The Evolution of Mara Dyer

  “Fuck,” Noah said, leaning his head back against his headboard. His eyes had closed and he was shaking his head. “Symbols. I didn’t even think.”

  “What?”

  “I never bothered to think about it in that context,” he said, rising from the bed as I handed him back his pendant. “I just saw it, knew it was my mother’s, and wore it because it was hers. But you’re right, it could mean something—especially since there are two.” He headed for the alcove.

  “I was just going to say it reminds me of the symbols on a family crest.”

  Noah stopped mid-stride, and turned very slowly. “We’re not related.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Don’t even think it.”

  “I get the picture,” I said as Noah slipped his laptop off of his desk and brought it to his bed.

  What was it Daniel had said about Google?

  “So, the preponderance of hits for ‘feather symbol meaning’ bring up the Egyptian goddess Ma’at,” Noah read. “Apparently she judged the souls of the dead by weighing their hearts against a feather; if she deemed a soul unworthy, it was sent to the underworld to be consumed—by this bizarre crocodile-lion-hippopotamus creature, it seems.” He moved the screen so I could see it; it was, in fact, bizarre. “Anyway, if the soul was good and pure, congratulations, you’ve earned passage into paradise.” Noah typed in something else.

  “What about ‘dagger comma symbol?’”

  “Opened another tab already but alas, said search has generated not much.”

  “Did you try ‘feather and dagger symbol’ together?”

  “Indeed. Nothing there, either.” Noah snapped his laptop shut.

  “How many hits did you say the feather thing brought up?”

  “Nine million or so. Give or take.”

  I sighed.

  “But most of the first ones were all to the Egyptian goddess,” Noah said cheerfully. “That’s something.”

  “Not . . . really.”

  “Well, we’re further ahead than we were yesterday.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Yesterday when I woke up to find that I’d been sleepwalking.”

  “Point.”

  “Yesterday when I was ready to blame my should-be-dead stalker for the creepy doll-in-underwear-drawer incident.”

  “I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Good,” I said, handing my grandmother’s pendant to him. “I was starting to worry you didn’t care.”

  “Is that what you think,” Noah said coolly. Then, “Why are you giving me this?”

  “I don’t want to lose it,” I said. But I didn’t want to wear it, either.

  Noah studied me carefully, but his fingers closed around the charm. “I have someone looking into the Jude issue,” he said then, his voice level. “A private investigator my father’s worked with. He’s trying to find out where he lives, which is proving difficult since he’s completely off the grid, and apparently isn’t stupid enough to use the illegal immigration channels for help.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “He was kind of stupid.”

  “Well, he’s not acting like it.”

  “Maybe he has help?”

  Noah nodded. “I’ve considered it, but who besides you even knows he’s alive?”

  “Another question,” I groaned. I flopped down on the bed and then turned my cheek to face Noah. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for him?”

  “I don’t tell you everything,” he said indifferently.

  The words stung, but not as much as the way he said them.

  “In any case,” he said, “about the pendant, at least now we know that at some point, your grandmother and my mother crossed paths through whoever made them. I’ll look through her things and see if I can find anything else.”

  I was quiet.

  “Mara?”

  I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have burned the doll, Noah. I should have looked for a seam or something—”

  “You couldn’t have known.”

  “There was a piece of paper, too.”

  “I saw.”

  “It could have been the answer to all of this.”

  Noah lightly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “There’s no point worrying about it now.”

  “When would be a good time to worry about it?”

  Noah shot me a look. “No need to get snippy.”

  I bit my lip, then let out a breath. “Sorry,” I said, looking up at his ceiling, following a pattern of swirls in the plaster. “I just—I’m worried about tonight.” My voice tightened. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

  I didn’t know where I’d be when I woke up.

  30

  NOAH STOOD UP SUDDENLY THEN, AND CROSSED the room. He locked his door as he met my eyes.

  “Risky,” I said.

  Noah was silent.

  “What about our parents?”

  “Never mind them.” He moved back to his bed and stood beside it, looking down at me. “I don’t care about them. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” he said. “Tell me what you want and it’s yours.”

  I want to close my eyes at night and never be afraid that I’ll open them up and see Jude.

  I want to wake up in the morning safe in my bed and never worry that I’ve been anywhere else.

  “I don’t know,” I said out loud, and my voice had this awful, desperate tinge. “I’m afraid—I’m afraid I’m losing control.”

  I’m afraid I’m losing myself.

  The idea was a splinter in my mind. Always there, always stinging, even when I wasn’t conscious of it. Even when I wasn’t thinking about it.

  Like Jude.

  Noah held my gaze. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “You can’t stop it,” I said, my throat tightening. “All you can do is watch.”

  It was a few seconds before Noah finally spoke. “I have been, Mara.” His voice was aggressively blank.

  My eyes filled with infuriating tears. “What do you see?” I asked him.

  I knew what I saw when I looked at myself: A stranger. Terrified, terrorized, and weak. Was that what he saw too?

