“How? How will we know?” She pursues him as he turns toward the cathedral. “Take last time. Obviously we failed, according to your reasoning, because we’re still here. But what would have done the trick? If I’d sold my house and moved into a bungalow? If you’d given back to all the people you stole from? Then what, there’d be a bright light and a chorus of angels and we’d finally be free?”

Santi looks at her, uncertain and close to tears. She forgets how vulnerable he is in this world, how much he needs her approval. Her fault. “I don’t know,” he says. “But whatever it is, it won’t be easy. You can’t atone without making a sacrifice. Giving up something you really don’t want to lose. Freely, of your own choice.”

The wind blows cold across the cathedral square. Thora pulls her jacket closed and keeps walking. She’s furious with him, and it takes her a moment to articulate why. She rounds on him, walking backward into the wind. “So you believe we have a choice now? What happened to God’s hand? Everything happening because it has to happen?”

“That was when I thought there was one universe.”

Thora laughs, throwing her head back like a mad witch.

Santi scowls. “What’s funny?”

“What’s funny is we’ve swapped places.” She grins at him maniacally. “Go on. Ask me what I think.”

He pouts like the sulky teenager he is. “What do you think?”

The wind whips Thora’s hair into her eyes as they come up the steps to the cathedral. “We have no meaningful choices at all,” she says. “Our actions don’t matter, because whatever we do has the same result. We die, we come back, we die again. Forever.”

Santi’s face contorts with frustration. “Why?”

She shrugs violently. “Because someone decided that’s what we deserve. You want to think we’re going to learn from this, that it’s all going to add up to something in the end. But it isn’t. It’s just going to go on, and on, and on—”

“Thora!” Santi yells. His hand reaches out. Thora grabs it without thinking, lets him pull her forward: remembers his tiny fingers, clinging to her like she was the only thing in the world.

A high-pitched singing, impossibly loud. A chorus of angels, Thora thinks, as something shatters behind her. She turns to see the paving littered with shards of black stone. “What the fuck?”

“A tile from the cathedral.” Santi tugs her back down the steps. “The wind must have blown it loose. It was—it would have hit you.” She lets him lead her to the shelter of the train tracks. “Are you okay?” He looks strange, drawn, as if he’s seen something he can’t bear.