I glance at it, my scarred palm. I drew it with a knife myself, for Goose’s benefit ostensibly, but also for mine. “I don’t heal anymore, is what I’m saying. Poorly.”
“How do you know?”
“Well,” I say, holding the bottle up. “I can get properly fucked up, for one thing.”
“Cheers to that,” Goose says, taking the bottle from me.
“Also, Jamie said something about it before we left the city.”
“Do tell.”
“Said the power’s out, for all of us.”
“Us . . .”
“Gifted. Carriers. Afflicted, whatever.”
“So you, Jamie, Mara, Leo, Sophie—all of you?”
“All of us,” I say. Except Mara. I remember her expression, or her lack of one, rather, when she said, “Mine isn’t.” Wish I could forget it.
I leave that bit out. I hold my hand out for the bottle.
He passes it to me. “As of when?” he asks, mercifully.
“The bridge, I think? Something happened there, I think. Not sure what. Jamie tried to use his ability . . . it didn’t work.”
“He told you, or you saw it not work?”
“It’s all rather vague.” My mind skips through still frames of that moment, but they’re out of order. “It’s all jumbled up with . . . I tried to heal Stella. I think.” Seems like something I would do.
“Maybe it’s not you. Maybe she was too far gone?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Doubt it, though. Mara’s father, Marcus—he was shot, once. Nearly died. I saved him.” An angry mother had aimed a gun at his client, but let’s be honest—Mara pulled the trigger. First time I saw her choose to be judge and jury and executioner. Memories.
“Maybe it’s only temporary?” Goose suggests. “Like a bruise or something.”
“Maybe,” I echo.
“Think mine’s gone as well?” Goose asks.
“Probably. Do you feel any different?”
“No. Never have, though. Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed you if I hadn’t seen you do”—he picks up my hand, lets it fall to the ground limply—“what you did.” He sighs. “Shame, really.”
“Mara’s grandmother said something about helping us get them back.”
“Mara’s—what?”
Shit.
“How drunk are you, exactly?”
“Sublimely,” I say. “Is that a word? It doesn’t sound like a word. I don’t care, if it isn’t. It ought to be.”
He crouches up, takes the bottle from me as I converse with myself.
“So what did she say?” he prods.
Goose thinks I’m talking about my Mara. I’m not sure I have the energy to correct him.
“She wasn’t . . . specific. But coming here was a part of it, I think.”
“So, you left her, but she told you to come here? To England?”
Fuck it. I give up. “I left Mara. Her grandmother is also named Mara.”
Goose’s expression betrays that he’s currently evaluating how drunk he is.
“Thing is,” I say, staring straight ahead. “Everyone in her family thinks her grandmother’s dead.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Indeed it is. Turns out, she’s been alive for over a century . . . ?” I say, as Goose’s head continues to tilt on its axis. “About a hundred and fifty years?”
“Of course.”
Neither of us says anything.
“Does she have a necklace?” Goose asks.
How does he know? “As it happens, yes,” I say, thinking of the pendant I now wear, the mirror image of the one that belonged to M. The one she left for Mara. “Why do you ask?”
“Game of Thrones. The Red Woman. She’ll probably crumble to dust if she takes it off.”
“No,” I say. “She gave her necklace to Mara,” I add, then amend, “She left it for her.” Inside a doll stuffed with human hair that we burned. I leave that bit out.
“What’s it look like?”
“The doll?”
“What doll?” Goose asks.
“Oh, the necklace, you meant. Like this.” I pull mine from beneath my collar.
He looks it over, confused. “You’ve always had that.”
“Sort of. My mother left hers for me when she died.”
“Wait, it’s the same one that Mara has?”
“Spitting image,” I say, glancing down at the oxidised silver. “Mirror image, I mean.”
“And I’m guessing you’re going to tell me it’s not a coincidence.”
