The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions Book 1)

OH MY GOD,” SOPHIE SAYS, her eyes widening as she takes in the flat. “This is your apartment?” she asks. “It’s incredible.”

It was decided that Goose’s little dinner party would be the setting for Sophie’s interrogation. Daniel was under strict orders to act perfectly normal, as if his girlfriend of the past year hadn’t been hiding the fact that she’s an X-Teen. Mara was under strict orders not to kill her, accidentally or otherwise.

“Thanks,” I say, taking her trench. “Getting bad out there?” The English and weather; there’s nothing we excel at discussing more.

The rain dribbles along the clock faces and the darkening sky, and the smells of braising lamb, searing scallops, and roasting vegetables ripen the air. When I bring out the wines, I begin to wish this actually is only a dinner party.

“No vegetarians round the table, I trust?” Goose asks.

Jamie tips his head at me. “Shaw only eats pussy—”

“Fuck off.”

“Daniel’s a vegetarian,” Sophie says, and looks at him. “I’ve been thinking about it too, actually.”

“How’s Juilliard?” Mara cuts her off. Awkward pause ensues.

“Um, hard?” She blushes. “I mean, it’s incredible just getting in, but now I’m practicing with students who are so much more talented.”

Elbows on the table, Mara leans forward and says, “You have to be super gifted to be admitted in the first place, though, don’t you?”

Bloody hell.

A slow nod from Sophie as she continues to feign ignorance, and acts appropriately thrown by Mara’s targeted passive-aggression. Which won’t remain passive for much longer. “I’ve never had to work so hard at anything in my life.”

“You’re being modest,” Daniel says, his arm around her, giving her an awkward squeeze.

This is going to be savage.

“What about you?” Sophie asks Mara, elbows off the table, hands in her lap. “You guys are—” Her face blanks for a second. “You’re at . . . NYU?”

Mara bends over like a snapped branch, and I hear the slight crunch of paper in her fist. For half a second I think about stopping her, letting the charade go on, dodging the scrunch until we’ve settled in a bit more. But then . . . it’s Mara. She’s going to do what she does.

She slides a printout of the smoking gun across the table to Sophie. Sophie doesn’t look at it—she looks to Daniel with a nervous smile. “What’s this?”

“How long have you known?” Mara’s voice slices the air.

“Known . . . what?” She still hasn’t looked at the printout. Good show. Perhaps all of us have underestimated Sophie Hall.

“Known that you were Gifted?” Mara asks her, and Daniel turns away to try and hide how fucking miserable he’s been since he found out.

“Well,” Sophie says politely, and turns to me. “I’ve been playing since I was four . . . .”

Mara bends down once again, then slides another sheet of paper toward Sophie. And another. All printouts of pictures of Horizons files with Sophie’s handwritten notes, among others’, all over them.

She finally sheds her smile and looks around at us. “What are these?”

Daniel, sitting next to her, lifts one up. “Your handwriting. On my sister’s file from Horizons.”

But Sophie’s expression is placid, impressively innocent.

Daniel turns to her. “What the fuck?” he says.

Jaws drop. I don’t reckon I’ve ever heard Daniel say the word “fuck” before.

There’s a pause before Sophie folds in on herself, like a limp puppet.

“How long have you known?” He presses, barely containing himself.

When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes, wet streaks running down her face. “I knew when I was sixteen.”

“How?” Daniel asks.

“I have . . . a sense about people. It’s like—it’s like I can see these connections, invisible strings, almost, that aren’t there, with points of light attached to them—and they look—they look like they’re tied to me. I get this weird feeling, almost like butterflies in my fingertips, when I meet someone who’s . . .”

“Gifted,” Jamie intercedes.

She swallows and nods.

Daniel rubs his hands over his mouth. “You knew the first time I introduced you to my sister that she was different.” His voice wavers but it isn’t weak.

Sophie swallows hard now, forcing back tears. “When she came to school. The first day. I felt it.”

“Before we even met,” Daniel says flatly.

A tiny nod.

“Well,” Daniel says, trying for angry but the ache of sadness throbs in his voice. “So that’s why you asked me out.”

