The Evolution of Mara Dyer (19 page)

“Of course.”

“My father took the jet.”

I made a face.

“I would wholly embrace and mirror your disdain, but I have to say, of all the useless garbage he bleeds money on, that’s the one I’m not at all sorry about. No lines. No security misery. No rush.”

That actually did seem worth it. “You don’t have to take off your shoes or your jacket or—”

“Or be fondled by an overzealous TSA agent. You don’t even have to show ID—my father employs the pilot and crew. We literally just show up at the private airport and walk on. It’s extraordinary.”

“Sounds like it,” I murmured, and flipped open the book.

“I’ll have to take you somewhere, sometime.”

I heard a smile in his voice, but all it did was frustrate me. “I’m not even allowed to come to your house without adult supervision.”

“Patience, Grasshopper.”

I sighed. “Easy for you to say.” I began turning pages, but my eyes kept landing on jargon. “What else does Mr. Lenaurd think?”

“I didn’t bother to read the whole thing; it was terminally dull. What you said just reminded me of it—the author believes that some experiences we’ve never had can be passed down genetically.”

I blinked slowly as a key fit into place. “Superman,” I said to myself.

“Beg your pardon?”

I looked up from the pages at Noah. “When Daniel was trying to help me with the fake Horizons essay, he asked if the thing my fake character has—the thing
I
have—was acquired or if it existed from the time she—I—was born. Spider-Man or Superman,” I said, and snapped the cover closed. “I’m Superman.”

Noah seemed amused by this. “As delightful as I find that concept, I’m afraid that our unnatural attributes must have been acquired.”

“Why?”

He set his guitar down on the floor, and then met my eyes.
“How many times have you wished someone dead, Mara? Someone who cuts you off on the highway, et cetera?”

Probably more than I should think about. I answered with a noncommittal, “Hmm.”

“And when you were little, you probably even screamed to your parents that you wished they were dead too, yes?”

Possibly. I shrugged.

“And yet they’re still here. As for myself, my ability couldn’t have gone unobserved when I was a kid; I had to get shots and things like everyone else. Surely someone would have noticed I could heal, no?”

“Wait,” I said, leaning forward. “How did
you
realize you could heal?”

The change in Noah’s demeanor was subtle. His languid posture stiffened even though he was stretched out on his bed, and there was something distant about his eyes when I met them. “I cut myself, and there was no trace of it the next day,” he said, sounding bored. “Anyway,” he went on, “it has to be acquired. Otherwise we would have noticed long before now.”

“But you said you’ve never been sick—”

“What we
should
be thinking about is why the hell the same rather unusual pendant would be in my mother’s chest of silver and sewn into your grandmother’s creepy doll.”

Noah’s face was smoothed into an unreadable mask, the one he reserved for everyone else. There was something he
wasn’t telling me, but pushing him now would get me nowhere.

“Okay,” I said, letting it go for the moment. “So your mother and my grandmother had the same jewelry.”

“And hid it,” Noah added.

I withdrew the silver charm from my back pocket and placed it flat in my palm. The detail was intricate, I noticed as I examined it. Impressive, considering the size.

I looked up at Noah. “Can I see yours?”

He hesitated for maybe a fraction of a second before slipping the fine black cord over his head. He placed it in my hand; the silver pendant was still warm from his skin.

I compared them both with an artist’s eye; the lines of the feather, the contours of the dagger’s half-hilt. The two pendants
looked
the same, but something bothered me. I turned the charm—my charm—over, and then I realized what it was.

“They’re mirror images.”

Noah bent over my open hand, then looked at me from under his lashes. “They are indeed.”

“And they’re not identical,” I said, pointing out the slight imperfections that distinguished one from the other. “They look handmade. And the design is a little—it’s a little crude, right? It kind of reminds me of the block printed illustrations you find in old books. And the symbols—”

“Fuck,” Noah said, leaning his head back against his headboard. His eyes had closed and he was shaking his head. “Symbols. I didn’t even think.”

“What?”

