The Reckoning of Noah Shaw Read online

“I can heal,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster. It isn’t much. “Myself and others.”

  “Cool,” he says flatly.

  I have literally never felt less cool.

  I notice him noticing my still-split knuckles and likely still-fractured fingers.

  “My ability’s . . . dormant at the moment,” I go on.

  Silence.

  “Or gone. I don’t really know.” My audience is nonplussed. “Any of this registering? At all?”

  Goose decides to chime in, having apparently witnessed a sufficient amount of my humiliation.

  “We came here to ask you about Sam,” he says to Ceridwen. “So we can stop whatever happened to him from happening to anyone else.”

  I would’ve given him the throat-cut gesture if I could’ve done. We’re sure to be kicked out or have our asses kicked, or both.

  Except . . . that’s not what happens. Ceridwen’s eyes fill with tears, but she blinks them back. Takes a few steps over to a small dresser before turning back to consider me and Goose. Her silent friend is leaning against the wall, watching us carefully.

  “You knew him?” Ceridwen asks Goose.

  Goose has the audacity to look to me for an answer. Such a shit.

  “I was there,” I say as slowly as I can, watching Ceridwen’s eyes widen. “When he died.”

  Her jaw clenches, and her grip on the dresser tightens. “How? How did he die?”

  I’m about to say, “He hanged himself,” when I realise that, whilst technically true, that’s not what Ceridwen’s asking. She knew him. She knows that.

  “He was murdered,” I say instead.

  A tear escapes her eyes, rolls down her cheek. “I knew it,” she says softly. “We came up in school together. I was a year older, but our little sisters were friends, so.” She wipes her cheek with her sleeve. “He’d never have killed himself. Never.” She sniffs, silent for a moment. Then, to me, “Did you try to heal him? Is that how you knew?”

  I catch Goose’s eye. We really should’ve had a plan.

  “I saw it,” I say. “I—”

  Felt it.

  “I watched it happen,” I say instead. “It’s—it was one of the things I could do.”

  “One of your Gifts,” her friend says, faintly contemptuous.

  “Lucky me,” I say, matching his tone.

  “Not a fan of that one?”

  “Not a fan of any of them, to be honest,” I reply, and notice a slight shift in his expression. A spark of interest.

  A moment passes before he indicates my hand. “Looks painful.”

  I shrug.

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Punched a tombstone,” Goose says cheerfully.

  “Too bad you lost that healing factor.”

  “Is it?” I ask him.

  Ceridwen smiles slightly, for the first time. “Sounds like you, Isaac.”

  A name. Finally.

  And a familiar one, at that. “Leo mentioned you,” I say, my eyes narrowing. “Said you went looking for a cure for this . . . what we’ve got.” I finish. The word rustles up something M said to us, but before I catch hold of it, Isaac peels himself from the wall. Walks toward Ceridwen’s bed, where a blue rucksack rests against one of her striped pillows.

  “Ceri, I should go.”

  She shakes her head vigorously. “Nonsense. They can go.”

  “Did you find it?” I ask him. “A cure?”

  He’s silent.

  “Look,” I say, treading as carefully as I can. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust us. Especially if you knew my father.”

  “Did you know your father?” he asks me. “If you didn’t, you’re an idiot. And if you did, you deserve what he got.”

  “I am an idiot. But trying not to be.”

  “Keep trying,” he says, and he sounds and looks so much like Jamie I can’t help but ask, “You’re sure your last name isn’t Roth?”

  “Very sure,” he says, and pauses. “It’s Lowe.”

  35

  TO LIVE OR DIE

  WELL,” I SAY, ENDEAVOURING TO keep my jaw from the floor. “That changes . . . everything.”

  “You understand why I’m not a fan of your father’s work, then.”

  “I do,” I say, still shocked. “But how did you get away?”

  Goose raises his hand. “I’m actually having a hard time following.”

  Isaac looks at Ceridwen, then me. “Shaw’s father hired the woman who adopted me when I was a baby. The woman who experimented on me when I was a baby.”

