Текст книги "The Evolution of Mara Dyer"

Автор книги: Michelle Hodkin

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

62

PATIENT NAME: Noah Elliot Simon Shaw

AGE: Seventeen

The patient presented as a healthy teenage male of above average height and lean, muscular body build. He appeared somewhat older than his stated age. Rapport was not easily established. Patient was not matter-of-fact or helpful.

Patient has an ongoing pattern of uncooperative, defiant, hostile, and aggressive behavior toward authority figures and peers, according to family and educators. Atypically, it has not affected the patient’s performance in school, where the patient has maintained a perfect GPA. Patient demonstrates neither hyperactivity nor anxiety but has engaged in multiple violent confrontations with others. Parents have reported several callous-unemotional traits and patient has rated highly on all three sub-scales. However, parents state that the patient has never exhibited any cruelty to animals and is in fact an exceptional caregiver to them, demonstrating a particular facility with feral and dangerous animals at his stepmother’s veterinary practice, negating Antisocial Personality Disorder and other sociopathic types as potential diagnoses. Both the patient’s father and the school have reported the patient’s intentional destruction and vandalism of property in the past, however, as well as deceitful behavior (lying) and flouting of social norms. School restrictions are repeatedly ignored and punishments are demonstrably ineffective. Stepmother reported past incidences of alcohol and drug abuse, but nothing in recent history.

When confronted with reports from his parents and educators, questions were met with arrogant, cynical, and manipulative responses, and educators report history of sensation-seeking (renowned sexual reputation) and impulsivity. Patient demonstrates arrogant self-appraisal and superficial charm; inability to tolerate boredom; is self-assured, voluble, and verbally facile.

Continue to monitor for probable Oppositional Defiant Disorder; possible eventual diagnosis of Conduct Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

I CLOSED THE FOLDER WITHOUT CEREMONY AND handed it back to Noah.

“Why do you have two middle names?” I asked.

“That’s your question? After reading that?” Noah drew back, searching for something in my eyes. Disgust, maybe. Or fear.

“It’s not you,” I said to him, and softly.

The corner of Noah’s mouth lifted in a slow smile. A sad one. “Yes. It is.”

We were both right, I decided then. Our files were part of us—the parts that people wanted to fix. But they weren’t all of us. They weren’t who we were. Only we could decide that.

I swung my leg over Noah’s waist and straddled him. “Maybe the uncooperative part’s true. You’re very”—I brushed my lips against his—“frustrating.”

Jamie cleared his throat. I nearly forgot that he was there.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“If okay means ‘pessimistic, unstable, and manipulative,’ then sure,” Jamie said cheerfully. “‘Patient demonstrates extreme sarcasm and enduring bitterness; sees things in terms of extremes, such as either all good or all bad. His views of others change quickly, leading to intense and unstable relationships,’” he recited from memory. “‘Patient demonstrates conflict about sexual orientation and is preoccupied with the sexual histories of others. Demonstrates a classic pattern of identity disturbance—an unclear, unstable self-image—as well as impulsivity and emotional instability,’” he said, suddenly sounding tired. He closed his file, chucked it like a Frisbee at the opposite wall, and leaned back with his arms above his head. “Ladies and gentlemen, Jamal Feldstein-Roth.”

I blinked. “Wait, Jamal?”

“Suck it,” he said with a grin. “My parents are liberal Jews from Long Island, okay? They wanted me to have a connection to my heritage.” Jamie made air quotes with his fingers.

“I’m not judging—my middle name is Amitra. I’m just surprised.”

“Amitra,” Noah mused. “Mystery solved.”

“What is that?” Jamie asked me.

“Sanskrit? Hindi?” I shrugged.

“Randomly?”

I shook my head. “Mom’s Indian.”

“What does it mean?” Jamie asked me.

“What does Jamal mean?” I asked him.

“Point taken.”

“I probably have about as much connection to my Indian heritage as you do to your African heritage,” I said. “My mother’s favorite food is sushi.”

