Eva had been ready for almost any answer—except the one she got. She sat, frozen, her brain working like a fish trapped beneath the surface of an ice-covered lake.
Magnus looked down at the ground again. “I’m sorry. I’m giving you too much information too fast, but you keep looking as if you’re going to run away, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t stand that. It’s happened so many times already.”
He rose from the bench, stuffing his alleged magical objects back into his backpack. “You need some time to think. I’ll meet you at…uh, I forgot to check out the town. Is the Cardigan Bay Ice Cream Parlor still here?”
Rendered numb by the reference, Eva managed a nod. Not wanting to see any more of Magnus’s blue-eyed stare, she looked down.
“I’ll meet you there at two. We can talk more then.”
He sounded almost as if he were asking a question, but Eva had no answer for him.
When she forced herself to look up again, he was gone.
She was late for breakfast with her mother and father, so she pulled herself together and took the short walk back to their place.
They must have noticed how pale she was, how shaky her hands were as she did her best to navigate the scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast. However, over the years they’d learned to give her space, and they said nothing. She didn’t want to tell them about meeting Magnus in the park. Why sound crazy when you can just hint at it with your unsteady behavior?
She managed her share of the small-talk, gliding over the surface of various topics with the finesse of an ice skater. Someone who didn’t know her would not have realized she was faking it.
Her prayers were answered when breakfast finally ended, and she was able to go somewhere to think. Since both her parents worked, she had until dinner to process the morning’s experiences and figure out what to do about them—if anything. Perhaps standing Magnus up would be the best course. But she wasn’t sure even of that.
She spent some time walking through the neighborhood, peaceful as the grave during a school day. Most of the parents worked, and the kids young enough not to be in school were likely in child care. Except for the occasional passing car, she could pretend she was the only person in the world.
She could hardly have been any lonelier if she had been.
Her parents would never understand what she was going through right now. Her old high school friends were scattered all over the United States. Her newer friends were six hours away in San Francisco, and anyway at work, so she couldn’t even call them. Well, she could probably have gotten away with a short chat, just to hear the sounds of some of their voices, but in a brief conversation, she couldn’t reveal what was really bothering her.
Damn Magnus! She had been doing well. Why did he have to come along and dig up her buried grief?
A stranger could easily get lost in Santa Brígida’s residential neighborhoods. The houses had been built all at once and all in Spanish Colonial Revival style, mostly using the same basic floor plan. With their pale stucco walls, reddish-brown tile roofs, and terracotta decorations, they were mute reminders of the past. The intersections were all neatly laid out with cross streets radiating from them at geometrically precise right angles. Someone would have to walk clear to downtown to find much variation in the basic pattern. But Eva could have traversed the town blindfolded without missing a turn.
Her feet took her to the accident site. She imagined she could still see the skid marks, though she knew the road had been resurfaced at least once since then.
How could such a drastic accident have happened in such a peaceful neighborhood? A drunk driver, or so the police said. He had to have been blind drunk to swerve far enough on such a wide street to hit a slow-moving car clear on the other side. In one bone-shattering, heart-rending collision, Tal was taken from her. His parents and one of his best friends, Dan, had died, too.
They’d been going to a middle school soccer game. Eva was going, too. She went to all of Tal’s games. Only she didn’t make it to this one. Her mom was driving her to the school, and by bad luck, they drove up the same street where the accident had occurred only minutes before. The Weaver’s family car, despite having been crushed like a beer can, she recognized instantly.
When her mom slowed, she jumped out of the car and ran toward the accident before her mom could stop her. Police stopped her before she got there, though—stopped her from saying goodbye to Tal.
The paramedics had managed to extract Tal from the wreckage. He was still alive when they got him out. He might have known she was there if she could have just gotten a little closer. Maybe she could even have urged him to hang on, saved him somehow.
No, that was wrong, and she knew it. His internal injuries had been too severe. But saying goodbye would have been something. It would have made it easier to move on, at the very least.
Instead, she had to watch from the sidelines as he died. Her mom tried to convince her afterward that Tal’s head hadn’t turned in her direction, that he hadn’t been looking at her at the moment when the life went out of his eyes. She knew he had been, though, and after a while, her mom stopped trying to convince her otherwise.
A lot of willpower and a little therapy had gotten her beyond the feeling that her grief was knifing her to death from the inside, taking leisurely swings with a blade that made her bleed as badly inside as Tal had bled on the outside.
