The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(31)

“Were,” Jamie says, and Stella shuts down. “Don’t you mean ‘were’?”

Her eyes harden. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

“I’m sorry,” Goose says, “but shouldn’t the police be here?” He thinks for a moment. “Wait, they were here. They just left and let you lot hang out?”

Leo directs his words at me. “Your friend—Jamie, is it? He’s not the only one who can be persuasive.”

Jamie pulls a face at Stella. “And here I thought I was special.”

“I still think you’re special,” Mara says.

Mara, Jamie; it doesn’t seem to bother them at all that they’re standing in a room where someone ended his life.

Perhaps it’s easier for them, having been through worse. A boy committing suicide must seem like nothing by comparison. I’m growing irritated at them for coming, at Mara especially for bringing them, at Leo for being coy about it, and at the entire bloody world.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask Leo, and Mara’s head snaps around because as I say it, I realise she doesn’t know about the address he conjured for me to see. There’ll be fallout with her later, which I can’t even pretend to care about now.

Leo makes no move to speak, so I go on. “We know what you said—that Stella told you we were here, and you were curious about Goose’s ability, I’m sure. But I saw you watching that girl on the platform before she jumped, before Felix killed himself. Who was she? Why were you watching her?”

Mara refocuses her attention on Leo, with effort. “Did you know her? Did you know she was going to kill herself?”

Leo pauses, and I notice something—he has no tells. No nervous tics. Slick, that one.

“We didn’t know her,” Stella says. “But like we said, we’ve . . . been able to find others with Gifts. We knew she had one.” Her pulse is thready, heartbeat erratic. Stella’s lying about something; about what, I haven’t the slightest.

“We’ll never know now, because she’s dead,” Leo says flatly.

“A lot of us have been turning up dead,” Stella says.

“Turning up?” Jamie asks.

Stella’s eyes dart away. Leo, undisturbed, says, “Committing suicide.”

Mara exhales lightly, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Look at the house,” Leo says. “Notice anything unusual?”

Stella unfolds her legs from beneath her, heads to the kitchen table in back. She comes back with a small pile of papers. Printouts.

News reports of missing teens. She places them on the scratched-up floor in a grid. Arcel Flores, a Filipina girl with a flashing smile, left her parents’ two-bedroom in Queens to tutor a high school student in maths. Never came home. Jake Kelly, a lacrosse player with a dimpled chin, missed practice—his parents haven’t seen him since.

There were six more. Six more names including—

Sam Milnes.

Mara goes rigid. “You knew them all?”

Stella won’t address her directly. She puts down the last piece of paper.

Felicity Melrose, seventeen. Daughter of Chelsey and Peter Melrose of the Upper East Side. There are more details about her family, where she was last seen, but those don’t interest me. I’ve never seen this girl before—not hurt, not in pain. She’s just—missing.

Felix, however.

“How’d they do it?” I ask, though I know the answer already. “How’d they kill themselves?”

Stella and Leo exchange a look.

“You can’t tell me because you don’t know. They’re missing, not dead—”

“As good as,” Leo says, straightening his spine.

“Explain,” I say, leaning against the wall.

Leo appears to be editing what he plans to say, which reminds me—

“Stella, are you listening?”

She turns practically white.

“To us. Our thoughts. Right now.”

She shakes her head emphatically. “That’s not what I’m doing,” she says, though her gaze flicks briefly to Jamie, Mara. “I have to concentrate, hard, to do it. And I hate it, so I take drugs to blur out the voices. Otherwise, it’s too much.” She looks at Jamie. “You guys know that.”

“Drugs?” Goose perks up. “What sort?”

“Prescription . . . ?”

“Actually,” Daniel says. “No offence, Stella—”

“He’s about to say something offensive,” Jamie stage-whispers.

“I’d be more comfortable knowing you’re not poking around in my brain either. I think that would go a long way toward trust, on both sides.” Ever the mediator.

Stella looks to Leo, and when he nods, I can actually feel her relief. Doesn’t escape my attention that she’s been looking to Leo for quite a lot. Codependent or . . . something more? Something . . . else?

Stella retreats to the bathroom, returns with some pills. Shows them to Daniel. “Do they pass inspection?”

He raises his hands up in defence. “You don’t have to show me. I know what you were going through last year. I know how badly you wanted a cure.”

A cure. Mara mentioned that in passing, that it was Stella’s main motivation for joining her and Jamie in their search for me. She’d hoped they’d find something that would stop the voices in her head. She’d hoped to find a way to be rid of her affliction.