The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(48)

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.