The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #3)(93)

Should you choose to wear your grandmother’s pendant, I will know of your decision. But no matter what, we will see each other again.

A.L.

I looked up as soon as I’d finished reading. Jamie was staring at me.

“What did yours say?”

My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.

“Stuff,” I said slowly. “About me. Yours?”

“Me too. Stuff.” He paused. “Do you believe him?”

Without you, he can.

“I don’t know,” I lied. My mind was crowded with words I hadn’t written, thoughts I didn’t think, memories I’d never experienced, and I couldn’t untangle them yet. “Do you?”

“I want to,” Jamie said. And then he bowed his head and clasped his necklace around his neck before I could say another word. He half-smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “The freaks shall inherit the earth.”





70


I WAITED EXACTLY ONE HOUR before hunting Noah down. I wanted to give him space, but I also wanted to tell him about what I’d read. What I remembered. I wanted to ask him what he thought we should do.

I knew what I thought I should do, but I needed to work up the nerve to do it.

I was not the girl I’d been when Noah had met me. I was not even the girl I’d been before Horizons. I’ve been remade by what happened to me, by the things I’ve done. I’ve become someone new; I feel something, I do it. I want something, I take it. Maybe I haven’t changed to Noah but I have changed. He’d seen pictures, heard words, detailing my crimes, but he didn’t watch me commit them. Part of me was glad. There are some things the people you love should never see you do.

And I did love him. Whatever parts of me had been burned away by what I’d been through, what I’d done, that wasn’t one of them.

But Noah was like the Velveteen Rabbit. I would love his whiskers off, love him until he turned gray, until he lost shape. I would love him to death. And he would let me. Gladly.

I found him hiding out in a different guest bedroom. He had his duffel bag with him, the one Stella had rescued from Horizons after we left the morgue. He’d finished reading the letter from his mother, but he hadn’t come to find me. I wondered what she’d said to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

I stood in the doorway, unacknowledged. “Can I come in?” He was reading something, and he nodded over the edge of his book.

“What are you reading?” I asked, then sat on the bed. Whatever it was, he was almost done with it.

“The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.”

My book. He must have taken it with him to Horizons. I hadn’t even noticed it in his bag.

“Did you like it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“The editor never tells you whether the protagonist is mad or was pursued by the devil. He didn’t resolve anything.” Noah set the book down on the nightstand. I moved closer, until I could feel his heat.

We’d been exhausted the night before and had passed out without talking, and when I’d woken up this afternoon, Daniel and Jamie had been there with the Lukumi letters. We needed to talk about what had happened yesterday, last night, and what would happen tomorrow, but the words I needed to say to him wouldn’t come. All I wanted to think about was today. Tonight.

I was not sure I ever really believed that Noah was dead, but I wasn’t sure I really believed he was alive either. I still couldn’t quite adjust to the reality of him. There were shadows beneath his eyes, and his cheeks were rough with stubble. The fading afternoon light from the window behind the bed shone through his hair, turning the strands gold. I never wanted to stop looking at him. I wished I wouldn’t have to.

Maybe I don’t have to yet, I thought. There was so much to say, but maybe I didn’t have to say it now. Noah was alive. Here. Neither of us was in mortal danger. We were sitting next to each other in a bed. I wanted to reach out to him, but my hands stayed knotted in the sheets.

“I let you die,” Noah said casually. “In case you were wondering.”

I wasn’t wondering. “Because I begged you to.”

Noah hesitated before he asked, “Do you want to die?”

“No.” It was the truth. I would have, for my brothers, but I didn’t want that for myself. “Do you want to die?”

I knew the answer, but I asked the question anyway, because he’d asked me. Maybe he wanted to talk about it. Maybe we needed to.

“Yes,” he said.

“Tell me why.”

“I don’t have the words.” His voice was smooth, his expression unreadable, but I knew it masked how worthless he felt, how screwed up and damaged and wrong he thought he was. How he felt responsible for everyone, for me, and how it broke him that he hadn’t saved me.

I didn’t know what to say to him, so I asked, “Are you thinking about your father?”

His jaw tightened; it was the only sign that he’d heard me. After what seemed like forever, he said, “I’m never going back there.”

“To Miami?”

“Wherever he is, I won’t be. He’s dead to me.”

I wondered if that were really true. I hoped, selfishly, that it was.