A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1) - Claudia Gray Page 0,110
back soon,” I say. Josie breathes out a sigh of relief, and I can see the tension in Theo’s shoulders relax the tiniest amount.
Mom interjects, “Theo came to us the moment Triad’s spy left. He told us everything. But by then it was too late—you were gone, and we knew Triad could get to you and we couldn’t, so there was nothing we could do or even say without endangering you. We’ve been working on our own Firebirds, hoping to follow you, but that work doesn’t go quickly. The last month has been hell.” She sounds more than four weeks older as she says it. “But now you’re here. You’ve come home.”
I wrest myself from Josie’s embrace, my smile returning to my face. “And now we have to go. All of us, right this second.”
“Go where?” Mom asks, frowning.
She doesn’t understand. None of them do. None of them know yet, the best news of all.
“To the university.” I take my mother’s hands to ease the shock, and look into all of their faces in turn before saying, “We have to pick up Dad.”
Despite everything that’s happened to me in the past couple of hours, I’m the only one calm enough to drive. So I steer Josie’s silver Volkswagen through the hilly streets. In the back seat, Mom and Josie are alternating between sobs of joy and horrible moments of doubt. They’re still overwhelmed, still afraid to believe.
Theo rides in the seat next to me, his expression stark as he stares straight ahead. Neither of us has spoken to the other since we got in the car. I don’t think we have any idea what to say.
Then I realize the first thing I need to know. “What was it like when you were, you know—taken over?”
Although he still doesn’t look at me, he relaxes a little. “At first it was like I was just losing time. Blacking out or something. I thought I was working too hard on the Firebird project, skipping too much sleep, something like that. Didn’t mention it to Henry or Sophia, because I thought they’d tell me to take it easy and I might miss out.” Theo sighs. “If I had, maybe one of them would’ve realized what was going on. So, that was pretty stupid.”
“You couldn’t have known.” Inside I find myself thinking of every other Marguerite I inhabited. At the time, I felt as though I was making responsible choices—or that if I made mistakes, they were the mistakes those Marguerites would have made in my place. But now that I see Theo’s profound sense of violation, I wonder if that’s how they feel, too.
“After he started using that green stuff, everything changed. I was aware of what was going on, but it was—distant. Foggy. It reminded me of twilight sleep at the dentist. Then he’d leave. Go back to his own dimension to, I don’t know, report in or whatever. By the time I could feel myself sobering up, he’d be back.”
I remember now, back in the Triadverse, the talk about Theo’s time-consuming “internship” with Conley. Really Theo was traveling between dimensions as Conley’s spy—going back only often enough to maintain his cover story.
Finally Theo looks at me, though his gaze is hesitant. “Once the son of a bitch moved on for good, I could only remember the big details—that they’d done something awful to Henry, that I’d framed Paul for it, and that they were after you. They’d been after you the whole time, and I couldn’t even warn you. We had to wait here, not knowing if we’d ever see you again.”
As much as I sympathize with the pain I hear in his voice, I can’t let Theo keep beating himself up about this. “I made it back. Okay? You have to stop worrying about the past. Worry about the future, because Triad’s definitely going to keep trying.”
“Oh, I’ve been thinking about Triad. Trust me, I’ve been thinking a lot. They had their chance to surprise us, and now they’re going to get a few surprises in return.” Theo actually smiles, but it’s the scariest-looking smile I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t want to be Wyatt Conley right now.
We reach the university campus. It’s a still place between semesters, almost abandoned, with only a handful of the usual cars in the parking lots and a few forlorn international students wandering around. With a stomp on the gas pedal, I speed us toward the lab and pull into the closest spot.