Not Skye.
The phone rang. Marnie grabbed it. “Hello?” She had to clear her throat. “Hello?” A second later, she blinked away her momentary, stupid disappointment. “Hi, Max,” she said. “No, no. I wasn’t asleep … Yeah, I did sleep some last night … Yeah, it helps to have someone to talk to. Definitely. Yeah, I think she’s pretty nice, for a psychiatrist … Yeah …”
Max had offered to take her back to New York, to let her leave Halsett forever, but Marnie had said no. “I’m not running,” she said to him, with—she realized—too much defiance in her voice. It hadn’t been aimed at Max, though. Not this time. And he’d known it, she thought. He had just looked at her and, after a long minute, nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets.
He was still nearby, at the Halsett Inn, and Marnie knew security was not going to stop with the emergency necklace. That there was a bodyguard in her immediate future. She wanted not to want one. She wanted to believe the necklace was enough. With her head, she did. Her gut, however, screamed a different story.
Maybe she would take up karate.
Max was trying really hard. It almost hurt Marnie to see how hard Max was trying. How guilt-ridden he felt. It turned out that he, and several security experts, had arrived in Halsett within twenty-four hours after Marnie disappeared. One of the so-called experts had even visited Leah Slaight’s house right away, talked with Leah, and left again. Marnie figured it must have been while she herself was largely unconscious, ill, in the basement room.
“I am going to bankrupt that security firm,” Max had said in that drawl of his. “I am going to sue them within an inch of their lives.”
Marnie had found herself looking at him, realizing that beneath his anger he was blaming himself. She had wanted to soothe him but hadn’t known how. Finally she’d replied feebly, “But since there was no ransom note … I can see how it made sense for everyone to start looking for a runaway—focus on train and bus stations, and the airports …”
But Max had compressed his lips. He had said, “No.” And then, after a minute: “It’s my fault. I should have known you better. Somebody—some adult—should have known you better. Not just that Delgado boy. If he hadn’t parked his car nearby … if his mother hadn’t filed a missing persons report and raised Cain …” He had stood up and turned away.
Marnie found that she couldn’t, after all, raise the question about Leah, about Skye. Couldn’t mention the one fleeting expression on Leah’s face that had given her pause, made room for doubt. Not yet.
She clung to the phone now and listened to Max. Today he had been interviewing bodyguards. There was one candidate he wanted Marnie to meet. “Okay,” she found herself saying. “Sure. I could meet him tomorrow afternoon, after classes.” She wondered briefly where the bodyguard would live, but with Max in this mood, she wouldn’t be surprised to see Tarasyn Pearce moved out of her room tomorrow and the bodyguard moved in. Or an entire dorm built just for Marnie and her guards. Marnie’s mind suddenly conjured up the Palace of the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, complete with chanting. Ooo—eeeee—oo! Yooo—ho! Ooo—eeeee—oo! Yeah, that would be quite the campus sight. Here comes the wicked Sorceress with her flying monkeys. Luckily, Marnie already owned a lot of black clothing … she’d just need a hat … a broom—make it an electric broom, with a hypoallergenic dust filtering system.
“Uh, I’m sorry. What’d you say?” Marnie asked Max. “Oh, four o’clock. Fine. That’s fine. Okay. Okay, bye.” She hung up and found herself looking, again, at her open door. Would she really want a bodyguard out there? Would that make her feel safe? She sighed. Maybe it would, but was that how she wanted to live? Would it form a habit she could never break for the rest of her life?
The rest of her life. Now, there was another frightening thought. Marnie remembered the Elf and his college plans. He seemed so sure of what he wanted, while she had never looked further than inheriting Skye’s money one day. As if her own worth could be measured only in dollars. As if Skye’s inheritance were worth no more than that.
Oh, and there was the headache again. And … Skye, again.
“All her fault,” Marnie muttered.
Oh, really, my pretty? said the Sorceress, cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.