I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the drugs or my angst, but that’s the moment I break. I tell Goose everything. About how I heard Mara before I met her. About realising we were the same, mirror images of each other. I tell him about the professor, my father, filling in the gaps around the experiments and Horizons as much as I can, given that there are gaps in my own memory as well.
I get as far as the bit just before Mara leaves before realising I can’t say the actual words. The vowels and consonants crystallise in my throat, sharp and piercing. Like I’ve swallowed a mouthful of razor blades and now they’re just lodged there, slicing me to ribbons.
“I’ve never seen you this fucked up over a girl. Over anything.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, though.”
“Fuck right off.”
“She’s what this is all about, for you,” he says, stabbing the air with his Guinness hand. “Not the suicides, or that old professor chap, or any of it.”
“All just subplot?”
“Precisely.”
“So where does that leave me?” I ask. My voice sounds less flat than I’d hoped.
“Well, do you want her back?”
“No,” I say, but not quite fast enough. My head feels thick, hazy. I exhale on the word “Yes.” My eyes close against the memories. What I said. What she did. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do know. But you can’t say it because the answer’s loathsome.”
“What’s that?” I murmur, leaning my head back against the cross.
“You care less about the fate of the world than you do about pussy.”
“God help me.”
“I don’t think he will, mate. I think you’re on your own.”
8
BEFORE
No Name Island, Florida
I OPEN MY EYES AND SEE nothing but white.
It is blinding after the dimness of my dreams. The dark halls of Horizons absent all sound—except for the occasional sob and scream. Mara’s silhouette, the way she looks in Jude’s arms as he edges her toward the shadows, a blade at her neck, his animal hands on her body. The memories have merged, meshed with others—my mother’s blood soaking into my skin, Mara’s voice in my ears as she begged Jude for her life. They’ve formed an endless nightmare from which I’ve no hope of waking.
Until now.
I blink and blink again. The whiteness dulls; it’s only fluorescent lighting, hidden in the recesses of the smooth, white ceiling.
A hospital ceiling?
I flip off the sheet covering my body and sit up. Pain spikes through my head and I close my eyes and grit my teeth.
“Careful,” a tinny, bodiless voice says.
It’s the voice of the person who betrayed us—who betrayed Mara most of all. The voice of the person who abused her trust. Who violated her home. Who watched on her monitor as Jude, that animal, crept into her room to watch her sleep, to scrawl messages in blood on her mirror, to torment and torture her until she broke.
It is Dr. Kells’s voice.
I open my eyes again, wincing as my vision clears. I’m not in a hospital room; I’m in some sort of cell. There’s a sink, and a toilet, and the white bed I was lying in just seconds ago. Three walls are concrete, and painted white. The fourth is glass.
“Where is she?” I say to the empty room, gripping the mattress. I feel the urge to tear it apart.
Dr. Kells can hear me, but she doesn’t an
swer my question. Instead she asks, “How are you feeling?”
“Where is she?” I ask again.
“When you stand up, you may want to do it carefully. The drugs may not have worn off completely yet.”
As if I care about being careful. As if I care about the drugs. I stare at the glass, at the white concrete walls beyond it, at nothing. I wonder, fleetingly, if I could use the bed frame to shatter it. And then I remember trying something similar with a chair in the dining hall at Horizons, before we found Jude. Before he found us.
Before Dr. Kells led him to us.
The glass there didn’t shatter. It didn’t even crack. I would need to come up with something else. But first—“Where is she?” I repeat.
“Where is who, Noah?”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m not fucking with you, as you put it. I’m merely trying to ascertain to whom you are referring. Are you referring to Mara Dyer?”
“Yes,” I sneer.
“In that case, she’s safe.”
“Safe where?”
“We can talk about that further, but I would like to discuss some other things with you first.”
“You cannot fathom the immensity of the fucks I do not give about what you would like,” I say, crossing the cell until I stand just inches from the glass. I see my reflection in it; my eyes are red rimmed and my face is pale. My jaw is rough, but only mildly—a day unshaven, perhaps two. I’m dressed in white scrubs.
