Leo pauses before asking, “Have you seen Felicity since—did you see her . . . ?”
I supply the word for him. “Die?” I say, and he nods. “No. Nor Stella. As I said, I can’t find anyone for you.”
“He’s not a precog,” Jamie cuts in, to my surprise. He’s been playing at casual, hanging back, leaning against one of the French doors, but now I notice that he’s hyperfocused on Leo, tense and attentive. “But you know one, don’t you?” Jamie asks him.
Leo’s face pinches a bit. “Yes and no. There was someone here who could do that, but they’re gone now.”
“Gone where?” I ask.
“Went looking for a cure, I think. Mentioned Europe.”
“Then let’s hear about the rest of your friends,” I say, leaning back and stretching my legs as far as I can without kicking him. “And figure out which one of them might actually be able to help.” If Leo wants to work, then let’s get the fuck to work.
“My friends can’t help us,” he says, those watery blue eyes on mine. “But your father can.”
27
ONLY WHAT THEY AIM AT
I NEARLY LAUGH AT MYSELF then. Here I thought I was well shot of this shit.
Goose is the first to speak. “Your father?” He turns to Leo. “Noah Shaw’s father?”
Leo seems to have a little speech already prepared. “Noah now owns a building that his father used to own. It was filled with files on everyone he had ever paid to have experimented on—”
Goose laughs. “David Shaw? Some sort of big bad supervillain mastermind? That’s your theory?”
Jamie makes a cringey face. “It’s . . . pretty much true, actually.”
I snap back to attention. “Jamie.”
“Dude, he already knows. Stella reads minds—whatever she knows about us, he knows.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
“The archives,” Leo says. No one else speaks. “Stella told me about them.”
“And?” I say, “is there a question in our future?”
“I want to see our files. I want you to take me there.”
“Why don’t you sit on Santa’s lap and ask for a pony instead?” I suggest. “That would be more likely.”
He straightens. “What do you have to hide?” He glances at Mara. “Something to do with her?”
I do laugh then. “I don’t have to hide Mara. She’s quite comfortable with her homicidal tendencies.”
She nods slowly. “Quite.”
Daniel rouses at the mere suggestion of Mara’s involvement. “Stella was in the archives with us, yeah. But you didn’t find out about David Shaw until she must’ve heard that rattling around one of our minds. So riddle me this: How have you guys been working to find your missing friends since the first one of them disappeared?”
Well done, mate.
“You must have done some kind of research,” he goes on. “You wouldn’t just wait for someone else to appear and rescue you or them?”
He’s hit on something; Leo visibly shifts his approach to all this. To me.
“No, we didn’t just wait for our friends to die. We actually tried to do something about it.”
“What did you try?” Daniel asks, proving to be exactly the sort of chap I need right now. Daniel’s the one who could change the world. If anyone were ever destined for greatness, it’s him.
“I’ll show you ours if you show me yours,” Leo says to me.
“Let me think about that for a moment,” I say. “No.”
Daniel shoots me an unsubtle look this time.
“Look, we’re here,” I say. “Presumably, so is the shit you’ve collected. The archives—I don’t even have the paperwork from the solicitors yet—”
“That didn’t stop Stella,” Leo says to me. “Or you,” to Daniel.
“What they found there was meant to be found,” I say. “They were left virtual instructions as to how to find it.”
“That’s not what Stella—”
“As was pointed out,” I say, trying ever so hard not to kick anyone’s teeth in, “my father orchestrated what happened to us.” I gather up my ammunition, however bullshit it might be. “He was many things, including evil, but he wasn’t stupid or careless. Codes would’ve been changed—the building might even be empty now, for all I know. I haven’t been there myself.” As I say it, I realise it might even be true. Surely I could find whatever I might want to, if I want to, but who knows what hoops I might have to jump through to do it? I try not to let my satisfaction show.
“It kind of feels like you don’t give a shit about finding Stella at all.”
Jamie twists a dreadlock around his finger, pretending to examine it. “Actually, I’m not sure I buy that you care about finding Stella all that much.”
Leo casts a dark look at Jamie. “Fuck you. I love her.”
Jamie’s right, though. There is something between Leo and Stella, I do believe that; but I’m not at all sure it’s love. Not on Leo’s end. The urgency I would feel if something like this were happening to Mara?
“If Mara were missing,” I say, “and someone told me that cutting off my limbs might help me find her? I’d be fucking limbless, mate.”
“I thought you actually wanted to stop this,” Leo says to Daniel, changing strategy. He’s frustrated and annoyed, but not panicked. Not desperate. “I texted you because you seemed like you’d care about people besides yourselves.”
“You know,” Jamie says, “when you’re trying to persuade someone to do something, you usually have a better shot when you don’t repeatedly insult them.”
Leo takes a deep breath. Dramatic. “I’m sorry, I’m just—scared for her.”
“How about this,” I say, an idea forming. “Share what you’ve got, and I’ll make arrangements for you, Daniel, and Mara to go to the archives together.”
Daniel’s mouth falls open a bit. Then he tries to hide it.
“That sounds like it’ll end well for me.” Leo sneers. “Going to an abandoned building with a Non and a murderer.”
Mara throws her head back against the sofa, rolls her eyes. “Why would I be killing random strangers?”
“Eliminating the competition?”
She snorts.
“Mara has no competition.” Jamie pats her head, and she closes her eyes and smiles, cat-like.
“Why would you even think that?” Daniel asks.
