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Malcolm hugs me for a long time when I surprise him. My eyes well up when he does. It’s the place. I can’t help thinking about everything that happened here. I can’t help imagining, for just a second, that Malcolm is Henri.
After I give him the same gift that I’ve given all the others, Malcolm tries to get me to stay for dinner.
“I can’t,” I tell him. “Too much left to do.”
He shakes his head ruefully. “Still off saving the world, huh?”
“Nothing quite so serious,” I reply. “I’m going to visit Sam next.”
“Tell him to call his mother!” Malcolm says with a shake of his head. “And tell him he needs to come home eventually and finish high school or he’ll never get into a good college. There’s a limit to how much vacation a young man should be allowed to take, no matter how many planets he’s helped saved.”
Laughing, I promise to tell Sam all that. Then I fly out of Malcolm’s backyard, turn invisible again and land a few houses over.
Sarah Hart’s house.
I stand on the front walk, not turning visible, not moving. It’s just like I remember it. I imagine jogging up the sidewalk and ringing the doorbell, how excited I would be to see her, my heart racing. She’d invite me in, and her house would smell amazing like it always would, and we’d—
There’s no movement in the windows. The house is dark. There’s a FOR SALE sign driven into the front yard.
I’ve imagined this a hundred times over the last year. How I would come here and ring the doorbell like old times. How I would see Sarah’s parents and tell them how much I loved their daughter, how much she meant to me, how much she meant to the world even if not many people know it and how sorry I am that I dragged her into everything that happened. I would tell them that I miss her every day. And then I would throw myself on their mercy.
I’ve imagined it so many times, but I can’t do it. I can’t take that walk up those steps.
I’m too scared. I don’t want to see the look in their eyes. I don’t want to grapple with the pain I’ve caused them.
Maybe someday I’ll be ready.
Not today.
In their tour of Europe, Six and Sam have made it to Montenegro by the time I catch up with them. They’re camping on a secluded part of Jaz Beach. Even at night, the water shines like crystal, the purple swells of the nearby hills a stunning contrast. I’m happy for them—the way they’ve traveled, how much they’ve seen in a year—and at the same time, my heart aches because it isn’t me.
On the beach, I find their campfire and their tent, but I don’t find Six or Sam. No, for that I need to follow the trail of clothes towards the water’s edge. I see them out there, silhouettes in the moonlight, tangled together in the water.
I laugh quietly and look away.
I’m not going to be a third wheel here, even if I do miss them both badly. I also haven’t talked to Six since—well, since she saved my life. A life that I was more than ready to throw away. Like Sarah’s family, I’m not sure what I’ll say to her. For now, better to let it go unsaid.
From inside my wooden box, I withdraw two pendants. They’re carved from Loralite stone that I chipped off the main rock back in the Himalayas. Chiseled into both of them is the Loric symbol for Unity. I drape these across their sleeping bags and find a scrap of paper to write them a short note. I let them know how the pendants work, that they just need to visualize the Himalayas and it should bring them to the chamber I’ve set up, the one I’ve scrubbed clean of the past and made ready for the future.
I write that I hope I’ll see them soon, and I mean it.
Marina is the hardest to find. If it wasn’t for her sporadic phone calls to Ella over the last few months, it might have taken me weeks to track her down. When I would ask her about Marina, Ella would always get quiet. She said Marina didn’t seem like herself. That she seemed paranoid. Angry.
I find her navigating a speedboat between deserted islands in the South Pacific. Her face is sunburned, her wavy hair crisped straight from salt water, and there are deep bags under her eyes. I get the feeling that she’s been alone for a while—I recognize the signs; I’ve seen them in myself. Her lips move when she’s not talking, her hands shake, her eyes don’t always stay focused.
We were raised in a war, and now—now we’re free. Everyone is handling it differently.
When I first appear to her, she doesn’t startle as much as the others.
“Are you really there, or have I truly gone crazy?” she asks me.
“I’m here, Marina.”
