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

I DREAM OF FIRE, BUT when I awaken my clothes are soaked through.

“She’s dead,” I say to no one. The white ceiling towers above me, hundreds of kilometres away. I’m not even entirely sure I’m on Earth until I hear Daniel’s voice.

“We know,” he says, and any horror I felt is drowned by the relief I experience knowing that he’s here, alive.

I sit up anxiously, remembering what Mara and Jamie said before Felicity burned. “Stella—”

I get a brief glimpse of Daniel’s face, deeply uncomfortable, looking away.

“Where’s Mara?” I ask, trying to sit up, but Daniel stops me.

“She was just here,” Daniel says. “Bathroom, maybe?”

“What happened to Stella?” I ask.

He exhales slowly. “She made, is making, a video. Right now. Nobody knows where she is, but she’s—she’s talking,” he says, his voice lowered. “She hasn’t outed you guys . . . yet . . . but she’s talking about the fire, and Felicity, and whatever’s happening to her right now.”

“And what is that?”

“What’s been happening to the other Carriers, the ones who’ve gone missing. Or that’s what she’s been saying.”

“She’s been at it for a bit.” Goose’s voice, from somewhere beyond my field of vision. When I twist my head, everything blurs.

“Since when?” I ask, trying to collect myself, or at least hide that I’m so wrecked. I hate the thought of them seeing me like this. Even Mara. It’s unbearable.

“Since you started having your fit, mate,” Goose finishes, then claps me on my shoulder as he sits beside me. My teeth rattle in my skull. “Glad to have you back.”

“Show me,” I say immediately, first to Daniel, then to Goose. He points at the telly, but the anchors are dissecting what Stella’s saying, playing parts of it over again. “I need to watch it straight through.”

“I’ve been recording it,” Jamie says. “Sophie and Leo are on their way over.”

Daniel’s expression changes, perhaps at the mention of Sophie. But he’s given over to it, I suppose, given the circumstances.

“Should I play it?” Jamie asks from the kitchen. I turn carefully around. This time is better. I’m getting better.

Goose mutes the news, and Jamie lopes over with his laptop, swinging his long legs over the sofa. He sets the screen on the side table nearest to me. Stella’s video’s got more than fifty thousand hits already.

“When did this go up?”

“Not even half an hour ago,” Jamie says. “It was cross-posted on social media first, then finally the news picked it up, because obviously.”

“Obviously . . . ?”

“You’ll see.” He presses Play.

All I see is Stella’s face, her skin tinted bluish from the screen. She’s staring straight into the lens.

“It’s happening again,” she starts, and there’s an unsettling smile on her mouth. “It’s Felicity. I didn’t really think I’d be next until I realised I was driving. And this was next to me, in the passenger seat.” She picks up a gun.

“Jesus fuck.” I breathe.

“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Keep watching.”

The camera lens is so small the gun fills it—you can’t really see anything around her, nothing to give off any hint of where she is. Her face appears in the frame, and she smiles again.

“I guess you wanted me to do this?” She puts the muzzle in her mouth, one eye looking at the lens, her lips still curved into a smile, showing teeth. She pulls the gun out.

“I actually. Bought. A gun. In Vermont, apparently—you can get one at sixteen there, did you know? I don’t know how I know, but I do. You must know too.” Her eyes narrow, and she leans toward the lens, her pupils dark and blown. “I can feel you in here. Pushing me. I think you’ve been inside me for a while, but I never really noticed, even after I saw you again. I mean, you have to be careful, you know? Don’t wanna get caught now, after everything you’ve done. Right?”

She’s vague enough that she could be talking about anyone, to anyone, but I know. Even though she hasn’t said Mara’s name yet, I know.

Her face goes slack. “She’s still alive. Burning. He’s not going to save her in time.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “I knew he wouldn’t.” She blinks, looks down at something, then back at the lens. “I think you could, though, if you opened your mind to it. To them. But she’d never let you. She wants you broken. She likes broken things. Loves that she’s the one breaking you.”

She picks up something else—she must have her mobile resting against something, because the lens goes dark, but we can still hear her.

