“No! I don’t want to be without him,” Chloe cried out at the same time Fenris declared, “I will never be parted from my mate!”
“Like I said, the worst. But fine, for Fated Mates, we got a coupla special offers. First offer: you can enter our reincarnation program. We put Fen-Fen in Modern Norway and Chlo-Chlo back in Modern USA—as humans this time. You both do this life thing all over again. Maybe you find each other, but most likely you find other spouses who ain’t ya fated mates and make my job a whole lot easier the next time you come through for processing.”
“What is the second offer?” Fenris immediately asked, not liking his chances of finding Chloe again on what had turned out to be not a flat land of thousands but a large ocean-covered ball with more people than he could ever hope to count.
“You go to the story multiverse.”
“The story multiverse?” Chloe repeated. She sounded just as confused as Fenris.
“Yeah, we’ve got this one Earth in the multiverse. It’s a lot like yours, but not quite as advanced. They’re still pretty far away from nanotechnology and nowhere near the quantum leap. No Go Rodriguez, so no biosystems. And no Alexei Rustanov, so his wife never became president. No werewolves or dragons either—they’re just a myth.
“Most of the stories in this world are completely made up or highly corrupted tales of things that happened in their history. That’s one of the many things their world has in common with yours. However, quite a few of their writers have access to real stories about real people from other multiverses. These stories are what us processors call gifts. Cuz the writers we give them to are never quite able to explain where they came from. And though they almost never admit it out loud for fear of looking like a kook, all of these writers with access to the stories in other multiverses are quite sure that somewhere, someplace, these characters they write really do exist. Many of them consider themselves channelers, not necessarily someone who’s really good at making stuff up.”
“Channelers…” Fenris repeated, understanding, but only somewhat.
The voice called Clarence continued on. “These writers often have a harder time of it, too because they get the sense that they owe something to the story, but they might not be good enough to tell it. Poor suckers. But feeling like you’re failing all the time is often the price of the gift.”
“Why would anyone want to be a writer in that world then?” Chloe asked, her voice baffled.
“No idea,” Clarence answers in a way that made Fenris imagine whatever the being was shrugging in the same way as Ola’s dragon mate often did. “But there’s a ton of channelers in this world, just waiting for our story downloads. In fact, would you look at this…Theodora Taylor just started writing Alexei and Layla Rustanov’s story, but then she doesn’t have anything slated after that.”
“But Alexei and Layla were still alive when I died,” Chloe insisted. I saw them at Rustanov Nightwolf’s wedding just a week ago.
“Like I said, time and space—not really a thing here,” Clarence answered.
“Who is this Theodora Taylor?” Fenris asked, frowning. “Why have I heard her name prior to this?”
“She’s the woman that wrote the romance novelization of our story at Alisha’s request,” Chloe answered.
Oh yes, Fenris remembered now. Chloe had gobbled her fictionalized versions of their story up along with those of Alisha’s and her sisters’. But his English had never gotten good enough to read anything beyond the simplest children’s stories to their great-grandchildren.
“Warning, she’s a lot more neurotic in this multiverse. Not nearly as confident as the version of her who wrote the books you read, Chlo-Chlo,” Clarence warned. “I’m predicting lots of gnashing of teeth on her part. Some gift! But she’s available if you want her. And if you become story that means you get to stay together forever, no matter what. So whaddya say?”
Fenris and Chloe no longer had bodies, but they turned whatever they were to look directly at each other. And though they also no longer had eyes, their gazes sparkled bright with the same decision.
THEODORA
2011 (2 days after Christmas)
“You seem good, honey.” Theodora’s best friend Monique said from the second row of their Ford Flex as they and their husbands and kids returned home from a quick Trader Joe’s run. “How are you feeling?”
Theodora glanced at her only daughter playing with Monique’s son in the Ford Flex’ third row while weighing her answer carefully. She was aware that Monique hadn’t decided to haul her family out to L.A. for Christmas purely for the weather—yay, sunshiny Christmas! Monique had also wanted to set real sister friend eyes on her after what had been a terrible year.
Theodora understood why her friend had been worried. After two miscarriages and a string of career disappointments, she’d only stopped calling her friend on the daily to break down in tears a couple of months ago.