And now Magnus, that bastard, had resurrected those old memories—and for what? Even if everything he said was true—and at her lowest point, she would never have believed that—he was a Tal. He would never be—could never be—her Tal.
She wandered around the old neighborhood for a while longer, but given the mood she was in, her feet eventually pulled her toward the local cemetery at the east end of town.
The place wasn’t quite abandoned, but the grass was fairly long, and the trees looked less well-trimmed than when she was a kid. Since Santa Brígida had no churches of its own, people tended to use one of the larger cemeteries in Santa Barbara, most of which were closer to the churches they attended.
In addition to the greater convenience of other burial places, Santa Brígida was a relatively young town, having been founded in 1996. Very few of the town’s residents had died since then. The cemetery looked oversized for the small number of graves it had, but at least it was easy to find Tal’s.
She was surprised to see a floral arrangement in the tin next to the grave. Tal’s friends, like hers, had all moved away, and he had no family in the area.
Even odder were the flowers themselves—twin flowers, a kind of honeysuckle that produced two blooms on each stem. If she remembered correctly from her long-ago botany class, they grew mostly in Finnish forests and bloomed in June and July. Where someone in California could have gotten them in April was a complete mystery to her.
The headstone was simple: granite with Taliesin Weaver and his birth and death dates etched in a plain font. It would have been hard to find a marker with less personality. But there had been no surviving family members, and his friends had all been middle schoolers. Headstone design was not exactly at the forefront of any of their minds—even if they had been given any say in how this headstone was made.
“I wish I could see you one more time,” Eva said as she stared down at the grave. Her fingers brushed across the headstone. She didn’t know what she had expected to feel, but she felt nothing except the stone against her skin.
What she really wished was that he had never died in the first place. But her desires counted for nothing. He was as dead as the stone that marked his grave. Nothing Magnus said could change that.
Magnus. No matter how hard she tried to keep him out of her mind, he kept intruding, like a long shadow that blocked the sunlight.
She glanced at her watch. It would take her at least half an hour to walk to the Cardigan Bay Ice Cream Parlor from the cemetery, and that was about all she had. This was the moment of truth—stay away from Magnus, as any sensible person would, or go and meet him.
Her feet started moving as if they had made the decision for her. Perhaps that was for the best. She didn’t want to see Magnus again, but she knew she would always wonder what else he might have said if she didn’t go find out.
She would hear him out, and then she would leave. There was no way he could convince her to accept him as some kind of substitute for Tal.
From the cemetery, she walked roughly north and eventually hit the southeast corner of downtown Santa Brígida, such as it was. The Spanish Colonial Revival style prevalent in the residential areas also dominated downtown, but business had been given a little more latitude to develop a develop a style of their own. The Cardigan Bay Ice Cream Parlor, named after the bay to the west of Wales, retained the tile roof but otherwise had a façade that reminded Eva of an English pub. Inside, it was more like a 1950s diner, mostly chrome and white, with red and pink accents. Not everyone could have pulled off that kind of weird hybrid, but whoever had designed the place had somehow managed.
Even though it was well past lunch and though most people would have been at work, the place was packed. The crowd included lots of people with shopping bags out of the top of which poked various touristy souvenirs of the Santa Barbara area. Could this many people really be vacationing here in April?
She arrived five minutes early, but Magnus was already waiting for her, staring at the door as if his gaze could summon her. When she walked in, he stood up and waved his arms to make sure she’d seen him through the crowd. He had a tentative smile on his lips. She walked over and sat down opposite him, but she didn’t return the smile.
The menu was a good excuse not to look at him. Questioning her decision to come, she thumbed through it. Distracted as she was, she felt hungry. She’d been wandering all over town since breakfast and hadn’t even thought of lunch. Fortunately, the place did have some food besides ice cream.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Magnus as if he could read her mind. “I’ve already ordered for you.”
Eva stared at him. “How could you possibly know what I want?”
His smile broadened. “I’ll cancel right away if I’m wrong. Hamburger, well done, on a sesame-seed bun with lettuce, tomatoes, and ketchup, but no mustard. Steak fries. Sprite, no ice.”
“How did you—”
“It was what you ordered on our first date, remember? And that’s not all. This is the same table we had then. I came two hours ago and sweet-talked the manager into reserving it for us.”
