The Reckoning of Noah Shaw Read online

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “That chain around your neck,” he says, tipping his head at it. “Why’d you put it on?”

  “It was my mother’s,” I say, without hesitation.

  “Try again,” Isaac says, irritatingly.

  “I found it in a box of her things, after she died—”

  “Not what I asked. Stop wasting my time.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you’re on about but—”

  “Why did you put it on?”

  “What are you, a human lie detector or something?” Goose asks.

  “No, I’ve just had a lot of practice listening to people. Enough to know when they’re not telling the whole story.”

  “Fine,” I say. “The whole story, that’s what you want?” Isaac looks back placidly. “My father moved us to the States a couple of years ago. Miami.” I’m hyperaware of the fact that I’ve only ever told this to Mara before, and now I’m telling a former schoolmate and two strangers. “Ghastly house, there was only one suitable room in it, so I claimed the library as mine and then began to—” I catch myself, close my eyes. Try to remember what I told Mara exactly. “I felt like I had to unpack,” I say. It feels like Mara’s here, on the grass, looking up at me as she once did from the floor of my room. I’d give anything to have her back.

  But the Mara I’m remembering now isn’t the Mara that exists.

  A mourning dove calls out softly from somewhere close by. I shake my head once. Soldier on. “I was exhausted, had planned on passing out when we got there, but I just headed right for this one box. Inside it was a small chest full of silver, but I started setting it aside, taking the chest apart. Under a set of knives, I found this,” I say, reaching up to my neck to touch it, the pendant. “I started wearing it that day.”

  I glance at the rest of them, who seem satisfied. But Isaac’s watching me in a way I don’t like.

  “I took it off a few months ago,” I say, aiming for casual and likely failing. “The professor sent me a letter, and in it he included one from my mother as well. She wrote it before she died.”

  That I remember without effort, and every word feels like a wound.

  Do not find peace. Find passion.

  I had.

  Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for.

  I’d done that, too.

  When you find someone to fight with, give her or him this.

  I swallow hard. “She wrote things, about what she thought I should do with my life, how I should live it.” I’ve shown the letter to Mara, only, and can’t believe I’m about to repeat those words to this audience. “Told me to ‘fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Speak for them. Scream for them. Live and die for them.’ ”

  Your life will not always be a happy one, but it will have meaning, my mother wrote.

  I skip that bit. “Then she wrote, ‘when you find someone to fight with, give her or him this.’ ” I indicate my chest, where it rests above my heart.

  “Did you?” Isaac asks.

  “Find someone to fight with, or give it to her?” I ask. He just stares in answer. Goose can’t meet my eyes—my display of emotion is hideously embarrassing, no doubt. Ceridwen’s mouth is parted slightly; she’s hanging on every word, though.

  “Yes, and no,” I say. “She got a letter from the professor too. Warning her to stay away from me, essentially.” Not essentially. Exactly.

  You will love Noah Shaw to ruins, unless you let him go, he wrote to her.

  Whether it is fate or chance, coincidence or destiny, I have seen his death a thousand ways in a thousand dreams over a thousand nights, and the only one who can prevent it is you.

  It’s becoming harder and harder to force the words out of my mind into my throat into the air.

  “Let me take a stab at that interesting story you alluded to,” Isaac says.

  A blessed interruption, though an unfortunate choice of words.

  “Your ex—she’s your opposite?”

  “Common enough trope,” I say indifferently. “Star-crossed lovers, all that.”

  Isaac sighs. “Yeah, they eat that shit up.”

  “She kept repeating the professor’s words. ‘He would help create a better world. Without you, he can.’ Maybe that’s why she did it,” I say without thinking. Twelve lives for my worthless one. Twelve families ruined. She’d said she had nothing to do with what happened to Sam, Stella—and I would have believed her without question, before. Before she became the person my father or the professor or I encouraged her to be.