This is going rather off course . . . . I try to catch Mara’s gaze, but her eyes cut Sophie to pieces.

Sophie looks genuinely horrified. “No. Daniel, no.”

His breath is rattling in his chest. “You find other Carriers—Leo explained it to us already. That’s what you do. So you found Mara, and then figured out that the best way to get to her was to go through me.”

She shakes her head fiercely. “It wasn’t like that—”

“It was exactly like that!” His face is transparent with betrayal and anger. “You knew about Jude. You knew he was alive and torturing Mara—you could sense him. And you just let me go on thinking she was sick? That she just needed help, when she was actually being tortured.”

“You’re the one who told Leo we were here,” Mara cuts in. “You’re the one who found us. Leo’s been lying for you this whole time.”

“I wanted to tell you before that,” Sophie pleads. “I hated lying.”

“Then why did you?” Daniel looks as though he might be sick. The food sits curdling, puddling on the table. “You’ve been lying to me for as long as I’ve known you.”

“But not as long as you’ve known Leo,” Mara says, her head tilting at an angle. “Right?”

Sophie sniffles, nods. “I met him at a Juilliard audition. He’s a cellist.”

“Nobody cares,” Jamie adds.

“Were you telling him everything that was going on with us?” Daniel says—it’s hard to know whether he means “us” in the couple sense or the group sense. Sophie’s shaking her head vehemently, pleading with him, but if I were him, I don’t know whether I could trust her again. Steady heartbeat notwithstanding.

“We just stayed in touch when he left Florida,” she says, which visibly perks Jamie up. Was he from there? Just visiting? Or recruiting, as it were? “Last year, while we were all at Croyden,” Sophie goes on, visibly trying to compose herself. “He was telling me about stuff that was going on in New York—people he was meeting, wondering if I could sense them from long distances or if it had to be in person. He told me how he and a bunch of others were practicing, trying to exercise our Gifts . . . they’re a muscle, he explained, and training makes them stronger.”

“Did you tell him we were coming?” I ask. “To New York?”

“Yes.” She looks down, her blond lashes grazing her cheeks.

Goose leans in. “What, you sensed us when we landed at JFK?”

“No,” she says, rather impatiently. “Daniel told me you were coming. Or that Mara was coming, anyway. With you.” She turns her aqua blue eyes on me.

Splendid. I’m keen to move on, myself. “You were at the subway with us when the girl died.” I can hear everyone hold a breath. “You knew she was Gifted—Goose was there, he’d have been amplifying your ability. You knew she was going to die.”

Her lips part, but no sound comes out.

“Her name was Beth,” I say to her just as she begins shaking her head. “You could’ve saved her life.”

“We didn’t know what she was going to do—Stella wasn’t with us that night—”

“That’s not how we heard it.”

“They didn’t want to out me, okay? But it’s true, Stella can hear thoughts when she knows what to listen for, but she didn’t know what to listen for, and anyway she wasn’t there! She and Leo lied to protect me. But even if she had been there, this hasn’t happened enough for any of us to even know what to expect beyond the obvious.”

“Which is?”

Her voice tightens with frustration. “For me, I just knew—it’s like, imagine all of us walking around with a candle. And then the light snuffs out. It just started . . . happening. People going missing. So we started tracking it.”

“The map?” I ask.

She nods.

“You created it?”

“Yes . . . and no. It’s not like I can just sense people all over the world. But being around you”—she turns to Goose—“it changes things.”

As it does for us all, it seems. My thoughts slide to Goose and Mara, but I mentally run like fuck from that. “How’d you put that map together?” I ask.

“The normal way, mostly. People came and went from the brownstone—but pretty much whoever came to the safe house would stay when they got there. Everyone told us where they were from, what they could do—we started piecing together whatever we could.”

“But you were in Florida,” Mara says at the same time. “At school.”

“Around the time I met Leo, he formed a sort of chat client, so we could all stay in touch. I started talking to Stella a lot. She helped me.”

Daniel’s eyes meet Sophie’s for the first time. “All those times you said you had a concert last year, out of state. You were actually coming here, to meet up with Leo and whomever, weren’t you?”

