—we kill him.
It hasn’t escaped my attention that the Paul I need to destroy is currently a passenger in the body of another Paul Markov entirely. Although right now it seems to me that anybody as evil as Paul would be evil in every single dimension, I don’t know that for sure. So it’s not as simple as finding him and, I don’t know, shooting him or something.
But there are things you can do with the Firebird that are dangerous to the traveler inside. Theo told me that much.
In fact, I decide, we should go over that before we do anything else, even before we leave the house.
Determined, I put my plate in the sink and return to my bedroom to talk this through with Theo. When I walk inside, though, he’s not in the bedroom. His clothes remain on the floor, apart from his thin black jacket, which I don’t see.
“Theo?” I walk into the bathroom, and I’m two steps in before it occurs to me how rude it was to do that without knocking first.
At that moment I see him, and I know he wanted to be alone. I also know why.
Because Theo, my guide, is sprawled on the tile floor, shooting up.
6
“THEO?” I TAKE A STEP FORWARD, THEN STOP. FOR SOME stupid reason I feel ashamed to see him like this.
Right after the shame comes anger. Why should I be embarrassed? I’m not the one getting high in the middle of something so dangerous, so important—
Then Theo groans as he slumps sideways onto the bathroom floor. He’s completely, totally out of it.
“Oh, shit.” I drop to my knees and roll him onto his back. Theo doesn’t even seem to know I’m there. “What are you doing?”
Theo focuses his eyes on me for only a moment and chokes out one word. “Sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry?”
“Yeah,” he says. My anger is very far away from him right now; I can tell. The whole world is far away from Theo at the moment.
I grab the small bottle I see on the bathroom floor; it’s still about half full of some liquid that’s a brilliant emerald green. What drug looks like that? It must be something from this dimension, because I’ve never seen anything like it.
I try to adjust him on the bathroom floor so that he’s not all crumpled against the vanity; he responds by rolling halfway over to rest his head in my lap. With a sigh, I settle in on the cold bathroom tile, back against the wall, and untie the rubber tube that he’d knotted around his forearm. It can’t be good to leave that on for long.
I can feel his breathing, deep and regular, as his chest swells against my thighs.
Leaning my head against the vanity, I try to steady myself. But it’s hard. Theo . . . isn’t stable. I knew this. We had all begun to realize that about him. His courage and loyalty don’t change this one critical fact.
The person I’ve been relying on to get me through this is someone I can’t be sure of relying on at all.
Although I hate to admit it, Paul was the first one who warned me about Theo—the first one who realized how bad he was getting, who tried to say something. And he must have suspected for a while, but kept it to himself. Only the Accident made him speak up.
The Accident was two months ago, and it’s the only time I ever saw my parents angry with Theo. They patched it up, and nothing actually happened, but still, it stood out.
That afternoon, I was hanging out with my sister, Josie, who was home from Scripps for the weekend. She was helping me study for the AP exams, which can be a little tricky when you’ve been homeschooled with no planning for the standardized tests to come.
I know the stereotypical images people have when they first hear the word homeschooled. They assume it’s super religious and not very difficult, like we sit around all day learning God made dinosaurs for the cavemen to ride.