CHAPTER
31
“Okay to sit here?” The words were soft but also, yes, a little hostile. Or … something. Marnie felt her shoulders tense over her breakfast mug of hot chocolate and knew a quick moment of gladness for this morning’s reflexive application of makeup and hair gel.
Jenna Lowry was standing a few feet away, across the table and two seats down. The rest of Marnie’s table was empty, as was most of the dining hall. With nearly an hour before the first class of the day, few students had yet shown up for breakfast.
“Go ahead,” Marnie replied warily.
Jenna sat down with her tray, pulled the cap off a purple highlighter, and, after taking a bite of marmalade toast, buried herself in a ragged book. Marnie noted, sourly, that this wasn’t a book whose cover Jenna felt she needed to conceal. Jane Eyre. Still romance, though, even if certified Literature. Marnie wondered if Jenna had made up with hockey boy.
Head still down, Jenna said abruptly, “This must be such a hard time for you. Everyone was so shocked. It seems incredible, Ms. Slaight being so crazy and locking you up. I even heard she thought she was your sister. And then killing herself, and you being there. I mean, I know it’s true and all, but I still almost don’t believe it. Not here at Halsett. You know what I mean? Does it seem like a dream to you? Or … a nightmare, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Marnie managed. “It’s like a bad movie.”
She could almost hear the echo of the dean’s words at the assembly. I deeply regret the part our school has played in this tragedy. I can promise all of you, as I have promised your parents, that we shall closely review our hiring and safety policies, although certainly when I search my conscience I can find no way in which we could have predicted or prevented the peculiar events of this past week.
Marnie shook her head to banish the words. She had the feeling the dean would be thrilled to get rid of her. That was another thing Marnie wasn’t ready to think about: what she’d do if she didn’t stay here. The subject panicked her. Ironic, given how much she’d once wanted to leave.
“Awful for you,” said Jenna. She looked up finally, but only for a second. “I’m just so sorry. I, um—we were all worried about you. While you were gone.”
Marnie felt all her hackles rise. Jenna had to say that. Everybody had to say it. How was Marnie supposed to reply? “I, uh, appreciate it,” she said.
Jenna dove back into her book—with relief, Marnie noted.
A page crackled as Jenna attacked her book with the highlighter. Marnie could actually hear the swoosh of the pen’s thick nub moving across the page as Jenna highlighted line after line. She wondered what scene Jenna found so worthy of note. She wondered, was Jenna planning to apply to Harvard too? Lots of Halsett girls did. If Jenna went there, would she meet the Elf? Would she have the insight, given her hockey boy, to even appreciate someone like the Elf?
Don’t start that, warned the Sorceress.
Marnie sighed. She pulled her eyes from Jenna and returned them to the depths of her own mug. She spooned up a little hot chocolate, swallowed it, and turned her thoughts inward again, away from Jenna and the Elf.
The counselor had said, “Marnie, it may take a long time, months, possibly even years of careful examination and analysis and anger and mourning before you feel any sense of real closure. But it is over. Leah Slaight is dead. She killed herself, and she can’t harm you anymore. Indeed, she harmed mostly herself. One day, dear, you will believe it with your heart as well as your head.”
Dear. Once, Marnie would have verbally scalded this stranger for calling her dear. Once, she would have had a smug, lengthy, cross-indexed internal list of all the things this counselor had got wrong, didn’t understand, could never understand.
What else was it that the counselor had said? That, in the meantime, life had to be lived.
But how? What did people mean when they said that? And … what did she, Marnie Skyedottir, want? She’d always been so focused on what she didn’t want. She had another flashing image of the Palace Guards, and shuddered. She felt she should do something, something, but she didn’t know what …
“What did you say?” asked Jenna.
Marnie blinked. She met Jenna’s stare. “What?”
“You said something.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Their eyes dueled. Eventually Jenna hunched a shoulder and returned to her toast and her book. Bearing down hard, she highlighted another sentence or five.
Marnie had lost her train of thought, anyway. She asked loudly, “What did you just highlight?”
Jenna looked up. “What?”
“What did you just highlight?”
Jenna’s mouth twisted. “What do you care?”