She sucks in her lower lip ever so slightly. I can see the moment when she hovers between lying and telling the truth. She decides to tell the truth. “That’s what I told my parents, so they’d keep paying for me to visit last year.”

This is shit. I’m so sorry for him, but nothing I can do at present. “Fine. Now that you have that map, and know what you know, can you sense us, still, even when we’re not right in front of you?”

She nods.

“From how far away?”

A slight shrug. “I don’t honestly know. Goose—that’s not your real name, is it?”

“Yes. I’m the fourth generation Goose in my family,” he says with a marvellous straight face.

Sophie blinks, but goes gamely on. “Well, you amplify—everybody. Everything. Do you have to focus on it or—”

“This isn’t about him,” Mara says. “It’s about you.”

“It should be about Stella,” Sophie says, her voice quiet but threaded with self-righteousness. “And Felicity, who’s still alive.”

“It is,” Jamie says, without any hint of his usual charm or humour. He’s furious.

“Then why aren’t you asking me about them?”

“Why aren’t you telling us about them?” Mara’s exterior is calm, watchful.

“Because I don’t know anything! That’s the whole point—we can’t do this by ourselves. We all have to work together—”

“But you’re the hunter—sorry, forgive me—the, what do you call yourself?” Mara asks her.

“What do you call yourself?”

Casual shrug. “Murderess, butcher—”

“Quit it,” Daniel says to Mara. She tucks her fangs behind her lips, for now.

“Like I said.” Sophie turns to me, having decided that I’m the Reasonable One, “when I’m on my own, I only know someone’s Gifted when I meet them. When Felicity and the others went missing, they fell off the map. Literally. There’s nothing I can do.”

I can’t help but sympathise with that last bit, not that I’m about to admit it. And I don’t know that I want the answer to the question I’m about to ask, but I ask anyway. “Who was the first?”

A beat before she answers. “Beth’s the first one I saw, but Sam—I think Sam was the first.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know him personally—a friend of Leo’s, her name’s Eva—he was her friend. I never actually met him, and he died in England. You were there. With Goose.”

And Mara.

I close my eyes, and when I open them, everyone—Daniel, Jamie, Goose, Sophie—has a trickle of blood running from their noses. Mara appears to be smiling. Christ, I need a sleep. I blink hard, rub my eyes, and the image vanishes, thank fuck.

“Eva told Leo when Sam killed himself, and said he went missing just before that. That’s when he thought we should try to keep track.”

“Not working out very well though, is it,” Daniel says.

Her eyes are cast down at her plate. “No.” She lifts her gaze up to Goose. “But you’re helping, even though you don’t know it. I’m starting to recognise what it feels like, when someone goes missing.”

“What about Felix?” Jamie asks. “If his connection timed out, or whatever, you’d think he’d be the one you’d notice?”

“Felix never went missing. He wasn’t . . . like the others.”

“Just an old-fashioned suicide.” Mara says what I’m thinking, what Sophie’s just confirmed. There is a difference between the deaths, between the willing and the murdered.

“Look, we’re scared, okay? For our friends, for ourselves.” A pleading look at Daniel here, who looks pained but doesn’t bite.

Mara, however: “I’d like to know why you were taking notes on my Horizons file.”

At least Sophie has the good grace to pretend to seem ashamed. Or perhaps she actually is. I’m not sure I care. “We thought it might help to learn everything we could about what that doctor did to you guys.”

“You could’ve just asked,” Jamie says, unsmiling.

“Right.” Sophie makes a noise. “Like you would’ve believed me if I told you what I could.”

“Leo believed you. So did the rest of your friends,” Daniel interrupts. “You deliberately hid it. From me, from my sister—”

“From me as well,” I say.

She meets my gaze. “I didn’t know you were Gifted.”

“How’s that?” I ask.

“No connection.”

“Not a metaphor, I’m guessing.”

“No. I can’t sense you. It’s like you’re not even in the room.”

Goose looks disturbed. “You’re not going to off yourself, are you, mate?”

“No,” I say just as Sophie does.

“I’ve never sensed him,” she continues. “It’s not like he’s gone missing all of a sudden. Speaking of which, whatever’s happening? There haven’t been enough . . . deaths . . . to see a pattern yet. I don’t know how long it’ll be before Felicity dies, or Stella—”

“How do you know they will die?” Daniel asks.

