“I dove down for Karly, but I couldn’t get to her.”

“How did you get out of the water?”

“What?”

“How did you get out of the water, Dylan?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. The police asked me that, but I don’t remember.”

“Why are you here, and Karly isn’t?”

“I don’t remember!”

“What do you remember?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all! I was trying to get to Karly, but I couldn’t find her. That’s when—that’s when everything stopped.”

“Yes.”

“That’s when everything else began.”

“Yes.”

I backed away from Eve, feeling an electric charge travel through my whole body. I looked up at the sky, which poured down a flood of rain over my head. I felt a tightness in my chest again, and I couldn’t breathe. Blackness darkened my eyes. Something briny and dank filled my senses.

“Oh, my God.”

“See? You know.”

I did know. A curtain parted, and I saw through all the illusions. It was as if Eve were a magician, and I finally understood the trick. I knew where I’d been, while my mind passed from world to world to world. I had traveled in a circle so I could go back to the place where my story began.

“What do you want, Dylan?” Eve asked me. “What do you want more than anything else in life?”

It was a question that had only one answer. “A second chance.”

“To do what?”

“To save Karly.”

Eve twirled her umbrella with a flourish. “Then you need to hurry.”

I ran. Yes, I ran. I ran like a madman through the Chicago streets, because I finally knew where I needed to go. I knew where my life was. I knew where I was supposed to be. I heard Karly calling out to me. She’d been calling to me ever since this began, and I hadn’t listened. Her voice was muffled. The sound had to reach me through the thickness of water, because that’s where she was.

In the river.

“Come find me. I’m still here.”

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 36

I had no map to guide me back, but I didn’t need directions. The river drew me with the irresistible pull of a magnet. With each mile I drove, the storm intensified, as if this final world knew I was trying to escape and didn’t want to let go of me. It threw up a maelstrom in my path. Angry branches of lightning shattered the sky, and thunder growled at me in a deep voice to turn back.