“Thomas Mayhew, armchair psychologist.” But he was probably right. In spite of the aggressive way the queen kept trying to tear down her stepdaughter, I didn’t think I was imagining the sadness I’d seen in the queen’s eyes. What if, under all that ice, the queen had some affection for Juliana?
“I spend a good chunk of my days standing in the corners of rooms, being ignored and watching people,” Thomas said. “You can’t help but pick up a couple of things. The personal stuff is important, but there are also a lot of political factors that make the queen behave the way she does. She sees Juli as a threat to her crown.”
“Juli?” I repeated. Well, I had my answer. He and Juliana had been close, close enough for her to let him call her by her nickname—but how close was close? Close like friends? Close like brother and sister? Or close like … I tried not to think about it. It wasn’t as if it mattered what their relationship had been. At least, it didn’t matter to me.
He cleared his throat. “Juliana.”
“What do you mean, ‘sees her as a threat’?”
“After what happened to the king, he’ll never be able to rule again. And when Juliana comes of age she can make a bid for the regency and she might get it, since Juliana’s claim on the crown is legitimate, and the queen’s is just a matter of momentary convenience. What will happen to the queen and her two children then? I think that’s what she’s worried about most.”
“Not the loss of power?”
“Nobody likes to lose power,” Thomas said. “But there’s more than one reason why the queen would be afraid of Juliana. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Do you think Juliana would really do that? Just turn her out?”
He hesitated, taking time to think the question over. “No, I don’t.”
“That’s good.” I didn’t like the queen much more than the queen liked Juliana, but of course she would do what was necessary to keep her family safe, even if it meant acting heinous most of the time. How could I begrudge her that while the desire to go home, and willingness to do anything to make that happened, burned in my chest like a bonfire?
“Anyway, believe it or not, I didn’t just come in here to chat with you about current political tensions,” Thomas said. “I’m going to accompany you to the dinner.”
“Do I have to go?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I was dreading the dinner because I’d been informed that the General would be there. This would be the first time I’d appeared before him as Juliana, and I had no doubt he’d be watching me closely. The thought made my stomach churn. Pretending to be Juliana was one thing; pretending to be her while the architect of my situation watched, ready to pounce if I screwed up, was quite another.
“Your presence is mandatory,” Thomas said. “But you don’t have to worry. You can do this. You did it earlier with Eloise Dash, you can do it again.”
“You keep saying that,” I pointed out. “What makes you so certain?”
He hesitated for a second. “If I tell you, will you promise not to just assume I’m crazy?”
“At this point, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t believe,” I told him. When you wake up to find you’ve been transported to another universe, even your most deeply rooted skepticism tends to take a major hit.
“Okay. I think—now, I don’t have any proof to back this up, but—”
“Just tell me, Thomas!”
“When I was on Earth, pretending to be Grant, sometimes I felt like, I don’t know, I could sense what he would do in a given situation,” Thomas confided. “I prepared for my mission; I knew all kinds of facts about Grant and his life. But when you’re deep undercover like that, you learn pretty quickly that facts aren’t people. They’re just facts. That’s what makes what you’re doing—what I did—so difficult. Friends, family … they can just tell when something’s not right, even if they never figure out why. But, I don’t know. Sometimes, I’d get into a sticky situation—say the wrong thing to Grant’s mom, or whatever—and I’d get this feeling like I was being guided.”
“You mean, like hearing voices in your head?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It was more like getting swept along with a current.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve got this friend—he’s a scientist on the many-worlds project. This stuff is his life. And he thinks that the connection between analogs runs deep. Really deep.” He laughed at himself. “Forget it. You probably do think I’m crazy.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t, not at all.” I was so close to telling him about seeing Juliana in my dreams. My heart began to pound as I thought about the possible implications of what Thomas was saying. Could anyone, under the right circumstances, talk to their analogs across the tandem? What did that mean for Granddad’s theory about how the universes weren’t meant to come into contact?
But my lifelong visions of Juliana were a far cry from what Thomas was talking about. What if I told him and he took the information straight to the General? The likelihood of him just returning me to Earth when my six days were up if he knew I had this ability was pretty remote, and I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize my return home. But there was a part of me—a large part of me—that wanted to talk to this friend of his, the scientist with all the theories. I wondered what he’d make of me if he knew.
Noticing my distant expression, Thomas cocked his head at me inquisitively. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” I told him. “It’s just … I feel it, too. The current.” Because, funnily enough, I did know what he was talking about. It was different from my visions, so subtle and incomprehensible that I hadn’t even realized what it was until Thomas described his own experience as Grant. “Thomas, where is Grant?”
I couldn’t believe the question hadn’t occurred to me until now. I tried to put it down to all the craziness that had happened, that I hadn’t had time to think of it when my life was in jeopardy, but I felt guilty for not asking sooner.
He sighed. “I was afraid you might wonder about that. The truth is, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Thomas confessed. “We call it the ‘analog problem.’ Analogs can’t touch skin to skin. If they do, one of them gets thrown back through the tandem.”
“Why?”
“When you move something out of one world and into another, it creates an imbalance. But the universes want to be equal. Usually, the analog that doesn’t belong to the universe it’s in gets thrown back, but not if they’re wearing one of those.” He glanced down at the anchor on my wrist.
“What does that have to do with Grant?” I demanded.
“He touched me,” Thomas said. “Well, technically, he punched me. Right here.” He tapped a spot on his jaw.
“Why would he punch you?”
“You know about Juliana, but try to imagine what it might be like to see her face to face.” Thomas took a deep breath. “It’s a … well, it’s weird. I was shocked at how much he looked like me, even though that’s what I was expecting. He must’ve thought he was losing his mind. I guess he just reacted. As soon our skin made contact, he was thrown through the tandem.”
“Are you telling me that Grant is in Aurora? Is he here? In the Citadel?”
“No,” Thomas said, avoiding my eyes. “That was the plan, initially. I was going to send him through the tandem, and a team of KES agents in the Tattered City were supposed to retrieve him. They were going to hold him at a safe house until I brought you here, and then they were going to take him home.”
“But that didn’t happen,” I guessed.
“Libertas got to him first,” Thomas admitted. I covered my face with my hands and groaned. “They think it’s me they’ve got in custody. The General’s expecting a ransom request any day now, and when it comes, he’ll pay it, and send Grant home.”