The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(47)

Sam didn’t want to die, but he killed himself anyway.

Beth didn’t want to die, but she killed herself anyway.

And then Stella reappears in our lives, only to disappear days later?

There’s a difference between taking pills in a bed, planning never to wake up, and climbing a centuries-old tower and hanging yourself while another man is being buried. A difference between throwing yourself in front of a train in front of strangers, and locking yourself in the bathroom to let your life drain out with the bathwater. The public display of anguish, and the isolated, private expression of it. How you choose to die can reflect how you chose to live.

Whoever found Sam, Beth, the others, and however she did it, Leo relayed that they went missing; their connection to her was cut. And then they reappeared when they were about to die. They were at war, I think—between needing, for some as yet unknowable reason, to end their lives, and their desperation to be stopped.

Sam wanted help. Beth wanted help. They killed themselves in public because they wanted people to know.

And not just people generally, in Sam’s case: I think he wanted me to know. He ended his life on the day of my father’s funeral, at my father’s childhood home. What if he knew about me? If he wasn’t just begging for help when he died, but was begging for my help?

Sam didn’t just throw himself in my family’s path, or mine—he crossed Leo’s path as well—through one of Leo’s Gifted friends, likely. The one who finds the others—on her own, or perhaps for him.

If you listened only to Stella and heard her version of her misadventures with Mara, it would be easy to lay blame and death at Mara’s feet. Easy for Leo to seize on her perspective and believe it paints a whole picture instead of just a fragment. Easy for him to look at me, knowing who my father was and what he’s done, and believe that’s the key to unlocking this misery, instead of looking, truly looking, at the lives of each of his friends.

I’ve excavated far too much of my own past looking for answers for Mara, and I love her. Leo’s not going to take the easy way out, if I can help it.

“If you really love Stella,” I say, “then you’re going to have to unpack your trust issues another time, because the only way you’re going to the archives is if you go with Mara and Daniel, full stop.”

“Why not you?” Leo asks.

“Because I believe it’s pointless.” True, and never more so than today. “And that there are better ways to go about finding missing people.”

“Like?”

“Jamie can persuade most people to do most things. The more eyes we can get looking for our friend, your girlfriend, the better chance of someone actually seeing her. Felicity as well.”

“Don’t you think I thought of that?”

“I don’t really think about you at all, to be quite honest.”

“The more eyes looking for them, the higher the chance of eyes on us,” Leo says. “Who we are. How we’re different.”

“Isn’t that part of what you do?” Jamie asks. “Cast illusions?”

Leo inhales. “How am I supposed to do that if I’m in the archives?”

Bollocks, and I’m calling him on it. “You do realise you’re wasting time we could be spending trying to find the girl you claim to love?”

“He’s right,” Daniel says. “We can all do this together. We should be doing it together.”

“Kumbaya styles,” Jamie says.

Leo folds his arms. “Yeah, you seem like the Kumbaya sort.”

I’m surprised at the fact that Mara speaks next. “If Stella actually did tell you the truth about us, she would’ve also told you that we’re loyal.”

“We’re in the same place, mate,” I force myself to say. “These abilities—we’re going through shite other people don’t know enough to have nightmares about, even. We don’t need to know who you and your other friends are to care about you not being fucked with.”

“All for one, one for all?” Leo asks. He knows I’m full of shit. Must do.

“Something like that.”

“Then why don’t you seem like you’re worried about turning up dead yourselves?”

This, at least, I can answer honestly. “Because some of us have experienced things worse than death. Hope you don’t have to find that out for yourself.”





28


MEMORABLE COLLISION

MY LITTLE PROPOSITION SEEMS TO have worked, however, for Leo leads us up the stairs into a large red room with a cracked nonworking fireplace and one long, massive desk along the wall—a counter, more like. The rest of the place might be falling apart, but the Mac is massive and new. What holds my attention though, is the map.

The thing spans an entire wall of the room, crisscrossed with differently coloured threads and pins. I move toward it, but Leo closes the drapes, shaking dust into the air and making Jamie sneeze. And casting the map in shadow.

The monitor blinks, swinging my attention toward it. Leo gestures us all to the screen, opens an app and types in a URL.

“You’re using Tor?” Jamie.

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Touché,” Jamie acknowledges.

Mara raises a hand. “Um, Tor?”