Eva turned pale, and her hands shook despite herself. Leaning forward, she whispered to him, “You’re not Tal—not mine, anyway. Stop pretending!”
“Then how do I know what you had on your first date or exactly where you sat? That’s not something I could have found out on the internet, now is it? And there’s no one else who would remember all those details. I do, though—because I lived it. Granted, it was on a different Earth, in a different universe, but I sat in this very chair ten years ago, wondering how long it was going to be before I could kiss you.”
The burger arrived at that point. To complete the illusion, Magnus had ordered the same thing Tal ordered on their first date: a hot dog with mustard and relish, and a coke.
Eva would have liked nothing more than to pour that coke all over him and run for the door. However, she’d been brought up with a don’t-make-a-scene attitude. She would force herself to finish as fast as possible and leave.
She could hardly taste her food. She ate it nervously, conscious of Magnus’s eyes on her. He didn’t demand conversation, though. He seemed to be waiting for her to start. Maybe if she said nothing, he would become frustrated with her and leave himself.
She finished in a few minutes, though it seemed more like hours. Magnus finished as well, but he showed no sign of losing patience with her. Instead, he pushed the menu in her direction.
“The place is famous for its ice cream. You can’t really leave without having some.”
Eva tried not to show how upset she was. She was not about to give him the satisfaction.
She’d been watching her weight when she first dated Tal, and she’d tried to refuse dessert. He’d said exactly the same thing to her that Magnus just said.
Studying the menu again gave her a chance to get a grip on herself without looking at Magnus, whom she imagined was grinning smugly at her.
The reason Cardigan Bay was famous for its ice cream—and the reason it was crammed with tourists—was that the owner had gone to a great deal of trouble to obtain flavors frequently served in Wales but far less common in America. The place still had fig ice cream, salted popcorn, honeycomb, mince pie, and several other specialties, as well as much more common alternatives. If she hadn’t lost her appetite and felt the hamburger churning around in her stomach, she might have enjoyed weighing her options. Instead, she quickly ordered one scoop of peppermint stick, realizing seconds after the words had left her mouth that she had ordered exactly the same thing on her first date with Tal.
She finally managed to look at Magnus again, and he was smiling triumphantly. “You know I’m right,” he said. “You know it in your heart.”
She looked down again, keeping her eyes on the table until her ice cream came. Her hands were white and shaky, but she made herself finish it. It felt cold on her tongue, but as with the hamburger, she didn’t taste it.
Part of her wanted to jump forward in time to the point at which she was finally free of Magnus. Part of her had questions—and that part she knew would keep nagging at her until she asked them.
She made herself look up at him. He was, as always, watching her every move.
“If you’re the Tal from your world, why is your name Magnus?”
His smile looked frozen on his face. “You’d have to ask my parents.” He scratched the back of his left ear.
Eva leaned toward him. “You’re lying to me. It’s been a long time, but you have the same tell that Tal used to—that ear scratch.
“Besides, if you’re Tal, how did you end up with different eye color and different hair color?”
“Genetics is tricky. The same two parents can produce a wide range of different combinations. Maybe my mom didn’t get pregnant at exactly the same instant Tal’s did. Maybe a different sperm was involved.”
“That’s not true, either. You didn’t scratch your ear that time, but I saw the way your hand muscles tightened. You were consciously trying not to.”
Magnus’s cheeks reddened. “You always were smart. But you don’t have the experience to fully understand the situation.”
“Try me. You said you wanted to talk. Well, then talk. Now’s your chance.”
Her tone was hostile, and he flinched a little.
“I am the Tal of my world—up to a point. I’m…the product of a magic spell that did not perform as intended. I have all of his memories until the moment at which the spell was performed. That was when I…when Tal was sixteen. I was physically identical to him when I was first created, but my original body was destroyed. This one’s pretty close to the original, but Tal insisted on the different eye color and hair color.”
Eva had to resist the temptation to laugh in his face. She would have sworn he was kidding her—or insane—but the pleading look in his eyes stopped her from scoffing openly.
“First, you want me to believe that parallel universes are real. Then, you want me to believe in magic. Now, you want me to believe that you’re the product of magic?”
“I know it’s a lot to take in. I can prove it, though, if you just give me the chance.”
“I can’t see this ending well,” said Eva slowly. “Even if everything you say is true, you aren’t my Tal. You never will be. And according to you, you aren’t really Tal even in your home world. Yet I’m supposed to love you just as if you were because that’s what you want.