  “God, Isaac,” Ceridwen says. “I didn’t know.”

  Isaac doesn’t say anything in response. Instead he considers me, searches my face. “What do you know?”

  I inhale through my nose. “That Kells was a monster. That my father encouraged her to be.” I look at Isaac, truly unable to imagine what he might’ve endured at their hands. The only context he fits in is with Jude.

  Just thinking that name rounds my hands into fists. My broken one throbs comfortingly.

  “Try not to take offence at this question,” I say next, because Isaac is right—I am absolutely an idiot. “But how are you normal? I’ve met the product of one of Kells’s experiments, and . . . he wasn’t.” A laughably inadequate description.

  “I was from an earlier set,” Isaac says. “Of twins,” he explains to Goose and Ceridwen. “My twin didn’t make it, but since I survived, she figured she got the protocol right.”

  “Yeah, she didn’t.”

  He shrugs.

  “This is mad,” I say quietly. “How did you escape?”

  “She took me out for ice cream, once. I ran away. I was six.”

  Christ. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “I don’t need your pity.”

  “And you don’t have it. Obviously you’ve done all right for yourself.”

  At that, he arches an eyebrow. “How would you know?”

  “Because you’re still here.”

  By some miracle, those words seem to resonate with him.

  “They didn’t make it easy, but you’re right. I survived,” he says, almost to himself.

  “How?” Ceridwen asks, with awe and respect.

  “Got thrown into foster homes a couple of times, always managed to wriggle out. When you have the kind of adoptive parent I had, you learn not to trust adults pretty quickly,” he says acidly. “So I lived on the street, pretty much. The homeless community was kinder and more trustworthy than most other people I’ve met. There were some people who looked out for me. Helped. I taught myself to read, and”—he shrugs—“here we are.”

  “Incredible,” Goose says. “I couldn’t’ve done it.”

  “You’d be surprised what you find out you’re capable of,” Isaac says. Then looks Goose up and down. “But no, you probably couldn’t have done it.”

  “So how’d you fetch up here, at Cambridge?” Goose asks.

  “I don’t go here,” Isaac says. “I came to warn Ceri.”

  Goose and I exchange a look.

  “How do you two know each other?” I ask quickly, not quite sure how to transition to our . . . theory.

  “I started the New York safe house,” Isaac says. “Leo took over when I left.”

  “To find a cure,” I repeat.

  “Which I never found,” he reminds me. But I found other things.” I notice him glancing at my pendant, peeking out from my shirt collar. Could be useful.

  “You’ve met the professor?” I ask.

  “Took him twelve years to find me,” Isaac says, a hint of pride in his voice.

  A plan begins to take shape. “Are you in his little club now as well?”

  Isaac cuts me a look. “If you’re asking whether I have one of those”—he nods at the chain around my neck—“the answer’s no.”

  “What is that?” Ceridwen asks me, but it’s Isaac who answers:

  “Another version of the symbols on our tattoos,” he says to her.

  Leo mentioned th
at someone else had designed them. Said Isaac was the first one to get it.

  Ceridwen shoots me an enquiring glance. I hold out the pendant for her to examine it.

  “What does it mean?” she asks.

  “We’ve been wondering the same thing, actually,” Goose says.

  “Do you have one also?” she asks him.

  Goose shakes his head. “No tattoos, either, I’m afraid. What do you suppose that means?” he asks Isaac, suddenly the group elder.

  Surprisingly, Isaac begins untucking his shirt. He lifts it up to his ribs—along one side is a tattoo, identical to Leo’s—a curving feather, the spine of it fashioned into a sword.

  “The professor told me about the symbols when he found me.” He looks down at it. “The feather, the sword. How they represent justice. He told me some stories, about my real background, he claimed. He knew what I could do, and suggested I use my gifts for good. Told me he was trying to make the world a better place, and needed my help to do it.” Isaac’s expression darkens. “I was tempted, for a minute, but then I thought, if he knows so much, why didn’t he find me sooner? If he knew so much, how could he let me be taken and raised by a sadist?” He straightens his spine. “I decided if he couldn’t have made the world a better place for one eighteen-year-old kid on his own, I didn’t think his was a cause worth joining.” Isaac crosses his arms over his chest. “So I reinterpreted the symbols he told me about. Got the tattoo. Started squatting in the brownstone. Leo tracked me down not long after that, and then he started finding others who felt the same way we did.”

