“Yes. I’m the fourth generation Goose in my family,” he says with a marvellous straight face.
Sophie blinks, but goes gamely on. “Well, you amplify—everybody. Everything. Do you have to focus on it or—”
“This isn’t about him,” Mara says. “It’s about you.”
“It should be about Stella,” Sophie says, her voice quiet but threaded with self-righteousness. “And Felicity, who’s still alive.”
“It is,” Jamie says, without any hint of his usual charm or humour. He’s furious.
“Then why aren’t you asking me about them?”
“Why aren’t you telling us about them?” Mara’s exterior is calm, watchful.
“Because I don’t know anything! That’s the whole point—we can’t do this by ourselves. We all have to work together—”
“But you’re the hunter—sorry, forgive me—the, what do you call yourself?” Mara asks her.
“What do you call yourself?”
Casual shrug. “Murderess, butcher—”
“Quit it,” Daniel says to Mara. She tucks her fangs behind her lips, for now.
“Like I said.” Sophie turns to me, having decided that I’m the Reasonable One, “when I’m on my own, I only know someone’s Gifted when I meet them. When Felicity and the others went missing, they fell off the map. Literally. There’s nothing I can do.”
I can’t help but sympathise with that last bit, not that I’m about to admit it. And I don’t know that I want the answer to the question I’m about to ask, but I ask anyway. “Who was the first?”
A beat before she answers. “Beth’s the first one I saw, but Sam—I think Sam was the first.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know him personally—a friend of Leo’s, her name’s Eva—he was her friend. I never actually met him, and he died in England. You were there. With Goose.”
And Mara.
I close my eyes, and when I open them, everyone—Daniel, Jamie, Goose, Sophie—has a trickle of blood running from their noses. Mara appears to be smiling. Christ, I need a sleep. I blink hard, rub my eyes, and the image vanishes, thank fuck.
“Eva told Leo when Sam killed himself, and said he went missing just before that. That’s when he thought we should try to keep track.”
“Not working out very well though, is it,” Daniel says.
Her eyes are cast down at her plate. “No.” She lifts her gaze up to Goose. “But you’re helping, even though you don’t know it. I’m starting to recognise what it feels like, when someone goes missing.”
“What about Felix?” Jamie asks. “If his connection timed out, or whatever, you’d think he’d be the one you’d notice?”
“Felix never went missing. He wasn’t . . . like the others.”
“Just an old-fashioned suicide.” Mara says what I’m thinking, what Sophie’s just confirmed. There is a difference between the deaths, between the willing and the murdered.
“Look, we’re scared, okay? For our friends, for ourselves.” A pleading look at Daniel here, who looks pained but doesn’t bite.
Mara, however: “I’d like to know why you were taking notes on my Horizons file.”
At least Sophie has the good grace to pretend to seem ashamed. Or perhaps she actually is. I’m not sure I care. “We thought it might help to learn everything we could about what that doctor did to you guys.”
“You could’ve just asked,” Jamie says, unsmiling.
“Right.” Sophie makes a noise. “Like you would’ve believed me if I told you what I could.”
“Leo believed you. So did the rest of your friends,” Daniel interrupts. “You deliberately hid it. From me, from my sister—”
“From me as well,” I say.
She meets my gaze. “I didn’t know you were Gifted.”
“How’s that?” I ask.
“No connection.”
“Not a metaphor, I’m guessing.”
“No. I can’t sense you. It’s like you’re not even in the room.”
Goose looks disturbed. “You’re not going to off yourself, are you, mate?”
“No,” I say just as Sophie does.
“I’ve never sensed him,” she continues. “It’s not like he’s gone missing all of a sudden. Speaking of which, whatever’s happening? There haven’t been enough . . . deaths . . . to see a pattern yet. I don’t know how long it’ll be before Felicity dies, or Stella—”
“How do you know they will die?” Daniel asks.
“Because Sam died.”
“A pattern of one isn’t exactly a pattern.”
She shakes her head. “Felix knew when Felicity was gone.”
“Because you told him you couldn’t find her, and he lost hope,” I say, drawing Mara’s attention.
She lets out a shaky breath. “No, Felix was an empath. He could feel, and change, people’s emotions. And when Beth went missing, and killed herself—he knew it was happening to Felicity, too.”
“I don’t know, seems like he gave up kind of quick,” Jamie says.
“He didn’t want to live in a world without her,” I say. Daniel looks up—my defence of Felix is an unintentional defence of Sophie, so I circle back to offence, where it’s safer. “So what’s your plan, Sophie?”
“My plan?”
“You must’ve thought about it,” Mara says. “Or were you planning to lie to us forever?”
“You’ve read my file as well, I imagine,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You don’t have one.”
Jamie’s forehead scrunches. “Sure he does. I’ve seen it.”
Sophie shrugs. “Maybe Stella never took it out of Horizons, then.”
“But she stole mine,” Mara says—to herself, I think. A slight smile appears on her lips. “Of course she did.”
“Tell me something,” Jamie cuts in. “Did you know about me too? In Croyden? Because we’ve both been there since elementary school—”
“I didn’t know that there was something going on with me until I was sixteen, and you’re two years younger than me. When I met Leo and he told me I wasn’t crazy, I never thought there was anything special about you—”
“Thanks.”
“We passed each other all the time, and nothing, until one day—”
“Something,” he finishes, leaning back against the chair.
At that, Daniel stands up. “I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.” He rises from the table, and Sophie scrambles to follow. The chair scrapes against the floor as she pushes it away from the table.
“I’ll take the train back with you,” she says.
“Pass.” He goes to get his coat, but Mara crosses the room and says something to him I can’t hear—Sophie’s talking at him, Jamie’s asking Sophie for her address, and Goose is going for the whiskey.
“Called you a car, dude,” Jamie says to Daniel before he walks out the door. Jamie looks down at his mobile. “It’s just down the street. It’ll be here by the time you’re downstairs.” Daniel pauses for a moment, then says to Sophie, “You’d better head out. Before it leaves without you.”
She looks confused. “You’re not coming?”
“Not tonight.”
That visibly shakes her. “I love you,” she finally says, quiet and honest and sad.
Daniel doesn’t reply, but Mara opens the door and holds it open. Once Sophie’s walked into the hall, Daniel says, “You don’t lie to people you love.”
If only that were true.
“Daniel, you should spend the night,” Mara says as he stands by the now-closed door.
“I want to be by myself,” he says flatly. “I’m just waiting until I know she’s gone.”
“You can be alone here,” Mara insists.
“Stop.”
“You should,” I say. “It’s late. We have the room. We’ll let you alone.”
He wants to argue, but he’s wrung out. “Where?” he asks, glancing upstairs.
“Second floor, make a left after the first bank of rooms. It’s completely quiet—”
“I don’t want quiet.”
“There’s a telly,” Goose says. We all turn to him. “What? There’s one in all the rooms.”
“Not ours,” Mara mouths to me.
Because we have better ways of spending our time, I’m a bit tempted to say, but, not quite the moment, is it?
“Fine,” Daniel shrugs off his jacket, loops it over his arm. “I’ll see you guys . . . whenever.”
“Take care, buddy,” Jamie says.
“Night, brother,” Mara calls up as he disappears. No response.
Jamie and Goose awkwardly disperse, leaving Mara and me alone.