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“You must leave him.” Her words cut the air.
A few seconds passed before I found my voice. “What are you talking about?”
“The boy with the gray eyes. The one outside.”
“Why?” I asked warily.
“The boy is destined for greatness, but with you, he is in danger. You are linked, the two of you. You must leave him. This is what I have seen.”
I grew frustrated. “Is he in danger because of me?”
“He will die before his time with you by his side, unless you let him go. Fate or chance? Coincidence or destiny? I cannot say.” Her voice had turned soft.
Soft and sad.
A fist closed around my heart. I tried to let him go once before. It didn’t work.
“I can’t,” was all I said to her, and quietly.
“Then you will love him to ruins,” she said, and let my hands go.
39
SHE WITHDREW THE CASH FROM HER POCKET AND offered it back to me. “I cannot take this from you, and you must not tell him what I said.”
“That’s convenient,” I muttered under my breath.
“If you leave him, tell him,” she said with a shrug, “by all means. But only if you let him go. If he knows of his destiny and the two of you remain together, it will seal his fate.” She gestured to the door.
I didn’t move. “That’s it?”
“I cannot help you further,” she said.
My nostrils flared. “You didn’t help at all.” My voice was sharp, but then it thinned. “Isn’t there something I can do?”
She crossed the small space and stood by the door. “Yes. There is something you can do. You can let him go. If you truly love him, you will let him go.”
My throat tightened as I looked at her. Then I marched out of the tent.
Noah was waiting outside and matched my pace as I stomped down the dirt path.
“Bad news?” he asked, clearly amused.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and kept walking.
“Wait,” he said, reaching for my hand and spinning me around. “Are you crying?”
I pulled away. “No.”
“Stop,” Noah said, and stood in the path. I hurried along and increased my pace to a jog. Before I knew it I was running.
We were nearly back by the Hall of Mirrors when Noah caught up with me. I felt a hand on my shoulder and whirled around.
“Mara,” he said softly. “Why are you running from me?”
And that undid me. The tears came faster than I could wipe them away. Noah took my hand and pulled me behind one of the game booths, then wrapped me in his arms. He stroked my hair.
“What did she say?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said between quiet sobs.
“But it’s the reason you’re crying, yes?”
I nodded into his soft shirt. He felt so solid beneath my cheek. I didn’t want to let go.
But Noah took a slight step back, pulling away, and tilted my face up with his hand. “This is going to sound mean, but I don’t mean it that way.”
“Just say it.” I sniffed.
“You’re gullible, Mara,” he said quietly, and his voice was kind. “An easy mark. A few weeks ago it was hypnosis and Santeria. Now it’s possession and tarot.”
“She didn’t do a tarot reading.”
Noah sighed and dipped his head. “It doesn’t matter what she did. What matters is what you believe. And you’re highly suggestible—you hear something offhand and suddenly you think it’s an all-embracing explanation.”
I glared at him, but there was no heat behind it. “At least I’m trying to find one.”
Noah’s eyes closed. “I’ve been trying to find one for years, Mara. It hasn’t led me anywhere. Look,” he said as he opened his eyes, taking my hand and lacing his long fingers through mine. “We’ll go straight back to her and I’ll double her money to admit the truth and she’ll tell you she made the whole thing up. To put on a good show. I’m not letting some con artist upset you this way.”
“She didn’t take my money,” I said quietly. “She didn’t have anything to gain by lying.”
“You never know what another person stands to gain or lose by anything.” He pulled me back onto the path. “Let’s go.”
When we made it back to her tent, a sign was hung over the entrance that said BACK IN ONE HOUR. Noah ignored it and pushed the flap open.
The fortune-teller’s daughter sat in a small overstuffed armchair reading a magazine. There was a Ouija board on the table in front of her. I looked away.
“Where’s your mother, Miranda?” Noah’s eyes roamed the small tent.
The girl cracked her gum and looked at me. She blew a fat pink bubble, then sucked it back into her mouth. “She got you good, huh?”
Noah arched an eyebrow at me.
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“You bought her Madam Rose crap?” she asked me. “Look, her real name is Roslyn Ferretti and she’s from Babylon, Long Island. You’d get better predictions from a Magic Eight Ball,” she said to me. Then turned back to her magazine.
Noah tilted the page down with one finger. “Where can we find her?”
Miranda shrugged. “Getting high probably, behind The Screaming Dead Man.”
“Thanks,” Noah said, and we left the tent. He held my hand and walked like he knew where we were going. “See?” he said gently. “It isn’t real.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t trust my voice.
An intimidatingly tall tower rose in front of us, right next to the Ferris wheel. A small car ascended slowly into the air; I assumed it would eventually fall in one drop. We hooked back behind the ride, searching for the woman as we walked. Noah led me around a patch of dirt; we wandered until it became grass and then, finally, we saw her.
Madam Rose, aka Roslyn Ferretti, was sitting perched on a small rock, the hem of her skirt pooled at her feet. Smoking a joint, just as her daughter predicted.
“Hey,” Noah called out.
The woman coughed and hastily moved her hand behind her back. Her eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. When she recognized me, she shook her head. “I already gave you your money back.”
“Why did you say those things?” I asked quietly.
Her eyes roamed over the two of us. She lifted the cigarette back to her mouth and inhaled deeply. “Because they were true,” she then said, exhaling the words in a cloud of cloying smoke. Her eyes began to close.
Noah snapped his fingers in her face. She pushed his hand away. “Listen closely,” he said. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to admit you made it up.”