  “Which is?”

  “I believe in justice. I just think we have to make it for ourselves.”

  He and Mara would get on well.

  Something he said catches me, though. “Did you say . . . Leo tracked you down?”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “Why?”

  “I thought he created illusions,” I say. “A girl, Sophie—she was the one who found others like us.”

  Isaac shakes his head. “Nope, you’ve got it backward.”

  “My mistake,” I say slowly. But it isn’t. Sophie described, quite lengthily, how her ability worked. Why would she lie?

  “Why didn’t you go back?” Goose asks. “To New York?”

  “I had a different . . . perspective, from Leo.”

  I think back, remembering our conversations in Brooklyn, in that house. About Mara, returning to our flat, drunk with power. Flashing me that wicked smile, that feral look as she pressed her hands against the wall of the clock tower, daring me to—

  “He wanted to develop his Gift. Get stronger,” Isaac says, mercifully interrupting my thoughts. Long enough for me to slam the door on them, on Mara, though she won’t stay there for long.

  “And you?” I ask him. “What do you want?”

  “I want to be left alone.”

  I turn to Ceridwen, then. “What about you?”

  “To live my life,” she says, looking away from us. “Stay at Cam. Keep my friends.” She turns to Isaac. “We haven’t done anything wrong. We shouldn’t have to hide.”

  “I don’t hide, I move.”

  I don’t hide, I move. M said that too.

  “Do you know anyone named Mara? Or Em?” I ask. She aimed me here, in their direction, after all.

  “She black too?”

  “No,” I sigh. “Never mind.”

  “Ceri, it’s your choice—if you want to come, I’ll help you. If not . . .”

  “I just don’t see how I could.”

  Isaac looks at her, disappointed. “Then I did the best I could. I’ve got to go.”

  “Why?” I ask, trying to delay him a bit, till I sort out why they’re here, and why we’re here. “What’s the rush?”

  He sighs. “Leo and Sophie said they were coming a week ago, right, Ceri?”

  She nods.

  “But they’re not here, and you are.”

  Goose blinks. “What, you think something’s happened to them?”

  “Honestly?” Isaac shakes his head. “Otherwise I’d’ve gone to New York before coming here.” He looks meaningfully at Ceridwen.

  “Is that your Gift?” Goose asks. “Sensing danger, or something?”

  “No. Just common sense.”

  “So what’s happened to them, do you think?” Ceridwen asks him.

  “I think after the past six months, Leo’s finally started listening to me.”

  Ceridwen turns to me. “Isaac thinks we should all be off the grid. Never spend too much time in one place. And never spend too much time with anyone else like us.”

  Isaac shrugs a shoulder. “Like I said, common sense. It’s smarter to avoid groups, if you want to avoid attention. Speaking of,” he says, lifting his rucksack off the bed. “I really do need to go.”

  “But there’s no one else here,” I say, looking around. “You think we’re being watched?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You think you aren’t?” Then, “I wouldn’t say ‘watched,’ necessarily. But ‘sensed’? Definitely.”

  “All of us?” Goose asks.

  He considers this before nodding once.

  “So you think you’re in danger as well?”

  “We’re all in danger, all the time.”

  “Fun guy,” Goose says to Ceridwen, who manages a grin.

  Isaac runs his tongue over his teeth. “How old are you?” he asks Goose.

  “Eighteen,” Goose replies.

  “And you?” Isaac asks me.

  “Nearly eighteen,” I say.

  “Right. Most of you are. How old am I?”

  “No idea.”

  “Twenty-one,” he says to me. “Three years may not seem like a lot, but trust me—your gifts, or whatever you wanna call it? They only start with healing. You’ve got some rough years ahead of you, if you make it that long. Not everyone does.”