“I’m just curious,” Marnie said. To her amazement, she found she was. The honesty sounded in her voice. Jenna looked at her, uncertain.
“Please,” said Marnie. The word surprised her—and Jenna, she thought.
After a couple of seconds, Jenna shrugged. “Fine.” She took in a deep breath and looked down at her book, eyelids flickering as she scanned the passage. Her shoulders moved uneasily, and for an instant Marnie thought she wasn’t going to read it after all. But then all at once Jenna lifted her chin and began, using a low voice that grew in depth and clarity as she went on, as if she could not help reciting well.
“This is Jane talking, okay? ‘You are a married man—or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you—to one with whom you have no sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you.’”
Jenna flung out the last sentence intensely, meaningfully, as if hurling it at a lover in a quarrel, and Marnie found herself suddenly sure that hockey boy was a thing of the past.
Jenna was now looking down thoughtfully, pushing at the toast on her plate. There was self-conscious color in her cheeks.
“Jaysus,” Marnie drawled. She was sorry even before Jenna’s head snapped up.
“You never change, do you?” Jenna spat. “Even a near-death experience doesn’t change you. Well, I’m tired of it.” She jumped to her feet, grabbed her book and her tray, and left.
Well, said the Sorceress after a minute. What was that all about?
I have no idea why she—
Not her. You. You asked her to open up and then you slapped her.
Marnie moved her shoulders uncomfortably. She imagined that everyone else in the dining hall was looking at her now. Well, fine. Let them look. They always had.
Her hot chocolate had gone cold. She clenched her fingers around it anyway. Jenna Lowry was a snobby, mean jerk and always had been. Right? Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed at Halsett, so why should Marnie change? Why?
With a new lurch of the stomach, she remembered that she had dreamed again last night. Now it all came back in a rush, playing in her mind’s eye as if it had been captured on film.
The Rubble-eater, coming closer. Llewellyne’s sword, posed. The trembling, and the knot of fear in her throat. And then—
The beast suddenly accelerating out of its normal lumbering run and swerving to leap, with the full force of its heavy body, headfirst toward the sharp end of the sword.
The sickening ease with which the sword entered the Rubble-eater’s eye and thrust deep into its brain.
The scene replayed once, twice, as if in a loop, and Marnie shuddered.
The bell rang for first period. Marnie looked up. The dining hall was empty again, except for her.
CHAPTER
32
Right after classes, as soon as she’d sat down in the conference room near the dean’s office with Max and the bodyguard candidate, all at once Marnie did know one thing she could do, and she fell upon the idea with relief. Since the autopsy was over, there was no time to be lost, so she immediately blurted it out. “Max—about Leah Slaight. I want us to give her a funeral. A real one, with a minister and everything. Can we do that?” She thought of the memorial service for Skye. Of how numb she’d been then. And how small; how young; how lacking in the ability to ask for anything …
The potential bodyguard, at whom Marnie had merely nodded before speaking, pulled back slightly from the table and pasted an I-listen-but-do-not-hear look on his face. In a subsidiary compartment of her mind Marnie wondered if he might work out after all. Perhaps for a short time. Ooo—eeeee—oo! A very short time, she hoped.
Max was clearly taken aback. After a moment, he said, “But she—it’s not our body to claim.”
“You told me her adoptive family refused to claim her.”
“You needn’t worry about that. The state will take care of—”
“That’s not good enough.” On top of the table, Marnie’s hands intertwined and tightened.
There was a pause. Max’s gaze flicked to Marnie’s hands and then back to her face. Finally he spoke, but carefully, as if he were walking on glass. “Marnie. It seems to me that possibly you’re feeling responsible for this woman, and I want you to know there’s no need for that.”
Marnie bit her lip and glanced down, away from Max’s intent focus. He said to the bodyguard, “Would you excuse us for a few minutes?” And when the man had left, Max said, “Marnie, I wasn’t as clear as I could have been on a certain point earlier. At the time I thought it wasn’t necessary. That you wouldn’t for a second believe … Hmm. Anyway. Now I think that we—I—need to be clear. This woman, um …” He paused, and all at once Marnie’s fists clenched.
