The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(52)

Her lips part, but no sound comes out.

“Her name was Beth,” I say to her just as she begins shaking her head. “You could’ve saved her life.”

“We didn’t know what she was going to do—Stella wasn’t with us that night—”

“That’s not how we heard it.”

“They didn’t want to out me, okay? But it’s true, Stella can hear thoughts when she knows what to listen for, but she didn’t know what to listen for, and anyway she wasn’t there! She and Leo lied to protect me. But even if she had been there, this hasn’t happened enough for any of us to even know what to expect beyond the obvious.”

“Which is?”

Her voice tightens with frustration. “For me, I just knew—it’s like, imagine all of us walking around with a candle. And then the light snuffs out. It just started . . . happening. People going missing. So we started tracking it.”

“The map?” I ask.

She nods.

“You created it?”

“Yes . . . and no. It’s not like I can just sense people all over the world. But being around you”—she turns to Goose—“it changes things.”

As it does for us all, it seems. My thoughts slide to Goose and Mara, but I mentally run like fuck from that. “How’d you put that map together?” I ask.

“The normal way, mostly. People came and went from the brownstone—but pretty much whoever came to the safe house would stay when they got there. Everyone told us where they were from, what they could do—we started piecing together whatever we could.”

“But you were in Florida,” Mara says at the same time. “At school.”

“Around the time I met Leo, he formed a sort of chat client, so we could all stay in touch. I started talking to Stella a lot. She helped me.”

Daniel’s eyes meet Sophie’s for the first time. “All those times you said you had a concert last year, out of state. You were actually coming here, to meet up with Leo and whomever, weren’t you?”

She sucks in her lower lip ever so slightly. I can see the moment when she hovers between lying and telling the truth. She decides to tell the truth. “That’s what I told my parents, so they’d keep paying for me to visit last year.”

This is shit. I’m so sorry for him, but nothing I can do at present. “Fine. Now that you have that map, and know what you know, can you sense us, still, even when we’re not right in front of you?”

She nods.

“From how far away?”

A slight shrug. “I don’t honestly know. Goose—that’s not your real name, is it?”

“Yes. I’m the fourth generation Goose in my family,” he says with a marvellous straight face.

Sophie blinks, but goes gamely on. “Well, you amplify—everybody. Everything. Do you have to focus on it or—”

“This isn’t about him,” Mara says. “It’s about you.”

“It should be about Stella,” Sophie says, her voice quiet but threaded with self-righteousness. “And Felicity, who’s still alive.”

“It is,” Jamie says, without any hint of his usual charm or humour. He’s furious.

“Then why aren’t you asking me about them?”

“Why aren’t you telling us about them?” Mara’s exterior is calm, watchful.

“Because I don’t know anything! That’s the whole point—we can’t do this by ourselves. We all have to work together—”

“But you’re the hunter—sorry, forgive me—the, what do you call yourself?” Mara asks her.

“What do you call yourself?”

Casual shrug. “Murderess, butcher—”

“Quit it,” Daniel says to Mara. She tucks her fangs behind her lips, for now.

“Like I said.” Sophie turns to me, having decided that I’m the Reasonable One, “when I’m on my own, I only know someone’s Gifted when I meet them. When Felicity and the others went missing, they fell off the map. Literally. There’s nothing I can do.”

I can’t help but sympathise with that last bit, not that I’m about to admit it. And I don’t know that I want the answer to the question I’m about to ask, but I ask anyway. “Who was the first?”

A beat before she answers. “Beth’s the first one I saw, but Sam—I think Sam was the first.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know him personally—a friend of Leo’s, her name’s Eva—he was her friend. I never actually met him, and he died in England. You were there. With Goose.”

And Mara.

I close my eyes, and when I open them, everyone—Daniel, Jamie, Goose, Sophie—has a trickle of blood running from their noses. Mara appears to be smiling. Christ, I need a sleep. I blink hard, rub my eyes, and the image vanishes, thank fuck.

“Eva told Leo when Sam killed himself, and said he went missing just before that. That’s when he thought we should try to keep track.”

“Not working out very well though, is it,” Daniel says.

Her eyes are cast down at her plate. “No.” She lifts her gaze up to Goose. “But you’re helping, even though you don’t know it. I’m starting to recognise what it feels like, when someone goes missing.”