“I bought these, too.” In the next frame, you can see a hunting knife and a bottle of something, as well as needles. “I can feel you in here, but I’m still me. My time’s not up yet. I mean, I know there’s nothing I can do at this point”—she shrugs casually—“I was made this way, to not be able to fight you. But I figure, at least I can choose how I die?” Her face vanishes, and the shot pans over the knife, the needles and a syringe, the gun and a box of ammunition, lingering on each for a shaky moment. “But nothing here’s really speaking to me.” She inhales deeply. “The gun feels like you. The needles . . . definitely not you. You hate needles. You used to hate blood, remember?” She throws back her head, laughing. Her throat moves, fills the shot. “You’ve changed a lot.” Her expression hardens, her eyes distant again. “We all did. But you the most.”

There’s a knock on the front door, and Jamie pauses the video just as I shake my head. “Goose, let them in. Daniel, how long does it go on?”

“I think it’s still going,” he says, glancing back up at the TV. Jamie checks his mobile before getting up as well.

I lower my voice. “You know what Stella’s saying,” I say to Daniel. “Do you think Mara . . . ?” My voice trails off. I can’t even make myself say it, not even to him. I twist around—Jamie’s still by the door, with Sophie and Leo and Goose. Where is Mara?

Daniel shakes his head. “This points at her, yeah. But I don’t think it is.”

“Why?”

“Listen to how Stella’s describing it—this isn’t murder. This is—someone’s in their heads, influencing them to do it. Coercing them.” He glances back at the door. Jamie’s on his way back over, along with Goose and Sophie and Leo. “Did you do what you said you would?”

I nod.

“And?” he asks.

“Gang’s all here,” Jamie says, standing beside Goose, Leo, and Sophie.

I remember last night. The scalpel Mara hid. The secrets she’s kept. I swallow my words, put my fist out to stop the train of thought that’s barrelling toward me. I catch Daniel’s eye and shake my head. He would rather believe it’s got something to do with Jamie. But this isn’t Jamie.

Sophie’s seated on another sofa, and Goose has taken the armchair. Leo’s standing, watching the silent news.

“I’m sorry,” I begin, looking at him. “About Felicity.” No response.

“The news picked up the explosion,” Sophie says. “Her parents . . .” Her cheeks and nose are red. She’s been crying.

Daniel turns to me. “That building is in your name,” he says quietly. “You’re going to start getting calls.”

“I haven’t heard anything.” I check my pockets. My mobile isn’t with me. Must’ve left it upstairs.

“You should check your phone,” Daniel says. “People are probably trying to reach you.”

I’m not sure how much I care, but I rise anyway. “Keep watching,” I tell them, though only Daniel and Sophie seem to be listening to me. “See if there’s anything that gives away where Stella is. Sophie, you haven’t seen her, have you?”

She shakes her head. “She’s missing, for me. Still. She didn’t . . . flare. If that’s what you’re asking.”

It is. “So there’s still time.”

“Uh, mates?” Goose has unmuted the television. “You should hear this.”

Stella had been missing from the frame, but she’s picked up her mobile again, or whatever she’s using to record herself.

“I want you to see it,” Stella says to the lens. “To watch me do it, not from inside my head but what it looks like on the outside, too. I’ve got all this stuff here, but it’s not . . .” She shakes her head. “It’s not what I want. Not that I want this at all, but since I don’t have a choice—since you’re bullying me into suicide, basically, at least I can still choose to go out the way I want. I still have some choices left.”

The echoes from my conversations with Daniel, with Jamie, with Mara—it’s as though she’d been listening.

“That’s why I’m recording it all. Everything. I know you think you’re the most loyal person alive, that I already betrayed you by leaving you—you realise I could name you, you know, right? All of you? I know you’re watching this. I want all of you to see me do it, but . . . this isn’t . . . right. It’s not . . . personal enough.” Stella looks somewhere else, then back at the lens. “I want your eyes looking at my eyes when she kills me. I want you to see what she’s really capable of,” she says, and a cold finger trails the back of my neck, because I know she’s speaking to me. “You won’t believe it any other way.”

Then Stella reaches toward the lens, and the screen fades to black.