The Retribution of Mara Dyer

by Michelle Hodkin

  I looked down at Noah’s face. His pulse fluttered in his throat. I glanced at the knife in his chest. Maybe—if I pulled it out . . .

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know.

  “Do it before he gets back,” Jude said.

  “Who?” Noah’s father? I didn’t care about him. He would get what he deserved. I would make sure of it.

  “The one inside me,” Jude said, sending a ripple of revulsion through me. “Doctor was working on something, a cure. I gave myself a shot, but it pushes the other one away for only a little while. You’ve gotta do it, Mara. Please. There’s no one else who can. You couldn’t do it before you manifested, but now, now you’re done. You came back. You healed yourself. You can do it now. Please.”

  Jude was asking me to kill him. And I would. He couldn’t live, not after what he’d done. But what he was saying, how he was saying it, peeled the skin off of a memory.

  I remembered him standing in the torture garden at Horizons, telling me I had to be afraid, afraid enough to bring Claire back. Which was impossible.

  The moment I thought this was the moment Noah stopped breathing.

  I watched as the pulse died in his throat, and a breath, his last one, escaped from his lips like a sigh.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered. One tear fell, then another. I looked at the knife through blurred vision.

  Jamie said, “Mara, do you hear that?”

  But I heard nothing. Saw nothing. Felt nothing but Noah. I pulled the knife from his chest, hoping, desperately, that it might not be too late, that somehow he could heal, would heal, despite the things his father had said, despite the fortune-teller’s words.

  “You will love him to ruins.”

  I thought about all of the choices that had led us here, how each one could have gone a different way. How Noah might never have met me. How he would have been whole and unbroken and alive now if he hadn’t.

  “Sirens,” Jamie said with hope in his voice. “Is he—is Noah—”

  But it was too late. The life I’d almost had died in my arms.

  “He’s gone,” I said, holding his body, and the knife that had killed him.

  “Please,” Jude said again. “Please, please.”

  I looked at the knife in my hands, the blade wet with Noah’s warm blood. There was so much of it, on his chest, beneath him. Even in his hair.

  The knife didn’t kill him. Jude did.

  But maybe I could bring him back.

  I let Jude’s pleading voice fade into the background with Jamie’s, with the sirens, with everything else. I closed my eyes and pictured it.

  Noah, alive, tying my shoelaces in front of my house before he drove me to school.

  Noah, alive, looking at the picture I’d drawn of him, folding it and putting it into his pocket to keep.

  Noah, alive, looking down at me with his messy hair and sleepy eyes, his arms wrapped around me as we lay in my bed.

  I opened my eyes.

  Noah was still gone.

  I was doing something wrong. I flipped through memories, mine and not mine, searching desperately for a way to fix this. Noah’s father and Dr. Kells had given Jude an ability but hadn’t been able to control him. They’d tried to take mine away, and I’d lost the ability to control myself. Until now.

  I wiped Noah’s blood from the knife, looked at the sliver of my reflection in it, hoping it would speak to me, tell me how to fix this. But it was silent.

  Jude was begging now, shivering. I got that he wanted me to kill him for his sake, so he wouldn’t have to become the thing he was ever again. But I didn’t care. I wanted him to suffer. He should suffer every day for what he’d done. That was what he deserved.

  But I knew I wouldn’t make him.

  Noah’s body was warm in my hands. The weight of him filled my lap. I didn’t want to think about Jude. But unless I wished him gone, he wouldn’t go.

  So I thought about his corrupted heart stopping, his blunted nerves dying, his pointless lungs drowning in fluid. I thought those things and more, but he was still alive. He was hunched over himself. I thought I saw a drop of blood drip from his nose, but I wasn’t sure.

  “Please,” he whispered again. “Please.”

  I could kill him without touching him, but I didn’t know when he would actually, finally die. That was always the part I couldn’t seem to predict, couldn’t control. Or if I did, I didn’t know how yet.

  So I said to him, “Come here.”

  Jude looked at me. Something hateful and sly flashed behind his eyes. How had I missed it, all those months ago? How could I have looked at that blond head and those dimples and missed what an empty, nothing, shell of a thing he was? How had I ever let him get close enough to hurt me?

  Whatever. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  It physically hurt to rest Noah’s head on the floor, to empty my arms of him and stand up to face his murderer. Jude was kneeling, but he was straining to do it. He was at war with himself; his muscles were corded and the veins stood out on his forehead and neck.

  Maybe I should have taken the opportunity to make him recount his sins before he died, to force some grand confession of regret from his lips, to make him own all of the pain he was responsible for. But that felt like more than he deserved. Jude was no better than an animal really, so in the end, I slaughtered him like one. I slashed the knife across his throat and he fell to his side. I watched as he bled out.

  I was vaguely aware of bodies, living ones, rushing into the room, shouting things as red and blue lights flashed through the grime-clouded windows. I glanced briefly at the laptop, watched as police broke into the room where Jamie was being held. Something moved at the corner of my vision.

  “Drop the weapon,” a female voice shouted. I hadn’t realized I was still holding the knife. I opened my fist. It clattered to the dusty floor.

