window. I missed the cheap Gold Rush Hotel in Beatty, now that the gold rush was long over.

We were safe for the first time since escaping Hassan’s universe, giving me the chance to unpack everything and try to cobble together an exit plan. The funhouse-mirror-horror-show of seeing Figueiredo in the flesh, with the shockwaves of anger that blasted off him. How weird it was to see him and Kaori together. Her working with him was a betrayal, but I knew she wouldn’t see it that way and she’d only offer some cool dismissal. Those are the feelings you are bringing to this, but they are coming only from you. Then how she told me she was dragging me and Yusuf back to our home universe so I could set things right. We’re too far away, here, for the ripples to hit and everyone has to be in their original vector in the multiverse. A big part of me wondered why with all Figueiredo could do—dropping into whatever universe he wanted, maybe changing his own world by willing it—he couldn’t just grab ahold of his All-Eye and kill Yusuf to revive Tiago.