She smiles that gentle, patient smile. I’m glad to see it.
“Thank God,” she says. “You showed up at a good time.”
I don’t ask her where we’re going. She drives the boat purposefully, like she’d made this trip before. I lean back and let the spray tickle my cheeks, feel the sun beat down on my neck and shoulders.
Eventually, Marina hands me a cell phone. Our fingers brush, and I notice that she’s ice-cold.
“I saw this on the internet, and I—I couldn’t let it go,” she says.
She plays a video that she downloaded off YouTube. Of course I recognize the scene. It’s the mountain in West Virginia, or what’s left of it. Really, it’s a crater filled with scorched rubble, the end result of our bombardment of that hellish place. The video was shot a week after our last battle there, when various government agencies had begun picking over the remains.
As a crew clears away some rocks, something knocks them backwards. A shape streaks upwards from the debris like a missile and disappears into the sky. The camera tries to follow it but isn’t nearly quick enough.
“We never got that fourth scar, John,” Marina says, her voice a little shaky.
“Maybe the charm was broken,” I say.
“I thought that for a while. Tried to convince myself . . .” She shakes her head. “I know the kinds of places he likes. I remember from . . . from when he told us about himself. Warm and tropical. Secluded.”
“And?”
“I found him last week,” Marina says.
Marina cuts the boat’s engine as we approach a small island. It would probably take you less than an hour to walk its entire perimeter. Just white sand and a small copse of palm trees. We drift closer, the waves tugging us in.
The guy standing on the beach with a wooden fishing pole in his hands looks frighteningly skinny. From where we are, I can see the outline of his ribs and spine. There are loose flaps of skin on his arms and belly from where the weight came off too quick. More disconcerting are the dark patches of skin, like tumors, like hardened obsidian, that make a patchwork of his skin. Maybe that’s a result of being drowned in Setrákus Ra’s lake of ooze. Another permanent disfigurement to go with the missing eye.
That is most definitely Five standing there. There’s no chance he doesn’t see us. There aren’t any other boats for as far as the eye can see. He probably heard us coming miles off.
“When I saw him die, John, all I could think was how horrible it was. To be killed in that way . . . ,” Marina begins hesitantly, staring across the shallows at Five. “But I also felt—I am not proud to admit this—I also felt there was justice there. That he had at last gotten what was coming to him.”
Marina hugs herself. Even in the sun, a light frost forms on her skin.
“I’ve prayed, John. I’ve—I’ve tried to get over it, like so many of the others have done. But the deaths haunt me. Not just Eight, but Sarah and Mark, Adelina and Crayton, all those people we saw in the mountain, the millions killed in the bombardment. And I think—how can anyone just move on? How? When there are still people like him in the world? When there is no justice?”
I swallow hard. “I don’t know, Marina.”
“I’ve been coming here for a week. Sitting out here. Watching him. He knows we’re here, obviously, even if he doesn’t say anything. It’s like—it’s like he’s daring me. Or he’s asking for it. He wants me to put him out of his miser
y.”
Looking across the water, Five does look to be in rough shape. Left to his own devices, I’m not sure how much longer he’ll last out here.
“You told me, John, that it would be up to me what happens to him. After, you said. But I do not want that responsibility. I don’t want to keep carrying this around—him, the war, all of it. It is too much to bear alone.”
I put my arms around Marina. She’s cold to the touch, so I turn on my Lumen, counteracting her chill. She cries, one hard sob, and then claps a hand over her mouth. She steels herself, knowing that Five will probably hear.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, producing the last of my pendants. “Let me take you someplace where we can figure out what’s next. Together.”
Marina hesitates, staring at Five. “What about him?”
“He’s a ghost,” I reply. “We aren’t.”
Marina comes back to the Himalayas with me. When she sees what I’ve done with the cave, with Eight’s cave, she runs her hands across the places where the prophecies used to be etched, feeling the smoothness of new stone, the possibility of a blank canvas. She lets herself cry at last.