“Latkes.” Jamie smiled for a second, but then it faltered. “This is bullshit,” he said suddenly. “We’re teenagers. We’re supposed to be sarcastic.”

“And preoccupied with sex,” I chimed in.

“And impulsive,” Noah added.

“Exactly,” Jamie said. “But we’re in here and they’re out there?” He shook his head slowly. “Everyone’s a little crazy. The only difference between us and them is that they hide it better.” He paused. “It . . . kind of makes me want to burn this place down?” He raised his eyebrows. “Just me?”

I grinned. “Not just you.”

Jamie stood and chucked me on the shoulder. Then yawned. “Rain check? I’m beat. You guys staying?”

I looked over at Noah. We hadn’t gotten what we came for yet. When our eyes met, it was obvious that he was thinking the same thing.

“Yeah,” I said.

Jamie picked up his file and dropped it back in the appropriate drawer. He reached for the door. “Thanks for the fun. Let’s do it again soon.”

I waved. Jamie closed the door behind him.

And then Noah and I were alone.

63

NOAH LEANED BACK IN DR. KELLS’S CHAIR and watched me. I was still in his lap.

And suddenly self-conscious. “What?” I asked as I blushed.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded.

“You sure?”

I thought about it, about what was in my file and what it meant. “Not entirely,” I said. Not being believed about Jude would always hurt. Noah’s arms tightened around me, solid and warm.

“You can read it,” I decided.

He shook his head, his hair tickling my skin. “I showed you mine with no expectations. You don’t have to show me yours.”

I looked up at him. “I want to.”

Noah’s hand wandered over the folder on the desk behind my back, and then he leaned back in the chair to read with me still in his lap.

We were silent. His fingers wandered beneath my T-shirt, drawing invisible pictures on my skin. Distracting me, I realized with a smile. I was grateful.

Then he said my name, bringing me back. “Mara, did you see this?”

I leaned over to look. Noah flipped the file around so I could read it. Under my stats, the ones I’d skimmed, there was a handwritten notation beneath a section called CONTRAINDICATIONS that read:

Sarin, orig. carrier; contraindication suspected, unknown; midazolam administered

My heartbeat thrummed in my ears. “Sarin. My mother’s maiden name.”

My grandmother’s last name.

I wasn’t sure if Noah heard me. He handed me the file and shifted me up, off of his lap. He was up in an instant.

The rush of blood was loud in my ears. “What does it—what’s a contraindication?”

“It’s like,” Noah started to say as he began opening drawers. “It’s like if you have a penicillin allergy, the contraindication is penicillin,” he said. “You shouldn’t take it unless the benefit outweighs the risk.”

“Like a weakness?” I asked. “What’s midazolam?”

“They use it at the clinic,” Noah said, thumbing through file folders. “They never told you they were giving it to you?”

“Wait, what clinic? The animal clinic?” I asked, my eyes widening.

“Most veterinary drugs started as human drugs, not the other way around. If it’s what I think it is, they use it for sedation, presurgery.”

“Why would I need to be sedated?” The idea made me shiver.

Noah shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Unless there’s a human indication I’m unaware of, which is possible.” He glanced at the clock. “They’re going to start waking up soon,” he said. He was silhouetted in the dark. “You look for Phoebe’s file, I’ll look for Stella’s.”

I looked without words because I couldn’t find any, not then. I kept searching, careful as I could be not to disturb anything as I tunneled through file cabinets and scoured the desk drawers. In the bottom-right one, on top of a pile of papers, I found something. But not what I had been looking for.

I withdrew the fine black cord with the silver pendants—mirror images, mine and his—that should have been hanging around Noah’s neck.

“Noah,” I said. “Your necklace.”

He turned to me, placing a manila file folder on the desk. Benicia, the label read—Stella’s last name.

I handed Noah the necklace and he fastened it around his neck. Then helped me search for Phoebe’s file.