  I notice Isaac’s raised brows and say, “She did something I . . . couldn’t forgive.” My body tenses. “I told her I never wanted to see her again. And I haven’t.”

  “But there it is,” Isaac says, looking at my pendant.

  I exhale through my nose. “The professor told us if we put it on, he’d ‘know of our decision,’ whatever the fuck that means. I took it off because it all felt like a manipulation.” My jaw tightens. “I didn’t want to be used, a tool in his fight or a pawn in his game or whatever tortured, overused metaphor you prefer.”

  My words to Mara shove their way into my mind, again.

  We don’t have to be what they want. We can live the lives we want.

  “I thought if I took it off, I wouldn’t have to be who he’d decided I should be. But I realised he’d been playing me—both of us—the whole time. So I decided, fuck it. I’d go along, then spoil his game when I got the chance.”

  It’s all true. It just isn’t everything that’s true, missing the M narrative. But it might be enough.

  “So,” Isaac says, gathering himself up. “This is you playing along?”

  In a sense. I nod once.

  “He’s still playing you,” Isaac says. “And not just him,” he says, discomfitingly.

  Did he know about M after all?

  “All those originals leaving footprints in your thoughts? You’re a wanted man, Shaw.”

  I shrug one shoulder. “Knew that already. The professor said I fit the Hero archetype, or whatever. Destined for greatness, were his exact words, I believe.”

  “Harry Potter,” Goose says. Whilst going back and forth with Isaac, I’d nearly forgotten Goose was here.

  “With a death wish,” I add after a beat. “And better hair.”

  “I believe there’s a case to be made that Harry also had a death wish,” Goose says. “To be fair.”

  “So what are you saying, exactly?” Ceridwen asks Isaac, ignoring Goose and me.

  “I’m saying you can’t do what he wants, or even the opposite of what you think he wants, without playing right into his hands.”

  “What if he’s not the only one?” Goose asks, and it takes everything I have not to kick him.

  Isaac shrugs. “Doesn’t change anything. They’re older than you and smarter than you and stronger than you. You think you’re all ‘Damn the Man! Save the Empire!’ But they’re the Man and the Empire.”

  Goose and I exchange a glance. “Are . . . we supposed to know what that means?”

  Isaac rolls his head back and groans. “You can’t beat them, is the point. Whatever the thing you want most is, that’s what they’ll use to get what they want from you.”

  “Why don’t they just take it?” Goose asks. “I mean, if they’re as powerful as all that.”

  “I don’t think they can,” Isaac says. “Or I bet they would. But as for you,” he says to me, “you’ve got a decision to make. What is it that you want?”

  Where do I start?

  “I don’t want anyone else to die,” I say.

  “Everyone dies. You can’t change that, and neither can I. Next?”

  “Fine, I’ll be more specific. I’d like for other Carriers or Gifted or whatever the fuck you prefer to call us to stop committing suicide en masse.”

  He stares for a second, then says, “I don’t know why what’s happening is happening, but I know that I can’t fix it.”
/>   Ceridwen’s shaking her head. “No, you don’t. You don’t know that there isn’t a memory buried in his mind that’ll unlock why this is happening,” she says. “Sam didn’t want to die. You said you went looking for a cure, right? Maybe he tried to show Noah something, point him in that direction—”

  “Here’s what I can offer you,” Isaac says to me, ignoring Ceridwen. “And it’s all I can offer you. I can fill in the gaps in those memories of yours. I can unlock the door to that house. But the key might also unlock other rooms inside it that you’ll wish you’d never seen. Things the people you’re connected to might’ve done that you’ll get to experience, relive, through their eyes, with your awareness.” His voice takes on an edge. “Think about those people. Those things. That legacy. Then think about the things you’ve seen and felt and whether you wish you could scrape them from your memory.”

  Like what it felt like to break my bones on the ruins, when I wasn’t old enough to understand why.

  Or cut myself when I was fifteen, when I thought I did understand why.

  Or the look on my father’s face when I held a gun to my temple and he didn’t blink.