  “Put your arms above your head and turn around slowly.”

  I did. About a dozen NYPD officers stood among the mannequins, holding guns, pointing them at me.

  I looked down at Jude’s body, and at Noah’s. Then back up, at the female officer. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. A grieving girl? A murderer?

  I realized I didn’t care. I’d told Noah he wasn’t going to die. The last words I ever spoke to him were lies. I was a liar. He did die, and even though I’d tried, I hadn’t brought him back.

  I wasn’t crying anymore. Instead there was just the sob that wouldn’t come, the sting of tears that wouldn’t fall, the ache in my throat that was dying to become a scream. Crying would have been a relief, but I wasn’t filled with sadness. I was filled with rage.

  Rage because he’d died, for no reason, for bullshit, while everyone else got to live. If people heard about what had happened, their faces would turn into masks of horror for a moment, but then it would become just a story to them. They would go on living, and laughing, and I would be alone with my grief.

  “He tried to kill her,” Jamie shouted from the crappy laptop speakers as an officer on screen untied him. It drew the attention of one of the cops in the room with me, but the other pairs of eyes didn’t waver in their focus.

  If they’d known me, what I’d been through, what I’d lost, they might have said they were sorry for me, sorry for my loss. They might even have meant it. But beneath that would have been relief—that death hadn’t happened to them.

  All I wanted in the world right then was for Noah to live. That was what he deserved. But thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.

  Except that when I want it, it should. That was supposed to be my gift. My affliction.

  I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut. Saw writing in my mind, in handwriting that wasn’t mine.

  You can choose to end life or choose to give it, but punishment will follow every reward.

  Punishment. Reward.

  I wanted to give Noah life. To reward him with it. But it wouldn’t be free. Nothing was. If
I wanted something, I would have to trade for it.

  I wanted Noah. What would I trade for him?

  Who would I trade for him, was the question I needed to be asking.

  “The people we care about are always worth more to us than the people we don’t. No matter what anyone pretends.”

  They’d been Noah’s words once. But they were mine now. Who wouldn’t I trade for him? I would not trade my family. Never them.

  But there were other people. The world was full of them. How many would have to be punished so I could reward? What was Noah’s life worth?

  His father, David, needed to be punished for what he’d done, no question. But a million of him wouldn’t equal one Noah. He was worthless. Less than.

  But not all people were worthless. I looked around me, at the men and women who filled the room, rushing into danger in the hope of saving someone’s life. They were good people. Brave. Selfless. Heroes, really.

  Would I trade one of them to have Noah back?

  Would I trade all of them to have him back?

  I was stripped of all illusions, about this and myself. I knew without thinking that the answer was yes.

  65

  I KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN next. As the police approached, the woman said, “Are you holding anything that could hurt me?”

  Ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers. I shook my head as she reached for my hands and cuffed me.

  “What happened here?”

  I didn’t respond. How could I?

  Besides, I had the right to remain silent, so that was what I did.

  The paramedics had arrived, and they were setting up gurneys, checking the bodies, as if there were any point.

  The female officer tilted her head and asked. “Are you all right?”

  The question was almost funny. I shook my head.

  “I think she’s in shock,” she said to an EMT. “Do a quick check, and we’ll take her to the hospital.”

  “We’ve got another one here,” a voice said. I followed the source of it and saw Jamie, flanked by two cops.

  “I told them,” he said loudly, too loudly, as he passed. “About your crazy ex.”

  Clever boy.

  “Your ex-boyfriend?” the female officer asked me. “Which one?”

  I looked at Jude.

  “This your boyfriend?” She tipped her head at Noah, at his body, as he was being lifted onto a gurney without urgency. I nodded numbly, dumbly. They were going to take him away. I didn’t know how I would bear it.

  “I think I know what happened here,” the female officer said in a low voice to another, who had joined her. “We’ll track down the parents once we get to the hospital.” She put her hand on my elbow as they began to wheel Noah’s body away. My limbs felt like lead. I couldn’t move. I could barely see. My vision blurred with tears. I blinked furiously, but they just kept coming.

  The female officer tugged me in the direction of the exit just as one of the paramedics lifted a sheet to cover Noah’s face. I saw him blink.

  Face covered, wheels squeaking. Noah was almost gone when I finally managed to say, “Wait.”

  No one heard me the first time, so the second time I screamed it.

  The action stopped. The paramedic who had done the face covering must have seen something in my expression, though, because he looked at me and then back down at Noah, and then lifted the sheet.

  “Holy shit,” he murmured. “He’s breathing.”

  A second ago, the air had been dead, practically silent, but now it buzzed with frenzy. Paramedics swarmed around Noah, blocking him from view. I caught a glimpse of an oxygen mask being placed over his face as I was pulled away from him by more than one pair of hands. I watched his eyes open, and beneath the clear mask I thought I caught a hint of that half smile that I loved and missed so much.

  I’d seen a lot of things since all of this had started though. And not all of them had been real.

  But as Noah passed me, he slipped his hand off the gurney. His skin brushed mine. Electrified it.