I opened every drawer, looked under every pile of paper. There were a bunch of notebooks all stacked on a shelf—I looked between those, too, taking each one out and flipping through it—maybe her records had been stuffed inside?

He slid into Dr. Kells’s chair then. “Keep looking,” he told me, as he turned on the computer monitor on her desk. I willed myself to hold it together despite the panic that scratched below the surface, and resumed the physical search as Noah began an electronic one.

And then, just as my eyes found a notebook with Phoebe’s scrawl on the front, I heard Noah say my name in the most haunted voice I had ever heard.

His skin was pale, illuminated by the monitor’s light, which flickered over his face as he watched something on the screen, utterly riveted. I gripped Phoebe’s notebook and moved next to him to see what it was.

What I saw, framed in the glossy white monitor, was us.

An extremely high quality video on Dr. Kells’s computer screen of me on my bed. In my bedroom. At home. Of Noah straddled in my desk chair, looking at me. Talking to me.

I saw his artful smirk. My answering smile.

And a date in the corner, where a counter ticked.

It was filmed last week.

Noah did something, clicked on something, and I watched in horror as our on-screen selves appeared and disappeared in fast motion as seconds, minutes, hours of footage passed.

Noah clicked again and a window opened up, containing more files with more dates. He opened them in rapid succession and we saw my kitchen. Daniel’s bedroom. The guest bedroom.

Every room in my whole house.

Another click. The sound of Noah’s voice reached out from the speakers and out from the past.

“I won’t let Jude hurt you.”

Noah inhaled sharply. He fast-forwarded again and we watched his lean frame disappear. We watched me speed in and out of my bedroom, and then finally change and get ready for bed. And then we watched Jude walk into my bedroom that night. Watched him watch me as I slept.

Jude had hurt me, again and again and again. Noah blamed himself because he wasn’t there, but it wasn’t his fault. He was just as lost as I was, just as blind in this as me.

Dr. Kells wasn’t blind, though. She saw it all. She saw everything.

“She knew he was alive,” I said, my voice sounding dead. “She knew he was alive the whole time.”

64

NOAH WAS COMPLETELY SILENT.

My eyes hardened as I stared at the screen. “Evidence,” I said, and Noah looked at me, his expression chilling. “We need to copy the files, then tell everyone what’s going on.”

Noah clicked an icon and an electronic window opened—a picture of a yellow triangle around an exclamation mark appeared on-screen along with the words:

UNABLE TO CONNECT

“Fine, then,” Noah said, and kicked out of the chair. He took my hand. “We’ll leave.”

But we couldn’t. “Not without proof,” I said, thinking of my file. Delusions. Nightmares. Hallucinations. “If we have no proof that Jude’s alive, that she knew, and we get out—I could just be sent back.”

My voice cracked on the word. I tried to swallow away the tightness in my throat and handed Noah Phoebe’s journal so I could keep rifling through the desk. For CDs, a thumb drive, any way to record this.

But Noah’s voice stopped me cold.

“Jesus,” he whispered, staring inside Phoebe’s notebook. I leaned around to see.

I could barely read her chicken scratch, but I did see my name in several places, along with sketches of a crude likeness of myself with my insides spilled out.

“Not that,” Noah said. He pointed instead to the inside cover.

Where Phoebe had drawn hearts with the initials J+P inside. Where she had written in flowery, cursive script:

Phoebe Lowe

Phoebe’s last name was Reynard. Jude’s last name was Lowe.

J + P.

Phoebe’s words rushed back to me—what she said after she planted the note in my backpack, the one that said I see you. They tumbled and spun in my brain:

“I didn’t write it,” Phoebe had said, then lowered her eyes back to her journal. She smiled. “But I did put it there.”

I heard her voice in my mind again as bile rose in my throat.

“My boyfriend gave it to me,” she said in a singsong voice.

“Who’s your boyfriend, Phoebe?” I asked.

But I never believed she actually had one. I just thought she was playing some crazy game. When she never answered, when she started singing, it made me think I won. But now I knew I hadn’t.