“I want to see her,” I say. “I want to see her now. Perhaps afterward, if I’m feeling generous—which is, I’ll admit, a tremendous if—we can talk further about how you’ve been torturing us and why. But if you think I’m going to say another word to you before I’ve seen that Mara is safe, you are not only sick, but stupid as well.”
“Actually, Noah, here’s how this is going to work. You will be allowed to see Mara if, and only if, you cooperate with me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Good night, Noah.”
The lights in the cell go out and I’m plunged into darkness. I slam my fist into the glass.
The pain is beautiful.
9
MERIT OF HEROES
Whitby, England
WE’RE WOKEN IN THE GRAVEYARD by a cloud of bats screeching overhead, returning to the abbey before dawn.
Or rather, that’s how Goose claims to have been woken, before he shakes me awake. Which happens to be right when a short, balding caretaker sort appears in the graveyard, staring at us with an expression that reads They don’t pay me enough for this shit.
“Jesus fuck,” Goose mumbles as I rise. “What happened to your hand?”
I look down at my right fist. My knuckles are split, bleeding. I try extending my fingers and the pain is extraordinary. I place my other hand on the cross, steadying myself, and notice my blood on the stone.
“You punched a bloody grave,” he says finally. “Literally.”
“Seems so.”
“May I ask why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Goose bends to try and read the headstone. “Apologies on my friend’s behalf, Miss Milnes.”
A finger of ice straightens my spine. “What?”
“The name on the grave. Allegra Milnes.”
I bend to read the inscription, but most of it’s eroded away by wind and rain and time. There’s a thought trying to pierce the surface of my blinding hangover, but Goose takes my elbow before it can coalesce.
“Come on, mate,” he says. The caretaker’s hangdog eyes follow us with reproach, so Goose apologises to him, now, and collects the remains of our binge from the graves we slept on.
“We’re vile,” I say, trying not to further desecrate or stumble over any headstones and failing.
“The worst,” Goose agrees amiably. “Though at the moment, you’re vastly more pathetic.”
Undeniable. The sun’s beginning to rise in direct proportion to the arrowing pain in my temples. Or the other way around. Or something. It’s shit, is the point.
“Least we’re not far from the cottage,” Goose says in an attempt at cheeriness. “We can ask the host for a doctor nearby or something—”
I try shaking my head—a grievous error. “No,” I say instead.
“I’m relatively certain your wrist isn’t supposed to bend at that angle.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Fine. Then we’ll order some takeaway or something, get some protein in you.”
The thought of food roils my stomach. “Mention food again, and I’ll vomit on those stupidly expensive shoes of yours.”
“They’ve seen worse.”
“I have a headache in my eye.”
“Buck up, mate. And walk in a straight line, if you can. Preferably not dead centre of the street.”
“If I get run over by a car, I’ll die,” I muse. “Fascinating.”
Goose has an arm around my shoulder, which only works because he’s just slightly taller than I. “Be fascinated later. We’re almost there.”
I’m overwhelmed by an urge to laugh and throw up simultaneously; mercifully it passes once we arrive at the house. The keys are hidden beneath a little red-hatted garden gnome, and Goose unlocks the back door. We’re immediately confronted by a massive staircase.
“I won’t make it, mate. Go on without me,” I say solemnly.
“You’ve been resurrected before. You can climb a flight of stairs.”
“Good morning!” a round, happy voice exclaims from somewhere behind me. I try to locate the source of it, but can’t seem to move my head without seeing spots.
“Morning,” Goose replies. I catch a flash of his toothy grin in my peripheral vision.
“Welcome to East Cottage!” the woman says. “I’m Jane Corbin! You boys have fun last night?”
“Celebrating my mate’s homecoming,” Goose says. “A bit overenthusiastically.”