  “And why is that?” Ceridwen asks. “Has anyone figured that out?”

  I nod. “I think there’s a difference between the . . . artificial version of the gene, for lack of a better word, and the original version.”

  Isaac slow-claps. I ignore him.

  “How do we know which one we’ve got?” Ceridwen asks nervously.

  “If you didn’t grow up in a lab, that’s a start,” Isaac says.

  “A start,” Goose says. “But not really conclusive, is it? I didn’t grow up in a lab.”

  “Nor did I,” says Ceridwen.

  “And we’re still here,” Goose chirps.

  “Sam isn’t.” Goose shuts up.

  “You didn’t happen to have any . . .” How to put it? “Issues, growing up?”

  “What sort?”

  “Were you in treatment for anything? Depression, anxiety?”

  Something closes down behind Ceridwen’s face. “That’s really none of your business.”

  Isaac sighs, frustrated. “The doctor who adopted me, she wasn’t the only one, using people for research. Although she might’ve been the only one who experimented on babies.” His jaw tightens, and he aims a glare at me. “His dad paid other people in other places to test kids he thought would be close to manifesting. Teens with mental health issues. So they wouldn’t be believed.”

  She shakes her head vigorously. “I don’t remember anything.”

  “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” he says quietly. “You know that as well as I do.”

  Goose looks back and forth between them. “Wait, what precisely is it you both can do?”

  Ceridwen looks to Isaac for reassurance.

  “Tell them.” He gestures at Goose. “If you want.”

  “I didn’t really know that I could do anything until Leo found me. But I can cancel out other Gifts.”

  “Oh my wow,” Goose says quietly. Then, “You’re my opposite. I make them stronger. What are the odds?”

  “Odds have nothing to do with it,” Isaac says, then runs his hand over his mouth. “It was designed that way.”

  “But not everyone was design
ed,” I say. “Goose never spent any time at a mental hospital.”

  “Did he need to?” Isaac straightens. “You guys were here. Growing up in the shadow of the piece of shit who started all this. How hard would it have been to . . .”

  “Manipulate his genes without anyone noticing?” I cut in. “You’re seriously asking that question?” I shake my head. “Kells was still trying to sort out how our abilities worked when I was in Horizons, not even a year ago. And her next experiment, after you? His name was Jude, and he was a fucking nightmare. Completely out of control.”

  “Yeah? What happened to him?”

  I hesitate.

  “His ex-girlfriend,” Goose answers, ever so helpfully.

  “Sounds like an interesting story.”

  “That depends on whether you like happy endings,” Goose says.

  Isaac shoulders his rucksack and leans in to kiss Ceridwen on each cheek. “I prefer no endings at all,” he says, before he walks out on us. The three of us stare at her closed door.

  “You know,” Goose says, “he never actually said what his Gift was?”

  Ceridwen’s eyes are fixed on the spot. “Isaac makes people forget things. Or helps them to remember.”

  36

  EITHER/OR

  GOOSE AND I EXCHANGE A very meaningful look. One that does not go unnoticed.

  “What?” Ceridwen asks.

  “That’s literally why he’s here,” Goose says, tipping his head at me.

  “Wait,” she says, shaking her head. “I thought you were here to find me. Because of Sam. And what you . . . saw.”

  I nod. “But I also just found out we’re related—”

  “How?”

  “Cousins,” Goose says.

  “No, how did you find out?”

  I could tell her half the truth? The bit Bernard conveyed to Mara, the rumours about Sam’s actual ancestry.

  Or I could confess the whole truth; the family tree Sam showed us that confirmed them.

  “It’s . . . complicated,” I say, buying time whilst I decide.

  “Try me.” Ceridwen folds her arms across her chest.

  Goose decides for me, as it happens.

  “He’s a ghost,” Goose says indelicately. “Who haunts Noah’s family home.”

  Ceridwen’s expression doesn’t change. As the silence stretches on, she finally says, “What are you on about?”