Jude did.

“He was using her,” I said, the fear fresh and raw. “He was using her.”

Dr. Kells knew Jude was alive and knew his connection to me. Jude was meeting with Phoebe, telling her who-knew-what and giving her frightening notes to pass along. Phoebe and I were Horizons patients. Dr. Kells was the Horizons director. And Jude?

What the hell was he?

“Fuck this.” Noah snapped Phoebe’s notebook shut and took my hand. “We’re leaving now.” He pulled me, tugged me toward the door. I could barely make my leaden legs move.

“What are they doing?” l whispered.

“We’ll figure it out, let’s just go—”

My mind was shutting down in fear and confusion and shock. I wouldn’t have known what direction to go in if Noah didn’t lead me. I followed him out of Dr. Kells’s office—the door closed behind us with a click. The halls were still empty and all of the dormitory room doors were still closed. None of the counselors had woken up yet. We might be able to slip out before they did.

Did they know everything too?

As we rushed through the hall, though, I noticed that there was, in fact, one door still open. One that I made sure I closed earlier on my way out.

My door.

I jerked to a stop in front of it, halting Noah along with me. “My door,” I whispered to him. “I closed it, Noah. I closed it.”

“Mara—”

I pushed the door open—a dim rectangle of light fell on the wall, by Phoebe’s bed.

Where there were letters.

Letters that formed words.

Words that were written in something dark and wet.

The salt-rust smell assaulted my nostrils and turned my stomach. Noah flipped the light switch but the light didn’t turn on. He moved deeper into the room, but did not let go of my hand.

Phoebe was tucked into her bed, the covers up to her chest. Her arms were by her side, and two dark, red balloons of blood burst from her slashed wrists, staining the white blanket on either side of her body. And on the wall, written in blood, were three words.

I SEE YOU

Jude was here.

The room was sucked of all sound. I tried to swallow, to scream, but I couldn’t. It was an infinity before I heard my name whispered in the most familiar voice I knew.

Noah’s arms wrapped around me, vise-tight and perfect. He folded me into him. He lifted me up, the warmth of him warming me through my sweat-damp shirt. I wrapped my legs around him and buried my face in his neck and sobbed without sound.

He didn’t say anything as he carried me. Noah stalked swiftly and silently, through the hall with me in his arms; I didn’t know how he was doing it and I didn’t care. If he put me down, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stand on my own.

We reached the front entrance then. And he leaned back and looked up into my eyes.

“The resort is maybe twenty minutes, if we run. Can you run, Mara?”

Could I run?

The wolf was at my door and there was fire at my feet. I had to run. I would.

I nodded, and Noah set me down, my hand still in his grasp. He reached for the door.

But what about—

“Jamie,” I whispered, looking behind us. Looking back. “Jamie was with us in the office, Noah. He was with us.”

I was being watched and tortured. Phoebe was being used and had been killed.

Neither of us had been safe. Both of us were here.

Which meant Jamie wasn’t safe either. None of the other students were.

But of them, Jamie was the one I cared about the most. If I had to choose, he was the one I had to get out.

“We have to get Jamie,” I said, my voice clear.

Noah nodded once, his expression hard. “I will, I swear it, but I need to get you safe, first.”

Noah was choosing me.

I didn’t waver. “We can’t leave him.”

“Mara—”

“We can’t leave him,” I said, and tried to pull away.

“We won’t,” Noah said. But he placed his hand on the doorknob anyway, and he wouldn’t let me go.

It wouldn’t have mattered if he had, though, because the door didn’t open. The knob didn’t even turn.

We were locked inside.

“We’re trapped,” I whispered. I hated my voice. I hated my fear.

Noah pulled me away from the door and headed left. His strides were long and fast and I could barely keep up. I had no idea where we were going; the place was like a maze. But Noah’s perfect memory served us well—he led us to the empty dining room, which looked out over the ocean. The edge of dawn had begun to creep over the black horizon through the window. Noah tried the door that led to the kitchen.