“What I want is to get on with my life—which I was doing until you showed up. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t the reaction you hoped for, but I’ve given you enough chances. I don’t want to talk anymore, and I don’t want to see you again—ever.”
Magnus’s expression made Eva feel as if she had just kicked a puppy in the face, but she made herself get up and walk briskly to the door. With every ounce of willpower she had, she managed to walk out without looking back.
She was done with wandering around town. Sitting around her parent’s house until they got back wasn’t ideal, either, but unless she wanted to go back to San Francisco early, that was her only choice. Walking as fast as she could, she headed back into the residential area. If nothing else, she was getting a lot of good exercise today.
She was nearly back home when she saw what she thought was a mirage. There was a silver flicker in front of her, a little like the optical illusion of water created by temperature variations in the air. Conditions weren’t conducive to that, though, and it seemed to be right in front of her, not in the distance as a mirage would normally be.
The silver brightened and enlarged until it was about the size of a doorway. It swirled, and Magnus stepped through it. As soon as he had both feet on the sidewalk, the silver anomaly vanished as if it had never existed.
Shock froze Eva’s muscles and made her thoughts flow as sluggishly as molasses. She should run, but she couldn’t take a single step away. She should scream, but the most she could do was open her mouth. Not even a whisper came out.
“Please don’t be frightened,” said Magnus. “The Eva in my world is so used to this kind of thing that it’s easy for me to forget you’re not. I just wanted to prove to you that magic’s real.”
She still wanted to run, but, bizarre as the situation was, his tone, his expression, and his body language were all calming. Faced with him again, even though she had told him she didn’t want to see him, she had a hard time picturing him as a credible threat.
“That was a portal,” said Magnus, pointing to where the silver swirl had been. It’s not like the ones I used to travel from one world to another. It’s a way to travel anywhere in this universe that I’ve been before. I spent some time walking around town so that I could move quickly if I needed to.”
“You…you really have been following me. I felt watched ever since I came to town.”
“Sorry about that,” said Magnus, looking down at the ground. “The orb of Theia sent me here, but I wanted to make sure of a few things, like that you weren’t in a relationship. I used a little don’t-notice-me magic, so you shouldn’t have been aware of me.
“The fact that you sensed something suggests that there’s a bond between us. You don’t have magic of your own, so that’s the only possible explanation.”
“Tal never had magic,” said Eva. “I would have known.”
“The Tal in this world…died on the very day in which he developed magic in my world,” said Magnus. “I inherited his abilities as well as his memories, which is why I have magic.”
“The Tal in your world is still alive?” asked Eva. The question felt awkward, but she knew she had to ask it.
Magnus nodded, and his hands clenched a little.
“And with the Eva in your world?”
“Ironically, no. It’s too long a story to tell right now, but the emergence of his magic created…problems. He and Eva are both alive, but they’re not together. Eva’s with someone else.”
“Then, if all you say is true, why didn’t he come looking for me?”
Magnus shuddered and looked down again. “It’s just like always. I’m never good enough. No matter how hard I try, I’m never good enough to be him.”
He sounded as if he wanted to cry but was determined not to. His tone made Eva want to cry herself, though she wasn’t sure why. She wanted to hug him, too, but she knew that was a bad idea. He would get the wrong idea.
“It’s not a question of you’re not being good enough. It’s a natural question, though. You said you’re just like him in some respects. Does he still love me…love his Eva?”
“He tries his best not to show it, but yeah, he loves her as much as ever.”
“Hence my question. He has the magic to do the same thing you’re doing, so why isn’t he?”
Magnus looked up, but his blue eyes were unfocused, as if he were staring through her instead of looking at her. “I’ll tell you the whole, sad truth. When the staff came into our possession, I suggested we could both find happiness. But Tal is more cautious than I am—way too cautious, if you ask me. He refused because he was afraid that traveling between universes too much might create unforeseen problems. He used one of those barriers-are-there-for-a-reason arguments he’s so fond of.
“He was also afraid of someone trying to take the staff. It’s one of the most powerful artifacts we’ve ever seen. He wanted to keep it locked up in a place where no one could ever steal it.”
“But he let you use it?”
Magnus chuckled, but without warmth or humor. “Stop staring at my ear to see if I’ll scratch it. No, he would never give me permission. I stole it before he could secure it.”
