Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

MAR

T his couldn’t be happening.

Levi had said Otis was the person he cared most about in this world, his best friend. And now Greta was telling me that Otis killed Nie?

Obviously Greta wouldn’t lie to me, but she could be mistaken, right? There was still the possibility that this was all a big misunderstanding.

“How sure are you that Otis killed Nie?” I asked.

“Completely,” Greta said.

Imogen nodded her agreement. “I saw him do it, too.”

Things between me and Levi were already complicated, but if this was really true, it made everything far more complicated.

It felt like the universe was playing a cruel joke.

“You saw him do it?” None of this made any sense. “How?”

“Cameras,” Greta said. “They’re all over Nevermore.”

Cameras to watch the private happenings? What else had they seen? Worry crept up my neck as I thought about the private moments Levi and I had shared out in town.

Greta’s cheeks flushed red.

She knew. Why I thought anything in my life could be private, I had no idea. I shared an existence with other Marnies. One of my friends had literally been in my head before. Nothing was private.

None of that was the most important thing at the moment.

“We can’t be sure of anything when there’s a shapeshifter involved. Bernadette could have pretended to be Otis,” I said.

“I believe her,” Greta said.

“She definitely didn’t do it,” Imogen said.

I needed to see with my own two eyes or there’d always be a seed of hopeful doubt growing in the back of my head.

I caught myself picking at the sleeve of my sweater, nervous energy searching for release. I flexed my fingers and measured my breaths. Slow, steady, calm.

My mind screamed warnings, a cacophony of imagined disasters, desperate cries that clung to the individuality of my lived experience as Mar.

But I had no choice.

There was no escaping what needed to be done.

“I’m ready to rejoin.” I reached for Greta, and found my arm trembling.

She accepted and wrapped her fingers around my palm.

Energy surged from her, straight into me, like a tidal wave. I had no choice but to submit to its power.

MARNIE

Mar had thought since she’d been the older copy, that she’d absorb Greta.

Greta hadn’t given a thought or care to which form became host to the whole.

But it was Greta who saw the purple bubble.

A flood of new memories washed over my brain, two sets converging into one experience. All of the memories were mine.

I wasn’t Greta anymore, or Mar. I was Marnie, as complete as I could be without the final pieces of Nie. Through my rejoining, I knew two consequential truths.

One—I’d done way more than kiss Levi, because even if I didn’t want to admit it, I was falling quite hard for him.

Two—Otis undoubtedly murdered Nie.

I’d been so certain I knew exactly the kind of man Levi was, that I could truly trust him.

And now….

How could he be best friends with a murderer?

Worse, Otis had murdered me.

A sinking feeling settled in my gut, heavy and foreboding. What if I’d been wrong to trust him? He’d been in Piccadilly at the same time Nie’s head had shown up on Barnacles’s door step.

The fox had dragged Nie’s head away, which checked out with Levi’s account of following a fox to the train station. But he’d said the fox was pulling a trash bag. A fox couldn’t have put Nie’s head in a bag, gotten it onto a train, traded the bag for a box, and delivered that box across town.

At the very least, Nie would have been covered in scrapes and bruises when I’d found her.

And when I searched her memories, I found only one piece of information that lent evidence to any of this—red. The fox was red. It was flimsy at best.

What if the fox had help? What if everything that had happened between me and Levi was a lie? What if Otis had never been missing, and Levi had been helping him this entire time with some twisted plot?

My breath rushed from my lungs. I staggered back as I tried to process the hurt that flooded my senses. The pain was physical, crushing, suffocating.

“You did it!” Imogen threw her arms around me and squeezed. “You’re one Marnie again. And you did it on purpose. That’s amazing.”

I could hardly feel the pressure she added.

I could hardly feel anything beyond the questions and thoughts swirling through my head.

Imogen kept her grip on me, but turned her head like she was waiting for me to say something.

I said, “Thanks.”

“I know this whole Otis thing is throwing you. How could it not?”

I wriggled to free myself from her grasp.

She released me. The concerned look on her face hurt my heart. I couldn’t handle any more hurt. I looked everywhere but at her.

“I have to talk to Levi,” I said.

“He’s getting dinner, remember?” Imogen tilted her head, the concern lines on her face only deepening.

“Right,” I said.

I took a seat on the edge of my bed and stared down at the carpet. Imogen stepped close enough that I could see the red points of her shoes. I could feel her winding up to say something, a gentle prodding, probably.

But then there was a knock on the door. Imogen answered it.

I rose from the bed and watched Levi pause at the threshold.

His shamrock irises soaked in all the light from the lamps, dimming the room around us. The entire world faded to a black backdrop.

I searched for the truth in the sharp lines of his face, on the lips that had felt so soft and adoring on my bare skin.

Show me what I feel isn’t one-sided.

Prove to me what I’d thought we shared was real.

We stared at each other for what was probably only a moment but felt like a lifetime. His expression transformed as he took me in, from happy-to-see me to something harder.

“Perfect. We need to talk,” I said. “Leave the food with Imogen.”

Levi handed it over without speaking a word.

“I won’t leave the building,” I told Imogen as I stepped past Levi and into the hall.

“All right,” Imogen said, with a tone that made clear she wasn’t happy about it.

I pulled the door shut.

“What happened, Marshmallow?” Levi touched my arm.

I tried not to flinch. I tried not to lean into him.

I needed a barrier around myself, a protective shield so I could think without allowing his closeness to sway my thoughts.

“We need to go somewhere private,” I said.

“We could go to my room.”

I shook my head. It needed to be somewhere neutral.

Lines formed on his forehead. He was concerned about me, about where we stood. Or, he realized I was onto him.

I took us to the roof.

The full moon cast long shadows across the rooftop. Each corner and crevice filled with inky darkness, contrasting sharply with the silvery glow of the night. The wind howled as it pulled at my pants, my hair, my sweater. I should have put on a coat.

“What’s wrong?” Levi asked as the door clicked shut behind us.

The sting of betrayal felt like a knife plunged into my back, each twist deepening the wound, but my mind clung stubbornly to the hope that Levi could offer me an explanation that would wash it all away.

“Your friend killed Nie.”

He furrowed his brows. Golden hair whipped over his forehead, hiding his eyes in shadow.

“Tell me you didn’t know,” I said.

“I didn’t know.”

I stared at him, wishing I could believe that. Willing him to prove it.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes.” His response was immediate and firm, as cold as the night air that assaulted it. “He’s a good person.”

Not I’m sorry, not I’m one hundred percent with you. He’s a good person —defending the murderer. Pain seared through me, raw and unrelenting, as if my very soul had been scorched.

“Good people don’t kill other people,” I said, and turned for the door.

Maybe I wasn’t the best person. I never claimed to be. But I would never kill someone, a stranger, with her back turned so she had no chance to defend herself.

I never had a chance.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Mar?”

I froze. “It’s Mar nie . I never should have expected anything but betrayal. Don’t follow me. This alliance is over.”

It broke my heart to a thousand pieces to walk away.

It broke my heart into a thousand more when he made no attempt to stop me.