It was locked too.

He swore, and then he was back by my side. He looked out at the dark water. Looked at the tables and chairs.

“Move,” he said to me, urging me away from the window.

I backed away as Noah lifted a chair. Launched it in fury at the glass.

It bounced off.

“All right,” he said calmly to the air, to no one. Then to me he said, “Let’s wake them up.”

Jamie. Stella. Everyone, he meant. We outnumbered the adults, and together, maybe we could do something that alone, we couldn’t. Maybe together, we could all find a way out.

We ran back to the patient rooms. Noah tried to open the first door. Locked. He banged his fist once, ordered whoever was inside to wake up.

He was met with silence. We tried another door.

Another locked door.

That was when I realized I’d never seen any locks on any of the patient doors. There were no latches to turn. No buttons to press.

That didn’t mean there were no locks. It just meant that we, the patients, weren’t able to lock them.

But now we were locked inside.

Trapped, my mind whispered.

We hadn’t seen or heard another living soul since we left Kells’s office. No counselors. No adults. They left us here.

Why?

My mind bent in confusion as Noah pulled me to his room, the one he shared with Jamie. The door was open.

Jamie was not inside.

My legs were string—I couldn’t stand anymore. I sank, but Noah caught me. He pulled me close, so close against him and wrapped himself around me until every point of my body made contact with his. Forehead to forehead, chest to chest, hips to hips. He loosened his arms and pushed the matted, damp hair from my face, from my neck. He tried to hold me together, but I still fell apart.

After my pointless sobs softened into silence, I spoke. “I’m so scared,” I said.

And so ashamed, I didn’t say. I felt so weak.

“I know,” Noah said, his back against the frame of his bed, his arms wrapped around me still. His lips brushed my ear. “But I have to go find Jamie.”

I nodded. I knew. I wanted him to. But I couldn’t seem to let him go.

It wouldn’t have mattered, though. A few seconds later, we heard the scream.

65

IT CUT OFF AS SHARPLY AS IT BEGAN.

“That wasn’t Jamie,” Noah said strongly against my temple. He tucked my head beneath his chin, my cheek against his chest.

He was right. The voice had been female.

We listened, fitted against each other in the dark. The silence was thick, shutting out everything but my heartbeat. Or Noah’s. It was impossible to know.

Another scream issued—from the compound’s center. From the garden? I couldn’t tell from here.

“Stay here,” Noah said to me, his voice firm and clear.

He couldn’t not go. But I couldn’t leave him.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re not splitting up.” My voice sharpened. “We’re not splitting up.”

Noah exhaled slowly. He didn’t answer, but he took my hand and lifted me up.

Our footsteps echoed in the silent halls and I gripped his fingers tightly, wishing we could become one thing. Holding on to him, I noticed, my wrists didn’t even hurt.

The early morning sky was still very dark, the black brightening only to a deep purple. Lightning flickered through the windows that wouldn’t release us and made monsters of our shadows against the wall.

Another scream.

We were corralled by it. Drawn to it. That was the point.

We walked into my nightmare together.

Jude stood in the Zen garden, broad and imposing in the sand. He stood between harmoniously arranged stalks of bamboo and sculptured bonsai trees. Jamie and Stella Adam and Megan were kneeling, arranged in the sand. Heads bowed. Hands bound. Positioned among the rocks.

Another girl—I couldn’t see her face—was lying on her side, unmoving. Her white shirt was soaked in blood, coloring it red.

There was a storm outside. It raged through the skylight. But the garden was quiet. No one struggled. No one said a word. Not even Jamie. The tableau was surreal. Deranged. Utterly terrifying.

Then Jude’s voice polluted the air. “Did you try the doors first?” he asked us, and smiled. “The windows?”

No one spoke.

Jude clucked his tongue. “You did. I can tell.” His gaze wandered over each of the bodies in the sand. When he looked up, it was at Noah. “While I’m glad we’re able to finally meet,” he said, “I did want to avoid this.”

