The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(90)

“Yes, but also about him. Like, generally.”

“I’m not following . . .”

“When I met you, I thought he was going to use you.”

“This is a shock to no one, Jamie.”

“Can you shut up for a second so I can admit my wrongness?” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying. He could never use you. You own him. You should’ve seen the way he was looking at you while you were out.”

I smiled a little. “How?”

“Like you’re the ocean and he’s desperate to drown.”

His words wiped the smile off my face. Noah had drowned. With my help.

I shook my head as if to clear it. Jamie must’ve thought I was disagreeing with him because he went on.

“You don’t get what you do for him. You’re like his manic pixie dream girl or something.” Jamie thought for a second. “Actually, more like his psychotic demon nightmare thing, but whatever. You get my point.”

I refused to acknowledge it.

“Speaking of demon nightmare things,” he segued gracefully, “you dying and coming back to life? That was a neat trick. How’d you manage that?”

“Jude said it’s because I manifested finally, or something. That I healed myself.”

“Huh. And Noah?”

I stayed quiet.

“He looked pretty dead when you were sitting there rocking back and forth, holding his seemingly lifeless body, I have to say.”

“Do you? Have to say?”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not being entirely truthful, Mara?”

“You’re imagining things. You’re under a lot of stress.”

He looked like he was about to hit me, when someone knocked on the door. Rochelle peeked inside and motioned for us to follow her out into the hallway.

“You owe me, Cousin,” she said to Jamie as we passed Detective Howard and some nurses.

“You love me and you know it.”

“You’re lucky I do.”

We passed Noah’s closed door on our way to the elevator. The cops were still there, still guarding him. I recognized one of them; he’d been at the factory. The one distracted by Jamie shouting from the computer.

Jamie stopped walking. “You okay?” Jamie asked the officer. I stopped to listen.

“Yeah,” the cop said slowly. “Why?”

Jamie motioned to his own nose. “You have . . . something.”

The cop’s eyebrows drew together and he sniffed, then rubbed his nose. His fingers came away red. They left a bloody smear above his lip.

He nodded at Jamie. “Thanks.”

We resumed our exit. When we neared the elevator, though, something caught my eye.

A scalpel rested on a little cart outside a patient room. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching me.

No one was.

I slipped it into my back pocket and followed Jamie and Rochelle into the elevator. The officer was dabbing a bloody tissue to his nose when the doors closed.





68


NOAH


MARA IS WAITING FOR US when Jamie springs Daniel and me that night. She stands beneath a streetlight on an empty sidewalk, looking very gorgeous in a very bad way.

“Subway?” Jamie suggests.

Daniel sticks his hand up in the air. “Cab. Definitely.”

A minute later one pulls up to the curb. The cabbie turns around once we’re in. “Where are we going?”

Mara grins at me. “Wherever we want.”



Almost as soon as Jamie unlocks the front door to his aunt’s house, he ducks into the bathroom, and Daniel passes out on the couch in the parlor.

I look around. “Nice place,” I say as Mara leads me farther in.

“Upstairs or downstairs?” she asks.

“Bed,” I answer. Her smile widens as she leads me up the steps. I follow her into a bedroom and we collapse together in each other’s arms.



I wake up the next afternoon. Mara is beside me, dead, her limbs tangled in the sheets.

No. Not dead. Sleeping.

But the panic stays with me. I extract my arm from beneath her as guilt rises in my throat. It’s so thick I could choke.

There’s a bathroom in here, thank God, and I escape into it and bolt the door behind me. I look at my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, at my empty eyes, my blank face. Then they disappear and I see other things. The pale blue veins in Mara’s arm before I stuck the needle in it. Her closed eyelids, unnaturally still.

I want to cut myself into pieces no one can reassemble. Instead I take off my shirt, knowing, fearing what I’ll see.

There are stitches in my chest, as expected, and the wound is almost completely healed, as I’d feared.

I steal scissors from the medicine cabinet and cut the stitches out, wondering without much curiosity at all if I’ll have a scar. Hope so.

“Knock, knock.” Daniel’s voice, muffled, accompanied by tapping on the door. I step out of the bathroom as he says, “Everyone decent?”

Mara opens her eyes blearily, looking up at me from the bed. Her hair is a wild, tangled mess. I want to fill my hands with it.

“Who is it?” she asks.

“Your brother,” I say.

She’s up in an instant and launches herself out of bed, stubbing her toe in the process, swearing creatively as a result. She flings the door open and attacks him with a hug. Daniel staggers back, but his arms wrap around her just as tightly.