The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(66)

“What are you doing here?”

“I found the one.”

“Please leave,” I said flatly.

“Mara—”

“Don’t you dare say my name. You have no right to say anything to me.”

He closed his eyes. “May I come in?”

“No.”

“Please.”

I wanted to close the door in his face, but I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t leave even if I did. He would stand there, sleep there, turn up everywhere I went, until he gave me the message he wanted me to hear.

“You left me,” I said, as I let him in. I didn’t have to make it easy.

The professor’s gaze fell to his feet. “I saw what would happen to her if I’d been there. It was for your, and her, protection.”

“That’s so convenient, isn’t it? You can excuse anything that way, can’t you? By saying it couldn’t be otherwise, that you had no choice. So why are you here now? What do you want from me? I want you gone before Indi finds you here.”

“There’s a girl. I need you to befriend her. She’s passionate, hyperintelligent, but skeptical.” His words were rushed—I’d never seen him so excited. “She won’t listen to me. You’re the only one who will be able to persuade her to do what’s necessary to have the child.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because your daughter is pregnant.”

I blinked, stunned. “What?”

“She didn’t want to tell you until after she’d graduated. She’s going to marry her boyfriend. She thought you’d disapprove.”

I sat down, rested my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands.

“It’s recessive, Mara—Her child might be a—”

My head snapped up. “Have you seen anything?”

“The child’s fate is too tightly wound with mine, so I can’t distinguish the threads. But I know that we need the boy Naomi will have. We need a Hero. Just in case Indira’s turns out to be a—”

Shadow. Like me. He didn’t need to say it.

“Your ability will fade as Indira’s child begins to manifest. But if the boy is born of the girl, Naomi, there might be a way—if you die by his hand, you might be able to reverse it. End the cycle completely.”

“Might.”

“There are no guarantees,” he said. “You know that.”

“And the girl? What will happen to her?”

“She makes the choice. She consents. She dies.”

It was a risk. But I would take it for my daughter’s sake. I flew to London with the professor the next day.





44


HE’S HERE!” DANIEL SHOUTED. “HE’S in New York!”

I lifted my head up from the kitchen table, wincing at the stiffness in my neck. Had I fallen asleep?

“What time is it?” I asked hoarsely.

“Wake-up time,” my brother said cheerily. He was neatly dressed in jeans and a henley shirt, standing next to Stella. She was also annoyingly alert, and freshly clothed.

“I thought about waking you to go to bed,” Stella said, then sipped from a glass of orange juice. “But Daniel said not to.”

“You looked pretty pitiful,” my brother added.

I couldn’t muster up an equally irritating response, but I didn’t have to because Jamie appeared in the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Who’s in New York?” he asked.

“Lukumi! Whoever! He’s giving a lecture at Columbia.” Daniel flipped around his laptop to show me an online announcement for the Columbia Department of Comparative Literature, and he read it aloud as I read it silently: The Final Girl: Jungian Archetypes in Pop Culture, a lecture presented by Dr. A. Lukumi, MD, PhD. Contact the Columbia Student Affairs office for tickets.

Jamie stood in front of the fridge. “Are you finished speaking?”

Daniel narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Can someone tell me why there’s no cream cheese in the house?”

Daniel ignored him. “It’s today,” Daniel said. “I’m leaving at four.”

I looked at the clock. That was in two hours. I felt a jolt of energy and stood up. I had time to change, maybe even shower. I wasn’t going to miss this.

“What are you doing?” my brother asked.

“I am going to get less gross,” I said, “And then I am going to go with you, obviously.”

Daniel shook his head. “That’s what he’ll be expecting. He knows who you are, Mara—he was in your hospital room, on the train platform. He’s been following you, right?”

“Right . . .”

“Then he’ll know if you show up.”

“He’ll know who you are too,” I said to my brother. “Haven’t you been paying attention? He’s calling us out. He knows everything, about all of us, about our whole family. He definitely knows what you look like.”

“Maybe, but I don’t plan on being seen. And if I am seen, so what? I’m visiting colleges, after all. It’s only natural that I’d be—”

“Auditing a lecture?” Jamie snorted. “I wouldn’t describe that as natural.”