I’m split open with desire, happiness. We smile against each other’s skin, and I inhale the salt-sweat smell of her, kiss her again, on her throat. Collarbones. Her hands thread through my hair and mine reach her chest—she gasps, and the sound alone has me spinning with heat. It’s been only hours since I’ve looked at her this way, but it could be years, centuries, for all that it matters. I’m starved for her, all the time, even now—I want every part of her, to devour her, to inhale her, but I also want her slowly; to see her, to listen to her, to listen inside of her, and so I force myself to stop. To trail my fingers slowly over the soft skin of her thighs, and pull back to see her expression.
Just looking at her face unmoors me. Cheeks flushed, skin shimmering, lips red and swollen with kissing, her head is tilted back, throat arched under the dome. But she can feel me watching her and reels her head back up, takes my hands, and pulls them onto her hips. The sound of her silk skirt sliding up against her silk skin is like silver on crystal.
Who is she? Who is this girl who would allow me to do this, here, now? And how am I allowed to have her?
I kiss the inside of each knee and up, farther, the roughness of my cheek raising redness on her skin. Then she grips each of my forearms, rocks herself back, and in one agonising, shimmering moment, one of her hands reaches beneath the hem of her dress, between her legs. Then her underwear slips to the ground.
A sharp hitch of breath. Mine. My head tilts down to kiss her skin, all of it, every bit I can reach. Just as I feel the warmth of my breath meeting the warmth of her body, my mind seizes.
I’m not looking at Mara—I’m looking at a reflection in a distant, black, stagnant puddle below me. At a reflection that isn’t mine. And then I jump to meet it.
4
THE DIRECTION OF HIS DREAMS
THERE IS NO SOUND, NO air, as the rope strains against someone’s neck. Fingers claw at my throat—no, his throat—trying to undo what he’s done. Then, the thoughts—his thoughts, his voice—storm my mind.
Help me help me help me help me help me help me help me hel—
Above me, worn stone opens to grey sky as a murder of crows takes flight overhead. It’s the last thing I see through his eyes before I hear Mara scream my name.
I am in my body again, staring up at the veined white marble ceiling of the mausoleum, not at the sky, not at dark, wet stone. I see Mara in front of me, not emptiness.
“What happened?” Her voice is panicked, urgent, and I realise then that I’m gasping for air.
“Someone—” Someone what? My neck is still raw, and I reach for the rope that was just there.
“Did you see something—”
Images flicker behind my eyes, final still frames the boy captured before he died. Ruined stone, handmade tiles. A dead pigeon, a pile of feathers and bone in the corner of the . . . tower. He hung himself in a tower.
“He didn’t want it,” I say, knowing it without knowing how.
“Who?” Mara’s hands cup my face. “Noah, what happened?”
I steady myself on the altar, and my eyes fall on the heavy wooden door, opened just a crack. “He killed himself here.”
Mara is off the altar now and braced, her body humming with adrenaline. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where?”
“The ruins,” I say, leading her to the door.
I’ve never been able to hear anyone’s thoughts before. Gifted, Afflicted, Carriers, whatever the fuck we are—when one of us is dying, or about to, I feel what they feel—their pain and terror connects us. And I see what they see—enough to find out where they are, usually, but never with enough time to actually help them. I’ve grown used to failing them after I’ve seen and felt, and so many die—there’s an emptiness that bleeds in from the edges, fills up the space where Feelings should be. I don’t even feel guilty anymore—if it happens and I’m in public, I beg off and either invent an excuse (Sorry, PMS) or deflect and say/do something assholic. It’s exhausting, being a witness, being a fraction of a victim each time—and there have been more that Mara knows not of. I don’t lie to her (much), but I sweep dark things into the darkest corner of my mind so I can be with her, enjoy her, feel and see and hear her, because it’s too late for them. I can’t keep these memories in that corner forever, but I can close the door on them and step back into the present.
But not today. This one—he was different. I was in his mind—I was him, for the slightest moment. Completely dispossessed.
I’m so consumed still that I don’t even realise that Mara’s taken over leading us to the ruins until sound overwhelms me.
The air is clotted with sobs, panic, confusion—Mara can hear it, feel it too. It tightens her body, coils her muscles, and I realise she’s holding my hand to soothe me, not herself. When I look away from her, I’m rather shocked to see that we’ve already crossed the bridge.
The gravel path forks toward the chapel and toward the ruins. She’s tugging me toward the chapel—we’re close enough now to see the crowd filing out. The volume’s dialled up again, and a wave of exhaustion licks at my body.
I step back, pulling Mara closer to me. “Other way,” I say, turning from the crowd. We wind back through the wood, avoiding eyes and ears, but something squirms in my spine the nearer we get. We push past dark spiky woven branches—Mara scratches her cheek on one. The only sound is that of twigs crunching beneath our shoes, and I’m grateful.
And then we’re there, standing in the shadow of the old abbey. The smell of cold, damp earth and wet layers of leaves hooks onto childhood memories and tries reeling them to the surface of my mind. I slide them away so I can see what Mara sees instead.
Her head tilts up. “This place is . . . bigger than I thought it would be. Up close.”
“Bigger on the inside,” I say. She nods absently.
We cross beneath a carved archway, and our footsteps echo on the stone, spiralling off against the flying buttresses. The sound rings in my teeth. If I didn’t know this place so well, I wouldn’t have found him as quickly.
A massive, grassy courtyard opens up to our left, but I turn right instead, past a row of stone stumps that were once columns, toward the old bell tower. Water trickles from somewhere, and a high, rising call sounds above us, like a warning. I look up just in time to see the arc of a sparrowhawk’s wing in the corner of my eye before I see him.
Mara’s gait is steady, panther-sleek, neither disgusted nor afraid. I shouldn’t be either, but there’s a smell coming off him. I can taste it in my mouth, acrid and wild.
Fear.
I put my hand out to stop her, but my hand catches air.
The body is still swinging, barely. That’s what I notice first. Then the slight trickle of blood from his nose that runs over his lip, his chin, before the droplet falls to the still, dark puddle beneath his body.
Something in my stomach flips. I ignore that warning call again, skittering off the tower, and approach Mara. She’s standing so still I’m not even sure she’s breathing.
I’ve seen dead bodies before. The boy and girl Jude killed at Horizons to show Mara and me how willing he was to kill, full stop. Same age as us, throats slit, blood and urine staining the sand beneath their bodies, and I was immune to it. I saw-heard-felt only Mara. And there were others, but again, next to her, they didn’t register. Their soundlessness was nothing because Mara’s notes spiked higher.
This boy, though. There’s horror here. A violated dignity that scrapes at my skin. I force myself to look, to ignore the hollowness of him beating at my ears, a black hole of sound, pulling everything around us into silence. Including Mara. I hear her breath from the outside, steady and even, but nothing else. No heartbeat, no pulse, no her.
“Noah.”
I startle at her voice. “What?”
“Do you know him? I asked you twice. You were staring off at something else.” She turns her head, and I follow the line of her gaze. It stops at a bloody mess of white feathers and bone. A hawk’s kill. A dove.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I shake my head. “It’s not me, it’s him.” I force myself to look again. His fingers are beginning to blue, like his eyes—open, like his mouth, slightly parted as if he’s about to speak. The rope creaks; the sound of it fills my head.
Mara’s voice, then. “Yeah. I feel it too.”
“What?” I ask.
“He’s like a block of ice,” she says curiously.
“You touched him?”