  He was alive. He was real.

  66

  A MACHINE BEEPED TO THE left of noah’s hospital bed as another on his right hissed. I could see them, hear them, as I was escorted past his open door. Two police officers flanked it, and when they noticed me trying to peer in, one of them moved to close it. Detective Howard—that was the female officer’s name—led me to a makeshift interrogation room. Number 1213, I noticed.

  “The doctor says your boyfriend is recovering remarkably well. Astonishingly well,” she added. “That chest wound of his—it looked pretty bad, like his aorta might’ve been punctured, even. The paramedics thought he was dead. . . . They don’t usually make mistakes like that.”

  She stared, waiting for me to speak, but what could I say? That I wanted him alive, so he lived?

  What a crazy thing to think.

  “Your friend—Jamal, right?—told me what happened to you. He gave us your parents’ number, and we’ve called your mother and left a voice mail. Hopefully she’ll be here soon.”

  Not likely.

  “But I’d like to hear what happened from you, in your own words, before she gets here, if you can tell me.”

  I could, but I wouldn’t. I was a lawyer’s daughter, after all. I tilted my head forward, veiling my face with my hair. I was a psychologist’s daughter too. I knew what I needed to do.

  “You were all in some kind of, what, treatment center together?”

  You could say that. I looked at the table and blinked as if I hadn’t heard her.

  “This must be very difficult for you,” she said gently, trying a different tactic.

  I bit my lip, hard, so I wouldn’t laugh. She thought I was trying not to cry, and put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “If it was self-defense, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Little did she know.

  “Just a few more questions, and then the doctors will come in to talk to you, okay?”

  No response.

  “Someone reported a homicide at that abandoned warehouse. Any idea who that might’ve been?”

  I had my suspicions; David Shaw topped the list. He thought I was dead, of course, and someone would have to answer for killing me, wouldn’t they? He was going to blame it on Jude, I bet.

  “And the hospital admitted a boy not much older than you, not far from the warehouse, only a half hour before we got there. Any idea who that might’ve been?”

  Daniel.

  My heart seized on the idea, but I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t say anything. I looked out the window instead. We were on the twelfth floor, and New York City stretched out below us. It looked like a doll world from up here, with pieces I could move or play with or break.

  The door squeaked on its hinges, and a doctor gestured from the doorway to Detective Howard. “Psych’s on the way,” he said in a low voice. “Someone’s here to see her, though.”

  A person stood behind him, but I couldn’t see who it was.

  “Are you the mother?” the detective asked.

  But the woman who stepped into the room was not my mother. She was young, in her twenties, and wore tortoiseshell glasses on her pale, round, freckled face. She was outfitted in skinny jeans and Chucks, and for the life of me, I had no idea who she was.

  She extended her hand to the detective. “I’m Rochelle Hoffman. I’m the lawyer.”

  67

  SHE WAS JAMIE’S COUSIN, IT turned out. He’d called her as soon as he’d dispatched his police escort. Then he’d given the cops her number and told them it belonged to my parents. They believed him, of course. They had no choice.

  When I was finally alone with her, I cut the catatonic act and told her I wanted to talk to Jamie. She made it happen, probably with Jamie’s help, and left us alone. He pulled up a chair and sat in it backward.

  “So. Here’s the deal.”

  He could not talk fast enough to satisfy me.

  “Daniel’s in the hospital to
o.” I opened my mouth to ask about him, but Jamie said quickly, “He’s okay. We’ll have to Wormtongue our way in after dark or something, stage a hospital break for him and Noah. Maybe during the shift change.”

  “What about us?”

  “Well, you would be a murder suspect, if I hadn’t managed to painstakingly, painfully, at great cost to my physical and mental well-being, persuade the police otherwise.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “You sound it.”

  “Does this mean we can just go?”

  “Sort of. Rochelle’s taking care of it.”

  “What did your cousin say we should do? About everything?”

  “Well . . .” He drew out the word slowly. “I sort of described the situation hypothetically.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “As in, ‘Let’s say this billionaire was funding these messed-up genetic experiments on teenagers . . .”

  “Right . . .”

  “Let’s say these teens have superpowers . . .”

  “Uh-huh . . .”

  “Let’s say one of them ended up killing some people with her thoughts sometimes and also with her bare hands. Hypothetically.”

  I buried my face in my hands.

  “Let’s say there was physical evidence tying her to some of the deaths . . .”

  Kells. Wayne. Ernst. “Christ, Jamie.”

  “And other evidence had been planted to make it look like she was guilty of murders she didn’t commit.”

  Phoebe. Tara.

  “Oh, and, just for fun, to make it interesting, let’s say all of these teens have documented histories of mental illness. What do you think our chances would be if we went up against said billionaire in court?”

  “I’m guessing you mentioned the stuff we have? The videos? Documents?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m guessing her response was not encouraging.”

  “Shocking, isn’t it? She said—hypothetically, of course—that the documents couldn’t be authenticated. Chain of custody problems, not admissible, blah, blah. I don’t know, do I look like a lawyer?”

  I inhaled slowly, trying to stay calm.