A Million Worlds with You by Claudia Gray

Author:Claudia Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

17

I WAKE UP IN THE CANOPIED BED, BLINKING AND UNSURE. The sky beyond the windows is dark, though the horizon is beginning to brighten.

Dawn is a time of day I usually feel no need to experience. But instead of burrowing back under the feather duvet and trying to go back to sleep, I push myself upright and take stock. The nausea I felt yesterday has died down, and while I’m still slightly short of breath, it no longer seems like a crisis. So I’ve adjusted to the altitude well enough.

My belly rumbles, reminding me that I have no idea how much Wicked ate in this body yesterday, if anything. Although I don’t read much Spanish, I can make out the hotel info book well enough to know it’s still an hour before room service will start serving desayuno. Time for a nutritious breakfast from the minibar.

Jet lag really doesn’t sum up how unreal everything feels after you’ve jumped all around the globe in different dimensions, I decide as I choose a bag of trail mix and a Coke. We need another word for it. Universe lag? Firebird lag?

I hate waiting. Suspense wears me down worse than stress ever could. Even jumping into worlds where I know Wicked’s latest deathtrap is waiting doesn’t grind me down as much as this: sitting on a leather sofa, watching the sunrise against my will, eating junk for breakfast while I wait for Wyatt Conley to show up and be creepy.

I know our next conversation serves a purpose. I know how important it is to find out just how much Conley has learned about the alliance between the other dimensions. And yet when I am traveling, I am brave. I do what has to be done. When I am waiting, I only feel small and hollow and scared.

If Paul were with me— I think, but I stop myself before even finishing. Reaching out to him here in Quito would endanger him, maybe even lead Conley to kill him. At this point, honestly, I would settle for absolutely anybody I love. My own world’s Theo, even. Or Josie. Or Mom and Dad . . .

The caffeine must be hitting my bloodstream, because my eyes finally focus on what’s been sitting right in front of me this whole time: a landline phone.

I sit up straight. I’d tried my tPhone almost as soon as Theo left, but it had been remotely shut down, no doubt by Triad. In my exhaustion it hadn’t even occurred to me to think about a landline. And for Wyatt Conley, genius of the cellular age—I bet he doesn’t even remember landlines exist, even though every hotel room has them.

Swallowing the last of the Coke, I pick up the phone and examine it. I don’t see anything that looks like a listening device, at least not according to the few spy movies I’ve seen where they check for this stuff. If Conley tapped the line, well, there’s nothing I can do about that. Still, I’d bet everything he didn’t think about the landline.

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