Page 41 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Ah,” says Thora in exaggerated understanding. “Of course. The big picture.”

López stops in his tracks, his face earnest. “I believe we were meant to work together,” he says. “To be here, in this place, at this time. The things it seems like we remember—I don’t think they’re memories at all. I think they’re part of a message. Directing us toward each other, since before we ever met.”

“A message from who? From God?” Thora shakes her head. “Sorry, don’t believe in him.”

López frowns. “But you must want to explain it.”

The truth is, she does. But she doesn’t want to get dragged into a theological discussion with her notoriously argumentative partner when they have a job to do. “In the words of my father the philosopher,” Thora says, “the world is a bloody weird place. You and me are far from the weirdest things about it.” She focuses on where they’ve stopped: between two alleyways, both leading through to the next square.

“Which way?” López asks.

Thora looks from one to the other, fighting a strange unease. She wishes she could split herself in two. Send one Thora down each path: catch up with the one who succeeded, erase the one who failed. “You pick.”

“You’re in charge, remember?” López says with a sly smile. “No pressure. Only innocent people’s lives.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic?”

López laughs.

“Left,” Thora decides, and starts walking, stomach already lurching with the conviction that she’s chosen wrong.

“Left it is,” says López with a disappointed sigh. She ignores him and moves on down the alleyway, one hand on her weapon. Then she sees.

She stops dead, presses back against the wall. “Wolfie,” she says softly.

López catches her up. “What?”

She points ahead. López tenses. The silhouette of a man, head in his hands. Thora can’t see his face, but he meets the description she was given: he’s the right height, with a shaved head and an FC Köln football shirt.

“Left it was,” López breathes into her ear.

The smell of smoke in his hair makes her want a cigarette. She laughs silently. “It was a fifty-fifty chance.”

“Guess we’re just lucky this is the universe where you got it right,” López teases her. He starts forward, then pauses, hand on his radio. “Maybe we should call for backup.”

Thora shakes her head. “He’s one drunk guy with a knife. We don’t need backup.”

López smiles at her, teeth bright in the semidarkness. “Why do you act like you’re immortal?”

Like so many things he says in jest, it cuts close to the truth. Thora doesn’t want to admit that it has something to do with him, with the fact of his presence. While she’s with him, part of her believes she can come to no true harm. “You’re the one who thinksall this was meant to be,” she retorts. “Is God going to let us get stabbed by some random maniac?”

López looks troubled. Without meaning to, she has sent him off into one of his contemplative spirals.

Thora sighs. “We don’t have time for this. If he moves, we’re going to lose him in the crowd. You double back and take the other alley—”

López interrupts, completing her thought. “Head him off from the front.” He’s already on his way.

Thora feels an odd anxiety watching his silhouette diminish, the shadow that defines him blending into the greater darkness of the alley.Shit.She presses hard on her temples. Now is not the time for one of what Lily calls her cosmic migraines. It comes on her now, pushing her backward through the wall into a darkness filled with rushing noise. The world is unstable, flickering in and out of existence every time she blinks; they are collectively remembering it wrong, over and over. She holds her breath, hoping to stem it, but it only gets worse: towers crumbling and knitting back together like bad crochet, a burning hole in the center of it all like a hellmouth.This isn’t real, she tells herself, closing her eyes.It’s happening in your mind. Step forward. Open your eyes.

She steps forward. She opens her eyes. She’s back in the ordinary darkness of the city, the wall solid again behind her. In the meantime, her target has moved. He stands at the mouth of the alley, leaning out into the square. He’s going to make a break for it, too soon, before López can get around to head him off.

“No no no,” Thora says under her breath. As if he hears her, the man lurches forward into the square, shoving his way through the crowd.

Thora swears. She sprints down the alley, following the maninto the surging mass of people. “Lišková!” she hears López yell. She’s aware of him somewhere to her right, drowned in the impossible brightness that burns at the corner of her eye, but she doesn’t waste time looking for him: she is busy tracking the commotion ahead of her, a ripple pointing across the square toward the ruined clock tower. As she ducks and weaves and pushes her way forward, a thought comes to her as clear as a revelation. Causality in this city has a downward slope; the tower stands in a valley where possibilities narrow to zero. She looks up to see the clock already at midnight, a premature renewal. In this square, it will be New Year’s forever. The man she is chasing breaks through the edge of the crowd, sprints for the gap in the wall of the tower. He checks over his shoulder before he disappears inside.

Thora pounds to a stop at the foot of the tower. López fetches up beside her, chest heaving. “Where did he go?”

Thora points to the jagged hole in the stones.

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