If that was a lie, it was a very unflattering one. Magnus must believe he was telling her the truth.
“If all this is true—”
“If! Haven’t you seen enough to prove at least that magic is real?”
“You could be…oh, I don’t know. Hypnotizing me somehow. I’m not quite ready to change my whole worldview because you say I should. Anyway, assuming for the sake of argument it’s true, what do you want of me? To declare my undying love and go back to your world with you? I just met you. You may be like Tal in a lot of ways, but you aren’t him. I’m not the Eva you know, either. And it would take time for us to get to know each other.
“You would have had more of a chance if you’d met me and not tried to sell all this stuff about being Tal or a magical clone of him. Just a distant cousin, say, with no magic, no melodrama, just you. Maybe we would have hit it off. We’ll never know now.”
“I’m sure I could have handled this better,” said Magnus. “But you can decide how you want this to go from now on. Forget the magic. Forget the parallel universes. I can stay here, and we can get to know each other.
“Then, if you decide you want to be with me, we can work out the details. I never expected you to come back to my Earth with me. I burned all my bridges there when I took the staff, anyway. I’d be perfectly happy to stay here with you.
“As for the magic, if it makes you uncomfortable, I can do without it.” He pulled out the staff, extended it to its full length, and threw it on the ground. “Compared to you, it means nothing to me. I’ll cloak the staff in concealment spells so it can’t be found and bury it somewhere. I have magic of my own, but I can promise to use that only if I have to protect us. Your life can be pretty much magic-free if that’s what you want.”
Tal had never been such a drama king. Of course, he hadn’t had any magic staff he could have offered to throw away for her. Magnus might be a lunatic or a con artist—but the gesture was romantic.
“I don’t want to sound too hung up on the practical side of things, but what would you do for money if I said yes to getting to know you?” Eva asked. “You don’t have a job in this world, or even an identity. How would you survive?”
“I’d probably have to use a little magic to get myself set up with a convincing fake ID and credentials. But even without magic, I’m not exactly a no-talent hack, you know. There are a lot of things I could do.”
Selling used cars was the first thing that came to mind. As absurd as the situation was, Magnus’s presentation was so engaging that Eva could imagine him selling proverbial ice to Eskimos.
“What do you say, Eva? I’m willing to do exactly what you tell me to do.”
Before Eva could respond, a flock of enormous birds swooped toward them. They were hawks or falcons—Eva wasn’t sure which. They seemed to be flying faster than any normal birds could have. They were a brown blur, gradually differentiating into several brown blurs as they sped toward Magnus and her. Even as they moved closer, though, Eva heard nothing from them. None of them cried out, and their wings made no sound, despite what must have been frenzied flapping.
Magnus, facing away from avian intruders, didn’t realize anything was closing on Eva and him until the birds were almost upon them. He must have seen the surprise on Eva’s face and the way her eyes were tracking something behind him. He spun to face whatever was coming and raised his hands. Eva heard the rush of wind, as if he were blasting air in the birds’ direction. Most of them collided with the force he had conjured and beat themselves bloody in a matter of seconds trying to break through the barrier he had created.
However, one swerved to avoid Magnus’s defenses, landed on the pavement without even the slightest sound, grabbed the staff in its oversized claws, and flew straight up with it. Dodging the falling corpses of the other birds, Magnus lunged into the air as if he could fly—and just kept going. In seconds, he had accelerated so much that he blurred as he soared into the heavens.
Eva was beginning to wonder if she would ever see Magnus again when he descended back to the ground, breathing heavily but still managing to curse loudly.
“What just happened?” asked Eva, her eyes darting between Magnus and mangled remains on the ground.
“Exactly what Tal was afraid of. The staff has fallen into the wrong hands. Flying that fast eats up magic too quickly, and the falcon kept speeding up until I knew I had no hope of catching it.
“How could I have been so stupid? I should have known. I should have extended my spell far enough to include the staff.”
“Everything happened so fast,” said Eva. “I’m surprised you managed to stop all but one of the birds.”
“Only one needed to get through. Whoever conjured up those falcons will become the most powerful sorcerer in the area, maybe even on the planet, as soon as he gets it.”
“How bad is that?”
“Terrorist-with-a-nuclear-bomb bad. No, scratch that. Terrorist-with-a-whole-nuclear-arsenal bad.”