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“You know, I recently read one of your papers,” she says casually.
This surprises me, and I bury my hands in my pockets. “Which one?”
“Something on quantum mysticism that compares shamanism to the many-worlds theory.” She shakes her head. “It made my head hurt, actually.”
My smile twitches, and I remove a hand to run it over my mouth. “Feynman said, anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy.”
She glances up at me. “And which one are you?”
A strange feeling washes over me, a sense we’ve done this before. “I’d think that’s for the profiler to decide.” I send her a wink, earning a sweet blush. “But now you have to settle my ego and tell me your thoughts.”
Halen stops walking and turns toward me. “Honestly? I’m a hardcore realist. I want to argue against all of it. But…I don’t know. I always try to question everything, even what my mind tells me is impossible.”
“That’s a non-answer,” I accuse delicately.
She senses she’s been caught. “Okay then. I think quantum theory is witchcraft.” She shrugs, and my jacket engulfs her adorably.
I can’t help it, I laugh. “You’re not too far off, sweetness.” She inhales a sharp breath as I step right in front of her. “Here, let me offer a demonstration.”
I capture her hair and pull it over her shoulder, then slowly drag the band down the length of her soft tresses, admiring the way the dark layers spill over her shoulder.
“Are you this hands-on during all of your lectures, professor?” Her tone is playful, but I note the breathy tremble just beneath.
“Never,” I say truthfully. “You’re the first to inspire me.”
An electric current charges the air between us, loaded with too much chemical attraction to ignore.
I hold the elastic band up. “Before I saw you, your hair could have been pulled back or loose. I’m not aware of the style until I observe you, then one of the possibilities becomes true, and the other collapses. This is an oversimplification of the Copenhagen interpretation. Now”—I run my fingers through her hair, relishing in the way she shivers at my touch—“with the many worlds theory, no collapse occurs. Your hair is in many styles all at once. It’s not pulled back or loose; it’s both at the same time.”
She tips her head back farther. “But as the observer, you’re now entangled with my hair, professor.”
Goddamn, the way she saysprofessordoes something dangerous to me. The deviant urge to wrap her hair around my fist and entangle myself so deeply inside her burns through me with vicious need.
“Exactly, and this is where our shaman finds himself,” I say. “If we accept that many worlds exist, where nearly every choice, every possibility exists simultaneously, then we can pose a question of what would happen to the shaman’s mind, a single consciousness, if he obtained entry to these worlds.”
Halen laughs. “See, my head hurts just trying to fathom it.”
“We’re not meant to,” I assure her. “As the shaman becomes entangled with the many worlds, this induces a state of mystical ecstasy. To those who view him from the outside, it looks like madness. But let’s consider it’s thewhat ifparadox. All worlds have a possible highest experience, and he’s attempting to experience them all at once, in search of the divine. ”
Halen considers this a moment. “But if you spend a lifetime in search of the highest experience, then you never get to truly live the one experience. Maybe I’m simply too logical, but to me, that’s madness.”
As she says this, I swear, she’s stolen the breath right from my lungs. “I find you remarkable, Miss St. James.”
She glances down at her ring before she meets my eyes again. “It’s Dr. St. James.”
I run my tongue across the ridge of my teeth. “Noted.”
She drags in an unsteady breath. “Thank you for that stimulating lecture,” she says, defusing the gathering tension. “Oh, and also for the use of your jacket. Here?—”
“Wait—” She freezes as I reach out and capture a small moth that’s entangled its wings in her hair. Her breath stills, and I’m desperate to taste her lips, to hear her release that breath in a throaty moan.
My mouth hovers close to hers, a dare, a promise.
A goddamn inevitability.
She watches as I release the insect to the night, and it flutters toward the illuminated lamppost above us. When I return my focus to her, I accept the jacket and slip my arms into the sleeves, savoring her scent.
The parking lot is silent, the whole world has ceased to exist in her presence. Absently, she spins her ring, and a devious part of me wants to slip it off her finger, to primally claim her right this instant.
