Page 66 of Meet Me in Another Life

Next to her, looking half-puzzled and half-amused, is Héloïse. As Santi watches her, standing meters from a doom she can’t even see, lifetimes of love turn to a rush of cold fear inside him.

He vaults the fence and strides across the grass to Héloïse, taking her arm. “What are you doing here?”

“She said she was your friend. Thora, right? She’s doing a magic show, but she was scared no one would come.” She laughs, a warm Héloïse chuckle that penetrates to his bones. “Carnival. Anything can happen.”

Thora gives her a courtly bow. “You are absolutely right, my lady. Prepare to be amazed.” She opens the carrier and lifts Félicette out.

“Stop.” Santi hears the desperation in his own voice. “Thora, please.”

She gives him a wicked grin. “Don’t worry. Cats always land on their feet.” Félicette wriggles in her arms, yowling. Thora tightens her grip. “Come on. We’re going on an adventure.” She carries Félicette toward the portal. The cat screams, spits, struggles to get free, but Thora holds fast until, at the threshold, she lets her go. Félicette bounds out of her arms and vanishes.

Héloïse jumps. She stares at Thora, then laughs and claps, looking sideways at Santi. “Mirrors?” she says in an undertone.

Santi can only stare at the empty grass, the void where something beloved once was. He doesn’t understand why it feels like such a violation: worse, somehow, than if Thora had drowned Félicette before his eyes.

“Why are you upset?” Thora looks at him, head cocked in fake confusion. “She wasn’t real. This proves it.”

“Thora.” He steps forward, takes her arm. “I know this is about Jules. I know it hurt you, seeing her again. But you have to see how that proves you shouldn’t be doing this.”

Héloïse touches his shoulder. He reads her frown.Why are you being so weird?“Santi, calm down. It’s a magic trick.” She turns a smile on Thora. “A very good one.”

Thora blows Héloïse a kiss. “I’m glad someone appreciates my art.” She offers her hand. “And now, madame, it’s your turn! Are you ready to brave the annihilation portal?”

Héloïse laughs. “I thought you’d never ask.” With a conspiratorial glance at Santi, she takes Thora’s hand.

Thora leads her forward. “Don’t worry,” she says. “If you’re real, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Santi watches Thora lead his laughing wife across the grass. He wants to reach out, to pull her back, but that would mean admitting in his heart that Thora might really do this. He doesn’t believe she will. She’s just trying to scare him. Any moment now, she will stop and turn back.

Héloïse looks over her shoulder with a warm smile. “Santi, what if—”

She’s gone. Mid-sentence, like his father in their crashing car so many lives ago. Thora startles. She looks down at her empty hand. “Shit,” she says quietly.

That—the acknowledgment that this was half a game to her, an experiment she didn’t know the outcome of—is what breakshim. He roars and runs for her. When he grabs her by the shoulders, he sees it in her eyes through the mask: part of her is appalled by what she’s done. But in her voice he hears only defensive triumph. “See? I proved it,” she says. “They’re not real. They never were.”

Santi shakes all over with an anger that staggers him. This is what Thora does, time and time again: take his hope and belief and desire for meaning, and drown them all in nothingness. For so many lives, he has tried to persuade her that their actions matter, in the belief that this was a test they had to pass together. But perhaps the real test was to recognize her for what she is: his enemy. The reason he is still trapped here.

Finally, he understands. His gut cramps with the knowledge of what he must do. All too easy, to sacrifice himself. This is the truly hard thing: to willingly give up Thora, to finally redeem her sins and his own. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, as he reaches for his grandfather’s knife.

Thora sees the blade a full second before she understands. The expression on her face will follow him for lifetimes. “Santi, no. Wait—”

He strikes fast and true, aiming for her heart.

She makes a terrible sound. Santi pulls out the blade, and her blood comes with it, warm on his hand. She’s staring at him, mouth open, disbelief frozen on her face. He pulls her close as she shudders, the life pulsing out of her.

“Sorry?” she wheezes. He can hear the blood in her voice. “You’re sorry? Fuck you!”

“Shh,” he says, holding her. “Don’t talk. It’ll be over soon.”

“Damn right it will.” Every breath must be like twisting the blade inside her, but this is Thora: she has to have the last word.For a vivid moment, he hallucinates his sullen daughter looking up at the false stars. “You think I’m not taking you with me?” Her hand gropes for his knife. Willingly, he lets her take it. Perhaps that is a sin too, but truly, he doesn’t want to outlive her. He holds her close, and when she strikes, he welcomes the dark.

Who We Are

Thora sits on the edge of a hole in the sky, swigging from a bottle of red wine. Behind her, on the other side of the mirror, the hum of conversation in Der Zentaur continues oblivious as she swings her legs over the twenty meter drop to the cobbled square. One quick leap and she would be on her way down. The thought of falling doesn’t scare her anymore. But it wouldn’t be an escape. She would only wake, and remember, and follow Santi again and again into the dark.

She doesn’t know if he’s in the city yet. For the first time, she hasn’t left him a message. Pain flares behind her ribs, as if her heart is still recovering from his knife. She takes a gulp of her wine, staring down at where the fountain gleams in miniature like a carefully painted simulacrum. What hurts, even more than the phantom pain in her chest, is the memory of his face after Héloïse vanished and Thora knew she had done something irrevocable. She screws her eyes shut, wishing she could erase the memory, but it sits there, indelible.

Thora used to think of herself as infinite. Now she knows what she truly is: a spiral narrowing to a point that contains all the worst things about her. She looks at herself now, sitting on a patchof nothing, getting drunk alone on the same old stolen wine, and feels a rush of disgust. On impulse, she upends the bottle to send the wine down as impossible rain on the square below. The red liquid bubbles out of the neck and stops, sticking in midair.

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