Nothing in Noah’s posture or expression showed that he’d even heard him. He was as still and smooth as one of the stones in the sand. The sight of bound and kneeling teenagers didn’t appear to unsettle him at all.

Which appeared to unsettle Jude. He blinked and swallowed, then met my eyes. “I tried to find you, Mara, but you were hiding. So I had no choice. You made me take them.”

“Why?” My voice shattered the quiet. “What do you want?”

“I want Claire back,” he said simply.

“She’s dead,” I said, my voice quivering. “I killed her and I wish I hadn’t but I did and she’s dead. I’m sorry.”

“He thinks you can bring her back,” Stella said, her husky voice barely above a whisper.

Seven pairs of eyes focused on her with eerie precision.

“What?” I asked her.

Jude crouched down in front of Stella, a coiled snake.

She ignored him, didn’t look. She looked, instead, at me. “He thinks you can bring her back.”

Jude smacked Stella across the face.

Jamie flinched.

Megan started to cry.

Adam watched Jude with keen interest—not fear.

Noah took a step forward, brimming with quiet violence.

But when I saw Jude hit Stella, something inside of me rose up from the dark. I held on to Noah still, but I stopped shaking.

“Bring Claire back,” I said slowly.

Stella nodded. “That’s what he thinks.”

“How do you—” I began to ask. Then stopped, because I knew.

Stella was like us. Different. I looked at her, at the expression on her face, and realized how.

She knew what Jude was thinking. She could hear his thoughts.

If Jude believed that I could bring Claire back from the dead, Claire who was mangled and crushed to pieces, who was buried in a closed casket in Rhode Island under six feet of earth, he was absolutely detached from reality. Completely delusional.

The only way out of this would be to act like his delusion was real.

“Jude,” I said, my voice pleading. Practiced. “I want to bring Claire back. Tell me how to bring her back.”

The muscles in his face twitched. “You have to be motivated,” he said mechanically. Then smacked Stella again. Hard.

The muscles in Noah’s arms went rigid, tense beneath my grip.

Jude’s eyes raked over Noah and a smile formed on his lips. “Yes, join us,” he said to him. “You can help.”

Something changed in Noah, then. He relaxed. “And how, precisely, would I do that?” His voice had become more than just blank. It was bored.

Stella coughed. Bowed to the ground, spat blood on the sand. Then looked up at me, her stare direct. “You have to be scared,” she said to me. “If you’re afraid enough, he thinks, you’ll do it.”

So Jude did want me afraid. Everything he did was designed to terrify me. Showing up at the police station so I would know he was alive. Stealing Daniel’s key so he could come and go whenever he wanted, so he could take pictures of me while I slept, so he could move my things around, like the doll, and I would know he had been there, violating the place I should have felt safe.

He killed the cat and told me why with a message in blood.

But that wasn’t enough. He didn’t want me to feel safe anywhere, with anyone. Not with my father—so he nearly ran us off the road. And not at Horizons—so he used Phoebe to scare me. He gave her the picture and had her scratch out my eyes, he wrote that note and had her deliver it. He played me like an instrument and used Phoebe like a tool, to unsettle me, to push me, to make me afraid when he couldn’t be around to do it himself.

I thought it was all for revenge. For Claire. To punish me for what I’d done to her and to him. And no doubt that was part of it. But in his mind, it was also a means to an end.

An end I couldn’t possibly deliver.

I had to be motivated, he said. If I was afraid enough I’d do it, he thought.

But I was afraid. I was terrified. And Claire was still never going to come back.

I didn’t know how to pretend otherwise anymore. “Jude,” I said. “I swear, I would do it if I could. I’m sorry.”

He cocked his head at me. Studied me. “You’re not sorry,” he said plainly. “But you will be.”

Then, in a movement so sudden I almost couldn’t make sense of it, he grabbed a fistful of Stella’s thick curls, lifting her up and bending her back at once.