“I never bothered to think about it in that context,” he said, rising from the bed as I handed him back his pendant. “I just saw it, knew it was my mother’s, and wore it because it was hers. But you’re right, it could mean something—especially since there are two.” He headed for the alcove.

“I was just going to say it reminds me of the symbols on a family crest.”

Noah stopped mid-stride, and turned very slowly. “We’re not related.”

“I know, but—”

“Don’t even think it.”

“I get the picture,” I said as Noah slipped his laptop off of his desk and brought it to his bed.

What was it Daniel had said about Google?

“So, the preponderance of hits for ‘feather symbol meaning’ bring up the Egyptian goddess Ma’at,” Noah read. “Apparently she judged the souls of the dead by weighing their hearts against a feather; if she deemed a soul unworthy, it was sent to the underworld to be consumed—by this bizarre crocodile-lion-hippopotamus creature, it seems.” He moved the screen so I could see it; it was, in fact, bizarre. “Anyway, if the soul was good and pure, congratulations, you’ve earned passage into paradise.” Noah typed in something else.

“What about ‘dagger comma symbol?’”

“Opened another tab already but alas, said search has generated not much.”

“Did you try ‘feather and dagger symbol’ together?”

“Indeed. Nothing there, either.” Noah snapped his laptop shut.

“How many hits did you say the feather thing brought up?”

“Nine million or so. Give or take.”

I sighed.

“But most of the first ones were all to the Egyptian goddess,” Noah said cheerfully. “That’s something.”

“Not . . . really.”

“Well, we’re further ahead than we were yesterday.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Yesterday when I woke up to find that I’d been sleepwalking.”

“Point.”

“Yesterday when I was ready to blame my should-be-dead stalker for the creepy doll-in-underwear-drawer incident.”

“I see where you’re going with this.”

“Good,” I said, handing my grandmother’s pendant to him. “I was starting to worry you didn’t care.”

“Is that what you think,” Noah said coolly. Then, “Why are you giving me this?”

“I don’t want to lose it,” I said. But I didn’t want to wear it, either.

Noah studied me carefully, but his fingers closed around the charm. “I have someone looking into the Jude issue,” he said then, his voice level. “A private investigator my father’s
worked with. He’s trying to find out where he lives, which is proving difficult since he’s completely off the grid, and apparently isn’t stupid enough to use the illegal immigration channels for help.”

I rubbed my forehead. “He
was
kind of stupid.”

“Well, he’s not acting like it.”

“Maybe he has help?”

Noah nodded. “I’ve considered it, but who besides you even knows he’s alive?”

“Another question,” I groaned. I flopped down on the bed and then turned my cheek to face Noah. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for him?”

“I don’t tell you everything,” he said indifferently.

The words stung, but not as much as the way he said them.

“In any case,” he said, “about the pendant, at least now we know that at some point, your grandmother and my mother crossed paths through whoever made them. I’ll look through her things and see if I can find anything else.”

I was quiet.

“Mara?”

I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have burned the doll, Noah. I should have looked for a seam or something—”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“There was a piece of paper, too.”

“I saw.”

“It could have been the answer to
all
of this.”

Noah lightly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “There’s no point worrying about it now.”

“When would be a good time to worry about it?”

Noah shot me a look. “No need to get snippy.”

I bit my lip, then let out a breath. “Sorry,” I said, looking up at his ceiling, following a pattern of swirls in the plaster. “I just—I’m worried about tonight.” My voice tightened. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

I didn’t know where I’d be when I woke up.

30

N
OAH STOOD UP SUDDENLY THEN, AND CROSSED
the room. He locked his door as he met my eyes.

“Risky,” I said.

Noah was silent.

“What about our parents?”

“Never mind them.” He moved back to his bed and stood beside it, looking down at me. “I don’t care about them. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” he said. “Tell me what you want and it’s yours.”

I want to close my eyes at night and never be afraid that I’ll open them up and see Jude.

I want to wake up in the morning safe in my bed and never worry that I’ve been anywhere else.

“I don’t know,” I said out loud, and my voice had this awful, desperate tinge. “I’m afraid—I’m afraid I’m losing control.”

I’m afraid I’m losing myself.