  Or Mara. The way every memory, every thought, everything I see and feel circles back to her, always. Reopens the wound I cut, prevents it from healing.

  “How can you be sure I won’t forget other things?” I ask. “Like how to speak or tie my laces?”

  Isaac shrugs. “Messing with memories can change your personality, yeah. But isn’t that the point?”

  It’s Goose who looks uneasy, now. “Sounds a bit risky, mate.”

  “It is,” Ceridwen says. “Whatever he takes from you, it’ll be gone forever.”

  I look at her, then at him, wondering fleetingly if that might have come between them.

  “How specific can you be?” I ask unhelpfully.

  “I mean, pretty specific. Almost Eternal Sunshine specific.”

  “Watched that with my older brother, once,” Goose says. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that movie didn’t end happily, did it?”

  “No,” Ceridwen says flatly. “It didn’t.”

  “It was ambiguous,” Isaac adds, a touch defensive.

  Ceridwen faces me, about to say something, but Isaac cuts her off. “Maybe there is something bouncing around in that head of yours that’ll magically put an end to all of this. Maybe the professor wasn’t just using you, and me, and everyone he’s ever met, and he really does need us to rid the world of evil. Maybe he’s the good guy. Maybe we are all heroes. But if someone gave me the choice, whether to remember everything I’ve been through in order to bring me here, to this moment, or whether to forget?” There’s pity in his eyes. “I would rather forget. For whatever that’s worth.” His eyes search the clearing for a moment, before he lifts his rucksack to his shoulder. “But you have to learn shit like that for yourself. I’m stuck here till morning, so you have till then to choose.”

  “Isaac—” Ceridwen says.

  “One last bit of advice? Make sure your choice is your choice. Not the professor’s. Not anyone else’s. Because you’re the one who has to live with it. Not Ceri, not your friend here, and definitely not the professor. Not any of them. You can’t beat them. Remember that.”

  “So what do we do?” Goose asks.

  “What I do,” he says. “Avoid them. They can’t win if you don’t play.”

  38

  OUT INTO THE WORLD

  ISAAC TAKES CERIDWEN ASIDE FOR a moment before leaving us, and we give them their distance.

  “Think we can still make that party?” Goose asks quietly.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Well, if you’re going to have your memory erased, might as well have one last bash.” His tone’s careless, but he won’t meet my eyes. Then, “You’re not really considering it, are you?”

  “Might do,” I say just as casually, which is just as much of a lie. Then I do what I’m better at—I deflect. “I’m not sure a party’s a good idea, to be honest,” I say, watching Isaac whisper to Ceridwen out of the corner of my eye.

  “But having a stranger mess around in your head is?”

  “You think he’d approve?” I tip my head at Isaac. “Of accepting an invitation we don’t know the origins of?”

  “Mate literally said ‘walls have ears.’ Wouldn’t look to him for social guidance. Probably we were recognised by Spencer or Nate or even Jasper, right? Remember him, the J-Crew?”

  Rower, used to prank the younger years with a small gang of fellow Slytherins. “Stupid name,” I say. Now all I can think of is the clothing company.

  “It’ll be fun,” Goose says. “We can prank them back, once we’re inside.”

  If it’s them. “And if it’s not them?”

  “You sound a bit paranoid, mate.”

  I do. And feel it. Have been, since well before we arrived, before we left New York, even. And I’ve been wrong and right to—we have been herded to England. But the professor did it first, before M, who lied in the beginning but made no secret of the fact that she wanted me here, and why. And she seemed to loathe the professor more than I did, more than Isaac. That’s been the common thread, which makes Goose right, as well, in a sense.

  The professor knew, impossibly, improbably, where to find me and Mara on her birthday. He knew of Simon’s existence, and found him. Both of them worked together to shape the moment I’m in, to shape my existence. I swore to myself I wouldn’t play the professor’s game, whatever it is, that I’d destroy his eight-dimensional chessboard instead.