  I drew myself up. “Tell me,” I said, my voice edged with steel. “Tell me what you see. Because I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t or what’s new or different and I can’t trust myself, but I trust you.”

  Noah closed his eyes. “Mara.”

  “You know what?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, holding myself together. “Don’t tell me, because I might not remember. Write it down, and then maybe someday, if I ever get better, let me read it. Otherwise I’ll change a little bit every day and never know who I was until after I’m gone.”

  Noah’s eyes were still closed and the planes of his face were smooth, but I noticed that his hands had curled into fists. “You cannot fathom how much I hate not being able to help you.”

  And he couldn’t fathom how much I hated needing help. Noah said before that I wasn’t broken but I was, and he was learning that he couldn’t fix me. But I didn’t want to be the injured bird who needed healing, the sick girl who needed sympathy. Noah was different like me but he wasn’t broken like me. He was never sick or scared. He was strong. Always in control. And even though he’d seen the worst of me, he wasn’t afraid of me.

  I wished I wasn’t afraid of myself. I wanted to feel something else.

  Noah stood beside his bed, his body taut with tension.

  I wanted to feel in control. I wanted to feel him.

  “Kiss me,” I said. My voice was sure.

  Noah’s eyes opened, but he didn’t move. He was considering me. Trying to gauge whether or not I meant it. He didn’t want to push me before I was ready.

  So I had to show him that I was.

  I pulled him fiercely into his soft bed and he did not protest. I rolled beneath him and he braced himself above me and his arms were a perfect cage.

  We were forehead to forehead. From this angle, it was impossible to ignore the
length of his lashes, the way they skimmed his cheekbones when he blinked. It was impossible to ignore the shape of his mouth, the curve of his lips when he said my name.

  It was impossible not to want to taste them.

  I arched my neck and my hips and stretched my body up toward his. But Noah placed one hand on my waist and very gently pushed me back down.

  “Slowly,” he said. The word sent a thrill through every nerve.

  Noah leaned down slightly, just slightly, and let his lips brush my neck. My pulse raced at the contact. Noah drew back.

  He could hear it, I remembered. Every heartbeat. The way my breathing changed or didn’t. He thought my heart was pounding with fear, not desire.

  I had to show him he was wrong.

  I arched my neck off of the pillow and angled my lips toward his ear and whispered, “Keep going.”

  To my complete shock, he did.

  Noah traced the line of my jaw with his mouth. He was braced above me and touched me nowhere else. Then he hooked one finger under the collar of my T-shirt and pulled it down into a slight V, exposing a triangle of skin. He kissed the hollow at the base of my throat. Then lower. Once.

  I was spinning. Pinned to his mattress by the space between us but I was desperate to close it—desperate to feel his mouth on mine.

  “Now?”

  “No,” he whispered against my skin.

  His mouth made me ache, sweet and furious. It was impossible to keep still, but when my body instinctively curved toward his, he drew away.

  “Now?” I breathed.

  “Not yet.” His lips found my skin again, this time beneath my ear.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly take any more, Noah lowered his mouth to the curve of my shoulder, and his teeth grazed my skin.

  I was ignited, on fire, flooded with heat and ready to beg.

  I thought I saw the smallest hint of a half-smile on his mouth, but it was gone before I could be sure. Because Noah’s gaze dropped from my eyes to my mouth, and then his lips brushed mine.

  The kiss was so light I wouldn’t have believed it happened if I hadn’t watched. His lips were cloud soft and I wanted to feel them more. Harder. Fiercer. I ran my fingers through his perfect hair and wrapped my arms around his neck. Locked them there. Locked him in.

  But then he unbound them. Pulled away and kneeled back until he was at the foot of the bed. “I’m still here.”

  “I know,” I said, frustrated and breathless.

  A smile lifted the corner of his mouth, lazy and sublime. “Then why do you look so angry?”

  “Because,” I started. “Because you’re always in control.”

  And I’m not. Not around you.

  I felt and probably looked like a wild thing while Noah kneeled there like an arrogant prince. Like the world was his, should he choose to reach out and take it.

  “You’re so calm,” I said out loud. “It’s like you don’t need it.” Need me, I didn’t say. But I could tell by the way his delinquent smile softened that he knew what I meant.

  Noah moved forward, toward me, next to me then, the slender muscles in his arms flexing with the movement. “I’m not sure you can appreciate how much I want to lay you out before me and make you scream my name.”

  My mouth fell open.

  So why won’t you? I wanted to ask. “Why don’t you?”

  Noah lifted a hand to the nape of my neck. Trailed one finger down my spine, which straightened at his touch. “Because part of you is still afraid. And I don’t want you to feel that. Not then.”

  I wanted to argue that I wasn’t afraid anymore. That we kissed and he was still here and so maybe I did dream that he almost died, maybe it wasn’t real. But I couldn’t say any of those things, because I didn’t believe them.

  This kiss was nothing like that one. When we kissed before, I didn’t know enough to even be afraid. Of myself. Of what I could do to him. I didn’t know enough to hold myself back.

  Now I was too aware, hyperaware, and so the fear chained me.