“Her name,” Marnie said distinctly, “is Leah. Was Leah. Leah Slaight.”
For a second Max’s jaw tightened. But he continued smoothly enough: “Believe me, Marnie, I know her name. What I want to say is that she—Ms. Slaight—was mistaken in her allegations that she was Skye’s daughter, your sister. Mistaken. That is to say, wrong.” Max’s voice sharpened. “I will admit that her mistake was tragic. I’m not without sympathy for any deranged individual. But I have not forgotten that she endangered you—not to mention, um, young Mr. Delgado.
“And I want to make sure that, out of some misplaced sympathy, you don’t start imagining things that aren’t true. You are Skye’s only daughter. Only child. You must believe that, Marnie.”
There was silence.
“I need to know that you’re clear on this, Marnie,” said Max. “On all of it. Are you? Marnie, do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I hear you,” Marnie said softly, and for a moment stopped right there, suddenly feeling she had stumbled to the edge of a steep, jagged cliff. No matter; she would ignore her fear. She took in a breath and then leaped. “I just don’t see why I should believe you.”
Max’s face went utterly blank.
“I don’t see how you can possibly know for sure.” Marnie swallowed. She felt a little as if she were hammering nails into Max’s forehead. “I think … I think you’re just assuming … or … or hoping … like I did, when she—when Leah—first told me. Because it would be messy. Because you think there’s no point, maybe. Because you don’t want to think Skye would have kept a secret like that. But the thing is, I don’t know.” She didn’t add her other thought. That Max might know. That he might be lying to her, even now. For her own good, of course. He would believe it was for her own good.
Max was silent for so long that Marnie was sure she’d hit the truth. One way or another. She took a deep breath. She would ask for the genetic tests, she decided. She needed to know.
By the time Max spoke, his face had gone pasty. His voice, however, was rock steady. “I knew your mother as an adult, Marnie. Adult to adult. That’s different from the way you knew her. Your perceptions are based on a child’s recollections. You have to admit that
. You can trust my judgment.”
Oh, please. “And why is that, pray tell?” Marnie flashed. “Are you claiming you never get someone wrong? Never make mistakes? Adults are perfect, and you’re especially perfect—is that what you’re saying?”
Unexpectedly, Max flinched, as if she’d punched him in the stomach. Then he recovered. “No, I’m not … that is … the point is—Marnie, I’m not making a mistake here.”
“No?” said Marnie. Inside, her stomach had begun to churn.
“No,” said Max, and nothing else, even though—suddenly—the room was heavy with unspoken things. Marnie could feel them. And, for the first time, her need to know was stronger than her need not to.
“Fine. Believe what you want,” she said. “But you can’t make me believe anything. Not now. Not ever. Not without facts.”
Abruptly she stood, pushing her chair back from the conference table. The chair skidded several feet from the force of her shove, nearly colliding with the wall.
“Marnie.”
Something new in Max’s voice. She stilled, and then, slowly, reluctantly, turned back.
“Please, can’t you trust me on this, Marnie? Please, can’t you? Won’t you?”
Please. Twice. And that tone. She had never heard Max sound quite this anguished before. But it didn’t matter. It couldn’t be allowed to matter.
“No,” Marnie said quietly. She remembered something the Elf had said to her. She said it to Max. “I have a right to know.”
Max was silent. Looking at her. Looking at her.
She looked back.
“What if we did do a genetic test?” Max said finally. “When it comes back negative, will you be satisfied? Will you believe in Skye again?”
Now, that was an odd question. Marnie found herself saying carefully, “I guess I would then believe that Leah Slaight wasn’t my sister.”
Max was silent again.
“Max?” Marnie said.
He pushed his own chair back, then, and turned it so that he faced her. “Marnie.”
Marnie stared at him. There was something new, something frightening, in his voice. Her stomach pulsed and for a moment she thought she would need to run for the bathroom. But she couldn’t seem to move, and the impulse passed.