knew the end was near. When they could feel it in their marrow, smell it in the air. When deals could be made and broken. “If I stay, you’re saying... he can go.”
“Go?”
“Back to the world. In my place.”
“Better.” It made a complicated gesture with something that wasn’t an arm, and a door opened, a rip, ragged at the edges as if the dark desert was a torn piece of cloth. I shut my eyes against the sudden brightness, but not before I saw what lay on the other side: blue sky, green grass, the pale trunks and golden coin-like leaves of aspen in the fall. A breeze cut through the creature’s stench with the sweet smell of leaf litter and clean air. “This one. Do you see it? I still have power left... to do this thing.”
“Nice try,” I said through a throat suddenly so dry with want that I almost fell to my knees at the bottom of the pit. I clutched the scarf. “Back to a world you’ll destroy.”
“A different world. One where the walls have not been breached between us by something that should never have been made. One where it was never made. Never even conceived.”
“They say…” I swallowed, my throat clicking again. Desert dry. Not like the other world, with its damp leaves, its blue sky. “They say the universe is a certain shape because it was made to be so. It is a shape because it is made to do a certain thing. Like a tool.”
“Yes. This is not that universe. This was shaped a different way.” It held the book up higher, flaring the many-coloured light across my clenched face. “Only agree to take this from me, and agree to stay. Be custodian of the knowledge in my place. Guard it from thieves and villains. Forever.”
“And where will you go?”
“To be again with my kind. Just as he will be.”
I looked at the other Nick, silhouetted uncertainly at the hole in the world. Sunlight spilled across the sand at our feet, showing how matte and absolutely black it was, without a single sparkle of quartz or mica. The shadows of leaves moved easily on the dark dunes, dappled and brisk.
Why was it always me who was tempted, who was offered these things? Why me, who constantly had to pretend to be Jesus on the mount, resisting the Devil, and not her, goddammit? Fucking why?
Because she had already been tempted with all they had, I thought. And she’d said yes. They had no more to give her.
But to tempt me, there was still so much. So much. This Nick, and the kids, and Mom, and their quiet life.
The other Nick, in the other universe, looked good. Healthy, scared but calm, clean-shaven, cowlick tamed, the disproportionate features—wide mouth, big nose, huge eyes, no different. The same face I’d seen in mirrors and windows and puddles all my life, not one molecule different. I wanted to talk to him—didn’t even know what to address him as. Nick? Me, I? He looked into the rip, the whispering aspens, then back at me. I couldn’t read his face. But there was no love there. I didn’t blame him. Are you real? I wanted to ask. Are you real enough for me to swap? Is it enough?
In my head I heard Johnny’s voice, clear and far away: Do you trust me?
No, I thought. But. We were running out of time. I had already paid him more time than the book was worth.
No you didn’t. He said you had a good heart. Now you will not pay his price.
No. I will not.
And I darted forward, slapped the book out of Namru’s grip, and wrapped it in my scarf. Both custodian and book screamed so piercingly that it seemed impossible to bear, and I screamed too as my ears buzzed in agony. Something crashed into me—the other Nick?—but when I opened my eyes I realized it was cold clay, the floor of the library, and I had fallen heavily to the ground, wrapped around the scarf and the howling book, unmuffled by my weight on top of it.
I scrambled to my feet, took two steps, and saw Johnny sprinting around a corner, knocking books aside in her haste. Black tentacles swirled at the edges of my vision.
I thrust the bundle at her, not wanting to touch it an instant longer. The fall had cut the inside of my cheek on my teeth, and my heart was beating so hard I