“The fewer of us there are, the less you have to worry about anyone getting in your way.”
“Getting in her way of what?” Daniel asks.
“She’s your sister,” Leo says. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that Leo hasn’t answered the question.
Daniel shakes his head. “If you don’t trust me, why text me? Why waste our time?”
Leo hesitates. “Because your friends trust you, and if you told them to come, I knew they would.”
He was right about that. But, confession: I’m not here for information about Stella. Leo’s basically admitted he doesn’t have any, and I’m not entirely convinced she’s even truly missing. I realise that I’d have likely left already if it weren’t for Sam and Beth.
This—whatever this is—started with them. Hearing their thoughts, which, in hindsight, I’ve got Goose to blame for, but they gave me an insight I’d never have had, otherwise.
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 reflec
t 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?”
“The dark web,” Daniel says.
“Because let’s make everything sound as sinister as possible,” Jamie says.
“Some of it is,” I say. “Snuff films on there, aren’t there?”
Jamie nods. “Afraid so.”
“Lots of porn though, I imagine?” Goose says.
“If one can think of it, there’s a porn of it,” I say.
Mara half smiles. “Oh?”
“It is known,” Jamie agrees.
Leo clicks an app that looks like a globe. “So this is the Tor browser,” he says when it opens. “Like Google, but completely anonymous. If we’re going to work together on this, you should probably all download it.”
Goose looks rather sceptical. “Won’t that land us on some Big Brother American Patriot Act government watch list of some sort?”
“We . . . crossed that bridge a while ago,” Mara says.
Jamie turns his palms up as if to say, What can you do?
“Well, I haven’t crossed it,” Goose says.
“Don’t whinge,” I say as a page appears on our screen as if from 1997, a message board, with the words “special snowflakes” written in Comic Sans.
The messages vary in their weirdness. One post is titled “How do I make myself psychotic?”; another one “gifted cats?” Jamie sweeps by Leo and clicks on it before he can stop him—dozens of cat GIFs appear, mostly of kittens falling off things, others of kittens riding things. Scottish folds are quite popular.
A shadow darkens Leo’s face. “Um, can I have that back?”
“Sorry,” Jamie says. “I just really like cats.”
Mara puts her hand on his shoulder. “Who doesn’t.”
Leo types a URL into the browser: 61f73d/4ffl1c73d
“Wow,” Jamie says. “Takes me back to my MUD days.”
“MUD?” I ask.
“Multi-user dungeon.”
My mouth silently rounds the word “Oh.”
Jamie looks at Mara, “You deserve better.”
Haven’t got the time or the interest to decode whatever Jamie’s on about. “So what are we looking at?” I ask Leo. I hadn’t known it was possible to be impatient and bored simultaneously. Leo clicks on a screenshot of a local news site in Charleston, South Carolina.
SUICIDE CULT CLAIMS FIVE
South Carolina: Police discovered the bodies of five students in a basement on Montagu Street on Monday, victims of an apparent suicide pact.
They included two students in their senior year at Ashley Hall, and one student from Summerville High, also in his senior year. Two freshmen at the College of Charleston were also among the dead.
No further details are available at this time.
Below the screenshot is a post from someone calling themselves truther821:
“This never happened. I was one of Marissa’s best friends. She never would’ve killed herself. She was GIFTED, like us. Cover-up maybe???”
I try and match up what I know to be true with that post, and . . . it doesn’t. I’d have seen them die if they were like us, no?
Leo scrolls down. On and on they go, posts from teenagers, purportedly Gifted, in several states—in several countries, in fact, though I don’t call attention to that detail—posts about teenagers going missing or committing suicide in the past three months.
“They’re not all legit, obviously,” Leo says, reading my mind. “But they’re getting more
frequent. All feature someone eighteen years old or close to it, all with prior diagnoses of mental health disorders, or so the media claims.” Leo sucks in a breath. “I also know that some of the posts are about people we knew, and some are written by Nons.”
“You keep using that word . . . ,” Jamie starts.
“Non-Gifted. Friends of theirs, or family I guess. Anyway, word’s getting out, is the point.”
But how could it? He claims to have known some of these people—past tense. But again, I’ve seen only three deaths thus far.
We’re all silent, until Leo says, “And in the interest of not wasting any more time, I also know that this doctor—Kells?—wasn’t just experimenting on you. She was injecting other kids with something, trying to induce abilities in them.” He walks over to one of the plastic card tables and holds up a file. “I imagine the name Jude rings a bell?”
29
A MELANCHOLY ACCIDENT
I DON’T LOOK AT MARA and Jamie, but I’ve no doubt they’ve got FUUUUUCCKKK written all over their faces, because, well. That’s the expression I’m trying to keep from mine.
“Stella told us about what happened to her. What the guy, Jude, did, to her, to you—” He nods in Mara’s direction. “She told us about the gene—1821? That gets switched on in some of us and not in others, and she told us how Kells set out to try and create someone like you.” Leo looks at me.
“All true,” I say, ever so calm. “But how, precisely, does that help find Stella, exactly?”
“We don’t know who was experimented on and who wasn’t.”
I offer a general-purpose smile. “Neither do we.”
He falls back into the chair, rolls up his sleeve to scratch his arm, exposing the edge of a tattoo.
“What’s that?” Mara asks.
He rolls the sleeve up the rest of the way. On his biceps, curling over his shoulder, is a black image of a sword, curved, sprouting feathers on each side, as if the sword is the spine of it.
I seize on it immediately. “Where’d you get that?”