For a split second, I actually want to tell him the truth. I want to pour out all the things I know or remember or would give anything to forget. But Noah doesn’t know what happened to my mother. When Noah looks at me he doesn’t see the girl I used to be or the monster I’ve become. He only sees a tiny bit of my crazy. And that’s more than enough.
“I was wrong, you know. About the Scarred Man. I was wrong for years, and Jamie knows it. He knows that finding out the truth has been hard on me. He’s worried about me.”
Noah takes a slow step back. There’s nothing but moonlight and the sound of the waves and this boy who could be at home almost anywhere on Embassy Row and yet has chosen to be here with me.
“Just so you know,” Noah says, “he’s not the only one.”
I’m just about to speak when Noah points to the darkness and I see a long pier. A tiny girl stands on the very end of it, her blond hair catching the light of the full moon that is rising over the city. She waves wildly in our direction. For a second, I think she might jump off the pier and swim toward us. As it is, she just runs.
“Grace! I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“I saw you a week ago,” I say, but Rosie barely registers the sound.
“But you missed my birthday! I’m a teenager now. Do I look like a teenager?” Rosie smiles and laughs, so happy she’s practically bouncing, and I’m suddenly reminded of the fact that she’s thirteen now.
The age I was when Mom died.
The age I was when everything went wrong.
This is supposed to mean something, a part of me registers. I’m supposed to forgive that thirteen-year-old version of me because she was young and scared and she was just doing the best that she could at the time. I’m supposed to be kind to thirteen-year-old Grace, and seeing thirteen-year-old Rosie is supposed to remind me of that.
But it doesn’t.
“I’m sorry, Rosie. Happy birthday. What else did I miss?”
Rosie shrugs. “Nothing. I find there is a lack of international intrigue at the moment.” For a second, her German accent is so heavy that she sounds like a spy in a black-and-white movie. “The prime minister is still in a coma, you know.”
“I know.”
“So …”
“So what?”
“So it seems more than a little coincidental that the Scarred Man is supposed to be the prime minister’s head of security. And you think the Scarred Man killed your mother. And then the prime minister has a ‘heart attack’” — she makes air quotes around the words as she says them — “and ends up in a coma!”
It’s not a coincidence. But it’s not the truth either. And no matter how much I care for Noah and Rosie, that’s the last thing I can tell them.
“I know you’re thinking that it’s Dominic’s fault. But you’re wrong. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Noah asks, genuinely confused.
For lying to you.
For lying to me.
For ruining your lives.
But I can’t say any of that, so I just ask, “Where’s the party?”
There should be music and lights and the not-so-hushed voices of people scurrying through the darkness, but Noah and Rosie and I are virtually alone in the moonlight. It feels like we’re the only people in Adria as Noah raises a finger and points to the inky darkness of the Mediterranean.
“There.”
I look, but I see nothing but stars and sky and salty water reaching all the way to the Italian coast. The moon is rising behind us, and the water looks so dark, so bleak. Once upon a time they thought the world was flat, and sometimes I still do. I want to swim out there, farther and farther until I reach the edge.
But then I see it.
There is a fire flickering in the distance, a tiny dot in the ocean of black sea and starry sky. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust and make out the dark outline of trees, for me to remember the island that rests three or four miles offshore. As kids, Jamie used to tell me it was filled with monsters — dragons and minotaurs and the ghosts of the people who, a thousand years ago, let the city fall. And right now I’d prefer any of those creatures to the beasts I know are gathering on the island’s shores.
I want to run away, to tell Noah and Rosie I’m sick or afraid of water or just plain afraid. But that’s the thing about being the girl who’s spent years convincing the world she’s not afraid of anything: At some point, someone is going to find out you’re afraid of everything.
I’m just starting to open my mouth, to protest or turn away, when Noah points to the motorboat that has appeared on the horizon and is coming toward us fast. “Here’s our ride.”
I’m pretty sure my jaw drops. My excuses fade away. The moonlight catches the long black hair that blows behind the girl who stands at the controls of the boat that’s pulling up to the end of the pier.
I’m fresh out of excuses when Megan looks at us and says, “Get in.”