“You know I am.”
“Good, because I think we might need it.”
She turned back to me with a concerned look. “Why? What’s up?”
“Oh, for one thing, I spent the afternoon in another dimension.”
Chloe laughed as she pulled a chilled bottle of white out of the fridge and set it down on the counter. “Well, if that’s the case, we might need more than sauvignon blanc.”
I set the wooden spoon I’d been using to stir the butter, cheese, and pepper into the pasta, and turned to face Chloe.
“What? You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I have had one fuck of a day.”
Chloe poured us each a glass of wine and sat down at the dining room table.
“Start at the beginning,” she said, “and don’t leave anything out.”
I plated our dinner, took a sip of wine, and told Chloe about my day—about Emily and everything she’d said regarding my parents, Gatewick, Meechum, Crow, that Rabbits had most likely been created to repair and maintain a much older interdimensional multiverse repair mechanism, and all the rest of it.
When I was finished, Chloe leaned back in her chair and exhaled. “Holy shit,” she said. “I don’t even wanna tell you about my day now.”
I pulled out my phone to show Chloe the photograph I’d taken of the poster advertising the music festival, and a picture I’d snapped of the Fremont Troll holding a Mini Cooper instead of a Volkswagen. Obviously, the music festival poster didn’t mean much out of context, and the troll photo could have very easily been faked, but I could tell Chloe believed me, even without further scientific examination of the evidence.
“Does this mean you have some kind of…super Gatewick powers?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it just means I’m a little fucked-up because my parents took drugs and made me play weird games as a kid.”
“You’re not fucked-up, K. You’re complicated. Huge difference.”
“Thanks…I think.”
Chloe nodded, then topped up our glasses of wine. “So, after hearing you describe your day of wild adventures, I think there’s only one thing to do.”
“I’m listening,” I said, and folded my arms.
“We have to do what your friend Emily told you.”
“And what is that?”
“Win the game, save the world.”
“Okay. But as much as I appreciate your enthusiasm, Emily also told me that Crow has been terrorizing and killing players, and that his manipulations have messed up the mechanics of Rabbits so badly that it’s become pretty much impossible to play the game, never mind win it.”
“Sounds like a challenge to me.”
“Really? Because, to me, it sounds like a futile and potentially deadly enterprise.”
“So it’s futile and potentially deadly. What the hell else you got going on right now?”
* * *
—
We finished eating, loaded the dishwasher, then sat back down at the table.
“What if we’re not safe here?” I asked.
“In your apartment?”
I nodded. I wasn’t worried about myself. I was thinking about Chloe. Crow had made it clear. If anything happened to Chloe, it would be on me.
“You’re thinking about the Swan lady and her suicide twins?”
“Or anybody else Crow decides to send,” I said.
“If somebody was coming to get us, wouldn’t they be here already?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What if they’re waiting to see if we start trying to play the game again?”
“Haven’t we been playing the game ever since we saw Minister Jesselman blow his brains out on live TV?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“Do you believe there’s something fucked-up going on and that our multiverse is in genuine danger?”
I thought about her question for a few seconds. Did I believe all of this was real? I was losing a lot of the details, but I knew I’d seen the movie Before Midnight. I could no longer recall much of the plot, but I remembered where we’d sat in the theater. Something was definitely happening.
“Yes, I think the multiverse might be in danger,” I said, finally.
“Well, then?”
“What I can’t believe is that it’s somehow up to you and me to fix it.”
“Let’s avoid the Chosen One bullshit and just go back to the beginning to see if there’s something we missed. And if we happen to find something, we can decide at that point whether or not to pursue it. Deal?”