  And Noah could tell. “When you’re frightened, your pulse changes,” he said. “Your breath. Your heartbeat. Your sound. I can’t ignore that and I won’t, even if you think you want me to.”

  It was excruciating, the wanting and the fear, and I felt hopeless. “What if I’m afraid forever?”

  “You won’t be.” His voice was soft, but certain.

  “What if I am?”

  “Then I’ll wait forever.”

  I shook my head fiercely. “No. You won’t.”

  Noah smoothed the hair from my face. Made me look at him before he spoke. “There will come a moment when there’s nothing you want more than us. Together. When you’re free of every fear and there is nothing in our way.” Noah’s voice was sincere, his expression serious. I wanted to believe him.

  “And then I’ll make you scream my name.”

  I broke into a smile. “Maybe I’ll make you scream mine.”

  31

  A SLOW, ARROGANT SMILE FORMED ON NOAH’S lips. “Gauntlet thrown.” He drew away and unlocked his door. “I do so love a challenge.”

  “Shame it isn’t the only one.”

  “Agreed.” He tipped his head toward the hallway. “Come on.”

  I rose, but before leaving his room, I grabbed the book. “Can I borrow this?”

  “You can,” he said, holding his door open for me. “But I should warn you that I fell asleep on page thirty-four.”

  “I’m motivated.”

  Noah led me down the long hall, our footsteps muffled by the plush Oriental rugs beneath our feet. We turned several corners before he finally stopped in front of a door, withdrew something long and thin from his back pocket, and then proceeded to pick at an old-looking lock.

  “That’s handy,” I said as it clicked.

  Noah pushed the door open. “I have my uses.”

  We stood before a small room that actually seemed more like an enormous closet. There were stacks of temporary shelving and boxes that lined the walls.

  My gaze slid over the piles. “What is this stuff?”

  “My mother’s things,” Noah said, pulling a cord that hung from the ceiling. An antique milk-glass light fixture lit up the space. “Everything she owned is somewhere in this room.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. But she left the pendant for me, and your grandmother left the same one for you—maybe we’ll find something about it in a letter or a picture or something. And if there’s a connection between your ability and your grandmother then perhaps . . .”

  Noah’s voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish his sentence because I understood.

  There might be a connection between his mother and him. I could tell he hoped it was true.

  Noah opened a box and handed me a sheaf of papers. I began to read.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  I was startled by the unfamiliar English-accented voice. The papers fluttered to the floor.

  “Katie,” Noah said, smiling at the girl. “You remember Mara.”

  I certainly remembered Katie. She was equally as gorgeous as her brother—with the same dark mane, shot through with gold, and Noah’s fine boned, elegant features. Lashes and legs for days. Arresting was the word that came to mind.

  Katie gave me a slow once-over, and then said to Noah, “So that’s where you’ve been spending your nights.”

  His expression hardened. “What is wrong with you?”

  Katie ignored him. “Aren’t you in a mental hospital or something?” she asked me.

  I was speechless.

  “Why are you being like this?” Noah asked sharply.

  “What are you doing in here?” she volleyed back.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like you’re digging through Mom’s shit. Dad’s going to kill you.”

  “He’d have to come home to do that, though, wouldn’t he?” Noah said, his tone disgusted. “Go ea
t something, we’ll talk later.”

  She rolled her eyes. Then waved at me. “Lovely to see you again.”

  “Wow,” I said once she was gone. “That was . . .”

  Noah ran his hand roughly through his hair, twisting the strands up. “I’m sorry. She’s always been a bit snotty, but she’s been insufferable these past few weeks.”

  So that’s where you’ve been spending your nights.

  “You’ve been away a lot these past few weeks,” I said. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who needed Noah around.

  He ignored the implication. “She’s been spending a lot of time with your best friend Anna these past few weeks. It’s not a coincidence,” Noah said tonelessly. “She’s not acting out because I’ve been with you.”

  But I felt a twinge of guilt anyway.

  “My family . . . isn’t the same as yours,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He paused, measuring his words before he spoke. “We’re strangers who happen to live in the same house.”

  Noah’s voice was smooth, but there was an ache behind the words that I could feel, if not hear. However he felt about his family situation, it couldn’t be helping that he was gone so much. And no matter what he said, we both knew that I was the reason.

  “You should stay at your house tonight,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Not because of that.”

  “You should stay here for a few days.” It cost me, but I didn’t want to admit it.

  Noah closed his eyes. “Your mother won’t allow me to stay over during the week once Croyden starts up again.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” I said, though I didn’t quite believe it.

  And then I heard an all-too-familiar voice call me from downstairs.

  “Ready to go, Mara?” my mom shouted.

  I wasn’t, but I had no choice.

  My mother was quiet on the ride home, which was immensely frustrating because for the first time in a long time, I actually wanted to talk to her. But each question I asked earned me the briefest of answers, verbal and otherwise:

  “Did Grandma ever leave me anything besides that doll?”

  A head shake.

  “Did she leave you anything when she died?”