“Because Sam died.”

“A pattern of one isn’t exactly a pattern.”

She shakes her head. “Felix knew when Felicity was gone.”

“Because you told him you couldn’t find her, and he lost hope,” I say, drawing Mara’s attention.

She lets out a shaky breath. “No, Felix was an empath. He could feel, and change, people’s emotions. And when Beth went missing, and killed herself—he knew it was happening to Felicity, too.”

“I don’t know, seems like he gave up kind of quick,” Jamie says.

“He didn’t want to live in a world without her,” I say. Daniel looks up—my defence of Felix is an unintentional defence of Sophie, so I circle back to offence, where it’s safer. “So what’s your plan, Sophie?”

“My plan?”

“You must’ve thought about it,” Mara says. “Or were you planning to lie to us forever?”

“You’ve read my file as well, I imagine,” I say.

She shakes her head. “You don’t have one.”

Jamie’s forehead scrunches. “Sure he does. I’ve seen it.”

Sophie shrugs. “Maybe Stella never took it out of Horizons, then.”

“But she stole mine,” Mara says—to herself, I think. A slight smile appears on her lips. “Of course she did.”

“Tell me something,” Jamie cuts in. “Did you know about me too? In Croyden? Because we’ve both been there since elementary school—”

“I didn’t know that there was something going on with me until I was sixteen, and you’re two years younger than me. When I met Leo and he told me I wasn’t crazy, I never thought there was anything special about you—”

“Thanks.”

“We passed each other all the time, and nothing, until one day—”

“Something,” he finishes, leaning back against the chair.

At that, Daniel stands up. “I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.” He rises from the table, and Sophie scrambles to follow. The chair scrapes against the floor as she pushes it away from the table.

“I’ll take the train back with you,” she says.

“Pass.” He goes to get his coat, but Mara crosses the room and says something to him I can’t hear—Sophie’s talking at him, Jamie’s asking Sophie for her address, and Goose is going for the whiskey.

“Called you a car, dude,” Jamie says to Daniel before he walks out the door. Jamie looks down at his mobile. “It’s just down the street. It’ll be here by the time you’re downstairs.” Daniel pauses for a moment, then says to Sophie, “You’d better head out. Before it leaves without you.”

She looks confused. “You’re not coming?”

“Not tonight.”

That visibly shakes her. “I love you,” she finally says, quiet and honest and sad.

Daniel doesn’t reply, but Mara opens the door and holds it open. Once Sophie’s walked into the hall, Daniel says, “You don’t lie to people you love.”

If only that were true.

“Daniel, you should spend the night,” Mara says as he stands by the now-closed door.

“I want to be by myself,” he says flatly. “I’m just waiting until I know she’s gone.”

“You can be alone here,” Mara insists.

“Stop.”

“You should,” I say. “It’s late. We have the room. We’ll let you alone.”

He wants to argue, but he’s wrung out. “Where?” he asks, glancing upstairs.

“Second floor, make a left after the first bank of rooms. It’s completely quiet—”

“I don’t want quiet.”

“There’s a telly,” Goose says. We all turn to him. “What? There’s one in all the rooms.”

“Not ours,” Mara mouths to me.

Because we have better ways of spending our time, I’m a bit tempted to say, but, not quite the moment, is it?

“Fine,” Daniel shrugs off his jacket, loops it over his arm. “I’ll see you guys . . . whenever.”

“Take care, buddy,” Jamie says.

“Night, brother,” Mara calls up as he disappears. No response.

Jamie and Goose awkwardly disperse, leaving Mara and me alone.

A dark look up through dark lashes. “I’m going to bed.” She doesn’t look tired. I think I hear her heart charged up, her pulse pounding in her veins.

“I’ll be a bit,” I say. “I want to clear up.”

She nods, then, letting out a long-held breath, says, “I could kill her for what she did to Daniel.”

An edge of a grin. “Literally or figuratively?”

She kisses me lightly on the mouth, then darts up the stairs and calls out, “Haven’t decided yet.”

With Mara, there’s no way to tell whether she means it.