She looked at me then, her eyes suddenly sharp. “Did you tell him?”
I opened my mouth to insist that I didn’t, but Noah spoke before I had the chance.
“A thousand,” he said darkly.
She gave him a long look. “I can’t take your money.”
“Don’t f**k with me,” Noah said. “We know you’re a fraud, Roslyn, so please do yourself a favor and admit it.”
Her head dropped, and she shook it. “That girl, I swear.”
“Roslyn.”
She lolled her head back, like this was some kind of giant inconvenience. “He paid me, okay?”
The hair rose on the back of my neck. Noah and I exchanged a glance.
“Who paid you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Some guy.”
“What did he look like?” Noah pushed.
“Tall. Dark. Handsome.” She smiled, and tried to take another puff. Noah plucked the joint from her fingers and held it in front of him, just out of her reach.
“Be specific,” he said.
She shrugged lazily. “He had an accident.”
“An accident?” Noah asked. “A limp? A prosthetic limb? What?”
“Talked funny.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “An accent. Right. What sort of accent?”
“Foreign,” she said thickly, and began to giggle.
“This is useless,” I said. But at least she hadn’t described Jude. A small relief, but still.
“We’re not leaving until she tells us exactly what happened,” Noah insisted. “Was his accent like mine?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“What did he say to you?”
She sighed. “He told me to bring you into my tent,” she said to me. “He told me what to say to you.” Then she lifted her face up to Noah. “And he said you’d offer me money and that I couldn’t take it.”
“When was this?” I asked her.
“About ten minutes before I saw you.”
Noah ran his hand over his jaw. “I don’t suppose he gave you a name?”
She shook her head.
“Are you sure?” he pressed. “There’s no amount of money I could offer you to tell us?”
A sad, brittle smile appeared on her lips. “God knows I could use it, sweetheart, but I can’t take money from either of you.”
“Why not?”
Her gaze drifted off into the darkness. “He told me I couldn’t.”
“So what?” Noah asked. “Why listen?”
Her voice grew quiet. “Because he’s the real deal.” Then she reached out her hand. Noah gave back her joint, and she stood.
“I’m truly sorry,” she said to me as she passed by, leaving Noah and me alone. The tower above us was just about to fall; but even though everyone in it knew what was coming, when it dropped, they still screamed.
Noah fit his hands to the curve of my waist. “Tell me,” he said.
He looked inhumanly beautiful under the lights. It almost hurt to look at him, but it would have hurt more to look away.
“Tell me,” he said again. There was need in his voice, and I didn’t have the strength to refuse.
“She said I have to let you go.”
He drew me closer. Brushed a strand of hair from my face, trailed his fingers along the curve of my neck. “Why?”
I closed my eyes. The words ached as they left my throat. “Because you’ll die by my side if I don’t.”
Noah slid his arms around me and fitted me against him. “It isn’t real,” he whispered into my hair.
Maybe it wasn’t. But even if it was . . . “I’m too selfish to leave you,” I said.
Noah pulled back so I could see his smile. “I’m too selfish to let you.”
40
WHEN WE MET BACK UP WITH MY FAMILY, I put on my happy face. I was still haunted by what Roslyn had said and the idea that someone paid her to say it, but when I managed to sneak a minute alone with Noah after we got home, he said he’d have Investigator Guy look into it, kissed my forehead, and left it at that. My face fell, but Noah didn’t see it.
Or he ignored it.
Noah would try to find out who paid her off, I knew. I trusted him. But I wasn’t sure he trusted me.
I was suggestible, he said, and Noah was the opposite. Eternally skeptical and arrogant about it. Yes, he went along with anything I wanted, no matter how strange—the Santeria stuff, burning that doll. And tonight, with the fortune business; he gave in to me too, even though he thought Roslyn was just high, that her words had no more weight than a horoscope. Noah indulged my every whim, but they were more than that to me.
Which made me wish I had the freedom to look for answers myself.
I knew I should be grateful not to be locked up in a mental hospital already and I was, but it was hard not to feel like a prisoner in my own house instead. And I wasn’t just under my parents’ observation—I was under John’s, too. I wanted him watching me and the house, absolutely. But even though I felt safer now, I didn’t feel free. That wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t Noah’s.
It was Jude’s.
Noah did ask me to come to his room after everyone fell asleep that night, and even though I was frustrated and tired and still thinking about my crappy fortune, I went. Obviously.
When I opened the guest room door, Noah was in bed—still clothed and reading.
“What book?” I asked, closing the door and leaning against it.
He showed me the title: Invitation to a Beheading.
I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. “I recommended that to you.”
“You did.”
“And?”
“It’s sad,” he said, placing the book on the bed.
My brows knitted together. “I thought it was funny.”
“Cincinnatus is in a prison of his own making. I find it sad.” He tilted his head at me. “You’re still upset.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
“In that case, I have a proposal.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve been doing exposure therapy at Horizons, yes?”
“Yes . . .”
“To overcome your fears.”
I nodded again.
“And one of the things you’re afraid of is hurting me.”
“Killing you,” I said quietly.
“If we kiss.”
If I lose control. “If we stay together,” I said, thinking of Roslyn’s words.
“You want to do both?” Noah asked evenly.
So much. “Yes.”
“Then my proposal is this: that we approach it the way you would any other fear. First, you’ll imagine an encounter with the source of the phobia.” A half-smile appeared on his lips.
I saw where he was going with this. “You want me to imagine kissing you?”
