“All for one, one for all.”
I turn her face toward me. I open my fist. The cut is deep, still open, but not bleeding. “Look. No scar.”
There is, though, and Mara knows it. The scars you can’t see are the ones that hurt the most.
22
MAN’S CAPACITIES
AS SOON AS I’m alone, I text Stella to say that I’ll meet her tonight, and she almost instantly sends me a location. Jamie and Goose seem to have retreated to their rooms, and Daniel’s gone back to his dorm, which saves me the trouble of having to lie about where I’m going when I leave. I write Mara a short note in case she emerges, then take the train to the park Stella mentioned. There’s an old stone house at the entrance. Stella’s waiting for me outside the gate.
“Thanks for coming,” she says.
“Rather odd place to meet, isn’t it?”
A slight, shivery shrug. “It’s between your place and ours.”
“Meeting in the middle,” I say, looking about. “Obvious metaphor or just convenient?”
Her eyes crinkle at the corners.
“You’re not worried about walking through parks at night by yourself?”
She arcs an eyebrow. “This is Park Slope. And it’s basically a playground.”
“Playgrounds without children are even eerier.” A fall breeze rustles the trees, and a swing nearby creaks, making my point . . . until I see the dog that brushed it, squatting as his owner dutifully waits for him to finish his business.
“What did you tell Mara?” she asks, refocusing my attention. “About where you were going?”
“Nothing,” I say. “She went to bed.”
Stella’s forehead scrunches. “So early?”
“We had a . . . disagreement.”
“Trouble in paradise?” She examines me, and that’s when I notice her noticing my wrapped-up hand.
I take the opportunity to look, really look, at Stella for the first time. She is different from the girl I knew at Horizons, which might as well’ve been years ago. It’s not just that her hair’s lost its shine, or that her face has hardened, her curves whittled down. There’s something missing behind her eyes. Something lost.
“How’d you end up in New York?” I ask.
She blinks. “I was in New York. With Jamie and . . . Mara.”
“Right, but as I understand it, you left?”
“I went home.”
I wait for her to finish. Clearly, she has something she wants to get out, or she wouldn’t’ve asked me here.
“Once it was obvious we weren’t going to find a cure for our . . . Gifts . . . I just. I stayed for a while after that, but then after Mara . . .” Her voice trails off. “I was going to go back to Miami—I didn’t know where else to go. But I left without anything—I had no money, no friends. I literally didn’t know what to do. I ended up sitting for hours in Grand Central, just sitting there, when Leo just walked right up to me.”
“What a coincidence.”
She avoids my eyes. “It wasn’t a coincidence. One of us can . . . find people like us. We told you that.”
“You did, but failed to mention whom,” I say, bored by the mystery already. Leo wouldn’t give anything away, but perhaps Stella might.
“She doesn’t live in the brownstone,” she says. “It doesn’t matter—the point is, Leo found me, told me I had a choice—he’d help me get home if I wanted to go, but also said I had a place with them if I ever wanted it.”
“How generous.”
She shrugs one shoulder.
“So you went home with a perfect stranger?”
At that, she laughs a little. “Safer than staying with my so-called friends.”
“And your family?”
Her bitterness deepens. “Not everyone has a perfect home life.”
“We have that in common.”
“Anyway, Leo wouldn’t have hurt me. I couldn’t hear his thoughts, but I knew—he’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met. He’s special.”
Aren’t we all.
“Look, the town house is like a safe house for people like us. Anyone can go there, anytime, and they take care of each other. It’s like—they’re like a family, okay?”
They, not we.
“And they welcomed me in, and Leo helped me figure out what I’m capable of. And Felix, and Felicity and S—” she catches herself. Was she about to say Sam? I want to ask, but I don’t want to throw her off. “They matter to me. I’m worried for them.”
“We already said we’d help.”
“Daniel said,” she corrects. “You didn’t.”
“Is this why you asked me here in the middle of the night? Because honestly, you needn’t have gone to the trouble—”
“I wanted to talk to you about Mara.”
I’m on guard, but try not to show it. “What about her?”
Her eyes dart away. “You seemed . . . left out . . . at the house earlier.”
Nerve struck. I pretend otherwise. “Excuse me?”
Stella meets my eyes. “What did she tell you about what happened after Horizons?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Because I heard what you were thinking!” Her voice echoes in the empty park, but it’s the words that lift the hairs on the back of my neck.
She takes a deep breath. “You were right. I was listening to you.”
“And what is it you think you understand?” My voice is low, quiet, but I’m furious.
“That Mara and Jamie went through something together that you weren’t a part of.”
She’s pressing on bruises, and she knows it. I refuse to give her the satisfaction. “You didn’t need to read my thoughts to know what’s literally true.”
“I know that she never told you what that something was.”
“She never told me because I never asked.”
Stella lifts her chin. “Because you don’t actually want to know.” She takes a step closer to me. “With your friend around? I can hear more than just the words you think before you say them out loud. I can hear what you’re afraid to admit even to yourself.”
My breath quickens as I grow angrier. “You were spying, in the most exploitive, violative way. Why should I believe anything you say?”
“Because you know I’m telling the truth.”
“I can’t believe I came out here for this.”
A bitter smile. “I can. You came because you know something’s wrong and despite acting like you don’t give a shit, you give a shit more than anyone—about this, at least. You don’t want anyone else to die. I may not be able to read your mind right now, but I know you can tell whether I’m lying or not. And you know I’m not.”
“I know you think you’re not. But just because you believe something doesn’t make it true.”
“And what do you believe, Noah? You think all of this is a coincidence? Everyone dying all of a sudden? Your father was the first, wasn’t he?”
The words I was about to say die in my throat. Does she know about him? What he did? Who he was?
Instead of those questions, I ask, “So you did send the clippings.”
She squints. “No. I didn’t. But I did read the obituary.”
There was nothing of consequence in the obituary. Which is what I’m about to say when Stella says, “It was a lie.”
I keep my voice even. “Was it.”
“He disappeared before he died.”
How does she know? I want to ask, but I don’t want to give anything away. “Why do you think that?”
“Are you saying it’s not true?” she asks. “That he didn’t disappear and then commit suicide—which happens to be how our friends are dying? How Sam died, at his funeral?”
A finger of ice trails my spine.
“What do you think Mara has to do with it?” I ask, but I’m feeling uneasier by the second, and my mind rebels against Stella’s words, pressing on me to leave. “Look, whatever happened between you and Mara, you’re clearly not over it, but I couldn’t care less, so if that’s all there is, I’ll just be going—”
“Whatever happened between me and Mara?” She laughs without humour. “God, you really don’t know her at all.”
“Oh, but you do. Because you were so close?”
“Because I was there. When she murdered Dr. Kells—”
“And what’s his name, right? Sorry, if you’re trying to shock me, you’re going to have to try harder.”
“Do you know what Mara did to him?”
“Killed him,” I say plainly. “Freed you, as I understand it.”