The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(51)

My eyes widened in shock. “India?”

“By the well,” he said casually. “You were younger then.”

I reached back, searched my mind for some glimmer of recognition. I remembered a woman pointing at me, whispering something. A man was with her, but I could not remember his face.

“That was you?” And then, before he could answer, “How did you know where to find me?”

“I was paid by Simon Shaw to unlock what he believed would be the secret to immortality.” The professor smiled just slightly.

“He thought I was—”

A slight nod. “I knew the man you called Uncle, and suggested that Mr. Shaw contract with him to care for you until you grew up, as no one could be sure what you would become until you were older.”

“But I thought you saw my future?”

“I can see shades of it, under . . . particular circumstances. But many things are hidden, even to me.”

“How did you know Uncle?”

The professor pursed his lips. “There are not many of us, and we are . . .” He searched for a word. “Attracted to each other.” ?The carriage slowed to a stop. He stepped out of the carriage and held out his hand to me. I took it, clutching my doll with the other.

“Professor?”

“Yes?”

“What am I?”

The look he gave me was tinged with sadness, but also hope. I would never forget it. “You are a girl, Mara. A girl blessed and cursed.”





34


THE LIGHT CHANGED FROM BLACK to bright red. I squinted against it.

“She’s moving. Look.”

“Hey, you.”

Jamie’s voice. I tried to answer him, to swallow, but my throat was filled with sand. I forced my eyes open—the light in the room was blinding. A backlit shadow shifted beside me.

“Stella—some water, maybe?”

In seconds another shadow joined Jamie’s, handing him something. He held something cold and hard to my lips—a glass. I was weak and couldn’t take it from him, but I sipped from it greedily. Freezing water ran down my chin, and as it did, I noticed that I was freezing too.

“Cold,” I said between gulps. My voice was still hoarse, but at least I had one. The room was coming into focus too. The more aware I became of everything around me, the more aware I became of myself. I was freezing, and nauseous, but somehow I didn’t feel sick.

“What happened?” I asked.

Jamie and Stella exchanged a glance.

“What do you remember?” she asked cautiously.

I thought back, rooting through hazy memories of the past few days—the road trip, the sickness, the train, the razor— Oh, God. “I—I cut myself,” I admitted. My cheeks burned with shame.

But then Jamie said, “We got them out.”

I blinked.

“There was totally something inside you, Mara. You were right.”

Horror. “Oh, God. What was it?”

“Like, capsules, they looked like?” Stella said.

“Do you still have them?” I asked.

“Yeah. Jamie?”

“They’re in my room. Hold on.” Jamie left, and when he came back, he held out his hand.

There were two of them, slightly larger than grains of rice, and transparent. Something copper and black was inside one, copper and red in the other.

“How did you know they were there?” Stella asked.

I thought back, remembered my face in the mirror, and the whispers: Get them out.

Please stop.

I opened my mouth to tell them, but then swallowed the words back. “I had a feeling,” was all I said as I shivered. Stella wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

“You scared the shit out of us, you know.”

I knew. But I’d had no choice. Or at least it felt like I’d had no choice. I remembered the feeling I’d had on the train, the feeling that had been with me since I’d woken up in Horizons, on the island. It was gone now. I felt like—like me.

“You look better,” Jamie said, studying me. “How do you feel?”

“Better.” I was thirsty, and tired, and nauseous and hungry at the same time. But I felt normal. Normal for me, anyway.

“Listen,” he started. “There’s something you need to know.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“When you—when we found you like we found you, we found something else.”

Jamie looked at Stella, who reached into her pocket. “Someone left a note at the door.” She handed it to me.

Believe her.

I didn’t recognize the handwriting. “I’m ‘her’?”

Jamie nodded. “It came with a medical kit or something. A big bag of surgical shit.”

I felt cold again. “Someone knew what was inside me.”

“And knows that we’re here.”

“Which means we have to leave,” Stella said. “Like, yesterday.”

“But whoever it was, whoever left it, they told you to believe me. And they were right.”

“But this person knows what’s wrong with us, and why wouldn’t they just say something if they wanted to help?”

My mind seized on the image of the man I knew as Abel Lukumi. If Noah had been there, he would have said that I was grasping at coincidences and trying to force them into facts. But Noah wasn’t there. It was just me, and Stella, and Jamie, and a trail of breadcrumbs that led to no one and nothing but the priest.