The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(57)

I shake my head. “There isn’t one. I love her. I’d do anything to protect her. And this is how to protect her. There is something about Mara that separates her from people like Stella, and Leo, Sophie—”

Daniel’s expression darkens. “Right. Sophie.”

“And Felix and Felicity, and even Jamie.”

“And you,” Daniel says, voicing what I avoided.

“Right. Me as well. You heard what Sophie said. She can’t sense me for some reason.” Maybe I should feel paranoid, or unnerved, but mostly I feel numb.

“But she can sense Mara.” He swallows. “You think she might—be at risk in some way?”

Not in the way Daniel’s thinking. But perhaps I can use it, his fear for her, so I nod.

He thinks about that for a moment, then takes a few steps forward, running his hands over some of the labels on the boxes nearest us. “I’ve been thinking that the common factor might not necessarily be a person but a trait.”

Yes. Brilliant. “What sort?”

“You’ve seen the list, right?”

“Which?”

He walks farther, footsteps echoing on the cement. “Dr. Kells created this list that she showed to Mara and Jamie and Stella, too, I’m guessing. There were two versions, actually—one that said you were alive, one that said you were dead.”

Ah. That list.

“Both listed all of your names, along with a bunch of others, Jude’s included, and had this designation after it,” he says. He peers over into the next aisle. “?‘Original,’ ‘suspected original,’ or ‘artificially manifested or induced.’?”

“You think that’s got something to do with all this?”

“Maybe,” Daniel says. “I mean, part of what was brilliant about what Kells did was giving the twins she worked on aliases.”

This I’d heard about only in the briefest of summaries—my own fault. Mara didn’t talk about it, so I didn’t ask.

“Go on,” I urge Daniel as broadly as I can. I’m not sure I want him to know just how much I don’t know.

“The infants she fostered—I only found records here under their aliases, corresponding with the alphabet. It was all coded, and they died at different ages, from different symptoms, but there were at least seven, not including Jude and Claire, and someone, somewhere, would know about it if they were all from the same locations.”

“But they weren’t.”

Daniel shakes his head. “From all over the country. As diverse a roster as she could manage, probably. And she was on your father’s payroll then, so he’d have helped cover tracks.”

No wonder he’d moved us to the States, ultimately. “It’s a big country.”

“It’s a big world,” Daniel says. “Like I said, looking for names in here won’t get us far, but if we think more broadly—countries or cities of origin, birth dates, maybe, somewhere buried in what will probably look like a bunch of useless boilerplate corporate crap, we might find records for at least some of the people who’ve . . .”

“Gone missing,” I finish for him.

“I thought of looking up Stella’s stuff in here, actually, once she popped up here in the city. That was one of my first thoughts when I came to you.” His eyes rake over the height of the shelves, resting at the top.

“Why didn’t you just say so when you first asked me?”

He pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose—a nervous tic of his. “Mara and Stella and Jamie have an . . . unusual dynamic,” he says finally.

“You didn’t want Mara to hear about your plans either,” I say, feeling rather self-righteous for a moment until Daniel shakes his head.

“Actually, it was Jamie I was thinking of.”

Well, well. “Why’s that?”

“So, I always thought it was odd that Stella was designated as a ‘suspected original.’ Not ‘original,’ like you and Mara, not ‘artificially manifested,’ like Jude. Once, when Mara wasn’t around, I asked Jamie about it.” He turns to face me. “Actually, it was when you guys all got those letters, remember?”

Would that I could forget.

“Anyway, we’d been talking about the Superman versus Spider-Man thing, born versus made theory, and I brought up the theory that maybe they didn’t know Stella’s genetic history when that list was made, and maybe that was how they were typing you guys.”

Typing. I wonder for a moment if Daniel knows about the archetypes we supposedly represent—where my parents got the idea that I was destined to be some great Hero, and my father’s conviction about Mara being the Shadow, destroyer of worlds or some shite. That all came from the professor, a subject I’m desperate to avoid.

“Anyway, Jamie mentioned that he was also a ‘suspected original,’ and I knew he was adopted; I kind of wanted to push the issue but, you know, still be . . . sensitive? Anyway, he went to get the mail when that came up. Stella got a letter too,” Daniel says. “Remember?”

Now that he mentions it, I do, but just barely. Daniel had thanked me for saving his life from my own father, and I was trying to close my eyes to the world, just then. But I nod anyway.

“I felt kind of left out. I didn’t ask to read Mara’s because she’d just been through . . . stuff. All of you guys had been, so I kind of wandered off to give you space. When I saw Jamie next, he was wearing that pendant you used to wear, and was acting totally different. I tried to pick up the conversation we’d been having before, but he shut it down.”