Figuring out how to use the mark required risks I couldn’t take there. I needed a safe haven and I needed it to be Ashville. It’s where my life was, my friends, my memories. It was home. That had to be preserved above all else so that maybe someday I could go back.
I’d written Jack a few times after I left; real letters, not e-mails. Nan always said an apology was best made in person, and if that wasn’t possible, on fine stationery. I’d sent him the first letter right after I got here. Others over the following weeks.
Now I just texted. Short little notes, unable to fully sever the connection.
He never wrote back.
After rolling around in bed for an hour, the stuff with Jack and the scene with Zander fighting for space in my jittery brain, I called Tasha.
“H’lo?” Her voice was groggy. I glanced at the clock again, afraid I’d miscalculated, but 1:23 here meant after nine in Romania and Tash wasn’t usually a late sleeper.
“Tasha? Hey, it’s Cassie. Did I call too—”
“Cassie!” Hearing pre-caffeine Tasha’s excitement made me smile. “How are you? I miss you! Wait!” I could almost see her doing the clock math. “Is everything okay? It must be …”
“The middle of the night,” I finished. “It’s fine. I just couldn’t sleep and it finally seemed like a time I might actually catch you awake.”
“Yeah … sort of. Late night.”
We swapped stories about the usual stuff: the kids she was teaching English, my new school, her parents.
“You hear from anyone else at home?” I asked casually.
“Like who?” She was all innocence, totally onto me.
“I was just thinking about Jack,” I said, still casual. Nothing wrong with asking about an old friend, right? “You know, wondered how he was …”
“Whether he was dating anyone? Asking about you?”
“Well, yeah.”
She sighed. “I wish I could tell you, Cass, but I don’t know. When I saw him last, he was pretty upset, couldn’t understand why you left.” She paused, asking carefully, “Why did you? I still feel like I don’t know.”
I closed my eyes, wishing I hadn’t brought it up. “Oh, you know, Tash, it was just … being there with the memories of Nan …”
“Yeah, I know.” I could tell she wasn’t really buying it anymore. Just like Jack hadn’t. “That’s it, though? There wasn’t anything else? Because …”
She didn’t finish, just left it out there. “No, nothing else,” I answered.
We talked a little more, but before we hung up Tasha circled back.
“You know, Cass, it was December when I saw him last.” She didn’t even have to say his name. “Months ago,” Tasha added for emphasis. “You know what they say about time, wounds, all of that. I wouldn’t wait too long to get in touch.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. I hung up after our good-byes, not bothering to tell her how many times I’d tried.
I lay in bed for another half hour, but knew all chance of sleep was blown. I decided to go to the all-night diner two blocks away instead. I rarely went out this late, but when I wanted to, I could. It’s one of the benefits of being my own boss at seventeen.
The diner was no-frills down to its very name: The Diner. I slid into an empty booth near the far corner after grabbing a job application for Liv. Not that I thought this was exactly what she had in mind, but I was here and they were “Now Hiring.” I’d carefully folded it into my backpack and was flipping through a left-behind newspaper when the men’s room door opened. I glanced up, without thought or expectation, immediately wishing myself back home in bed, sleepless or not.
The man walked toward me, lowered himself to his seat, and slurped at his coffee. He was lit with a soft, steady light. The last thing I needed tonight. The mark.
I glanced at the clock by the door: 2:47. He had less than twenty-one hours to live.
I closed my eyes, rubbing them as if I could erase his image: shaggy brown hair, worn flannel shirt, dirty jeans, heavy boots. He looked around fifty, but his scruffy face was tired, the kind that seems older than it is. Beaten down.
“What can I getcha, hon?” The waitress stood by my table. Behind her, I could see the man set down his cup and collect his things. I couldn’t eat now anyway. I hated this feeling, hated what I had to do next: watch, learn, judge. Save him or don’t? Trade a life for his? Without any evidence there even was a trade-off beyond the letter written by my long-dead and possibly crazy relative. Hardly rock-solid proof.
“Nothing,” I told her, reaching heavily for my coat. “Changed my mind.”
I slid out of the booth and followed him into the dark and freezing night.
The mark was as luminous as the moon against the near-black sky, more vivid than I’d ever seen it. I followed him, tense and anxious, staying in the shadows. But the man kept his head tucked against the wind that blew straight into us, never looking back, as we walked one block, then two, three, four from The Diner and my apartment. At the end of the last block, the man turned into an alley.
I hesitated, an ominous feeling stealing over me at the cusp of the dim passage. I’d never been to this part of Bellevue before. It was probably totally benign, if a little run down, during the day. But in the deserted night, it looked anything but safe.
What if his fate was to be mugged on his way home? What if following him made it my fate, too? What if he was the mugger; had known the whole time I was behind him and turned in here to trap me? What if I was his killer, protecting myself—his death the result of my own self-defense?
He’d gotten most of the way down the block while I stood paralyzed by my imagination. If he turned into a building or ducked down another street, I’d lose him.
And I couldn’t lose him.
My hands clenched into fists, I started down the alley. I was within half a block of him when he paused, pulling out a set of keys and descending three stairs to a door. He unlocked it and slipped inside.
A light went on. I moved closer, crouching low, able to make out a sink, stove, and table. His kitchen. The counters held a toolbox, coffeemaker, and neatly stacked pile of magazines. It was frustratingly bland. No photos. No clutter or mess. No collection of empty booze bottles. Or guns or drugs or swastikas or signs saying “I’m a bad guy. Don’t save me.”
I waited, trying to ignore the bitter wind blowing through the corridor where I squatted, while he sifted through papers and envelopes. Finally he walked to the back room, turning on the light before disappearing into a bathroom.