Jane is no stranger to enthusiasm, clearly. Every sentence is punctuated with a verbal exclamation point. “Of course, of course! Well, welcome, as I said! There’s plenty of food in the fridge, my husband Roger will be down in a bit before he heads to work, and then you’ll have the place to yourselves for the rest of your stay!”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to smile like Goose. I think it frightens her.
“You’re most welcome,” she says. No exclamation point, that time. “Oh, love! What happened to your hand?”
“Slammed a door on it,” I lie. “Jet lag and alcohol don’t mix.”
She offers a sympathetic look. “They certainly don’t. You ought to get that looked at—my husband’s a medic, he can—”
“I’ll be fine, just need a sleep.”
“Of course, of course,” she says, fluttering her hands. “Off to Bedfordshire with you.”
I haul myself up the stairs, my jaw clenching with each step. I’ve no idea how many bedrooms are in the cottage or which ones are ours, I realise, at about the same time I realise I don’t care. The first one with a made bed is the one I end up in. I kick the door shut, and fall onto it stomach first, a massive mistake.
I lie there, unwilling to moan even a bit, because I’m going to suffer silently, with dignity. People who moan are intolerable.
Just be sick already. Get it over with.
“Fuck off,” I say to no one, staring at the white beadboard on the lower half of the white walls. There’s a fireplace in the room. Charmant.
Just being able to rise up onto my elbows is a monumental achievement, on par with space exploration and stem cell research. The prospect of death is always tempting, but never more so when compared to the prospect of standing.
“Get up, twat,” I growl at myself. Gendered insults work on my ignorant psyche, apparently, because I am standing. Unfortunately I can’t remember why.
Also unfortunately, I’m facing a mirror, which seems spectacularly unfair. I look the way I deserve to look, which is to say, ill and wretched.
I allow myself to wallow
in it instead of focusing on any of the more global concerns, like whether Daniel or Jamie has been co-opted into one of the respective shadow organisations that have taken an interest in us over the year, or Mara’s current whereabouts and welfare, or whether I’ll wake up to find Goose missing and then dead.
Or that dream from this morning, or last night, or whenever it was. That Horizons dream.
Too much. The best course of action is oblivion, obviously, which leads me to do the perfunctory knock-then-open on the doors of the other rooms until I find Goose sprawled on a large canopy bed in one of them, snoring lightly.
He had the pills in his jeans pocket, which he’s still wearing, which is why my hand is on his ass as a man dressed in white scrubs—Roger, presumably?—walks by, as I’ve left the bedroom door open.
“What!” I shout slowly.
He backs away with raised eyebrows, which is ideal, as it allows me to (1) avoid conversation and (2) withdraw the bottle from the still-sleeping Goose, shake out a few pills, and summon enough saliva to swallow them without water (an important life skill) before stomping back across the hall, my teeth rattling in my skull.
Without alcohol to help the pills along this morning, I remain upright and conscious, jittery and chattery. My fist throbs, but I don’t want to think about it because that means thinking about the nightmare and the grave and the name of the woman buried in it when I don’t want to think about anything at all, so instead I’m opening the various doors in the bedroom I’ve landed in—a cupboard and a loo, should I decide to force my body to empty my stomach of its poisonous contents, though I already know I won’t. “It would be disrespectful to waste Goose’s beneficence so thoughtlessly,” I say aloud, to no one, as I wait for the pills to kick in.
The effects are disappointing, to be honest. I’d hoped for instant sleep—the exhaustion plus sedatives plus leftover alcohol ought to be enough to down a bull elephant, one would think, but all I get instead is a mild reprieve from my vengeful headache and the twisting in my stomach, along with a general creeping tiredness. I lie down, but can’t close my eyes. The curtains in the room are drawn, and daylight sneaks in from the edges, slicing bars and shadows on the wall. The room feels raw, eerie, wrong in the daylight. Coffinlike and close.
The Reckoning of Noah Shaw Page 4