Megan screamed. Jamie looked away. Adam made a surprised noise.

Noah was on edge again, I could feel it. But he didn’t move from my side.

I was seething. “You think if you torture her, I’ll bring Claire back?” I asked, my voice rising in fury. “If I could do it I’d have done it already—”

Jude let Stella fall back to her knees. He looked down at her.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

A smile crept across Jude’s mouth.

The way she sounded, the way he smiled, set my nerves on fire. “What?”

Jude looked up at me, and his grin grew wider. “Tell them,” he said to Stella. When she didn’t speak, he tugged on her hair. “Tell them.”

“She—” Stella screwed up her face, and her eyes flicked to Jude as he crouched beside her. “She knew,” Stella whispered, looking straight at him. “Jude’s part of it. She knew—oh my God, she knew, about all of us, the whole time—he’s part of it, she promised him you’d bring Claire back if he brought you here, she told him how to make you do it, and she left the rest of us here to see what you would do, oh God—”

“She?” Jamie whispered.

“Kells,” Noah said.

“Jude’s part of it?” I asked, my voice brittle and breaking. “He’s part of what?”

What was he? What were we?

“I can’t hear,” Stella wailed, “there are too many voices!” Then Stella whispered and mumbled; I could only catch one word. It sounded like “insurance.”

“How do we get out?” I asked quickly. That was what I needed to know, before Stella lost it. How to get out.

“You can’t,” Stella moaned.

“I was let in,” Jude said calmly.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest.

Dr. Kells had let Jude in. The adults were all gone. There was no one to help us, no one who would come.

“He killed Phoebe,” Stella said, her shoulders shaking. “But it looks like you did it, Mara—that’s what they’re going to say. They need you—”

Jude slapped her cheek. Stella sucked her full lips into her mouth and looked down at the sand. She wasn’t going to say anything else.

I couldn’t make sense of most of what she had said, but one thing I caught was this: Dr. Kells promised Jude I would bring Claire back if he brought me here tonight. And she was lying.

She wanted me here for some other reason and I couldn’t begin to fathom what it was. I couldn’t play along with Jude’s delusion, but maybe if I could show him that he was just a piece, a pawn in whatever twisted thing was happening here, there might be a chance, however small, that he would let us go.

I didn’t see another way. So I said, “Dr. Kells is lying to you.”

“No,” Jude said to me, “you are.”

Then he grabbed Stella’s wrist and broke it. We all heard it snap.

Megan screamed like an animal. Jamie swore. Adam smirked. I churned with rage.

But Noah. Noah didn’t make a sound. He didn’t step forward. He didn’t even tense. After a minute, he said, “You might want to let her go,” as if he were pointing Jude in the direction of the nearest gas station.

The muscles in Jude’s face twitched. He didn’t understand why Noah wasn’t reacting, why he didn’t seem to care, and until that second, neither did I.

Jude wanted us off balance. He wanted us afraid. He needed those things from me most of all, and I thought he was hurting Stella to try and scare me even more.

But it wasn’t working. I wasn’t scared. I was angry, and Jude saw it. Which is why he wasn’t trying to use Stella to provoke me—he was using her to try and provoke Noah. Thinking he couldn’t resist a damsel in distress.

He wanted Noah to take her place.

But it wasn’t working. Noah didn’t move.

Jude dropped Stella’s wrist, then. She fell back against the bloody sand and I felt a split second of relief—

Until Jude pinched the back of Jamie’s neck.

Everything changed. My stomach curdled with fear.

“I’ll let this one go,” Jude said with a wholesome smile, “if Mara takes his place.”

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Jude had me before, at the marina, and didn’t kill me then. He came into my room and ruined my life but I was still here. I was still alive.

Jude couldn’t kill me, Stella had said—he thought he needed me to get his sister back. If I took Jamie’s place it wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t possible; Jude would be busy with me, giving the rest of them a chance to get all of us out.

I let go of Noah’s arm.