  Which has led me to Isaac, whose only advice is to avoid them. To live like him, always moving, always hiding. No risk, no chance. I get why he lives that way, why he prizes survival above all else.

  Goose couldn’t be more different. He prizes fun above all else. And unlike Isaac? He’s happy.

  Unlike me.

  Ceridwen’s on her way back to us before I can reply. “So,” she says with forced lightness. “Looks like you’re spending the night as well.”

  “Don’t worry about us—” I start.

  “We wouldn’t want to trouble you—” Goose says.

  “Nonsense, we can grab some takeaway from Gardies, then head back.” She indicates the rooms at Emma.

  “Actually,” Goose says, “we were invited to a party at King’s later on—”

  “You’re welcome to join us—” I say.

  “It would be splendid if we could dress in your room, though,” Goose finishes.

  Ceridwen looks at us sceptically. “Dress?”

  Once back in her room, she eyes the fruits of our shopping experience earlier in the day. “Where exactly did you think you’d be going tonight?” she asks. “The nineteenth century?”

  “Bit much?” Goose holds up a waistcoat.

  “A bit, yeah.”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Goose says. “Thought perhaps we’d be invited to Formal Hall somewhere.” Ceridwen starts laughing. “No?”

  She shakes her head. “Not how it works, sorry.”

  Goose pouts. “We got invitations and everything.”

  She tilts her head, and Goose hands them to her. “Midnight? At King’s? Sorry, no, you’ve been invited to a soc initiation, probably. Or a prank.”

  Wonder what her take on it’ll be. “You don’t think it’s odd that our full names are there?”

  Ceridwen shrugs a shoulder. “Likely you were spotted by someone you know whilst milling about with the freshers. Hopefully it’s someone who likes you. Otherwise you’re in for a bit of a night.”

  Goose is wearing a rather smug smile.

  “Will you come along?” I ask Ceridwen, who’s already shaking her head. She sits on her bed, folding a leg beneath her.

  “I appreciate the thought, but my binge-drinking days are behind me.”

  “You’re not in a soc?” Goose asks.

  “I am—it’s the done thing,” she says with a crooked smile. “But I’ve already had my initiatio
n, which wasn’t as stupid as whatever you’re surely about to do. You likely won’t remember me or anyone by the time it’s over.”

  “I think we’ve found paradise,” Goose says solemnly.

  If I’d never heard of Mara, if we’d never met, if my parents had been fucked up in the normal way, and if the professor had never existed? Goose is who I’d be like. Who I’d want to be like.

  “I think I might agree,” I say back.

  Once we’re both suited (“At least you’re not wearing red chinos,” Ceridwen says, upon seeing us), Ceridwen offers to show us the way to King’s. “Not that it’s difficult to work out,” she says, “since it’s literally the centre of the bubble, but one mustn’t forget one’s manners.”

  Once we head out, Goose says, “God, those Tabs really weren’t joking when they said there’s nothing open at night.”

  Our footsteps echo on the cobblestones—we’re literally the only people in sight, though a peal of laughter rings out from a street or two away.

  “You honestly don’t even notice it after the first week or so, not with the college bars and swaps and things,” Ceridwen says. “Though I imagine it is a bit jarring if you’ve just come from New York.”

  We’re standing in front of the gate to King’s, and Goose stares up at it. “There’s literally nothing like this in America.”

  There really isn’t. I’d gotten rather used to how new everything seemed in Miami, especially, and even New York. But standing in front of a chapel constructed by Henry VI is quite the reminder.

  “It is rather extraordinary, isn’t it?” Ceridwen says, then looks at her wrist. “It’s not midnight yet. Want to look around?”

  I nod, and Ceridwen takes off at a slow stroll. We follow, and I imagine my mother here, walking this same path, or having breakfast in Hall, or sleeping in a room less well appointed than Ceridwen’s. Instead, it’s that journal entry of hers that comes to mind—