The idea was a splinter in my mind. Always there, always stinging, even when I wasn’t conscious of it. Even when I wasn’t thinking about it.

Like Jude.

Noah held my gaze. “I won’t let that happen.”

“You can’t stop it,” I said, my throat tightening. “All you can do is watch.”

It was a few seconds before Noah finally spoke. “I have been, Mara.” His voice was aggressively blank.

My eyes filled with infuriating tears. “What do you see?” I asked him.

I knew what I saw when I looked at myself: A stranger. Terrified, terrorized, and weak. Was that what he saw too?

I drew myself up. “Tell me,” I said, my voice edged with steel. “Tell me what you see. Because I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t or what’s new or different and I can’t trust myself, but I trust you.”

Noah closed his eyes. “Mara.”

“You know what?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, holding myself together. “Don’t tell me, because I might not remember. Write it down, and then maybe someday, if I ever get better, let me read it. Otherwise I’ll change a little bit every day and never know who I was until after I’m gone.”

Noah’s eyes were still closed and the planes of his face were smooth, but I noticed that his hands had curled into fists. “You cannot fathom how much I hate not being able to help you.”

And he couldn’t fathom how much I hated needing help. Noah said before that I wasn’t broken but I was, and he was learning that he couldn’t fix me. But I didn’t want to be the injured bird who needed healing, the sick girl who needed sympathy. Noah was different like me but he wasn’t
broken
like me. He was never sick or scared. He was strong. Always in control. And even though he’d seen the worst of me, he wasn’t
afraid
of me.

I wished I wasn’t afraid of myself. I wanted to feel something else.

Noah stood beside his bed, his body taut with tension.

I wanted to feel in control. I wanted to feel
him
.

“Kiss me,” I said. My voice was sure.

Noah’s eyes opened, but he didn’t move. He was considering me. Trying to gauge whether or not I meant it. He didn’t want to push me before I was ready.

So I had to show him that I was.

I pulled him fiercely into his soft bed and he did not protest. I rolled beneath him and he braced himself above me and his arms were a perfect cage.

We were forehead to forehead. From this angle, it was impossible to ignore the length of his lashes, the way they skimmed his cheekbones when he blinked. It was impossible
to ignore the shape of his mouth, the curve of his lips when he said my name.

It was impossible not to want to taste them.

I arched my neck and my hips and stretched my body up toward his. But Noah placed one hand on my waist and very gently pushed me back down.

“Slowly,” he said. The word sent a thrill through every nerve.

Noah leaned down slightly, just slightly, and let his lips brush my neck. My pulse raced at the contact. Noah drew back.

He could hear it, I remembered. Every heartbeat. The way my breathing changed or didn’t. He thought my heart was pounding with fear, not desire.

I had to show him he was wrong.

I arched my neck off of the pillow and angled my lips toward his ear and whispered, “Keep going.”

To my complete shock, he did.

Noah traced the line of my jaw with his mouth. He was braced above me and touched me nowhere else. Then he hooked one finger under the collar of my T-shirt and pulled it down into a slight V, exposing a triangle of skin. He kissed the hollow at the base of my throat. Then lower. Once.

I was spinning. Pinned to his mattress by the space between us but I was desperate to close it—desperate to feel his mouth on mine.

“Now?”

“No,” he whispered against my skin.

His mouth made me ache, sweet and furious. It was impossible to keep still, but when my body instinctively curved toward his, he drew away.

“Now?” I breathed.

“Not yet.” His lips found my skin again, this time beneath my ear.

Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly take any more, Noah lowered his mouth to the curve of my shoulder, and his teeth grazed my skin.

I was ignited, on fire, flooded with heat and ready to beg.

I thought I saw the smallest hint of a half-smile on his mouth, but it was gone before I could be sure. Because Noah’s gaze dropped from my eyes to
my
mouth, and then his lips brushed mine.

The kiss was so light I wouldn’t have believed it happened if I hadn’t watched. His lips were cloud soft and I wanted to feel them more. Harder. Fiercer. I ran my fingers through his perfect hair and wrapped my arms around his neck. Locked them there. Locked him in.